Vince Valholla, Chairman/CEO of Valholla Entertainment, has been championing for social media marketing ever since the early days of MySpace.
Valholla Entertainment was one of the first independent music companies to use a custom domain on Bitly and a member of Twitter’s beta program back in its infancy.
Between working with his team of talented artists, Vince also dedicates a lot of time building relationships on social media and sharing his experiences online. He joined Twitter back in 2008, and still sees an average of 200K impressions a week.
Valholla also writes regularly on his Chairman’s Corner blog, where he shares his thoughts on the future of the music industry and finding success, with pieces like Here Are 4 Things Artists and Creatives Fear The Most and The Future of The Music Business: Album Releases That Mimic Movie Releases.
This week, we sat down with Valholla to talk about his journey with Valholla entertainment, how social media has changed the industry, and how he uses Bitly.
Tell us a little more about your journey with Valholla Entertainment?
VV: I’ve been involved in the music industry since early 2000. I started Valhalla Entertainment in 2005.
The music business was going through an interesting phase at that time. We were shifting from a lot of the physical guerilla marketing to online marketing. I remember Myspace was big around that time. A lot of our counterparts were focused on street promotion, but we wanted to get in early with online marketing and we really mastered it.
Vince Valholla
How did you first discover Bitly?
VV: It came to a point where we got really big on social media. We would study what the major labels were doing and learn from them. Our whole thought process was that if we could mimic what major labels were doing but on an independent scale, we would be in a good place.
In 2009, I saw that Interscope was using short links, so I decided to give it a try. I bought a new domain with GoDaddy and created a custom URL with Bitly. Switching over to custom short links allowed us to not only have cleaner links, but have something branded.
We’re also really data-driven. We look at the data to see which songs are doing well. We post a lot of original content on our website. What sets us apart from other major labels is the ability to tell our story, and links help us do that. All of the links we track tell us how people are behaving as far as what they click on. And back in our Bitly account, we have a database of all of the links we’ve ever created.
The Track Burnaz
What are some interesting ways you use Bitly links?
VV: We often send our fans exclusive sneak peeks of music before it comes out. We use Bitly links to send them the music so that we’re able to see how people are responding to these early gifts.
We also use Bitly links offline. One of our 2015 releases, Kirby Maurier’s “Doing The Most,” was one of the highest selling R&B albums in the South Atlantic region. We used printed materials and short links that allowed us to connect the web experience to print and track how many fans were coming in from the offline materials.
Short links are also great for Instagram. We dropped a new remix single today where we updated Kirby’s bio with a custom short link. My producers who work with Future and Big Sean also rely on these links because they’re so much cleaner. For some, links are more of a vanity thing. But for me, it’s both vanity and data.
On our blog Chairman’s Corner, for example, Bitly links have become so synonymous with what we’ve been doing with our online marketing strategy. After we publish a new blog post, the first step before we do anything else is to create a Bitly link.
What’s your most-used Bitly feature right now?
VV: The new app has a top ten feature that I use a lot. I love the new app by the way. These stats allow us to pivot how we promote. It ensures that we’re promoting the links that are getting the most traction. We can even say to our fans, “Hey, this story or song is performing well” and have hard data to back it up.
Which channel do you find most success with?
VV: Twitter. I’ve had more success with Twitter than any other platform. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a way with words… They changed the algorithm a little while back so it’s a little harder to trend now, but on the Valholla Entertainment account we’ve still maintained high level of interactions to impressions.
On my personal account, I get anywhere from half a million to a million impressions a month.
The reason we were able to adapt to the recent changes and find success on Twitter is because we really spent time cultivating the community. A lot of people have a hard time because they don’t spend time promoting to other people. In fact, I’m talking with you today because of Twitter.
Bitly: That’s so true! We might not have connected if you hadn’t tagged us on Twitter.
Kirby Maurier
So, what’s coming up next? What do you have in the works right now?
VV: The Track Burnaz. They produced this song called “Bad Tings” by Zoey Dollaz (feat. DB
Bantino), released from Epic Records. It’s impacting radio right now. They also have production on Big Sean’s “I Decided”. They’re really innovative and they’re artists as well.
We’re excited about Kirby. She is one of the most commercially successful R&B artists out of Florida, and we’re all excited about that. There’s also SIN, Xali and The Pyrvmids. All of the other artists on our roster are working on some cool projects right now as well.
Also, not many entertainment companies have research and development teams. I head up our R&D team here at Valholla. We currently have a provisional patent for an app that will roll out in the marketplace within next year. Our goal is to connect fans to actual artists. Streaming is so rewarding right now because everyone’s using it. Downloads and purchases have leveled off and aren’t growing because there’s no more incentive for music consumers to purchase. We’re going to give fans that incentive with this app.
To learn more about how entertainment companies use the link to brand, build loyalty, and personalize content, check out out our blog post, “5 Ways Entertainment Companies Use Bitly.”