If you’re reading this, and I hope you are, I could really use some advice.
As you’ve probably realized, I’ve started playing music again. When I more or less stopped playing a few years ago, email was still the best method for communicating with fans. I feel like, at this point, that’s no longer the case.
I know a lot of people follow both my personal Facebook page as well as my Facebook music page. Some of those people also follow me on Twitter, possibly even Google+. I try to vary what I post on any given service, so people don’t end up seeing the same thing in fifty different places, but at the same time I’m aware of how much ‘noise’ there is on these services and I want to make sure that people who want to know about things like shows, or new music, or whatever are able to find out.
I try to make sure I post the more important stuff to my Facebook music page and Twitter, while trying to walk that fine line between making sure it’s seen and annoyingly repeating myself over and over. But I’ve been terrible so far with updating Google+ and I haven’t updated MySpace in god knows how long. I suspect there are other places I ought to use that I don’t even know about. It’s a little unnerving to admit to being so un-hip, but there you have it.
Most importantly, while trying to get information out, I’d really prefer that we all felt there was some sense of actual communication going on, rather than it just being a glorified internet telephone pole with show posters all over it.
What I’m trying to ask is, well, I don’t even know… If you’re a musician, writer, artist, fan, friend, or someone who’s simply stumbled on this post but finds the background colors of this site somehow hypnotic, what’s your advice? What’s your opinion?
for me, at the moment, Facebook works best. But, I really should start using Google+ more as Facebook keeps annoying everyone – but the change is hard, inertia of everyone still on Facebook.
In your shoe, I’d consider maybe doing a blog page – someone else I follow had a music page on Facebook and they just got rid of discussion pages, so all the great questions and answers that had bee posted there just went away – so Facebook could screw you over at any time.
You MUST do emails when announcing shows. Last time you were up here (DC area) years ago, I did not realize it till afterwards, although I had signed up for email., Either it went to spam or I never got a heads-up.
Thats my 2 cents.
Glad to see that you are back at it.
Hi Paul…I’ve been running into the same issues. I think I’m being annoying by posting too much and then find out that barely anyone sees the posts. I have no suggestions for you but hope that I will learn from the advice others give you. I just started recording again this year and we are playing our first show in NYC and I’m not sure how to even publicize it without being crazy annoying.
Well, anyway, maybe we can play some shows together at some point. I think you will dig what I am doing now. We’ve only released one song so far but are about to release another, digitally and as a physical CD single. We’ve asked Jon Auer to mix it and he is doing so now so we are super stoked about that.
Let’s do what we love!!! Glad to know you are doing it to.
Trish
BTW…love the Supertramp cover…I love that record and was lucky enough to see that tour. It was fabulous.
I use Facebook to keep up with musicians I like. I have no idea whether I represent the norm.
Mike: Yeah, I hear Google+ all the time but I really don’t see much activity when I’m there so I haven’t been very good about keeping up with it. In general I really have to post important info EVERYWHERE at least once, I’m just trying to figure out the best methods as far as not being annoying and actually making use of them in some kind of constructive way rather than just being a salesman for myself.
As far as email, I am close to switching systems for that, hopefully it will be more timely and accurate in the future.
thanks!
Trish: That is AWESOME, I loved Jon’s solo record! Definitely keep me posted on how that goes!
I’m glad you’ve started back up, as well, and I’m all for trying to do some shows at some point. I will probably start trying to piece together a band soon and once that’s up and running we should definitely try to put something together. Good luck in NYC!
Rachael: I’m not sure there is a norm, which is kind of what makes this so complicated!
Regarding the internet telephone pole, I really miss the staples.
I think half the phone poles in L5P are really only standing because of the staples.
I think the best thing to do is to use your own website as a main hub and use the various social media to feed into it. I do this all the time when I update one of my blawgs–I post a link to Facebook in the same way I post a link to Something Clever I Found On The Internet, and do the same on Twitter and (when I remember to) Google Plus. I think hosting your own space is very important in this day and age, when social media services can change the rules on you without telling you at a moment’s notice (I’m looking at you, Zuckerberg.) Also, as MySpace proves, no site, however seemingly powerful, is truly permanent. Given the undercurrent of resentment building around Facebook, I’m guessing it will fall the way MySpace did as people find (and build) better options.
Lots of people still use email lists to keep in touch with their fanbases. If you keep it entertaining and show up in their inbox just often enough, people will even look forward to hearing from you.
That’s a thing I wasn’t sure about, because it almost seems like no one bothers with the websites themselves, anymore. But it wouldn’t shock me to be wrong about that.
I think it’s best to have one central source for information. Blogs allow interaction. The social networks should work like a funnel to lead people here. Facebook is destined to collapse. It’s a fad. You just need a pointer at the social network sites just so people can find you. Check on them to add friends, but I wouldn’t really feel obligated to participate daily. You are a famous celebrity. You don’t have time to write those songs and socialize all day.
Twitter works best when used as an RSS feed. It’s better as a “Hey, I updated my blog” announcement. Most MySpace pages I have seen are giving people links to elsewhere. It’s dead. Google+ has an uphill battle despite a seemingly successful start. I post on messageboards and put a link in my sig file back to my web page. Google ranks a web page higher if you have a lot of cross domain links back to your site. Your chances of grabbing stray web hits increases if your posts include both common and uncommon words mixed.
If you talk about Spider-man and chances are your posts won’t get in the top 10,000 search results. Talk about Spider-man and Rocket Racer and you’ll get a top twenty search engine result from people doing very specific searches.
Think about what topics people are going to search for and post blogs about that. Pay particular attention to the noun combinations you use. You can still be candid and write blog posts that will get noticed on Google.
BTW, not sure if you intended on your Supertramp cover tune to be downloadable, but it is. I suggest you use a service with better security.
Funnel everyone to an email list you can manage on something like Mailchimp. It’s the only way to assure you will get through to people over the long haul. You have control over a list, not over social networks. But you should still mirror more important posts to all the social sites for good measure.
For example though, people who’ve liked you on Facebook won’t necessarily see your posts if they haven’t commented or liked your posts regularly. They are even less likely to see a Twitter post unless they are reading when you post it.
David: Everything you said became suspect when you called me a “famous celebrity.”
There’s a middle line, somewhere… I know maybe a little too much about the optimization side of things, actually, and I get what you’re saying. I try to do a little of that but at the same time I don’t want to spend much time being beholden to it. I’m not so much concerned with driving visitors as I am in doing something that’s interesting and has even a little sense of community to it. So what I’m asking wasn’t so much about “how do I get more people to find me” as it was “how do I make the connection feel like something more than just repetitive show announcements.” But I appreciate the other advice and understand how much it could damage your status as an online curmudgeon.
(Unless this is a different David, in which case disregard that)
Jimmy: Yeah, that was more or less how I tried to manage things before, trying to point everyone towards the email list. After all the time away, though, I think my email list is fairly suspect. Still, it’s good to know that’s more or less still the best thing to do.
I haven’t really looked at MailChimp before. I used FanBridge and was relatively happy with it (though I found it when I didn’t really have a big need for it). My main curiosity is which one is best for sending Facebook visitors, etc. over to the list. I don’t know if you’ve got a specific opinion about that, though it’d probably be easiest if I just went and saw what you were already using.
You’ve got the right curmudgeon. Having run a messageboard since 2004, I’ve discovered that a sense of community has more to do with collecting people who will post. You can have 100 happy visitors to your site, and only 3 who post anything. Of those 3, only one will post something more than two words such as “I agree.” If you are lucky enough to get someone who is offended and rattles off some vitriol in their post, you might have a dozen other people band together, become friends and chastise the negative person in the process It’s just the nature of how people behave online.
I’m not suggesting you pimp your site out and be like the thousands of annoying people who drop into random discussions only so they can hype (spam) links to their site. I am suggesting that to achieve a sense of community, you need to statistically make it more likely by 1) attracting NEW listeners/visitors who are more vocal and thought provoking. 2) making it as easy as possible for the converted fans to find you and come back. Ultimately though, only two things really drive discussions online. That would be “news” and “controversy”. Discussions fizzle quickly unless you are bringing information that means something to the reader.
If you say “Joe Smith is going to be a guest musician at our next show”, chances are that people will put that on their calendar and not come back. If you say “We are going to have a mystery guest musician at out next show”, people have a reason to come back and talk.
I’m not sure how and when you post content updates, but I wouldn’t do like another band and post a full album up for streaming. I would post maybe a few popular ones and maybe rotating songs every three weeks so people have a reason to bookmark your page and come back. I know that sounds manipulative, but it’s also adds a sense of mystery and revelation. It’s no different than the reason people read a book. They don’t necessarily want the ending revealed, they want the roller coaster ride.
I think an email list is a very bad idea. With spam being a multi-billion dollar problem worldwide, I think everyone should avoid using it as a mass communication method. RSS solves every problem that email lists had. The problem is that most people don’t understand the power of how to use it or what it even is. If you have an RSS link I can plug the link into Thunderbird (the email program I use) and every time you update the feed on your site (or your site can do it automatically), I will get an update just like an email. In other words, I can opt in and opt out on my own. Your fans don’t have to worry about some trojan app hijacking your software and turning your computer into a spambot sending out spam to everyone.
No, I get it and I appreciate the tips. I suppose I chose the wrong word in “community” as god knows I don’t have the patience to manage something along those lines (and more power to you for having managed it yourself). Just a sense for people who come that the response they get is actually personal, not some intern? I don’t know. I am, perhaps, over thinking the whole thing. I do tend to instinctively want to create from whole cloth what can only really grow organically.