The Expansion of Your Street Team

Originally, street teams were used by punk and unsigned bands to help promote their upcoming shows or recordings. Usually unpaid, these teams are often comprised of teenagers who are rewarded with free band merchandise or show access in exchange for a variety of actions:

• bringing friends to the shows
• convincing friends to buy band merchandise
• phoning your local radio station to request their songs be played
• putting up posters

A variety of ways have been used to reward street teams for their participation. With the ever increasing number of ways to gain exposure both offline and online the types of people involved in your street team needs to be expanded.

1. Social networking fan sites
2. Amateur video recorder
3. Online Video Community Operator
   
4. Internet researcher (new forums, social network, social bookmark, video showcases, etc)
5. Blog commenter's, also forum participants
6. web-site maintenance/ blogger
7. Fan Mailing List operator
8. Fan Site Coordinator
9. Song Reviewer
10. Squidoo page handler
11. Contest coordinator
12. E-Book Author (Behind the scenes, biography, etc.)
13. The list is ever growing as such I will be adding to this as time goes on.

The basic idea here though is that DIY does not mean all by yourself. The above list are some of the things you may want to work on but don't have time to do everything. Get your most valuable fans to help and join your street team. Think of creative ways to reward them for their help in any of these activities.

What other things can be added to the above list? Do you feel comfortable writing an article about one of the above?