Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Social Networks to Grow

Using social networks I don't know why we forget they were constantly connected to social networks it's constant but you take that same thing where you're talking about it in your problem line of generic a fast food restaurant and about how you need a trombone player and then you mentioned it online is like hey is anybody know a trombone player suddenly it's amazing people will come to you with all of these potential solutions it's truly unbelievable how easy it is to actually take advantage of this yeah then it makes it easier and a lot of ways actually and I mean the messages could be really short I mean with twitter and all these other things nowadays like hey anybody know this or anybody know how to solve this problem and actually starts to pull things together and then this is probably the most amazing one that I don't know why everybody forgets it it's it's the powerful network that's usually for cotton any gas is well we might be talking about oh cell phones cell phone that were...

cell phones truth I know that is a powerful network that's pretty good uh this the groups of people yeah and it is your fans your fans with cell phones with cell phones it doesn't hurt fans your fan and here's why I think there's still something in our heads from the time that then we were younger which is a longer time ago than you know guys, they're starting out you're already in this but I think that people still think along the lines of the fans there's something separate for me that I don't get to know who they are even communicate with them in fact I'm gonna keep me at arm's reach that was linked to keep away from us meanwhile you've got the social media they expect to be engaged and actually I want to be really specific about this because there's actually some really good stories that come out of this do you want to tell the jena single thing uh about booking life okay, so again so your fans can help you they are a network beyond your friends and family and and all that kind of stuff uh jonathan colton is a very successful indie musician who's done it all without a label he's out of new york out of brooklyn and uh he uh see what this is about him touring so he had a chance uh something some had to bring him to see if it was his friend in seattle that said, hey, why don't you come visit he's like, you know what I could play? I'd like to play a show, but I don't know he doesn't know seattle he doesn't know where when you send use would be good and he didn't want to convince the venues that he would bring an audience it was like well like it right? And it was such a last minute thanks for the moment type thing. So what he did was he actually asked his fans he just kind of uh opened it up and actually it was blogged about it or something, right? And uh um when that happened there was two fans in particular that said, oh if you can come to who were in seattle if you can come to seattle like we can set up the venue we'll get off we know the scene so we can get you we would just love to see you here s o he actually basically outsourced the booking to these guys and I think he said that they got two venues ready so they actually brought him a choice to where he could play, which is fantastic uh they ended up picking one and then he did, uh play the show I know there's another point on that when do you want to know though that that's the key thing? Well, actually there is something I mean talking about entrepreneurship his fans were happy to do this it's not like they took a bucking cut they didn't they weren't looking for that they just wanted him to play he also went out of his way to engage with this fans he had message boards on his website and he had a very active fan community that really I was rooting for him this level of interaction is what you should be striving to dio and then thinking about it how they can solve problems the second story brad sucks it's brand sucks that net and his name with the ballots the name of the band but he has the best tagline I think of just about any is it's a one man band with no fans which is what the challenge is you don't want to be a fan to prove him wrong and you know more and more he gets more and more people were like ok so that's cool but what did he do that was special? Well he actually has very remix herbal music and people just love remixing this stuff so he was on a website called cc remix cc mixer yeah cc mixture and cc mixture allows you to just upload your source tracks and then it has a license on there that basically says hey you know feel free to remix it my stuff I don't mind it's okay? You can do this well considering that he had a lot of people remixing his music and doing it so much so that he was able to make an entire album of remixes which is cool but I was able to sell that well if you think about it every single remixer has their own audience to which only grew his audience bigger see how that can work and again, these people are not just fans now today's fans are collaborators, but they're also taken create stuff with you or for you or about you actually jonathan called never made I don't think he's still made any videos I think is amazing he is now he's finally maybe but most throughout a lot of his career his fans were the only ones that made videos and he was happy to have him do it and happy to let them do it so we should talk about it like, well, how did he cultivate his fan base? And I think you are the key thing is, uh what he did very religiously was he wrote back to every fan who wrote him if there was any comment on his blogged commented back if there was email sent to him and he said there's a lot of e mails that were sent to him he wrote them all he treated every single, uh contact from a fan as special and he would go to the coffee shop and sit down and type away an answer and he did that religiously and you talked about that it was like a full time jobs writing a lot of ways, but that is then he it was building that connection one by one one fan at a time at the time of the time in the time and uh um and that's how he actually started really building that relationship which allowed him then to go hey, we're going to play in seattle where should I play and able to actually get his fan that work to actually help amount so he opened it up so that is music can be used for videos I think there was a comic book are an art book got another fan said look here's an email came in I'm so inspired by your music I would like to do artwork for it and I like to sell a book with it. Maybe we can work together on that. I think he said yes to that on dh er and there's a couple other things like that that he would work and collaborate actually with his fans to create something new and the create extensions of stuff that he would never even have thought that he would be able to do since he's so focused on the music so that's that point so beyond the fan network you can actually go beyond your network if it starts to run dry. There are so many incredible options lately sites and services certainly, and we have tons of them on the lincoln resource sheet that you can get if you purchase, of course, but beyond that here's just a few examples of the things that are out there that are actually, surprisingly with being range five or is very interesting it's basically asking people to do something for me five dollars and you might have a task that you're not very good at that you just need to have taken somebody help me do this web page they are due this solve this little problem you might not have to pay for a big consultant you can actually ask for somebody on the internet to do it. Amazon's mechanical turk what did they say? You said that the other other tagline is artificial artificial intelligence so basically what that is is a pool of people who get paid money to actually do work manual asks whatever you want do research on something type a whole, like transcribe something? Yeah, whatever it is that you're looking for it's out there craze lists is surprisingly within range. Teo and a lance is one that is more for any kind of consulting services reinforced freelancers all of that kind of stuff. Every skill that you might think that you need including some very esoteric skills are out there and available for you to reach just through the internet, right? Exactly. Ok, so and then there's even yet another place you can tap talent and that's ah, musician communities and there are way too many communities even cover every if you play an instrument every like seems like every instrument has a form or a bulletin board or community associated with it? I was thinking our bass player hangs out on the bass forms song writing communities singing communities deejay you name it and there's communities of musicians getting together talking about their problems they're talking about things that they want to connect with time of creative projects talking about how to get played better on their instrument or whatever but is it is a wealth of uh, of talent and information that you can explore I think even services so we're going to talk about a lot of the sites and services that in the next lessons many, many, many, many lessons but like almost seems like many of the services also have communities that have surrounded it like cd baby he adams the mind reverberation comes to mind where again musicians trying to solve problems trying to help each other out uh um gather and then of course is any guide dot com and then there's uh musician communities like j p folks just plain folks just is a great if you haven't checked that out it's free to join tons of musicians and just about every city all over the place all over the world and they're just there I would add to one other thing which is you know, if you have your own studio at home and you're used sonars we dio or whatever program you use this community's behind those they can help medals also long kinds of problems which is a big part of this whole thing we have a question coming from keith he was wondering your thoughts on what you think of un releasing are releasing unfinished materials and should you give out your product when it she wait till it's finished well that's a good question that's a very good morgan talk about that in the next session so that's a really good that you want to give a sneak peek well no way thanks yes next session the next session what we're going to be talking about is how to prepare your music percent so today aside from this first one is all about your music the first one is next one is preparing a music the next one is selling your music and then it's promoting your music and it's all about these various ways that you can do things so ah big thing about preparing your music is deciding when to release it we don't have a slide on that in particular but sometimes those demo tracks can be very useful and we'll talk about that in a little bit right? Right so you want to review it? Sure so all the different networks that we talked about families, friends we talked about what we just talked about musician communities we talked about the sites and services which we will be talking extensively about in the next lessons that can solve your problems um and connect you with opportunities and stuff and many of our free yes um and then we talked about was it one more can't remember now and you have the clicker so I don't know but we talked about many different uh networks that you can uh tap to help you uh do it yourself that was the big thing. You know, the key thing is you aren't alone and nor should you try and do it all yourself you certainly should try and find people to do things that really drain you because that will kill your creativity that will kill all of the impetus you had to do this in the first place and once you take advantage of the ones that are within reach, you can get busy making music which let's face it. I mean that's what we're here to dio I mean, I enjoy doing marketing I enjoy doing pr work, but in the end what I really want to be doing is have my horn, you know, and be playing and be writing new music and performing and doing all that kind of stuff so there's a mix of these things let's face it to every musician that you've seen which is really big and really successful they all have teams of people around them that's what it's about that's what they dio so learning more we always and each of our sessions with learning more first of all in the book we actually have a whole thing on networking it's not just networking in general it's networking for musicians it's so a lot of the stuff that we talk about here and it's it's in a chapter called your team that's what we call it how to find people of phil skills that you need when you're network runs try how to network in the music industry in particular all kinds of topics like that are things that we like to cover the effect well we certainly have some do you have do we have one right here yeah great um we talked about engaging with fans like you guys have some good examples of ways to engage with your fans through social networks like twitter or instagram or those uh you should yes yes definitely and now you're talking about your web presence in your web strategy actually a lot of ways you should yes that is exactly what you should be doing do you have a twitter account yeah ok and yet you're on instagram well ok you're really on facebook yes and let's think it's a more you're on lengthen should be let's hear some musicians who were thinking I don't need to be unlinked linked in is great it allows you to connect to people and find out who they're connected to yeah it's great exactly but yes those channels archy and you know it's like going back to the book and one of the things that way won't be talking about really is about using your like we'll talk about it where it pertains to make you money but in general your web and you're on social networking and mobile strategy which we cover in the book and depth I mean it's like three chapters of tackling this stuff are are you should have a strategy around how you present yourself and uh and and how you should actually engage people through facebook and twitter and all that kind stuff and we do talk about that in depth and in the book on then give a lot of tips on like keep it short for twitter of course obviously um but I don't know if you have anything else to add on that no I mean it really comes down to talking about your problems oddly enough, that's the thing now with fans also you know you can organize something some people do contests and other things to try and get people help choose thie album art or other things like that to the extent that they're involved and plugged into it the more they get they're likely to be good customers and by neat stuff and do it I think this new revolution of crowd funding is fascinating to me because people will contribute they'll actually say, oh, I want to help make your new album of success or your tour whatever it is that you're trying to fund and then when they buy into it actually they're more likely on the other end of it t really even b'more involved they're also likely to think that they're a part owner and should tell you what be able to tell you what to do deal which is a downside to voluntarily yeah we will talk about that there's one more thing and that's the contest I think the cyber the pr but mario high it could also be could actually is a great resource teo tackle how you interact because you're talking about engagement with fans through social networking that book which is give away uh actually walk you through those type of steps and how to actually go do that so we talked about jonathan colton he would go to a coffee shop in sit down in the answer all these e mails and and engaged that way as well we'll show you actually illustrates a lot of like how you should do that the importance of asking the right questions uh how you should limit promoting yourself in your album because you don't want to be the steady stream of by my opened by my album by my open by my album you really want to engage and that means it's a back and forth discussion engagement shining but what it is in general is engagement shining a light on others like any fans you have, they have their own thing go promoted, they'll be thrilled if they like your stuff right and also sharing things of interest to them. So if you've got a particular type of music that you do, you can talk about that type of music going on in your town, they're going to pay attention to your right because they're interested in it, and then they're going to be more interested in hearing about your show. I want to get to a couple of the other you mentioned that's, the cyber pr for musicians, yeah, ariel high, exactly, and that will have like recipes howto really engage fanbase now we will talk about that throughout the lessons coming up where especially where it's about making money. Our focus here is about making money, but that's a key thing is, of course building that community, which is why we way lead off with that way have a two part question here from keith, and this may be covered in the future segments just sure. First up, he says, how much time do you dedicate to pr as opposed to playing the gigs? How much time should I focus on trying to brand myself and market myself if I'm focusing on music? And secondly, this is a comment regarding brad sucks and jonathan colton saying he noticed that both of them license under creative commons is that the way to go? Are we going to be touching on that throughout this course? We both good question with growth. Very good questions. So but the difficult answer. I forgot the first one already, so he was asking how much time you should spend your craft first is marketing well, that's hard. I mean, there's no way we can give you an answer. The direct answer. So I guess you would start by saying, do you like pr? Yeah, because like randi was talking about, he likes coding, so we would always put him to work on coding stuff going on now, but but he doesn't do graphic arts stuff, so we would have our other friend actually help us on that. So if he's big into pr and he's really intrigued by and everything, we're definitely going to touch it. Touch pr and marketing in feature lessons here. Maybe then hey would want to put sometimes, yeah, if he's a musician per se that's like I don't want anything to do with that that's where this networking stuff actually, uh, comes in handy. Um, that you khun, hopefully get somebody you can connect with somebody who will help you with that uh, now thinking through let's, say jonathan colton like he actually in the very beginning, I don't know if he doesn't now, because he's very established at this point and he doesn't have the time, but at the very beginning, like I says, he engage with every fan who wrote him and he was then asked questions he would always be asking questions, too is through his blawg and his fans about I want to do this, but how do I do this? And it just cultivated people who really wanted to help him, which is fantastic, but and he we actually set aside, I think it was like two to three hours a day. So that's be the part of the answer that, like and that's fan engagement, right? And that's actually more uncomfortable with more effective npr at the beginning, it truly is, and if you have a live show going on, by the way, that thing will build itself, you'll have a draw. Once you get to a certain size venue, the larger venues don't take chances on people they don't I mean, they want to get people in the door, so once you get to that point, you have an easier time getting pr will come, you know, a lot of things about spending time that's, one of your most limited resource is besides money and you should only spend as much time is you khun spare and as you khun dio while keeping the musical inc is the music? Is it the heart of the whole family? And if there's a general answer, it has to be that now that said the very last session, if you can hang on to the very last day is about pr and how you can do pr that's within your arms reach and we'll talk about that we'll give you ways to do it there won't take all of your time, right? And then the other question was about the creative comments it is the right way for some people it isn't for others and we talk about this in the book. This is one of the ways that you can use copyright to promote your music, not just protect your music the way that creative commons works is instead of having to go to a lawyer and try and figure out, can I do this with your music or can't I? They have very specific and very clearly written no license terms that says share it all you want, I don't care it's okay don't have to ask me and then they have permission and it gets out there that's how the indie band survival guide book started it was a one hundred one page fifty thousand word pdf we gave away for free from our website under a creative commons license, that's that had a no commercial terms on it, and they had to give us attribution, but you couldn't make money off of it, and you share, and it was a notary votives one so we didn't. In this case, you can do derivatives like the cc mickster it's allowed to do derivatives. So here's the key, something that we released for free on the internet became a very successful book with commercial actual commercial worth. So anybody that tells you that if you release something under a creative commons license that you've destroyed, its commercial value is crazy, you can do quite a bit with it, and we're kind of living proof of that, and we do that with our songs let's say that we do, and we do a number of our music, we do the same thing now that said, the terms of a creative commons license is perpetual, it has to be for toe work. We're not going to get into the details on why, and that said, you really should think about what you have under that term and which ones you don't and perpetual we should define what that means is when you release it under creative commons than it's forever released on a creative come for me, but after dealio actually on twitter it at dt two k asked, said that you haven't mentioned you too much and wants to know if youtube is no longer a relevant medium for the advancement of indie music. Oh, my exact opposite, yeah, way! So if you can hold on to date too what we are going to do, we have an entire succession. I'm just so important you too. We have articles and electronic musician magazine about it. It is the best way to promote your music. We'll just tell daily, auto, hang on, they're coming tio day to we'll do one more question than this one may be addressed as well, but alexa loose troll wants to know, she says it's hard to cultivate an image on social media from day one on a lot of us have been using it for a while before we thought about branding ourselves as musicians. How do we start branding ourselves without confusing the audience that we already have? Is this something where you need to create a whole new set of accounts for your music as opposed to your personal brand? It's a fantastic social media question, you know, it's very interesting, I'm just well, what I'm curious about on this one is have is this a person who's established themselves is something else and trying to change it? Or was it just I must person and then it's like now? I'm a musician, which isn't that surprising if people know you and you've got a personal account, it's not hard to change a little tag line at the top to say musician and changed the image banner at the top to show your music and to start talking about your music every once in a while, not spanning people, but engaging in doing that kind of stuff is like, hey, he released a new track, it's a very natural thing when it comes out of your personal stuff. Now, if you had a social media account, you're all about theater and like a theater person doing this in this also know now I'm a musician and people maybe say, well, what are you? Which which is it? Although, to tell you the truth, that kind of thing should be able to cross promote very well, and you still should be able to take into a lot of different directions? The thing is to be authentic, and if that being a musician is part of you, you can actually take advantage of that was a clear question. Well, we touched a little bit about what's coming up next, and I know we're going to talk about what to do before you leave this studio, but I think that there's, we have something of seven registrations that you need to do before releasing your music that we're going to touch on, and I thought I might give you guys the opportunity to explain exactly what that means. Well, with this type of thing, before you actually release music until the world, you want to be doing seven registrations, seven registrations to make sure that you're actually getting all of the royalties that you're owed to make sure that it's fully copyright protected and actually get it out there in a way that actually will start bringing you in income and that's something that we're going to be covering in the very next session, and just to make sure I'm what we tend to do is we tell you to turn these seven registrations into a checklist to do before you, even your release, your music into the world, but that's, just one of the many things that were going to be covering about preparing your music, and maybe now you see, based on this, what preparing is talking about got some really great it's already coming in, I know there's a lot more to go, but I wanted to share some of thie online communities comments about you guys, so sharing in amber, steffi said, actually, from twitter, she said, loving this already. Jason randy on creative lives new audio channel is the best way to keep faith, so music is a business, and your music is your product product. Oh, my god! Mind blown.