How Lady Gaga can use Social Media on The Monster Ball tour

I started to write this post based on how music artists in general can use Social Media on their tours, but since Lady Gaga is about to start a new leg of her Monster Ball tour in 8 days, I’ll use her as my example.

Gaga already has a couple of social media tricks up her sleeve for the Monster Ball tour.  First, she’ll be partnering with Virgin Mobile to help VM get 1,000,000 Likes on Facebook by year’s end.  VM will have 10 official ‘tour bloggers’ for Gaga, but I’m not sure how that ties into helping VM get a million Likes by year’s end.  Apparently, the idea is to get a million of Gaga’s fans to like VM.

Another deal she recently struck is with SkyGrid.  This one sounds more interesting, as SkyGrid would allow Gaga (and other artists) to pull user-generated content from social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and collect it all on one page.  If this could be done at the individual show level, it could really work to drive interest in the tour.

But in thinking about this, I have a few more ideas that Gaga could implement to use social media to better connect with her fans.

Gaga’s Monster Ball tour starts next Saturday in Atlantic City, and will end in early May.  The idea is simple for her Social Media strategy:  Give her fans the tools to re-create the magic and excitement of a Lady Gaga concert.

First, it starts before the concert begins, with this message to the audience:

1 – Each city is given a different hashtag, so that way Gaga can track fan engagement on Twitter in each city.  And the distinctive hashtag makes fans more likely to use it.  Tweets from each city can be streamed to Gaga’s website.  Gaga can also read a couple of the tweets during the concert, which will of course spike activity.

2 – Encourage fans to blog their review of the concert.  Gaga will pick her favorite reviews and notify the winners by commenting on the blog.  The winners will also receive a signed copy of her new CD, Born This Way.  Winners will be the ones that have the most comprehensive reviews, and make the best use of creating content via multiple forms, such as video, pictures, etc.

3 – Create a special page to collect all the fan-created content from each concert.  It sounds like Gaga’s recent deal with SkyGrid will make this possible.  If the functionality allows, concert-goers should be made aware of the page before the concert, that way they can create content in hopes of seeing it appear on the page.

4 – Select a few audience members at each show to video the show.  Follow the Beastie Boys model, give 50 attendees a Flip camera, and tell them to shoot footage of the concert.  They can shoot whatever they like, each other, Gaga, whatever.  When the concert is over, they return the Flip to Gaga, and get a signed and inscribed copy of her new CD, Born This Way.  Gaga can then take the videos and put some on her site, some on her YouTube channel, and also use all the footage collected from each show to make her concert DVD for the tour.

So those are some ideas I had for how Gaga can leverage social media during The Monster Ball tour.  What else could she be doing?  There’s a ton of possibilities involving FourSquare or GoWalla, maybe involving ticket giveaways.  What do you think?