Strategy From Radiohead: The Value of Radio Silence

Looking to stand out online? Sometimes, it’s about what you don’t do with your social presence.

Last year, the band Radiohead gained wide notice from the public after it deleted its social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The tactic helped the band’s most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool, stand out during a particularly saturated album-release cycle  (opens in a new tab) last year. But artist and writer Stanley Donwood, a frequent Radiohead collaborator, revealed that no one expected it would work so well.

“That was another of those ideas that you have down the pub that turned out to be really much more effective than we thought,” Donwood told Creative Review  (opens in a new tab), in what were the band’s first public comments on the strategy. “Honestly, we did not expect people to go quite so crazy. It worked really well; really it was a way of getting rid of all of what had gone before; it was a practical solution to what seemed to be a complicated problem. Quite a simple solution: Just stop everything for a bit.”

Donwood compared the band’s strategy to “Mike Myers’ version of an evil Bond villain”—apparently putting it on the same level as sharks with friggin’ laser beams on their heads  (opens in a new tab). “It was creatively brilliant fun,” Donwood said.

If you’re looking for more online marketing ideas from Radiohead, check out my blog post on the topic from last year.

Social Reassessment

https://twitter.com/deirdrereid/status/816384397381402624  (opens in a new tab)

Resetting your social media presence isn’t just a good idea if you’re Radiohead. According to Maggie McGary, the social media manager at the American Psychological Association, now’s a good time to do a social media audit.

“Even if you have a totally on-point social media team, chances are that they’re moving so fast with the daily management of social media and the time-intensive process of curating and/or creating engaging content and not getting a chance to stop and do any digital weeding or drawer sorting,” she writes on her blog, Mizz Information.

Head over this way  (opens in a new tab) to see her full list of tips.

Other Links of Note

Keep your options open. At SocialFish, Informz Digital Marketing Strategist Chris Scavo highlights the importance of diversifying your marketing  (opens in a new tab).

Millennials want better customer service. Here’s how firms are responding  (opens in a new tab) to that demand, according to CMS Wire.

Side gigs are great. But as Lifehacker explains, they should come with some sort of broader career benefit  (opens in a new tab).

(iStock/Thinkstock)