You can now find it at www.dotwmedia.com

These pages will still stay here as part of www.kevinwhiteimages.com but all future posts will be at the new address.

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I’ve been watching some videos and reading reports about social networking and how to use them effectively for your business and the one thing that is very obvious to me is that they seem to be aimed at an American audience. Some of it just doesn’t make any sense or is totally irrelevant to me, being based in the UK. We do things differently and mostly have a different business mindset.
Virtually every video I’ve seen about social networking has mentioned Facebook. I know it’s popular but a quick look at this list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
and you will see some other social networks that are big in Europe and other parts of the world outside of the USA.
If you’re not in the USA and have a business or some music to promote, try something different.
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The one thing that has been a common thread on everything I’ve read and seen about social networking is the recommended time that it is suggested you spend each day on developing your networks. It has always been one hour a day. Either one hour in the evenings or 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at the end of the day. Sometimes it takes me more than an hour just to respond to the emails that need dealing with from the sites I’m on.
So I’m either on too many or I shouldn’t be responding to them all, but it would be rude to ignore them and that isn’t very social is it?

The problem I find with it, is not the technology or the idea, but the way in which most people use ‘Twitter’.

I don’t follow many people. I normally follow someone for a while, see what they ‘tweet’ and stop following when it feels like I’ve become an old woman gossiping over the garden fence.

I really have no interest in what someone had for lunch, what they had for dinner or if they are bored at work.

Some times I might follow a link that has an interesting article at the end of it, but I have yet to find a way, if it exists, to filter out the noise and only get the information I want. It might be possible to do, but if it is, it really shouldn’t be so difficult to put in place. That’s why I don’t like it.

When I use any service on the internet I want to see what I want to see, not have to sort through tons of rubbish to find the good bits.

Another thing I’ve noticed about ‘Twitter’ is that you occasionally get the same group of people promoting each other. In some ways that is a good thing, but I often wonder if they are only promoting to each other or if it actually brings any new followers, customers or fans to what they are promoting.

Take for example if a musician or band I’m following promotes their friends music on Bandcamp. I know lots of artists like Bandcamp and want that to be the place they sell their music, but as a consumer, I don’t like Bandcamp, ( I’m not telling you on here the reasons, Bandcamp might read it and change things!) so as soon as I see that in the link I don’t bother.

On the other hand, if instead of promoting each others Bandcamp, Reverbnation or CDBaby pages via ‘Twitter’ they got together and put their collective works on an e-commerce enabled web page or even a simple page with all the music listed and links of to were they can be purchased, they could promote their own music at the same time as promoting their friends.

It would never happen, someone would have to maintain it and musicians are artists not businessmen!

There isn’t a big team of developers working on the latest ‘widget’or web ‘plugin’, it’s just me listening to the bands and users and their suggestions and seeing what I can do with my limited ‘skill’ set.
I read a lot about ‘mobile’internet and this being the way forward, but will it happen?

When I first started getting interested in the internet and web design, back in the days when graphics were animated .gifs and flash was a ‘new’ technology from Macromedia and we had dial-up connections, there was a big ‘buzz’ about the future of the internet.
Every one would have a broadband connection, all watching movies online and everything being interactive. These were the days before ‘Flash’ became a standard way to do things and one of the options at the time was ‘SMIL’ (pronounced ‘smile’)
I put in the hours learning ‘SMIL’ and loved what it can do. I admit I don’t know much about ‘flash’ but I think some things that can be done with ‘SMIL’ that you can’t do with ‘flash’.
'SMIL’ for the moment seems to have been relegated to the world of mobile phones.
The problem is that what people thought would happen, didn’t.

We now have the new audio/multimedia formats MusicDNA and Apples iTunes Lp, although the later isn’t aimed at mobile devices.
It will be interesting to see if either of these formats or another new format CMX or the format being developed by MXP4 will rise to the top.

More importantly for the independent and unsigned artists, is how ‘usable’ will these formats be?
It’s relatively easy to record a track and convert to any of the existing formats generally in use today.
If any these new formats mean specialist hardware, software or new skills to produce them, will this put independent and unsigned artists at a disadvantage?
With the added multimedia content that these new formats can include, will consumers begin to expect this also from independent and unsigned artists?
With the iTunes Lp format, will Apple only accept these from the major record labels, leaving the independent artists out in the cold?

Many people complain about the audio quality of the mp3 file and although there are better options from a quality point of view, they haven’t caught on.

Will any of the other new formats displace the mp3?

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.

http://virb.com/kevindotw

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.