How To Create And Manage A Street Team (directions)
1. Choose your collaboration tool.
You will need a collaborative communication tool to organize and manage your street team. Tools such as Yahoo Group, Google Group, or Ning are free but lack tracking and measuring capabilities unique to managing Street Teams (so they may require additional work to manage). Other options are services that specialize in street team and fan management such as ReverbNation.
2. Organize the team.
Reach out to your fan mailing list and ask who wants to be part of your street team. You may want to give them something in return for joining.
3. Give the team a mission.
Establish a mission and define a time frame in which to acheive it. Missions can be anything from spreading your music, enlisting new fans, promoting a show, etc. Tools like ReverbNation will help you set deadlines and define goals for your team automatically.
4. Provide the team with the tools to carry out the mission.
Give them what they need to complete the mission. If you want them to poster the neighborhood, give them posters. If you want them to sign up fans on your mailing list, send them a link to the signup page at your website. Tools such as Reverbnation provide additional widgets for online campaigns (i.e. they provide the music players for your street team to post at their sites or other social networks).
5. Set a reward to motivate the team.
Be creative with your awards. Some ideas include giving them an autographed CD, sending them merchandise, or putting their names in the liner notes of your next album.
6. Measure everyone's progress.
You will need to define a way to figure out who accomplished the mission and deserves a reward. Tools like Reverbnation, handle this by creating unique widgets that track an individual's progress.