Amanda Palmer and HubSpot: Going Real Time to Succeed

Improvising Under the Volcano

Amanda Palmer, lead singer for the Dresden Dolls and punk rock cabaret solo artist, is active on Twitter (@amandapalmer has over a half million followers), her blog, Facebook, and MySpace. She uses Twitter as a tool for instant communication with her fans, frequently answering fans' tweeted questions and comments. "There's something about Twitter that's so different, because you're so accessible and it still kinda feels like a clubhouse," Palmer told me. 'You're not just sending an anonymous transmission out to all of your fans ever who have signed your mailing list. Instead, it's almost like standing in a room with them and saying, 'Let's go over to this corner.' "

When she is on the road, Palmer uses Twitter and her blog to bring together groups of fans in real time. "I'll say, 'Last minute show at this bar. Everybody show up. It's free.' Or 'Here are the tickets; buy them now.' " She calls these instant performances "Ninja Gigs." Like the morning she tweeted word of a secret gig in Los Angeles: 350 folks showed up five hours later at a warehouse space where she played the piano.

Palmer has also done free Webcasts where she auctions off whatever she's got at hand: props from the videos she's just shot, handwritten song lyrics, even random stuff from her apartment, like an empty wine bottle. "People have bid hundreds of dollars on this stuff!" she laughs. "But a lot of it is not even really so much about the stuff itself as it is about their willingness to connect with me and support me," she says.

Palmer says that since early on in her music career, she's loved connecting directly with fans. "I've grown the fan base literally person by person," she says. "I've been saving money plus establishing huge connection with fans by 'twitchiking,' asking for rides to and from airports, etcetera, on Twitter. It works! But you must be fearless and have a fan base you trust. I also borrow practice keyboards from locals instead of renting for my hotel rooms, saving me almost $500 for every city I'm in. I've also been saving money on hotels, for example a $600-per-night hotel suite for a week in San Francisco for $150 by tweeting for suggestions and getting a tweet back from a fan who was a hotel manager. Fans love to help."

All of these ideas played out in real time for Palmer when she found herself in Reykjavik, Iceland, for what was supposed to be a 45-minute layover on an April 2010 journey from Boston to Glasgow where she was to perform.

That was the day Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted, shooting millions of tons of ash into the air and shutting down air traffic across the Atlantic and Europe. Palmer's flight was cancelled and her European plans were instantly erased.

Facing similar news, with a hotel voucher from the airline in hand, I think most people would just get on the bus and go sulk in the hotel. Not Amanda Palmer.

Instead, stuck in Reykjavik, Palmer got on Twitter--and got instant advice from people all over the world. "Hera Hjartardottir (@herasings), the Icelandic singer who'd just opened up for me in New Zealand, hooked me up with her childhood friend. And like magic I scored a ride from a stranger and didn't have to pack into the sardine bus to the hotel," she says. "We were friends within minutes." Palmer saw a few sights, had a refreshing soak in the Blue Lagoon (a natural geothermal spa), and ended up at the hotel in the early evening.

She then decided to do a Ninja Gig that night in Reykjavik. "An Icelandic comrade named Ben who had read my Twitter feed volunteered to find me a nightclub and equipment," she says. The gig was quickly confirmed, and Palmer tweeted the address of the bar and told people to get there at 9 P.M.

"We went and hung out on the streets of Reykjavik. I got a feel for the town and tried to encourage every lonely Icelander who was twittering 'am thinking about going to the @amandapalmer gig but it'll probably be too packed' that they were possibly the only six people that would be there," she says. "I played for about 2.5 hours, almost all requests. About 100 people came in the end. I drank six vodkas, and I did not pay for them. Afterward, behind the bar, I did an impromptu interview with Iceland's leading English-language paper while smoking a stolen cigarette, my first in months."