(Guest post from Bianchi PR Account Supervisor Leslie Dagg)

We know, we know. Your opinion of Lady Gaga might be one of love, hate or ambivalence. But no matter what … we all can learn a thing or two about maximizing social media potential from her.

No, seriously. And you don’t have to set a piano on fire or wear an outfit made out of raw meat to do it.

If any one person demonstrates the power of social media and viral marketing, it’s Gaga. Few marketers out there can compare when it comes to leveraging social media to sell product and engage.

She has built her career up from the bottom, performing in small clubs and gradually building a fan base – a community – and then harnessing the power of social media to catapult herself. As Madonna did with the music video and MTV in the 80s, Gaga does with YouTube, Twitter and Facebook today.  She oversees all aspects of her social media presence, controlling her own image and engaging in direct communication with her audience.  

The numbers don’t lie. Currently, Lady Gaga has:

• More than 6 million followers on Twitter;
• More than 17 million fans on Facebook;
• Towering sales on iTunes; and
• Has set records on YouTube for having her content viewed over a billion times.  

Not to mention, she has scored a number of award nominations (Grammys, MTV Music Video Awards, etc.) for her efforts and has even put together her own creative team that she manages –called the Haus of Gaga – to help create ideas and content.

And she centers it all around her official website, which serves as the portal for all things Gaga.  It is a constantly updated site, providing event updates, news, video, and more.

All of these social media outreach channels allow her to personally communicate with her customers and has made her easy to find, which in turn makes her product – CD, videos, DVDs and other merchandise – easy to find.  

By providing constant, new, helpful, interesting content and access, Gaga is always serving her customers. Her brand is easily accessible, allowing fans from around the globe to experience it at any time with ease. Gaga’s customers are not left wanting. They are never out of the loop or behind on related news. She’s made it easy for them and she has been rewarded in return.

Gaga’s grasp of all things digital have landed her on the cover of TIME magazine and her social media business acumen has been discussed in articles everywhere from The Wall Street Journal to Industry Week to AdAge. As writer Dirk Smillie said in his 2009 Forbes article about Gaga and business, “Lady Gaga isn’t the music industry’s new Madonna. She’s its new business model.”

Due to Gaga’s penchant for dressing outrageously and crafting over the top theatrical performances, “authentic” might not be a word you associate with her. But she has authenticity in spades when it comes to the time and effort she dedicates to branding herself and communicating directly with her fan base. 

Take away the shock value, the glitter, the flashing lights and you see what social media is supposed to provide and achieve for everyone – including your company: communication, access, information-sharing, transparency and convenience.

The top three things we can take away from the social media ‘Haus’ that Gaga built:

• Make yourself easy to find online — for your potential customers, existing customers and other audiences. Have a presence. Be accessible.
• Keep it fresh. If you have a blog, news room, YouTube channel or Twitter account, use them! Nobody is going to return for a repeat visit if you’re not offering them anything new.  
• Be engaging, interesting and direct. Join conversations in related online communities, talk with people, respond to feedback and leave feedback of your own.

Reading Seth Godin's new book called Linchpin, I had some lingering questions on behalf of all the musicians I know.

So I asked him. Here are my questions and his answers:

You say, “the winners are the artists who give gifts”, but many artists I know are feeling like the losers. How would you explain your philosophy of the linchpin economy to a musician who's making great music, giving it away online, but getting only apathy in return?

Feeling like a loser is part of being an artist, but I want to challenge the notion of “great music.” Sure, some music that's great is great for the ages and it's okay that's it's not being heard, but so much of what people call great art (whether it's a book or a song or a way of doing customer service) isn't actually great, it's merely “very good.” Very good music is unheard every day, because very good music is not in short supply. There's a huge surplus of it.

I'm not equating “great” with “commercial.” I have no doubt that there's great art that doesn't sell. But most musicians you and I know are TRYING to be commercial, if commercial means successful, heard, lots of stuff sold, lots of people at the concerts. And in the rush to be successful, sometimes great gets pushed out the window. I've sampled hundreds of songs on CDBaby and I can say that almost all of it is very good. And virtually none of it is great, if we define great to mean music I need to buy, to give away, to talk about to everyone I know. Almost none of it changed my life, and that's what great music does.

Great means unsettling. Great means open to criticism. Great means booed off stage. And great music, like a great idea, spreads. Ideas that spread, win, and so the goal today is not to make great music for 1970 or 1990, but great music for today, for a market that's super picky and selfish and has ADD. Great is in the ear of the listener, of course, and the definition is simple: if it spreads, then for this market, it's great.

By definition, Great cannot create widespread apathy.

People often use price as an indicator of quality. Even connoisseurs rate wine higher if told the price is higher. So many artists are averse to sharing their work online for free, because it might be seen as valueless. Since I've heard you argue both sides of this, how do you reconcile it in the case of an artist choosing how to share their work?

This is a conundrum, and probably worth thinking about a bit. Paintings, for example, have been free to experience as long as there have been art galleries. The difference today with music is that there's a mammoth change going on - and it's about control. Music has always been free on the radio (in fact, record companies PAID to get it on the radio). Now, though, every song is on the “radio” all the time, because the radio is Pandora and Limewire and the rest.

So, if the radio is already there, and music is free-er than ever, it's not clear that music is valueless. There's more music being listened to (not just played, but being listened to) than ever before in history, and that listening is proof that people value it. At least they value it enough to spend their time.

Get over the idea that your success is equated with selling the right to listen, or selling control over when people listen. Relinquish the opportunity to make money by controlling who can listen and when. That's gone. It's over. It would be like a bakery selling the right to sniff the fresh bread or a wine maker selling the right to look at the cool label. It's now a public good, something you see as you walk by.

What you can sell, what you better be able to sell, is intimacy. It's interactions in public. Souvenirs. Limited things of value. Experiences. Memories. People will pay for those things, IF: your art is actually great and if you make it possible for them to buy them.

If it's great, let it go. You'll do fine. If it's not great, figure out what great is and do that.

A tall order, but a huge opportunity.

Thanks, Seth!

Hugh MacLeod has many more interesting questions-and-answers about Linchpin, here.

UltraViolet.