2010
Open your favourite web browser, go to your favourite search engine and look for ‘Social Networks’ and you’ll get 1,000,000s of results.
Search for a network that covers a specific interest ‘photography social network’, or ‘music social network’ and the results are equally staggering.
The reason that got me thinking about this, was that I’ve been spending some time recently ‘deleting’ accounts on networks that were not doing anything for me. Rather than try to keep them all updated, I looked to see what had happened on each one over the last 6 months and if nothing worthwhile had happened, I zapped it!
I started to think that maybe it’s better to have a good strong ‘core’ number of networks that I use rather than having loads of accounts that I ignore.
Is it the same for your business?
Regardless of if I’m using a ‘network’ to promote a project or promote one of my own websites or domains, I’ve always looked at these as my ‘sales’ team. If you run a business and have staff working for you, each has a job to do. You possibly wouldn’t keep them employed if they didn’t bring anything of benefit to your business.
If you look at the networks and websites you maintain in the same way, you’ll probably see that some out perform others in the benefit they bring to your business. If this is the case, then why not drop the less helpful ones and find some new networks to develop over the next few months.
It can help give a new momentum if you’re stuck in a rut.
It gives you some ‘free’ promotion in a new area rather than repeating the same message to the same audience.
You also the benefit of being the new kid in class, which may bring in some good long-term contacts and fans.
There may be some argument for keeping ‘another’ web page up for search engines and you may have a few friends on a network you might be that isn’t doing to well, but are they really helpful to you?
If you don’t want to ‘delete’ anything, go in and add a message to say you’ve moved the profile and put in the address for your new one. That way you can see if anyone does actually visit you there. If they do they have hopefully followed you, if they don’t, what have you lost?
At the very least it gives you a new page to ‘promote’ on your existing favourite networks.
Nothing more boring from a friend or fans point of view, than seeing the same old url and ‘Follow me on…..’ message on Twitter or MySpace day after day.
2010
I've known about www.virb.com for a long time, but never really looked at it until now. It takes a short while to sign up, you have options for the type of account, personal, band, artist, photographer, film maker, business etc, which gives you access to different backend tools.
There aren't many skins to choose from, but you can change the colour scheme and if you're a dab hand at HTML it looks like you can completely alter the layout of your page if you really need to.
What I liked best was that you can add your feeds from Twitter, Flickr, your blog, rss feeds and other sites and more will be added soon according to the website.
This means that once you've set up your page, you can go away and forget about it and it will update as you carry on using the other services as usual.
So for 30 minutes effort, you have another web profile that can be found by Virb community and some more back links to your website to boost your serch engine positions.
Great for any business, designer, photographer or musician trying to build a network or fan base.
2010
Over the last year, spending a lot of time working on www.somojo.net and www.somojomagazine.com I’ve noticed a lot of things that I’d never had any reason to notice before.
I’ve worked within the creative industries for most of my life, but had never had so much day to day contact with musicians.Take 5 minutes to look around MySpace, Soundclick, Reverbnation, Bandcamp, Bandglue, Virb, Bebo or any of the other number of music websites out there and you will find 1,000s of solo artists and bands trying to get their music out to a bigger audience.The internet and technology has changed the way the music business works, to the extent that it is now changing on almost a daily basis, rather then being run by a few big companies in the way it was before. The big companies still have the money for marketing and promotions, but it is possible for bands and solo artists to make some money from their music, possibly even make a living if they are lucky.
Maybe it isn’t really about ‘luck’, if some of the things I’ve noticed are anything to go by.
The first thing I notice about bands and musicians is their approach and attitude to their music, although this also applies to most other businesses I deal with.
If someone sends me an email from a free service, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc, it looks like spam and will often get picked up by my spam filter.Get a domain name, they don’t cost much, you can have the email re-directed so you can use your favourite email client, but it really does look better and you’ve a better chance of your email getting through.
If you’ve gone through the process of getting an account on a website that enables you to make an EPK (Electronic Press Pack) then send that out, not an email with a link to it. By the time I’ve read the email, I could have read the press pack.
When sending emails for all communications with your music, always use the same email address!
Don’t use one address and then change it 2 months later and wonder why it looks like people aren’t replying. I really don’t care that your mail inbox was full of spam because you used a free email account. I’ve done my bit and replied, why should I do that again if you can’t be bothered to tell me you’ve changed email addresses?
Get your own domain name, it’s more professional and it’s easier to control the spam.
While you’re in the process of getting your domain name, get a website, not a MySpace, Reverbnation or Facebook page. Yes, lots of people use them, but if you want to make some money from your music, you really need more control than they offer.Every time you point someone to your MySpace page, you are making MySpace some more money. OK, you’re not going to make millions from having Google Adsense ads on your own website, but there are loads of other things you can do, that can make a difference to your income and success.
Look at your music as a business. Your own website is having your own shop on the high street, a MySpace page is a concession in a corner of a department store.
If you’re sending any mp3s to anyone via email, please make sure that the mp3s are correctly ‘titled’(song title and album or ep title if applicable) have your band name on them and if possible an email address in the comments section of the id3 tag.Digital files do get separated from the original mail and emails get deleted. Some days I have hundreds of emails and mp3s sent to me at Somojo and it can be a nightmare trying to find who an artist is just from an mp3 with a song name.
That also applies to photographers and bands if you send out any images. Please make sure the photographers name, website and email address are in the iptc info. Why people send out images without this amazes me. I’ve been working with digital images as a photographer for over 12 years and the last thing I do before any image goes out via email or on disc is check the iptc info is correct.
From a different point of view, if a photographer is sending out promo pictures of bands, ask the photographer to include the band web url and email address in the iptc info and at the same time if a band or solo artist is sending out mp3s and they have some promo shots, add the photographers url or a url where the images can be seen in the comments section of the id3 tag.Anything that makes life a little easier this end helps get you noticed has got to be a good thing.
It may seem trivial, but if I’ve looked at 50 digital images that day and they all have no iptc data and the next one I look at not only has iptc data, but also includes a bands url, I will be so surprised, I’m going to take a look!
I’m sure it will have the same effect on other people too.
2010
Do you use MySpace?
No, I didn’t ask if you had a MySpace page, I asked if you ‘use’ MySpace and I don’t mean having a profile and directing people to it as your ‘official’ website, which is another thing I wouldn’t recommend, more about that later.
So what do I mean by ‘use’ MySpace?
Well, firstly it depends on how you see your MySpace page. I have a page for Somojo www.myspace.com/somojointernetradio and as far as I’m concerned it’s just a digital business card.
What I’ve discovered on MySpace, is that when I change the ‘profile name’ of the Somojo page, I get different people and businesses contacting me.( I haven’t found if there is a way to see what people are searching for on MySpace, which would be helpful, but if I do I’ll let you know.)
If I am looking for more artists/bands who want to be my ‘friend’, then ‘Somojo radio & Somojo Magazine’ works best, some of the other options I have tried are ‘Somojo, the creative arts playgound’, ‘Somojo radio and magazine’ and ‘Somojo Magazine and radio’.
This is applicable to any business or band or MySpace. You can often see ‘Now on itunes’ or ‘Looking for gigs’ next to names, but are they going to be things that people actually search or look for?
Yes, it does make easier for the ‘friends’ you already have in the system to see what you’re up to, but surely the point of being in ‘business’ is to get new customers and keep them.
If you’re in a band or a solo artist, you are still a ‘business’, your music is your ‘product’ and your fans are ‘customers’.
It takes more time to think of what might work for you than it does to change it.
Give it a go, see what happens.
2010
Do you ever wish for the good old days?
The days before mobile phones, computers and the internet?
If you’re in a particular age group you probably don’t know what life is without this technology, so that would be a silly question!
I remember those days. I remember the first video recorder I had, (the remote was attached by cable) the times when if you called someone and they didn’t answer the phone, you tried again later. Makes me feel old thinking about, it wasn’t really that many years ago.
I have no wish to live in those times again, I love what I can do with my computer and with the oodles of information available at my finger tips on the internet, I can sit for hours filling my head with information I didn’t know I needed to know!
With all these great advances in technology and communications, I still get baffled at how people use it.
What is the fascination with the number of ‘friends’ you have on a particular social network?
If you are a business, does the number of ‘friends’ directly increase your sales or just give you a bigger list of people to spam with a sales message?
How do you know that you’re spamming the right people?
There are reports about difference demographics using different networks. Have you read these reports?
Are you on the right network for your product or service?
Do you have the time, resources and desire to change your thinking if you find you could be better served else where?
After all, it could mean starting from scratch with no ‘friends’ as you make the transition. Would that affect your immediate sales?
I know there are too many networks out there for most people or businesses to actively be involved with all them at any one time. But maybe it’s worth taking half a day to look around at some options, think differently for a while.
The worst thing that will happen is you’ve wasted a few hours looking to expand your business. On the other hand you might just find something that works better for you in the long term.
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