Post 9: My Website and Social Media Pages

Research

I researched this to find the codes and conventions of websites belonging to Pop Music artists. I then looked at specific case studies to get examples of how these websites are specially crafted to appeal to the target audience, engage them and convince them to buy into the artist and the brand.

I was heavily influenced and inspired by Selena Gomez's, Khalid's, Taylor swift's and Ariana Grande's websites.

I then researched Khalid, in particular, to analyse his use of website and social media to create a converged and synergised online presence. This helped me to show how website and social media can be used to reinforce and craft a star persona, and how social media platforms can be used to increase traffic to the website to promote tour ticket sales and music and merchandise sales in order to ensure the artist is an asset to the record label, creating a large profit.

This research was useful to me as it showed me what I need to include when creating my own website in order to make a conventional website of a pop artist. It also helped me by showing me potential layouts and styles of website, allowing me to develop ideas about my own website concerning style, layout and what pages and features I want to include. The in-depth analysis gave me specific examples of what I can do and what features I could add to adhere to convention and create a unique and authentic yet conventionally pop website.

Planning

Ideas, Plans and References for Extra Audio-Visual Material

Behind The Scenes Video

My first idea for extra audio-visual content is to create a behind the scenes video of different studio and locations and outtakes. This will be put to the same music as the main music video, giving the audience extra and exclusive content to see what set is like behind the camera. This gives a feel of exclusivity and close proximity to the star, allowing the audience to engage with the star.

One of my main inspirations for this video will be the behind the scenes video for Ariana Grande's song 'Boyfriend' ft Social House. 

Elements from this video that I would like to take are:

- The camcorder style of filming behind the scenes

- Videos of the star acting and not acting so we see the "real them".

- fun clips of the artist and actors getting along

- shots between takes

- shots of the process of directing and filming, discussing the shots, the monitor etc.

Vanity Fair Interview

Secondly, I would like to create an interview for fashion magazine Vanity Fair, which also has a large video presence on it's website and on YouTube. This video interview will allow fans to get to know the persona in more detail and will help to make the Livvy Lawson brand identity more well-known. It is also intertextual with existing media as Vanity Fair is an existing and well established brand. This will create a type of familiarity for the audience and make the interview seem respectable and reputable.

One of my main inspirations for this video is the Vanity Fair Interview with Billie Eilish 1 year apart.

Elements from this video that I would like to take are:

- An acoustic and instrumental version of the promoted song accompanying the video

- the soft lighting

-setting in a studio with a white background, simple

- questions that inquire into the artist and their rise to fame, not just their song and packaged persona

Radio 1 show clips and promotion

I would also like to create 4 10 second adverts to promote an appearance on the breakfast show on BBCR1. This will establish the artist as a British musician, as the BBC is a very quintessentially British brand. It will also show that the artist is trying to appeal to a young, mainstream demographic as the target audience for the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show is a mass-market and diverse 15-29 year old demographic.

Brand collaboration and sponsorship

I want to also have a brand sponsorship and partnership with my star persona. This would help to promote the aspirational and fashionable lifestyle conventional of a pop musician. This will help to also show my star identity as I can link it to my charity UNICEF, through creating a sustainable and ethical fashion line that adheres to the messages and demands that UNICEF places on brands and fashion labels to give workers good rights, wages and to stop child labour. 

My advertising campaign for this partnership is heavily influenced by the Missguided print campaigns featuring stars such as Sofia Richie :

My advertising campaign is also heavily influenced by the recent Molly Mae X Pretty Little Thing video promotion:

I also want to create a competition with my partnered brand to allow for fan participation, giving them the chance to become prosumers by uploading their own pictures. This will help to create a sense of community as my fans can share images under a shared hashtag.

Plans, Ideas and references for my website structure

My Flat Plan

This is my flat plan of my main page, showing my ideas towards how I want my website to look and which sections should be where.

I have chosen to create a scrolling website, inspired by Khalid. This means there are different sections on my website as you scroll down, all the content isn't just on linked separate pages. This is conventional for pop artist websites, with many adopting this style of website.

My linked page will be News, featuring my audio-visual content and my various social media streams. I also want to have a community section on my linked page to create a community and fanbase for my fans to interact and write their own comments, influenced by the community section in Selena Gomez's website. This will increase engagement and interactivity, allowing fans to interact with the brand, making it more accessible.

Colour scheme

My colour scheme is based off of my album cover shown here:

My colour scheme based on this album is denim blue, with accent colours of a burnt orange from the sunglasses. White and black will also feature heavily as tones in my text, buttons and backgrounds. My text will be in the font Arial, the same as my album cover.

I will have some strips to encourage the audience to follow or visit the store, an idea inspired by the merch and follow strips on Khalid's website. The background of these strips will be distinctly from the other backgrounds in order to break up the content and give the website a uniform feel throughout to pull it together. The background for these strips will be the denim from the album cover, helping to synergise everything together to present a uniform brand identity.

Social Media Plans

I aim to create social media accounts for Twitter and Instagram which are fully converged to my website and across platforms. They will be synergised, much like Khalid's through having the same bio, profile picture, and posting the same photos on both platforms to present a unified brand identity. 

I will also post updates and various images and text to make my artist seem accessible to fans, helping to create a loyal fanbase.

Conclusion

My planning was useful to me as it allowed me to prepare and arrange my ideas for my website and social media pages. This allowed me to think in-depth about what I wanted my website structure to be, the colour scheme, fonts, and what audio-visual content I want to create for my website in order for it to be successful and appeal to my target audience. When making my music video, I can refer to this planning to ensure I create a synergised, converged, and engaging website that appeals to my target audience. They will be able to interact with my brand, hopefully buying into it and buying tickets and merchandise.

My sources for this post are:

- Selena Gomez website

- Taylor Swift website

- Khalid website

- Google Images

- Twitter

- Facebook

- Instagram

-YouTube

- Pretty Little Thing

- Missguided