Posted by Ann Bernard
Happy Thanksgiving!! This is a special Thanksgiving treat - an in depth interview on social media with Dan Meyer multiple Guinness World Record holding sword swallower, 2007 Ig Nobel Laureate in Medicine; a featured Ripley's Believe It or Not performer, and one of only a few dozen professional sword swallowers left in the world today, Dan Meyer has been seen by millions on hundreds of regional, national and international appearances. Dan was also a semi-finalist on the 2008 America’s Got Talent.
I don’t listen to too many people but when a man can swallow solid steel blades from 15 to 30 inches long and up to 8 swords at once.…there’s something inside me that says “I don’t know quite why, but I really ought to listen to a man like that – I doubt he wastes his time saying things that aren’t true.” It intimidates and fascinates me.
You can only imagine my excitement when Dan agreed to share his thoughts on Social Media with the Yut Media readers. Dan wrote an article called Dan’s Top Tips on Social Networking – an overview of social networks and how to best use them.
Let’s get into it and hear from Dan Meyer
Q: Our initial conversation started (over on Twitter) because I was looking for some input on RerverbNation. What are your thoughts of ReverbNation?
Dan Meyer: I really like ReverbNation and have been using it for about a year now.
Of course, being a Sword Swallower as a performing artist is completely different than most of the traditional rock bands that ReverbNation was designed for, so I can't really take advantage of selling mp3s online. But besides that, I have still managed to make it work for me, and I love it!
My favorite components of ReverbNation are the widgets, fan collector, schedule (with visual maps!), and most of all, the FanReach newsletter - I can put together nice HTML newsletters with images, links, and videos, and when I send it out to my fans, it includes my tour schedule, links to my online store, etc. I love the nice look and feel they have on their apps and widgets. I especially like the way that I can narrow down my target demographics for my newsletter to only send to certain demographics - Males, females, certain age range, within so many miles of a zip code etc. This means, I can send out an email to just my recipients in a particular state or region of the US or my fans in Europe whenever I head to Europe. Pretty cool!
Those are most of the main benefits, along with the fact that it is FREE, and they even claim to pay YOU for hits! Can't say I have used the Street Team functions yet with my fans, but I have heard back from several fans who say they appreciate knowing what I'm up to and when and where they can see me!
Dan’s Profile on RerverbNation
Q: When and how did you get started with social networks and using online tools to reach and communicate with your fans?
Dan Meyer: Now that I think back on it, it was way back in 1992 that I really got my early start in online social networking, although we didn’t know to call it that back then… When I got my first computer strictly for practical working on writing books and film scripts, I saw these little icon pictures and clicked on them to see what they did… They took me to online places with names like Prodigy, CompuServe, and Promenade, so I signed up with all three, and made a lot of online friends on all three, many of whom I still network with today! I ended up becoming a beta tester for Promenade, which evolved into AOL, and surprisingly, I still have and use my original account there!
Over the years, I became a Moderator on several Yahoo Groups discussion lists. Even though we may not consider Yahoo Groups the hottest in the social networking scene today, I did use it to set up a fan newsletter list that I use to send out updates from my BlackBerry when I’m on the road.
In the past few years, like many others, I got set up on MySpace, and used it to send out bulletins and blogs. But it was Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that really got me going strong on the whole social networking trend in the past year, and I feel like they have helped me network with my friends and fans. However, it has been Twitter and Ping.fm that have really helped me take social networking to a whole new level by allowing me to keep an updated web presence on several dozen places around the ‘Net on a daily basis!
Why do you think it’s imperative as an entertainer to have an online presence?
Dan Meyer: Two words - “Show… Business”!
It’s called “Show business” for two reasons – you’ve got to be able to “show” yourself and market your show to as many people as you can possibly reach, but you need to be able to run it like a professional “business”. In the entertainment business, you need to be able to reach people from all walks of life and in lots of different ways. If people don’t know about you, chances are they are not going to come knocking on your door with opportunities.
And in the show business, you are only as good as your last big appearance. But if nobody hears about your appearances, they won’t be reminded that you’re around and actively performing. On the other hand, if you constantly promote yourself and your appearances using online tools, you’ll be able to keep in touch with your fans and let them know what you are doing, which often leads to more opportunities.
So it is imperative to have an Internet presence today. But not just one. The old days of just having a single .com website presence are gone… That’s only one “doorbell”, one way for people to find you, and today that’s not enough. Most people aren’t going to just stumble across your single main website. You’ve got to go reach people where they are, and viewers and not just on one single network like AOL or CompuServe used to be in the old days. So people have moved on to setting up other social networking sites, like MySpace. But not everyone is on MySpace, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Plaxo, or AOL… And some are on several.
Today many of my friends follow me on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn… others say they have kept up with me on Plurk or Pownce, Bebo and others… If you want to reach a lot of people in a lot of places, you have to have a presence on all of the sites. If you limit yourself to just one presence, you will limit yourself to the number of people you can reach.
Actually, there is a third word that is almost as important as the first two: FREE! Other than the time involved, most of the social networks are free to set up and maintain. I feel it would be a travesty to waste the opportunity to reach people on all these free social networking sites. Why not be able to reach potentially thousands of viewers, listeners, or fans at once for FREE instead of spending money on the old method of phone calls, faxes, and USnail Mail?
Q: How has using social networks and interacting online changed the way you do business?
Dan Meyer: I used to spend a lot more time on the phone… talking. Now I spend more time on the phone tweeting and SMSing, as those are almost as immediate, and in many cases more far-reaching than just talking to one person at a time. Now when I send out a 140 character Ping, it immediately updates my MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Mashable, Hi5, BrightKite, Flikr, Blogspot, LiveJournal, FriendFeed, and lots more sites I can’t even remember! And I’m sure there are some new ones I haven’t joined yet!
Another way that online networking has helped change the way I do business is that now I rarely mail out promo kits with DVDs… Now I can do almost everything immediately online using emails, images, and links to YouTube videos. This not only saves on time and postage costs, but it gets more immediate results. Several of my YouTube videos have gotten tons of hits in the past few weeks, and I am pitching some of my YouTube videos to shows like Leno and Letterman, and I’m hoping they’ll pay off in the next few weeks!
Several other social networking friends have also gotten involved in many of the same networks I have. So now we Digg each others’ stories, videos, and other work, and help promote each other. In my view, that’s what it’s all about – making it a win-win situation where both parties can cross-market each other and everyone wins!
Q: What’s the biggest opportunity generated from your online presence? How did it come about?
Dan Meyer: I’ve had a few nice opportunities that I know were generated strictly from having an online presence… A newspaper editor from the Huntsville Times who asked me through LinkedIn, “Do I know you?” I described who I was and what I did, and within a few weeks, she had written a feature story on me! Also through LinkedIn, I got connected to a new TV network in Las Vegas who is interested in doing a story on me.
And just a few weeks ago, I was at a Huntsville Havoc Hockey game twittering about the game, and I happened to follow the twitters of Ann Bernard who was twittering a Washington Capitals hockey game. And here I am a few weeks later doing an interview on social networking!
But one of the best ones was getting contact through my MySpace page from someone at America’s Got Talent, which prompted me to actually go to the first audition in Nashville, which led to the regionals in Atlanta, that led to the semi-finals in Las Vegas, and finally all the way out to the live episode in Los Angeles! Now that’s what I call a golden opportunity that was initiated through social networking!
Q: What is your online interaction with fans like? How much of yourself and “private life” do you share online?
Dan Meyer: I’m usually a pretty open and transparent person, so I don’t mind sharing some personal things. But I have also learned not to bore followers with trivial details. It can get boring to just say, “I’m having coffee now…” That can lose followers’ interest if you don’t really have anything to say. However, it is a little different if you say, “I’m having coffee now… with a fellow sword swallower here at the train station in Milano Italy!” Now I think that’s interesting and worth mentioning!
When I’m not on the road, my wife and I raise Arabian horses, cats, kittens, parrots, and chickens… So sometimes when I am at home on the farm, I don’t mind mentioning something more mundane, like when I’m bottle feeding kittens or mending fences in the pasture surrounded by beautiful horses. It kind of makes a contrast with performing and puts it all into perspective. Overall, it helps my friends get to know more about me and realize that I am a normal person with a normal life just like everyone else… except that I occasionally like to swallow swords underwater in a tank of sharks!
Q: You mentioned your addiction to your BlackBerry…how do you manage your time online?
Dan Meyer: I absolutely LOVE my BlackBerry… It is SO useful and productive when it comes to sending e-mails, SMS, Twitters, Blackberry Messenger, AIM, Google Gtalk, etc. And it is immediate – When I get an email, I can usually reply in a few moments and not have to wait until I get home to a computer late that night. So I use my BlackBerry constantly from the moment I roll out of bed in the morning till late at night. I keep two spare batteries in my pocket for extra productive days, but even in Europe, I managed to get by on one battery all day. And thanks to an innovation I use in creating my own “auto-text” shortcuts, I am to the point where I can almost send emails faster on my BlackBerry than I can on a full keyboard! As a matter of fact, many of my responses in this interview were done on my BlackBerry while waiting in traffic!
Here’s an example of how I used my BlackBerry to keep up with friends and fans while on the road. I just got back from four weeks performing at Harvard, MIT, the Bahamas, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Italy. While I was on the road, I sent out Twitter and Ping updates whenever there was something interesting happening, which was usually several times a day! I twittered as I was going onstage at the Ig Nobel Awards ceremony at Harvard, and while I was sitting onstage during the ceremony. As it turned out, one of the 2008 Ig Nobel winners who was being awarded his Ig Nobel Prize had to be interrupted from Twittering on his BlackBerry, which he continued to do FROM THE AWARDS PODIUM while he was trying to give his acceptance speech! Talk about a diehard Twitterer! Needless to say, he and I now follow each other on Twitter!
A week later, I was Twittering on my BlackBerry while sitting next to Lethal Weapon actor Danny Glover in the Bahamas as we were both waiting to go onstage. We struck up a conversation, and he ended up pulling a sword from my throat right there in the green room tent! We even got it on video!
In Europe, I twittered when I was performing in castles in Sweden, at a huge science festival in Italy, doing a film shoot in Germany, and drinking coffee at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. When I got back from Europe, I ran into dozens of people who commented on several portions of my trip! I was amazed that so many of them had really kept up with me. I asked where they had read about my trip… The responses were varied… Some said they followed me on MySpace, others on Facebook or LinkedIn or Plaxo, while many others followed me on Twitter. So yes, even though we may not always get immediate direct feedback from our online comments, I have learned that social networking can indeed be a very viable way of communicating with friends, fans, and followers!
Q: Any pearls of wisdom you’d like to leave to other entertainers still hesitating to get involved online?
Dan Meyer: Don’t do it! Stay offline and keep doing what you’re doing to the same folks you are networking with now… so that those of us who are not afraid to grasp and utilize new technologies will be able to market to this new market that you are missing out on!
For the rest of you who aren’t afraid to move forward, go for it! Get a Blackberry, set up at least a few accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Ping to get started, and go for it. Networking is a win-win situation… the more people you and I network with, the more opportunities we create exponentially. So connect with me on any of the sites you are on so we can help each other out. Let me know if there’s a way I can help you out by networking with you or performing for you.
Again, it was a honor to have Dan share his online experiences and how he leverages the web…I hope you’re taking notes. I have invited Dan to come back as a guest blogger to share more of his knowledge, guidance and advice so hopefully we’ll see more of him.
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2008.11.26th.
Interview: Bryan Of Zelazowa On Indie On The Move
Posted by Ann Bernard
Had a great interview with Bryan of Zelazowa about their site Indie on the Move which is created by and for independent artists to help book tours and review venues.
Listen and learn about the motivation behind Indie on the Move, how it can help you and how you can be part of helping other indepedent artists.
2008.11.15th.
Social Media Interview: Michael Paige
Posted by Ann Bernard
We got all kinds of goodies on this blog! You’ll see these types of interviews, Social Media Interviews, every so often. I’ll pose questions to different types of entertainers to find out how they use social media and what they think of it.Our first interviewee is international romantic recording artist, Michael Paige. I met Michael at BlogWorldExpo 08. I was very impressed that he was in attendance since you didn’t find that many entertainers there…mostly all social media types, PR folks and bloggers.
At any rate, I really enjoyed getting Michael’s point of view on social media and I had the pleasure of introducing him to Twitter.
Michael can be found on the web on his own website where he runs a video blog and on a few social networks.
Check out his interview and his web presence.
Interview
Q: You’re in the process of establishing a strong web presence…when did you realize this was something important to do?
Michael Paige: Creating a strong presence online has been on my agenda for the last three years. The more time that passes the more I realize how much business is being done on the web.
Q: What do you perceive the value of social media to be to you as an independent artist?
Michael Paige: Social media can do a lot for anyone online. However I think it’s easy to get completely sucked in by wanting to be everywhere. As an independent artist it’s important to be able to know where to spend your time and energy online.
Q: What aspect(s) of building a relationship online with your fans are you enjoying the most?
Michael Paige: People in general are great, and unique. It’s a blast getting to meet, get acquainted and communicate with so many people that enjoy my music.
Q: What’s the most useful/valuable social network/social media platform to you and why?
Michael Paige: All of them are important. I think where you spend your time the most is what’s really important.
Q: How much time a week do you spend on social media (communicating with fans, interacting on social networks) and what does the breakdown of that time look like?
Michael Paige: I don’t spend a specific amount of time on a daily or weekly basis. It depends on my performance and recording schedule.
Q: I see you run a video blog on your blog/website. What made you choose to do a video blog? Which post has been your favorite so far and why?
Michael Paige: I’m not sure which is my favorit e blog post. The reason I decided to start blogging was that people were asking questions about me, my family life etc. So I thought it would be a good idea to let them in on what I spend time doing.
Q: Any words of wisdom or advice to independent artists getting involved in social media?
Michael Paige: Pour your heart and passion in to what you’re doing, and enjoy the journey. Music/entertainment has always been a difficult field to be a part of. The most successful people in this industry have had their ups and downs. So enjoy every moment you can.
Web Presence
Michael On: Blog, Website, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Viddler (he’s got more but those are where he seems to spend most of his time)
What I like
Michael’s web presence leverages the 3/4 out of the 5 ways to communicate and interact with his fans.
He interacts with his fans and the people who interact with him. His profiles are public so he is accessible. He creates quality content for his video blog allowing people to get to know him. He even conducts interviews of people in other communities other than music and recording.
All his profiles that can be branded are professionally branded…the others have the cover of his new album. If he can sell his music on a site…he’s selling his music, but of course offering a listen for free.
Recommendations
My recommendations to Michael to have greater success with social media are 1) To leverage his video content more. 2) Add profile information to his Viddler profile. 3) Be a little more active with the Viddler community. 3) To not be shy or afraid to annouce his new blog videos to Twitter, MySpace and Facebook - must create cross promotion across all the networks. 5) Consider starting a YouTube channel and post there as well. 6) When the time is right (touring) leverage the use of pictures more.
Be sure to listen to Michael's beautiful and romantic music!
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