Broadtexter Weekly

The 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards finalists were announced on Thursday, February 1st and Broadtexter is proud and humbled to have been selected as a finalist in the “Technical Achievement” category. The SXSW Web Awards “uncover the best new websites and celebrate those who are building and implementing tomorrow’s online trends”. The Broadtexter team will be in Austin for the whole festival (March 9-18) so drop us a note if you’ll be there and want to meet up. We want you to know how grateful we are to all of you for using Broadtexter. You can see all of the finalists by visiting:

http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/finalists/

The SXSW People’s Choice Web Awards
There is also a People’s Choice award for the festival and we’d love to have a go at it. Please vote for us if you have a chance. Here is the link:

https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/

Broadtexter enables every Musician to create a Mobile Fan Club so they can easily use regionalized text messaging to stay connected with their fans on-the-go. Every musician has an email list and MySpace ‘friends’, but the ability to reach fans with text messages about new releases or specific shows (in specific areas) is the next generation of fan communication.

How it Works. Fans easily join a Mobile Fan Club right from a Flash widget that the musician can embed across their entire web presence (social networking sites, blogs, and their home pages). Once in a Mobile Fan Club, the musician (not Broadtexter) controls the messages that go out to the fans. The service is completely free of spam so fans will never get annoyed with third-party advertisements on their phones.

The Trend. Broadtexter is offering a meaningful way for fans to stay informed when they’re not at their computers. The growth of social networking sites like MySpace has created great opportunities to increase exposure for a musician, but it has also created an over-load of information for the typical music fan. There is just so much to keep track of out there. It’s tied fans to their computer screens and created a challenge to keep their attention. Broadtexter Mobile Fan Clubs make it easy for musicians to keep their fans informed and updated about relevant information.

Cool Factor. One stand-out feature is that a musician can send REGIONALIZED alerts to their fans right from their own cell phone (because sometimes you just can’t get to a computer between gigs). Regionalized alerts can also be easily sent from the secure Broadtexter account pages where there are some other great tools like the ability to review fan subscriber data by region, customize the look and feel of the sign-up module, and review past text alerts.

Scenarios. The usefulness and power of Broadtexter for musicians becomes obvious when you consider it can be used for so many things like show time changes, special radio appearance announcements, and exclusive fan club discounts. However, the greatest power is being able to reach a fan a few hours before a show with a reminder on their phone. It’s such an incredible way to get more ‘butts in the seats’!

Founders. Based in New York City, Broadtexter was created by a group of real performing musicians and music fans who wanted to create a way to help musicians connect with their fans on-the-go through the use of cell phones and text messaging. In tune with the changing climate and democratization of empowering services available to musicians, the founders recognized that mobile solutions have only been available to the major artists with the big bucks. Broadtexter is built for ALL musicians of every size fan base and budget.

It’s a brave new world…the better musicians communicate with their fans, the more their fans will grow with them and buy their albums and come to their shows. Broadtexter currently serves the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico and has an extended free trial. Setting up a Mobile Fan Club can be done in five minutes right from the Broadtexter website.

I’m a singer/songwriter living in NYC. Like most musicians, I send a monthly email to my fans with dates for up-coming shows. I’m always concerned that the gigs in the middle and end of the month are going to be over looked or over shadowed by the most recent ones. I know that when I get an email from a friend who tours a lot, I end up deleting the message after I read it, or it ends up so low in my inbox that I forget the date on the tour that actually pertained to my city.

I would send text message reminders to my friends in New York when I was in town because I had their numbers in my phone. I wanted to be able to do the same thing for my fans but the question became, how would I get their numbers? I also would only want to send to my fans if THEY wanted the reminder so how would I get their permission? Also, I would want to let them tell me what state they wanted to be reminded about. Finally, I would not want all my fans to have access to my cell phone number.

I talked about these issues with some programmer friends. We decided to build a service that solves all these problems. We eventually created Broadtexter. I can send messages from my phone when I’m on the road (or from my computer) to the specific state that the fan is registered in. Fans can subscribe on my MySpace page or my web site using a cool little Flash module.

I posted my module and fans began signing up! I recently played a show in NYC and 2 people came up to me after the gig and said, “I’m so glad that you sent me that reminder today, I almost forgot that you were playing tonight.” Someone else said, “That reminder was awesome! I was walking to the club and could not remember exactly where it was. I never would have found it if you had not sent the address to my phone today.”

When it came to pricing our service, I based it on an average ticket price of $8. If sending text message alerts brings in only 2 people who might not have come otherwise, then the service pays for itself. What better promotional tool could an artist have than to be able to do permission based reminders right to their fans phone? Not to mention big notices like a new album release or a T.V. appearances.

Here’s a link to my site using the Fan Sign-up Module:
http://www.teddygoldstein.com

And my MySpace page with the Fan Sign-up Module: http://www.myspace.com/teddygoldstein

Learn more and demo the Fan Module with the link below. You can signup, customize your module and have it working on your MySpace or web site in just a few minutes.

www.broadtexter.com

Hope you like it.

One of the most important things about having a mobile fan club is to get your fans in it! You’ve probably been building an email list, myspace “friends”, and maybe even a street team to help support your career. Broadtexter is such a great compliment to all these important things that you do. We’ve had such great feedback from artists and fans alike about sending out those last-minute reminders about shows (heck, just the other night I got one myself to go a show that I otherwise might have missed!…Jim Boggia, The Living Room, NYC, great show Jim).

Tell-A-Fan
We now make it easy for you to send out email invitations to your fans right from your Broadtexter account. One thing we know is that fans will tell other fans about your mobile club, but you have to start the chain. Click on ‘Invite Your Fans’ from your account home and you’ll be able to send out ten email invites at a time to your fans. The invite will include a link right to your Fan Module.

Add Fans!
Now you can add fans to your club if you have their name, number, and mobile carrier. Most artists collect email addresses at shows (either at a merch table or by passing around a note book or pad). Why not collect their mobile info as well? We created a VERY simple, printable PDF (which you can download from within your account) that you can use to collect all the information you need. Once you’ve gather that info, click on ‘Add Fans’ in your account home to enter it. It’s so easy!

We hope you like and really use these features! Drop us a comment or suggestion about our service any time and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible. Thanks for your help and support.

Broadtexter was started to promote one musician – ME. As a touring singer/songwriter, I wanted to find a way to send regionalized text alerts to my fans around the country.

Before Broadtexter I sent out mass emails to my fans at the beginning of the month with all my tour dates, but I knew that shows in the middle and end of the month were getting lost in the mix. I hated sending out reminders about specific shows on email after I had already sent a big monthly email, for fear that my fans would feel like I was spamming them. However, I knew that people who genuinely would have liked to know about my gigs were missing them. Email also had a few other problems:

• I struggled with the best time to send the reminder emails. If I had a show on a Saturday, I knew that many people did not check emails over the weekend. If I sent it during the work week, I was concerned that it would get lost in a sea of emails.
• I couldn’t regionalize the emails. People who lived in Nebraska were getting emails about a show in Chicago. My email list became quickly outdated since many people moved or changed their email addresses over the years.
• I was tied to using a computer, not very convenient when you’re on the road. Often, it was hard to find an internet connection. When rushed, I simply had no time to get to a computer.

When musician friends started sending me text message reminders of their gigs, I thought, “Wow, this really works great!” If not for the text message reminder, I would have missed their show. How could I make this work for me…and eventually other artists and fans. First, the Broadtexter Team came together, and we set up a service that would allow me to:

• Put a sign-up module on my website for fans (or any other shared site that I promote my music on) that would collect the necessary information for sending text messages.
• Set up a security feature that would ensure that the person signing up was actually the person holding the phone.
• Create a region selector.
• Make it very easy for the fan to unsubscribe themselves.
• Set up a database that separated all the fans into their appropriate resident state.
• Send an alert from either a computer or from my own cell phone.
• Make it so that when my fans got my alert, they did not see my cell phone number but rather an email address. (You know, groupies)

Then, I sent out my monthly mass email and told my fans that they could sign up for “text message alerts.” BAM! The fans started signing up! I showed the fan sign-up module to some of my other musician friends and they all wanted to know if they could get the same thing for their websites. Some additional features the Broadtexter Team added were:

• Customizable modules, since no two artists sites are alike, that allow the artist to change the color of the module and what it says.
• A privacy policy that keeps both the fan and artist numbers secure.
• A simple way for artists to sign up and immediately receive a code that allows them to post their module on a variety of web sites.
• A secure backend that allows artists to have their own login so that they can manage all their alerts and messages.

I am very excited to introduce Broadtexter to the music community. With my friends who are serious music fans, I have spent endless hours thinking of every possible want and need for the artist and the experience. We feel great about this service and look forward to making it even better as the artists and fans who use Broadtexter give us feedback.

Broadtexter is a service created by actual performing musicians and music fans who wanted to create a way of keeping artists better connected with their fans through the use of personal mobile devices and text messaging.

One of the greatest challenges an artist has in the current market is getting ‘above the noise.’ Broadtexter enables artists to promote themselves with text messaging and reach fans where they always are…on their phones! The Broadtexter Team knows that artists will benefit greatly from this medium.

Simply, Broadtexter is a service that enables musicians to include this sign-up module (shown on the home page) in a web site, MySpace page, or any other web pages of their choosing. Fans use the sign-up module to subscribe for FREE text alerts about shows in their area (or multiple areas) and for alerts about album releases, videos, and other cool general info. Broadtexter is very serious about the privacy and control a fan should have over information they want to receive on their phone. The sign-up process is pretty slick and totally 100% opt-in and permission-based. Plus, a fan’s phone number is never shared with anyone. Fans can take comfort in the fact that they’ll never get spammed by some Broadtexter corporate sponsor…because there aren’t any.

One handy stand-out of all the totally cool features Broadtexter offers is that an artist can send REGIONALIZED text alerts right from their mobile phone (because sometimes an artist just can’t get to a computer between gigs). Regionalized alerts can also be easily sent from the secure Broadtexter account pages where there are some other great tools like the ability to review Fan Subscriber data by region, customize the look and feel of the sign-up module, and review past text alerts.

Broadtexter is now fully launched as a BETA as we add new features. During the private ALPHA period in mid-July, the Broadtexter Team reached out to a few artists around the country to become early adopting users. The reaction was phenomenal! The team is indebted to these artists for their incredible feedback. The artists were amazed how easy it was to get the module onto a web page or a MySpace page. Best of all was seeing their fans from all over the country signing up for text alerts without any promotion being done, reinforcing that this is something artists need and real fans want.

For artists, Broadtexter offers plans as low as $10 per month. Naturally, it’s FREE for fans, although fans will be charged their standard message rates by their carriers for receiving text messages. Broadtexter’s super low rates make it affordable. Plus, Broadtexter is offering rolling promotions and discounts to encourage new users to try out the service. Check it out.