Ok, I’ll admit it…  I’m a closet KISS fan.  Yes, the rock band KISS.   Being a closet KISS fan, I hadn’t looked for them online outside TicketMaster searches. I also have to admit that I was curious a few months ago when I received an e-mail from Eventful.com about a “fan routed” KISS tour.  Being a social media advocate/aficionado I had to see what this was all about.

Mark attends a KISS concert in Hartford, CT (1996)

To be fair, let me explain my expectations.  I consider Gene Simmons to be an insightful marketing minds.  I mean love him or hate him, this guy has been selling himself and KISS for decades.  Even if you don’t like his stuff, you can observe that he gets it done.  So my expectations were pretty high.  I expected that a social media campaign such as a fan routed tour would have a very strong online presence.  I expected that Gene Simmons would have his folks working with the cutting edge technology that is pervasive in social media today.

So, what did I find?  I was surprised.  Keep in mind, I only did a bird’s eye assessment – nothing more than 45 minutes total.  In this assessment, I look at the major social media and bookmarking sites.  This is not enough evidence to build a plan around, but it is enough to give you a sense of the social media presence of an entity. Here are my findings:

Websites: I was dismayed to find that KISS.com is not owned by KISS.  They needed to go with KISSonline.com.  Given the productions that KISS usually generates and the financial capital they hold – I would have expected a more polished website.  Same with GeneSimmons.com.  The visual feel is very similar and echos the presence on Facebook and MySpace.  Consistency s good,  I just expected more.

LinkedIn: I was not surprised here.  I did not find evidence of any band members – even using their real names.  This doesn’t mean they aren’t there – it just means I did not find any I could certifiably state were legitimate.  I did find several impostors.  I also found one LinkedIn group which uses the band logo.  I am surprised here at least from the standpoint of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.  Being the business mogul he is, I expected to find Gene with a presence on LinkedIn.   I was hoping that Paul Stanley was promoting himself as an artist here as well.   I guess when you’re famous you don’t need a LinkedIn profile, but I disagree with that notion.

Facebook: There is a legitimate KISS fan page on Facebook with over 100,00 fans.  Figuring 2 million Facebook users, that’s 5% of the population.  There are some other fan pages, but they are either tribute bands or user generated fan pages.  The presence here is very similar to the KISS website.  So kudos for consistency.  There are even Facebook applications dedicated to KISS.  So on initial appearance (remember bird’s eye view), we have a uniform brand so far.   Gene Simmons also has his own Facebook page set up, so we are starting to see him carry his personal brand over to the online world.  Way to go Gene!

MySpace: As expected, there is a MySpace page for KISS.  I would have been shocked if there wasn’t.  When I think music and social media, I think of MySpace first as a place a band would be.

Twitter: Initially I was expecting a ton of impostors on Twitter.  The #Kiss hashtag is active with activity and shows related tweets.  I was able to find 5 accounts on Twitter which appear to be legitimate KISS representation, Gene Simmons was one.  Gene does not tweet very often and has only been on since March 2009.  Definitely a presence, but it could be tightened up a bit.  I also see how Twitter could become an integral part of the KISS machine – read on after the assessment notes.

YouTube: I was not surprised here.  There is a large KISS presence on YouTube – mostly fan generated though.  Who cares, its a large number of videos blaring KISS music.  This would be a great place to connect with the audience.  Heck, consider doing something official on Pandora as well.

Groups on Google and Yahoo: There are a large number of groups on Yahoo and Google talking about KISS – the band.   This is good because this is where the fan base is hanging out.   Knowing where your customers/clients/fans hang out is important – it lets you craft and target your message.  Mr. Simmons excels at that.

Delicious / Digg: As expected, there weren’t many (in comparison to everything else) bookmarks on Delicious or Digg related to KISS.   There were about 300 total between the two sites (yes there will be some overlap).  For a band, I’m not sure how important this area is to build a presence on.

SlideShare: I was just curious and went here to see.  There were 3 presentations involving KISS.  I expected none or for them to be related to Gene Simmons only.

So in a nutshell, I feel that Gene Simmons has a more cohesive social media presence than his band.  I also feel that there are some things that could be done to tighten up the messaging and branding on both fronts.  There is absolutely a role that social media could play in elevating the KISS brand and like many corporations – they are struggling with it a bit.  The good things are that the presence is strong where expected – those places just need to be connected together with a strategic purpose.  I see evidence that Gene is doing that for his personal brand.   There are plenty of places to engage the community as well.  This is where I would focus the Eventful Tour Demand.  As for the other places such as LinkedIn?  They may not matter nor may Gene care – I think a presence there would reinforce him as a maven of marketing and detract from the impostors.

That said, I still love the idea of using social media to have fans vote on what cities and in what order KISS will play it’s North American tour.  That’s an awesome idea and one that should be capitalized on.  And here’s the final idea for using Twitter.  Listen carefully Gene…  Set it up so that your set list on the tour is fan generated by Twitter.  My vote will be for “God of Thunder”.

For those wanting to do their own Bird’s Eye assessments, here’s the table I use to capture the data in.  Again it’s simple and shouldn’t take a lot of time.  Add columns to do a comparison between entities.  Again, this exercise is not enough to build a plan or strategy around.  The purpose of this exercise is to determine online presence from a social media perspective;  show were potential conversations regarding your brand, product, or service occur; and at a high level capture the sentiment of the conversations that are occurring.