Getting the edge by staying on top of your social networks and emails

As I’m work­ing today, I’m reminded about how impor­tant it is for you as a music artist to stay on top of your emails, social net­works and other types of cor­re­spon­dence that relate to your music career.

If you read Mak­ing it in Music on a fre­quent basis, you know that I’m all about giv­ing tips and bits of nuggets to improve your game and get one up on the other per­son. Ran­dom­ness does noth­ing but place you in the pack of a whole lot of oth­ers who prac­tice the same thing, while won­der­ing why they aren’t get­ting closer to their “goal.” Don’t know about you, but last time I checked, ran­dom and goal are not even close to being related. They don’t even pass as dis­tant cousins.

So before going fur­ther, know that I have noth­ing but love for you all! I appre­ci­ate every sin­gle one of you who take the time out to stop by. Because of this love, I’m going to be can­did, for those same rea­sons we all rebelled against our par­ents in their time of nag­ging (def­i­n­i­tion: wis­dom) and in our time of well…thinking we had it all fig­ured out. Didn’t you hate it when they were right?

Keep­ing up with your social networks

Can you hon­estly say you stay on top of your social net­works as you should? On a daily basis, you should block off a time to answer any mes­sages and email that relate to the sites you are pro­mot­ing your­self on. It sounds like such a sim­ple task, doesn’t it? The prob­lem, is that a good many music artists fail to do this impor­tant part of their daily activ­i­ties. The result, is that you con­tin­u­ally cre­ate a dis­con­nect with the very peo­ple that enable you to exist – your fans!

Of course, you can uti­lize your smart­phones. That is a given, par­tic­u­larly for Twit­ter and Face­book, but there are many mes­sages that require more typ­ing and thought. It’s easy to for­get these kind of mes­sages through­out the day. That is why it’s nec­es­sary to always make a habit to check all your cor­re­spon­dence through an actual com­puter at one time, regard­less of your mobile activ­ity. That way, you don’t miss anything.

Per­cep­tion and follow-up

We all know that per­cep­tion is every­thing, regard­less of how good your “inten­tions” may be. If you’re per­ceived as some­one who is aloof and unre­li­able, that becomes real­ity. This is not the way you want to present your­self, par­tic­u­larly to those in the music indus­try who reach out, but you don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate. That seems like mad­ness, but in real­ity, it hap­pens all the time, sim­ply because music artists aren’t tak­ing care of their business.

The other day I was talk­ing to a guy from a large enter­tain­ment com­pany who men­tioned how crazy it is that music artists and bands don’t respond to oppor­tu­ni­ties because they just aren’t on top of it, or they have incorrect/insufficient con­tact information.

Slap your con­tact info on everything!

Speak­ing of con­tact info. Your con­tact infor­ma­tion should be EVERYWHERE. It baf­fles me when I’m try­ing to con­nect with an artist and you have to jump through hoops and Google searches to find a valid email address. What’s up with want­ing to be incog­nito? Gene Sim­mons would spank you.

Proper con­tact info on CD sub­mis­sions is a given. This rule has been out there for eter­nity and every music pro­fes­sional I know has said it over and over again. Don’t miss a spot! On the CD, the jewel case and on cover let­ters. You can never put it in too many places.

Some­thing else to con­sider. Make sure your con­tact infor­ma­tion is on your Face­book fan page. I don’t under­stand why so many artists choose not to do this. Often, indus­try peo­ple don’t want to post on the page, but rather get with you through email or mes­sag­ing. Make it easy for them.

Lastly, be con­sis­tent about the email addresses you use on each social net­work and update them as needed. That way, there will never be an issue with bad email addresses which can lead to missed opportunities.

Using social net­work apps to simplify

There are a great many apps and pro­grams to sim­plify your social net­work pro­mo­tions by inte­grat­ing all or some your social net­works into one place. One of the most pop­u­lar is Hoot­suite, which inte­grates Face­book, Twit­ter, Linkedin, Ping.fm and oth­ers, so you don’t have to indi­vid­u­ally go to each appli­ca­tion. Saves a ton of time. Tweet­deck is another, which enables you to see your pop­u­lar social net­works oper­at­ing in real-time, all on one page. I rec­om­mend you uti­lize these and other apps/programs out there to sim­plify what you do.

The solu­tion to your email dysfunction

Most email clients both online and off, have a fil­ter­ing sys­tem and the abil­ity to inte­grate mul­ti­ple email addresses. If you really want to stop pulling out your hair, cre­ate an email address for each func­tion of your band (book­ing, PR, what­ever). Then, make a folder for each address. When you’ve com­pleted this, go ahead and setup fil­ter­ing rules for each email address so all cor­re­spon­dence relat­ing to each spe­cific email address will auto­mat­i­cally fil­ter into its own folder. The only thing you have to do, is make sure that you check each folder, at least once a day. This will reduce the level of chaos you may be expe­ri­enc­ing. Of course, the goal is to cre­ate a team (pub­li­cist, man­ager, book­ing agent) who would be respon­si­ble for their own cor­re­spon­dence on behalf of you.

Hope­fully, this sparked some real­iza­tion about how you han­dle your cor­re­spon­dence, which plays a major role in the suc­cess of any busi­ness. Take con­trol of yours and I guar­an­tee you that by doing this, you’ve gained a con­sid­er­able edge over those who shrug it off.

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