Why Social Networking Is Important To Indie Musicians
I'm a computer techie geek. I don't mind saying it, especially now that social networks are exploding like crazy. It makes me seem much cooler, right? LOL. In case you haven't noticed there is more to promoting your music besides a web site (so old school now!), iTunes and Myspace.Greg Rollett says in a recent blog post...
Social Media attracts more listeners, drives fans to buy your merchandise and keeps them coming back by offering fresh content from songs, pictures, blogs, videos, etc.
How true! I set up my first Blogger Blog in 2000 and started taking it really seriously in 2004. Today, my Madalyn's Music Biz Blog is quite the popular blog with regular postings that provide information and resources to indie musicians. Expanding social networks like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter allow you to post fresh, new content that will keep your fans interested in you and your music.
Here are three social networks you should take advantage of:
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
Flickr
Flickr is a image/video hosting website, web services suite and an online community platform. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its organization tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
Here is an example of how I used some of these tools for "live" blogging this past weekend while attending the ASCAP Expo and several shows in L.A. It was quite cool!
With my iPhone I was easily able to email photos taken from the phone to my Flickr page and my Twitter page. When logged into my Flickr page I was able to then blog one of the photos with text that immediately posted onto this page. Cool huh??
You can check out my pages at:
Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gogirlsmusic/
http://twitter.com//gogirlsmusic
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=696545329
Copyright © 2008 Madalyn Sklar, IndieMusicCoach
Madalyn Sklar is a music business coach, consultant and author. She founded IndieMusicCoach and has spent over 12 years working with a wide range of independent musicians all over the world - U.S., Canada, Ireland and Japan thus far. Her goal is to help indie artists achieve greater success in the music business by working smarter not harder. She is also the founder of GoGirlsMusic.com, the oldest and largest online community of indie women musicians, with a vision of bringing together and empowering musicians from around the world.
Madalyn is available for one-on-one consulting and coaching at affordable prices. Check out http://www.indiemusiccoach.com/ for more info.
Labels: social networks
Madalyn Sklar is a music business coach, consultant, blogger, social networks expert and author. She has spent over 12 years working with a wide range of independent musicians all over the world - U.S., Canada, Ireland and Japan thus far. Her goal is to help indie artists achieve greater success in the music business by working smarter not harder. She is also the founder of GoGirlsMusic.com, the oldest & largest online community of indie women musicians. 
"Madalyn not only gives me marketing strategies during our consultations, but she gets me thinking in a whole new direction."
"Madalyn’s high-energy, can-do attitude was the shot that I needed to get me going!"
"Madalyn has played a key role in helping me build a strong foundation for my music business."
"In just one session, Madalyn was able to answer tons of questions we had about the music industry and making a living as an independent artist."
I think Social Networking is might just be the future of the ailing music business! I have been working on a project called Blastbeat which allows young people to promote and manage bands in mini music companies. The project started in Ireland and is now happening beginning in locations all over the world including New York,LA, South Africa and Europe. The back bone of Blastbeat is it's own social networking site Blastspace. Members can share ideas, music, gig footage all in the Blastspace arena. Check out www.blastbeat.org and have a look at the Blastbeat network.
Posted by
Brian Brandignite |
3:25 AM
Thanks for the plug Madalyn. It's SO important to not only be a part of these communities, but really engage them as well. It's more important to be on the music-specific social networks, as these people are already targeted as being huge music fans and will pay attention to you more than some of the more general networks. Last.fm, Imeem, ReverbNation, PureVolume - these are the really important ones to spend time on.
Posted by
evolvor |
1:49 PM