March 3rd, 2010
An excellent story about the emergence of new artificial intelligence musical tools from Zenph this morning in Wired prompted the following:
I love “technology changes everything” stories, and in this case the technology is way cool, and I’m not sure that much is changing. Life always comes down to the choices we make, their consequences and what we learn (if anything sadly) in the process. Artists are always commenting on our/their choices. If a musician chooses to accompany himself with a pair of spoons or with a digi-pro-multichan-conscribulator in the end makes a difference, but not the difference. Is what he or she saying relevant to you now? Does it speak to you…touch you deeply or is it just background flash signifying nothing? Artists always choose to experiment with new and better tools, but it’s what they do with them (even with faux Clapton playing lead) that means something or doesn’t. Did “Tears In Heaven” touch you? Why? Great music is always an original response to life channeled from the depths of being. That said, bring on the new toys—the more the merrier.
Tags: Clapton, new AI musical tools, Tears In Heaven, Zenph
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February 28th, 2010
It’s been just about eighteen days since I started to actively market on LinkedIn. Here’s what I did; I joined about a dozen professional groups, introduced myself to four or five of these groups as a whole, and, then, have followed up by sending a short personal letter of introduction to lots and lots of individuals with an invitation to visit http://www.aSiteAboutSomething.com. In all instances, I’ve asked people to share the site address with anyone they thought might be interested in my work or the site.
So, what kind of results am I getting? Actually, fantastic. In eighteen days, I’ve built a network of 260 people: a diverse group of musicians, producers, writers, publishers, agents, SEO and IT professionals, online marketers, etc., who’ve been exceedingly generous with their time to visit the site and offer feedback—some of it very useful. I’ve had two tentative offers to use my music in video/film projects and a connection with an internet radio station. I’ve been approached by a record label, and I’ve made phone or Skype contact with quite a few of people who I believe will become good friends and colleagues. The site itself received its largest numbers of visits yet this month: 3579 according to Awstats or just under 4900 according to Webalizer. (I’ve always used Awstats, because it’s the lower number.) But the bottom line is we had just under a thousand more visits this month than last.
Pebble-in-pond marketing is a term I heard online. In essence, it’s the effect of tossing a pebble into a pond and creating ripples that fan out. A lot of the people I’m connecting with on LinkedIn know people who know people who might be interested in what I’m doing. So if they send my site to those people, that’s far more likely to result in visits from people already predisposed to what I do.
You’ll have to draw your own conclusions about whether LinkedIn marketing is a good way to go for you. But for someone like me who’s trying to build an audience using a website as the primary vehicle, it’s terrific. On top of that, you meet some really nice people.
Tags: building collaborative professional networks, marketing on LinkedIn, pebble-in-pond marketing, professional networks
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January 18th, 2010
I’ve started joining more groups on LinkedIn as part of my marketing strategy for www.aSiteAboutSomething.com. Actually, I should have said “evolving or developing” marketing strategy. It’s near impossible to formulate much of a strategy for promoting an indie artist’s work online other than to keep looking for people who’ll like your work and publicly recommend it to others. It’s all about word of mouth. The especially good thing about LinkedIn is that it’s an opportunity to connect with other knowledgeable people who may be able to give you some fresh insights about a better way to go about things. And some of them may even be willing to help spread the word—just because they “get” what you’re doing and are happy to help. I think it’s an avenue for other indie artists to explore. We’ll have to wait to see if it produces the kind of positive results I’ve gotten doing coattail marketing.
Tags: coattail marketing, indie artist marketing, using LinkedIn for marketing, word of mouth marketing
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January 11th, 2010
Wired Magazine has a provocative piece by Clive Thompson about the extent to which group-think drives our likes and dislikes. The story focuses on some cleverly designed experiments by Duncan Watts and Matthew Salganik, which strongly suggested to Watts and Salganik “that half of a (pop) song’s movement could be attributed to intrinsic appeal. The rest was luck. Rerun history, it seems, and Madonna could be working as a waitress.” (Follow the link above to read this article.)
One important lesson that indie artists can draw from all this is that testimonials from people who love your work are likely to be powerful influences on other people visiting your site, so your site should showcase these positive impromptu reviews. Apparently, most of us find expressions of authentic enthusiasm by others reassuring—encouraging us to click the “like” (or more importantly) the “purchase” button—perhaps more than we care to know. We’re all busy—with far too many appeals for our attention than we can reasonably deal with. Sometimes we just follow the crowd.
Tags: Duncan Watts and Matthew Salganik, following the crowd, Madonna, word of mouth marketing
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January 10th, 2010
Last night, my wife and I went to see Young Victoria at our local arts cinema. But before going into the theater, we stopped off at our local bookstore across the street. RJ Julia is a lovely, welcoming shop that regularly attracts authors (famous and not so famous) who come to promote their books. I drifted around looking at all the books on display on the various tables that the publishers pay extra for, all those pretty, colorful, well-designed covers calling, “Look at me. Look at me. For the love of God, look at me; buy me.” All those too easily ignored books with their spines barely showing on the shelves. So many, many books. So many, many authors. All pleading for attention. Overwhelming. And then I thought about my own work up on the web. ‘This is some rough business,’ I thought.
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January 7th, 2010
I’ve been thinking about you—the people who enjoy my stories and songs, and who will enjoy Living On The Outskirts Of Heaven, a collection of poems about achieving peace of mind that I’ll be releasing shortly.
I’m thinking about you, because I’m choosing to spend more time marketing and promoting http://www.aSiteAboutSomething.com and less time doing corporate work. I’m choosing what I love and find challenging and personally meaningful over what I still need to do but don’t especially love.
I’m thinking about you because I don’t know where to look for you online.
As a group, you tend to be self-reflective, curious about life and highly intelligent. You’re filled with wonder and optimism. And you’re also a bit alienated or skeptical of the world’s values. You may have been trusting of authority and found it wanting. You are seekers in all the various senses of that word. And if this was thirty or forty years ago, I’d know exactly where to look for you.
So I ask myself what are you doing today? What are you most interested in now? What still interests some of you after many years? I think you must be just about everywhere—in every field. I ask myself what do you find especially interesting right now? What causes and issues are most important to you? Where is the future happening? Because I’m sure you’re busy checking that out online too. I’ll keep looking for you; I hope you’ll tell the others.
Tags: Choosing what you love, finding seekers online, where are they now, where do you find seekers
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January 2nd, 2010
One of my favorite blogs in Wired Magazine is, This Day In Tech. Today, I added the following to the comments about whether or not Y2K was a lot of hype or not.
An absence of knowledge of the facts, will never prevent most of us from holding strong opinions on all manner of things. Human beings, like nature apparently, abhor a vacuum of ‘opinion-less-ness’. We form opinions though mostly by choosing sides, selecting those to believe and disparaging the intentions and basic decency of the opposition. And the pundits we choose to believe, while passionate, articulate and loud, are frequently as ignorant of the facts as any among us. But I’d like to suggest that there are some questions of concern so basic, so fundamental to the way we live, that we might better rely on what some might call our innate “common sense.”
Is it necessary to be vigilant about maintaining, securing and updating our computer systems worldwide?
Should we be cleaning up the environment?
Do we require universal access to the very best education possible to assure our future?
Do we require some kind of universal access to affordable healthcare?
Is Congress functioning well—doing the people’s business?
Seriously, now…. Don’t you already know the answer? The big questions are not really the ones that stump us. It’s the figuring out how we’re going get together and go about fixing what’s broken or about to break.
Tags: answering the big questions, choosing sides, common sense, debating Y2K, holding strong opinions
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December 24th, 2009
As someone selling eBook as well as print versions of my novels, I’m grateful for any online article that discusses the new eReaders because these offer me a slightly more targeted opportunity to reach some of the people who might want to read my eBooks. If you’re marketing, however, it’s important to be clear about your purpose in leaving a comment. You’re purpose is to attract interest in your site and your work. To date, the marketing comments that seem to draw best for me tend to be sincere, authentic, relevant to the topic, thoughtful and, if at all possible, helpful somehow. A genuinely witty or funny comment can also work, but they’re a lot trickier to pull off. Expressing genuine enthusiasm for something can also draw positive attention. Bottom line: coattail marketing absolutely requires your best effort to reach and to serve others, so they’ll rightly assume that there’s more of the same to be had on your site and are tempted to visit.
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December 23rd, 2009
Seth Godin’s blog post this morning introduced me to Kevin Kelly and his post about 1,000 true fans: . It’s provocative reading for indie artists of all varieties, but then follow this link to musician Robert Rich’s thoughtful expansions on the reality of depending upon 1000 true fans:
Every artist needs to be prepared to work consistently at connecting with the people who will truly “get” his/her work… people who will be enthusiastic enough to not only support it with purchases, but also to recommend it to others. The central thesis presented in the links above is that a core base of 1000 true fans may well be sufficient to generate an ongoing income stream sufficient for you to maintain a minimal lifestyle creating art.
What interests me more than the proposition that 1000 core fans might equal financial stability, is the question of how exactly do each of us go about reaching that first 1000 people for whom our work is meaningful enough that they’ll recommend us to others?
At a minimum, we’ll need:
1. A website with compelling content—much of which is free to sample, and
2. Some kind of ongoing marketing campaign (including coattail marketing, blogging, personal appearances/performances, & media exposure) to bring people to our websites (along with any other points of purchase).
What’s missing for most of us are an abundance of reasonable (or maybe not so reasonable) first, second and third steps toward building that viable, on-going marketing effort that not only attracts our first 1000 true fans, but also allows us to keep doing “our work.”
Here’s my short list—good just for this morning:
1. Local is global; global is local. Start wherever you happen to be. That article you got in the local paper is most likely also up on the internet, so there’s no calculating where it will go or who will eventually see it.
2. Build on top of whatever exposure or success you manage to get. Any media exposure you’ve gotten will only add credibility with the new venues you approach. If someone purchases your work, write that person a thank you note and ask for suggestions and referrals.
3. Try just about anything. There’s no hard and fast formula for successful marketing. There’s only what works, so it’s better to experiment and discover what works for you. Then do more of that.
4. Don’t let your beliefs about marketing keep you from seeing what’s happening. Study the results; resist any temptation to rationalize them away with beliefs. If you don’t know why something is happening, don’t know. Keep asking questions until a new working hypothesis occurs to you to test.
5. Quit if you can. And instead find something that you can’t. (For more, see yesterday’s post on Jon Bon Jovi.)
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