Before getting into this post, I’d like to repeat my disclaimer, as MySpace happens to be a client of the company I work for – and I want to be clear that the post below expresses opinions that are mine and mine alone (or… mine, all mine!).

This blog expresses my personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else… unless they’re being interviewed or I’m summarizing something they said – then it does.  I welcome comments and discussions, though do reserve the right to remove offensive or inflammatory comments if necessary.

My blog may come across as slightly sarcastic at times. That’s because I’m slightly sarcastic at times. Again, this is me, not my employer, my family, my friends or my favorite cactus talking.

Now that the disclaimer bit is over, let me explain my thoughts about MySpace and the wider online music world.

Think back to the early 2000′s. As far as social networking goes, it was just a baby. You had Friendster and MySpace, but not much else. As a musician, it made sense to put your efforts into MySpace, as it was quickly gaining popularity and had a very large audience. It was a great place to put press photos, music, information about your band members/your band, tour information, etc.

It had the magic duo – the functionality and the audience.

Jump forward to 2010 and the situation has changed dramatically. I still have a MySpace account and still go there to look at new music and check out what the bands I like are up to, but I’d be lying if I said that I used MySpace as frequently as I used Facebook or Twitter, for example.  Some of that is due to my job, as a good part of what I do requires me to pay attention to Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis, but it’s also due to personal preferences; my friends have mainly migrated away from MySpace, so it’s usefuless has gone from a “catch up with everyone”, to a “see new music/catch up with bands”.

Now, MySpace has been taking some great steps recently to fix some of the things that their users were talking about – such as a redesigned look and feel. That’s fabulous, and as a user I really appreciate the change (hey there, MySpace – thanks!).

What does this mean for bands?

It means that your audience is no longer in one central place.  If you audience isn’t in one central place, what sense does it make for you to only exist in that “no longer central” place?

Think of it this way.

Let’s say you lived in a small town and you only had one grocery store. Suddenly there was a population boom and 3 more stores opened. If you were selling a product at that one grocery store, wouldn’t you want to get your product into the other new stores? Your former customers could start wanting to go to one of the new stores for any number of reasons, but you still want to get your product in front of them. True? Absolutely.

Diversify

No, this isn’t a post saying that MySpace is useless (it’s still quite useful), and I’m also not telling you delete your band page off of MySpace (keep it!).

This is a post telling you to look beyond the single grocery store.

• Look at places like soundcloud to post your tracks/give your fans the ability to download mixes.
• Look at Facebook to maintain a basic presence for people that use that social network as their first port of call (they do have 500 million users).
• Look at Twitter to chat with your fans and expose your music to potential new fans.
• Look at flavors.me to aggregate all of these outposts onto one central page.

All of these places provide an easy way for you to be found on a Google search, and even if you prefer going to MySpace, it doesn’t really matter if your fans/potential fans don’t.

The best part? They’re all free (like MySpace), and don’t require any knowledge of HTML to set up.

Note: flavors.me does charge $20/year if you want to make your URL bandname.com instead of flavors.me/bandname. You can set it up and keep the original URL for free though.

So – bands/musicians/producers/DJ’s – I’m curious! What do you think? Have you tried any of the above? Did they work for you? Why or why not?

I’m fortunate to live in a city that oozes culture.  From the orchestras and the ballets to the concerts at Madison Square Garden or Radio City Music Hall, NYC knows no shortage of spectacularly good music. But, many people (even those who live here) fail to notice the smaller things. Free concerts in the park(s), small music venues that bring in upcoming band after upcoming band, street performers/subway musicians all often escape attention from the general public.  I personally can’t count the number of times I’ve walked by a particularly amazing violinist in the 14th St/8th Ave subway station instead of stopping to listen, all in the name of getting home that much sooner.

In my case, I was wandering home from the cheese shop after choosing to ride the subway the few short stops home instead of risking my cheese on the 95-degree walk from one side of my neighborhood to the other.  I walked into the station and headed down the stairs to the platform while listening to what sounded like a full band playing down below.  To my surprise it was only 2 saxes and a fairly simple drum set, but I still purposefully missed my arriving train and watched them play until the next train came about 10 minutes later.

Now, I’m just as guilty as anyone of passing by subway musicians or street performers. You really get used to ignoring things when you live here.  You ignore the people begging for change on the sidewalk, the taxis incessantly honking their horns, the foul smells originating from bags of trash waiting to be collected, the people handing flyers out for yet another free comedy show, the charity petitioners begging for a second or two of your time, the phone conversations you happen to overhear… you get the picture.  I wrote about the practiced art of ignoring life in the city before when this blog was just a wee baby blog (ok, a really wee baby blog) and it still stands true today. We ignore, we segment, we automate, and we forget how to communicate with people.

We forget what it means to connect.

Me and my cheese connected with new music on Saturday. We connected with the ladies dancing beside me, the numerous other people that missed the first train to stand and listen to these guys play, the people stopping to drop a few dollars off in their case and of course, the music.

I took a video (of course) – watch. It gets REALLY good around 1:15.

You know what I wish, though? I wish they’d included their name.  I dropped some cash in to help them with their quest to record, but I’d love to see them play in a proper venue someday.  Anyone that makes me spontaneously stop for an extra 10 minutes just to sit and listen deserves much more than a few bucks.  But alas, they didn’t put their name on their sign anywhere.

Lessons learned? Be ridiculously good and be easy to find.

I know, the life of a hustler is hard.

Let me help. Here are 6 great social tools to help your hustle along and create some buzz about your music.

Note: if your noise doesn’t qualify as wonderfully crafted, start here.

1. Twitter – No, it’s not just about what you had for lunch.  The pros? Setup costs are low (it’s free) and setup time is minimal (5 minutes, tops).  The cons? A bit of reading before you jump on would probably be a good thing, and tweeting takes time. Getting in the habit of sharing little details here and there also takes a bit to get used to. Just be sure not to be “that guy” on there, please.
2. Facebook – Yes, really! You can set up a page with pretty minimal time and effort and it’s completely OK to fill your Wall with your stuff, even multiple times per week! Go look at Alicia Keys’ page if you want an example of a successful Fan Page. Warning: Facebook likes to change things and delete things without warning, so don’t depend on this tool alone to get the word out.
3. Contxts – It’s a pretty simple concept. You meet someone, you tell them to text a number with a certain message, and in response they get a text back with your contact details. It’s free for everyone involved and pretty easy to configure to your liking.  Twentysomething in the Music Biz covers a few promotional ideas here (it’s well worth the short read). I use it as my “Oops, I ran out of business cards!” backup.
4. SoundCloud – Again with the free. Setup takes about 5 minutes and you can upload all sorts of things to the system. Start with a track or two, perhaps end up with an album or a mix. It’s up to you but it’s a great (and social) way for people to wander by and discover your music.  It’s also easy to embed into places like blogs (see my post here if you want an example) and profiles.
5. Blogger – For those lacking the funds to start a self-hosted website, Blogger provides a nice alternative.  You can write about what you’re up to, put a bit up about yourself, and link to your music all from one central area.  Bonus? You can set up your other sites to direct back to your blogger.com blog, providing a central “hub” for your efforts and a flexible place where you can update your fans and foes alike about what’s going on in the world of your musical creations.
6. YouTube – Set up a channel, record yourself practicing or performing, and share.  I have my own channel to share things like trips I take or concerts I go to, and I’m always surprised to see how many people view my videos.  You can link to your YouTube videos from any number of your social sites, and it’s a great place to share your music as a lot of people use YouTube as a discovery engine, a la “plug in a random search term and see what comes up”. You can also embed your videos in your blogger.com site, share them on Facebook or Tweet about them.

What tools did I miss? The comments are yours for the sharing!

The benefit and the downfall of not having a traditional 9-5 is the fact that you can work at any time, and generally in any place.

This is great at 3pm when you have to scoot off to run a few errands, but can become troublesome when you really know you should be spending your Sunday afternoon being productive, instead of laying around in the park.

Even despite the evidence to the contrary, this myth about being “one in a million” seems to persist through many areas of life.  A great High School football player may see his name in lights in a huge college, then NFL, stadium. A teenager teaching himself guitar may fancy himself as the next Jimi Hendrix.

Dare to dream people, but don’t forget to hustle along the way.

Hustling means practicing not only to be good, but to be phenomenal.  As a hint, Malcom Gladwell seems to have done research suggesting that this greatness starts hitting its stride around 10,000 practice hours. And that’s perfect practice, not just half-baked “I think I’ll play a few notes and call it practice”, practice.  There’s a difference, and every musician knows that this difference exists.

Wake up early and set a schedule.  Learn when you’re most efficient, when you’re the most creative, and when you’re just “there” and pretty much useless. Build around that, and stick to it. Work your butt off like your career and livelihood depends on it, as you know what? It does.

The lack of defined working hours is either a good thing or a bad thing. It really is up to each individual to figure out what works for them, then react accordingly.  Do you have your best brainstorms at 2am, consistently? Great. Harness that and make sure you plan to be up and brainstorming at 2am.

Do you work a full-time job? Plan around that, and be prepared to sacrifice.  It wouldn’t be called the life of a struggling musician if the musician wasn’t, well, struggling.

Hustling often means staying up extra hours, giving up free time and using vacation days to work on your craft.

A hustler’s life ain’t easy…

I often notice a difference in people I come across. It’s become a bit easier to define lately as those who get “the hustle”, and those that don’t.

Those that do often have multiple projects going on at once. Those that do always have their hands in something and their minds working on a problem they’re not quite sure how they’re going to solve, but they know they’ll get there. Those that do are often the ones drinking a few cups of coffee to get them through until midnight, and those people you see that always seem to have something to do, people to see, or places to go.  The hustle really is the manifestation of their belief in many ways – the belief that if they work hard enough, if they hustle enough, that their dreams WILL come true.

Those that don’t have it… it just seems half-baked. They have this great idea but aren’t really ever able to execute. They practice for hours but never really improve. They’re always on the cusp of doing something that could be great, but never really manage to start doing it.

Can you taste it?

It all goes back to how bad you want it, I think.  Do you wake up thinking about it? Do you dream about it when you go to sleep at night? Does it invade otherwise unrelated conversations with friends? Does it excite you?

Are you a hustler, or are you just along for the ride?

Picture this…

A guy takes a girl out on a first date.  She’s dressed up, and he’s aiming to impress. They make polite conversation over a glass of wine while waiting for their food to arrive, and each feels a spark of hope for what may come. He gets up, as if to go to the bathroom, but instead bends down on one knee, revealing a ring inside a box and asking her to marry him.

Romantic, right?

She says no. She says it’s too soon, that she barely knows him, and she runs off – scared at how quickly he moved from an innocent conversation about where he was from, to asking her to spend the rest of her days by his side.

What Happened?

He moved too fast.  Yes, it’s romantic, and yes, the thought of skipping the arduous dating process and getting straight to “the point” is tempting, but she wasn’t ready.  She wanted to discover his quirks, she wanted to discover the dynamics of their relationship without the pressure of a looming wedding, and she wanted to savor the moments they had to come.  She wanted to take her time to decide, and he rushed her.

Um, So, Music, Hello?

How does this relate to music marketing, you ask? Simple.

Musicians ask for the sale before their fans have a chance to make up their mind.

Musicians rush the relationship, doing the music marketing equivalent of proposing on the first date.

So someone follows you on Twitter, great. Reach out and say “hello” or ask them how they found out about you. Start developing your relationship with them from there. Get to know them a bit, and let them get to know you. Jumping in to ask them to buy your latest single/t-shirt/concert ticket before you’ve ever shown that you care about them just defeats the purpose. They end up feeling like just another wallet and you end up seeming like just another self-centered, out to make a quick buck, musician.

So you have a Fan Page on Facebook. Great. Use it to show your fans what you’ve been up to. Don’t just post things and walk away – participate in the conversations taking place on a regular basis.

There’s a time and a place to ask for the sale. That time and place is not every day, nor is it during your first conversation with someone who has been kind enough to show interest in your work.

Give your fans and followers time. Respect the fact that building a relationships with a fan is the same in many ways as starting to date someone new.  There are surprises, there are common interests, there are laughs, and there is a bond that grows over time.

Making money from music isn’t about getting a bunch of people to buy your first album, then finding an entirely different group of people to attend your shows, then seeking an entirely new audience to buy your swag. Relationships aren’t about a bunch of first dates!

So, musicians. Don’t treat your fans like wallets with mouths and faces. Don’t propose to them on the first date.

There’s a lot of talk about what social media is, especially lately.

“It’s a new way to communicate”

“It’s a new distribution platform for ideas and voices”

“It’s the hot new thing to do!”

“It’s the thing that is ruining everything else, including publishing!”

Some of the statements above may be true, but what isn’t ever covered is what social media is not.

Social media is not a new platform from which to shout your message to anyone listening.

Social media is not the new email.

Social media is not the be-all, end-all.

Social media is not the sole force behind the declining recording and publishing businesses.

Social media is not a tool you can pick up and discard at will.

Social media is not easy.

Social media is not free.

I’ve written before about how to not use social tools. Twitter, Facebook and the mentality behind MySpace, for example.

These posts revolve around a single principle – you can’t successfully use social media to market yourself if you think like an ad executive in the 70′s.

Social media requires a shift in thinking.  Stop thinking of your fans as big dollar signs, waiting to buy your concert tickets, latest schwag or newest CD. Start thinking of them as people, with preferences and lives – of which you are a part by their choice.

Spamming your “friends” or fans with glittery comments on the latest and greatest social networking site won’t work, just like sending them auto DM’s or spammy @ messages on Twitter won’t work.  You don’t like getting spam email, so why would you ever think of sending spam “conversation starters” across the social web?

Social media isn’t easy, and it’s certainly not free. It requires time, effort and a lot of thought. But first, it requires an understanding that your fans are your fans because they want to be, and not simply open wallets.

They want to be treated like a human being, and you must understand that before you can be successful.

Do you disagree? Perhaps you want to share an example of someone you like using social media well? Leave it in the comments!

Photo credit: Alejandro Groenewold

You know that crazy guy on the street corner, shouting at you to buy his wares? They may be designer handbags (fake), pashminas, fruit, or biblical reckonings. Whatever he’s selling, he passionately wants you to buy. Obviously he conveys this by yelling at you. Obviously.

How often does that work?

… how about “It never works, unless I have a genuine need to buy his stuff – and then I buy despite the yelling.” That seems about right for me, and I know many others in this great city will also agree.

Marketing has gone from a “tell anyone who will listen our message, over and over again, and hope that they’ll eventually buy from us”, to a much more relationship-based approach.  Without being all buzzwordy – people want to talk to people and companies they’re interested in. They’re not as interested in listening to said people and companies shout in their general direction, and some are just plain turned off by the shouting.

The point is this: Social media tools aren’t just about taking the same practices from “old” marketing ways and adopting them to “new”. You can’t expect to shout at people on Twitter or Facebook like you used to do (even on MySpace, the horrors!) and have them pay attention to you. They just won’t.

If you don’t “get” it you’re probably wondering “Wait, why won’t they pay attention?”. If you do “get” it, you’re probably thinking “Yup, I agree!”.

For the ones that don’t “get” it – it boils down to the way you think about your fans/consumers. They’re not nameless and faceless people who happen to buy your stuff. They have personalities, they have passions, they have interests, they have likes and dislikes. You fit in there somewhere, which is why they buy your stuff. You have to quit thinking about your fans/consumers as anonymous pockets of money and start thinking about them for what they are – people. Fans. Consumers. Actual living breathing females and males with actual lives.

That’s where you start from!

Suddenly, shouting at people with lives and interests doesn’t make so much sense.  You wouldn’t do this in a normal social setting, so why would you online?

For years the recording industry, and even the music industry as a whole, viewed their customers as anonymous open wallets. Clearly this hasn’t worked for the recording industry in recent years, and the public is finally seeing a shift towards viewing people as actual people.

Consumers across all markets now have a true voice, and fans/consumers expect you to at the very least, listen to them.

So – on behalf of all fans and consumers out there, I beg you.  Bands? Solo artists? Please stop shouting at me. Please stop “connecting” with me on social sites and then turning the conversation around so it’s 100% about you.  I’ll stop listening, and I’ll show you that by unsubscribing, or unfollowing, or unfriending.

Chris Brogan touches on this in a recent post – check it out here (excerpt below).

The Mindset: Don’t Be That Guy

First, learn to promote, but don’t be that guy. It’s really important that you are participatory in the social space. If you’re here just to talk about you, your work just won’t get as much spread. People won’t take the actions that they might if they feel you’re “one of us.” By starting with this point, I’m saying this: your mileage WILL vary if you approach social media tools as just another channel exactly like what you were doing with marketing.

Have you had this happen to you before? Do you have more to add? Say so in the comments!

Social media is a lot of work. Anyone in the industry will tell you the same thing, and there are a number of posts by people far more eloquent than I about this very subject. Check here, here and here for starters. Notice the constant mentions of “time”, “time consuming” and “measuring”.

For me, there is the full-time job, the 50ish blogs I subscribe to, Twitter, my personal blog, this blog and various new media and music events around the New York City area.

For being so “easy”, keeping up with social media is really hard work.

My Activity

I’m active on Twitter daily, and I set aside a few nights a week to read (and usually draft, though more on that later) blog posts as well as catch up on everything I’ve missed throughout the week.

I also end up checking Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn more frequently than once a week; though it is a priority to check them all once a week at the same time to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is my blogging activities.  I’m the type to think on the go quite frequently, which is why I enjoy living in a city like New York so much.  It’s not uncommon for me to use the WordPress application on my iPhone to jot a few quick notes while on the go, saving these thoughts for later when I have more time to flesh them out into a full post.

I’ve found it important to map out which networks and social sites I want to maintain a presence on, as well as how I plan on being active on those networks.

The same questions can be used to plan your own activities in social media.

Planning My Activity

Here’s how I started:

Presence

• Where (what networks and sites) do I currently participate?
• Where do my contemporaries or audiences participate?
• Do these sites make sense for me?

Planning

• How active do I want to be in social media?
• What sites tie into my objectives (for me, this is personal, for you it’s probably business)?
• How can I manage this activity without losing my mind?

Many social media professionals have shared their own strategies and tips and a few are linked here for your enjoyment.

How do you handle your social media activity?

As a recent transplant to New York City and an avid people-watcher, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about barriers; specifically, barriers to communication.

My subway ride in the morning takes me from the hipster neighborhood of Williamsburg to the west side of Manhattan in the Garment District, on two subway lines and through 8 stops.  I typically make this journey with music in my ears and a coffee in my hand, and on mornings in which I get a seat, a book as well.

My time in the morning is my “quiet time”; time for me to prepare for the day, wake myself up and begin to be aware of my surroundings. As you may have guessed, I’m not a morning person.

Enter, the barriers.  The barriers are the headphones, the books, the gazes that dance around the subway or street in a dedicated effort to miss everyone sharing the subway car.  In a city brimming with people virtually living on top of each other, it’s amazing how many of us exist in our own little world and pointedly avoid joining another.

As marketers, we are guilty of creating artificial barriers.  We create straw houses and segment anything we can get our hands on.

Thinking like a record label….

Your new hit band makes punk music whose main audience is made up of males from 18-25. Not satisfied? You know that most of them live in California and also surf. Still not satisfied? OK, fine, you know that at your shows, most of your fans have brown hair and also wear Threadless t-shirts.

Next album the band makes? You make sure it has that male young adult California brunette Threadless-wearing surfer feel to it. Plus you test it with the radio stations who cater to this demographic, just to make sure it will sell.

Marketers do this in the name of relevancy, or rather, the guise of relevance.

What’s to say an Alaskan female isn’t just as reasonable of a target market? She stands in line for your new CD and even flies to Seattle whenever your band plays there. If I were a record label, I’d be concentrating my efforts on finding people like her to talk to, instead of sticking my new hit band in one demographic who is bound to grow out of their sound in a few years. Alaska may have the passion to be a staying power instead of a transient fan.

What gives marketers the right to slice and dice into oblivion? Who says people should be placed in straw houses according to the characteristics or habits marketers view as important? Why not accept the fact that these straw houses will eventually be blown down, and that our “highly targeted” messaging may still fall short?

Old way of thinking, meet new way of thinking.

Remove the barriers, treat individuals as individuals, and give your market a voice.  Don’t be a creep about it, but make hypothetical eye contact with that person on the subway and say “Hi”.

Or, do the social media equivalent and start following them on Twitter, or connect with them on Facebook, or comment on their profile on MySpace, or… the list goes on.

To labels and bands alike – know your market, but don’t let yourself be defined by that market.

Think outside and use the tools at your disposal to break down barriers to communication, blow up the straw houses and treat each fan like the individual they are.

*The above photo was made available under a Creative Commons license by aaronbeekay.

Plenty of posts exist about how to rock Twitter as a musician. One of my favorites is by the ever-so-smart Laura Fitton (co-author of Twitter for Dummies).

Instead of following suit, I thought a more interesting post would revolve around how to complete #FAIL at using Twitter.

If you need basic information about Twitter check out this, this, and this.

Oh, let me count the ways!

#FAIL 1 – Don’t post an avatar, fill out your bio, include a link to your website/myspace/imeem/soundcloud page, or list your location.

If I don’t know who you are, where you are, who is tweeting from your account or where I can go to find out more about you, why should I believe that you are really you?

I have to call out @DaveJMatthews for being slightly guilty of this.  You figure out pretty quickly when paying attention to his tweets that he is in fact the REAL @DaveJMatthews, but it would certainly help to have a link to their homepage or a brief bio explaining that upfront.

In this case his very lopsided follower count helps me believe in his authenticity. Funny how that one can work for or against you….

#FAIL 2 – Send an auto-DM thanking people for following you

It may seem nice. It may even seem polite. I’m sure you think it’s “following the crowd” and “helping to spread my music to far away places!”. Really? It’s just annoying.  I’m following you, clearly I’m interested in keeping up with what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and who you are.  I don’t need to be explicitly thanked for that interest, just give me interesting stuff to follow and I’m satisfied.

Plus, it fills up my inbox and it’s not a genuine communication. Chances are if you say “Hey, thanks for following! Check out my MySpace page!” I’ve already been there, done that.

#FAIL 3 – @message people en masse, requesting that they check out your “new super-awesome thing!”

Don’t be fooled by the medium or the funny @. This is SPAM. I don’t follow you (in most cases), nor do I appreciate being lumped in with other people (who usually don’t have anything in common with me). In fact, I’ll block you without thinking twice if you SPAM me like this.

Twitter is personal. If you want me to check out your “new super-awesome thing!” why don’t you ask me on a one-to-one level (a regular, and nicely-worded, @ message will suffice)??

#FAIL 4 – When you tweet, tweet ONLY about your music. Include links in every. single. tweet.

Yes, I like your music. That’s why I follow you on Twitter instead of only keeping up with you via your SoundCloud, MySpace or Facebook pages.  However, I also want to learn more about you.

I expect more from you on Twitter! I expect YOU to come through.

I can find your music elsewhere, and I may not mind the occasional tweet about it (especially if it’s something new, a new remix, or an old favorite). However, I relate back to my original point – I want to learn more about you on Twitter. Your music doesn’t teach me anything new, and no matter how much I like you, the constant links get old (sorry, they do).

#FAIL 5 – Tweet incessantly. Only about your music.

This is a continuation from the above. On top of only tweeting about your “newest tracks!”, make sure to do it once a minute or so to make sure I really can’t miss it.

Hint: I’ll block you after a few minutes, even if I’m a really huge fan. You’re cluttering up my Twitter stream and no, my Twitterverse does NOT revolve around you!

#FAIL 6 – Point your followers to your MySpace page. Over and over and over again.

Chances are, this is where I found you to begin with. Why redirect me there unless there’s something new? Correcting punctuation doesn’t count as “new”, either.

#FAIL 7 – TWEET IN ALL CAPS. THIS HELPS YOUR TWEETS STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD AND IS CONSIDERED SUPER-AWESOME!

This one needs to be explained? Really?

#FAIL 8 – Never @reply people. Never DM people (manually), either.

I follow you because I like your music and want to interact with you on a more personal level. I don’t want to be one of the unidentified masses, grouped in with your thousands of other fans or friends on MySapce or Facebook. I want to have a more one-to-one relationship with you on a service that isn’t overloaded with spammers or every single person I’ve ever known.  Therefore, I follow you on Twitter.

I may want to ask you a question. If you don’t follow me, the only way I can do this is an @reply. If you do, I can DM you (and hope you’re not so overwhelmed with auto DM’s that you actually pay attention to them coming in).  I have an ego, and I’d really like to know that I’m being heard. I’d love a reply. It makes me feel important, even though it takes just a few seconds of your time.

You see, to you it’s all about you, but to me, it’s all about me.  Show me you care, show me I exist to you!

#FAIL 9 – Follow thousands of people without tweeting or following anyone back.

I blame this on media and marketing in general. The “old way” of thinking about things is funnel-based. If I follow 2,000 people (Twitter’s initial limit, in case you were wondering), out of those about 200 will pay attention to what I’m saying, and a further 20 will buy my music when I tweet about it (since it’s the only thing I tweet about).

The “new way” of looking at things is less funnel-based, and more like a tree. If I follow 2,000 people that’s fine, and 200 will probably really pay attention to what I saw.  But what about when they RT (retweet) my tweets? This info then goes out to their networks, and usually results in more followers! If I interact with them they may become fans, and may even buy my music (or my t-shirt, depending on what I’m selling).

It’s not a pure funnel anymore. It’s like a tree, with branches and leaves extending in every which direction. It all relates back to me (the trunk), but I have many more ways to extend my reach than simply aiming for a high follower #, and I have a great tool to enable those followers to spread my message for me (saving me, the musician, a lot of work).

#FAIL 10 – Automatically Tweet everything you post to Facebook.

Extra #FAIL points if your FB updates exclusively point me to your MySpace page.

The true problem with this is that it shows a lack of effort. Tweet a bit ON TWITTER – mix it in with your #FB updates.

Care to share any of your musician-related #FAIL stories??