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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Posted by Ann Bernard

…and what else? What’s it call? You know, come on…oh yea, Interact.  Entice me, feed my curiosity and interact with me. 

It’s doesn’t matter what aspects of the entertainment industry we talk about; doing the following three things – enticing fans, feeding their curiosities and interacting with them will lead to greater interest in your offerings and people attending shows, concerts and events. 

The internet, social media and utilization of web technologies make enticing fans, feeding their curiosities and interacting with them EASIER. It just takes a little bit of creativity and understanding of the tools that are available.

Social Media for Performing Arts: The Metropolitan Opera
Possibly one of the best organizations that’s making use of social media and strong overall marketing/promoting of their upcoming season is The Metropolitan Opera. 

Entice:  To entice a potential client/new fan is to share the experience, in this case of the opera, with them.  The Metropolitan Opera entices various audiences by offering broadcasts of their operas over a variety of mediums…to include radio and live in HD.

The Met’s new online subscription service features 13 HD videos, 37 historic TV performances, and 120 radio broadcasts delivered on demand. They certainly figured out how to deliver content to their audience when and how they want it.

Other enticing factors on The Metropolitan Opera website include a well stock picture gallery, some previews and audio highlights.  Visual and auditory features are key to sharing the experience and enticing people.

Really wish there were more previews.

Feed My Curiosity:  The Metropolitan Opera website is full of interviews, commentaries, and blog posts.  The comments are turned off on the blog posts which is very unfortunate. I also think they would do well to have more video interviews.

Visitors can definitely find the information they’re looking for and learn a lot.  If you can’t find what you’re looking for…you can always Ask Figaro!

I love this feature.  Let’s face it, operas aren’t the easiest things to understand so getting help from an expert on the topic is an excellent addition to the site, which by the way, also falls into the interact category. 

Interact:  Another interaction feature offered is the Ask Figaro Quiz “a highly un-scientific personality test to find the right opera for you!”

The Metropolitan Opera could do a little better with the interact portion of their website…they definitely could engage with their audience more by asking questions of their audience, looking for feedback and member reviews.  Adding a forum to their website would probably go a very long way to allow opera fans to interact together while participating as well. 

Parting Thoughts – What’s Completely Missing
The Metropolitan Opera is doing a pretty good job on their domain…however, there isn’t a whole lot of ways to spread the data on their domain to outside sources. 

No way to share the Metropolitan Opera trailer of Madam Butterfly or any other videos on the site.

And I have to note again – the comments are off on the blog, which is a prime method for people to interact with them.

It really isn’t that hard nor is it expensive to get involved in leveraging web technology and tools to entice, feed curiosities and interact with people.  It’s also not about doing perfectly, but at least getting started in engaging with your audience.

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Posted by Ann Bernard

What we’ve been discussing thus far is something I’m going to coin as “loose-leaf -social-media.”  That is to say, we’ve been doing some talking about having a presence on a variety of social networks.  I call it “loose-leaf” because hanging out on social networks and creating content without a plan is like having loose leaf papers with writing on them blowing in the wind…you don’t know what’s going to come of them and who is going to read the pages. 

Don’t get me wrong, some amazing things can and will still happen; particularly the ability to build some great relationships with your fans.  But, what we want to eventually get into is creating a social media campaign.  Having an understanding of your landing points and extensions is NOT a social media campaign.

A social media campaign is about leveraging your  loose-leaf-social-media together around a plan to accomplish a specific  purpose.  A social media campaign requires having 1. a plan 2. a purpose 3. a desired outcome and 4. a method to track its effectiveness.  It’s also called a campaign for a reason – it doesn’t happen overnight (even if it did happen overnight…it required a lot of planning and prep-work) and it will require continuous work.

You would launch a social media campaign for:

• The release of a new album, book, movie…etc.
• An upcoming tour
• A special show or event
• Recruit new talent

…just to name a few

First Step of a Social Media Campaign: Establishing Strategic Loose-Leaf-Social-Media Presence.
Having an established, strategic loose-leaf-social-media presence prior to initiating a social media campaign is advantageous.  It means you have some, even if meager, presence on the web and within a few communities. 

If you aren’t involved in loose-leaf-social-media and you engage in a social media campaign; you run a higher risk of coming off has only promoting, marketing and selling to the communities you belong to.  On the other hand, if you’ve been involved in loose-leaf-social-media than you have a greater chance of having the communities and relationships you’ve developed work in support of your campaign.

Communities and Relationships
It’s time to get into the importance of properly establishing yourself on the web and in your communities.  We’re going to explore social networks, blogs, websites and talk about the keys to being a successful, contributing member of a community.

It’s going to be awhile before we talk about creating a social media campaign again, so if you feel you have a well established loose-leaf-social-media presence and you’re ready to launch a campaign – contact me and we can discuss it.

Otherwise, since this blog is in its infancy and from what I’ve gathered of my readers you’ve been hanging out on MySpace and not venturing out too much; I’m going to take the time to explore with you.

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Posted by Ann Bernard

Yesterday I mentioned that using third party applications (sites and communities) are better than using the ones built into MySpace.  Now, I’m going to explain why I made that statement.

You have five basic kinds of communities on the internet.  You have: 

1. Landing Points/End Points
2. Your Extensions
3. Your Hubs
4. Your Aggregators/Promoters
5. Traditional Communities
   

We’re going to be to talking about what’s more relevant to you: your landing/end points and extensions.

Your Landing/End Points on the Web
A quick refresher – three days ago in the More Chatting About Social Media post I mentioned that people communicate on the web in five ways:

1. Words (blogs, microblogging, and through comments)
2. Audio (podcasts, internet radio)
3. Video (from 12seconds.tv, Seesmic to YouTube, Viddler and Internet TV shows)
4. Pictures (Flickr)
5. Presentations (mixtures of the above - Slideshare)

Your landing points/end points are sites on the web that have the capabilities of  combining all 5 methods of communication.  Another important characteristic of a good landing point is a large and relevant community.  Sites become landing points because a large mass of people have made it a habit of visiting those sites once, twice, multiple times a day or at least every week.

Lets narrow that down further – in a nutshell, good landing points for you as an entertainer are MySpace, to some extent Facebook and your own website.  I’m going to keep pushing the importance of having your own website.  It’s an excellent landing point and place to aggregate your extensions.

Other Landing Points for Entertainers

MySpace isn’t the only community focused on music or entertainers. There certainly are quite a few others out there.  I need to explore them more, but from what I’ve seen of them; they are more like traditional communities with limited abilities to combine all your communication means.

Would love to hear from you about you think of that statement.  Do you have other landing points?

Your Extensions
Your extensions are sites and communities where you produce a specific type of content and take part in participating in that community.  The content is exposed to the community within that site but the site is designed for you to extend your content to your landing points. 

Video and Picture Sites
Video and Picture Sites are excellent extension sites.  They are fun places to create and post content and are, depending on the site, relatively light on the workload for the community side.

Driving the point home from yesterday’s post – the reason it makes more sense to have an account and post your videos on YouTube rather than just on MySpace is for the extra exposure in a different community.

Microblogging Platfroms
Microblogging platforms (Twitter, Jaiku, Pluck, Pownce, Tumblr, etc.) require a great deal more involvement to create valuable, interesting content and become part of the respective communities.  The effort ought to be made though, in at least one of them, because of exposure to different audiences and another form of content.

Internet Radio, Podcast, Internet TV
This is a whole new level of involvement in creating content.  I definitely don’t want to get into what it takes to be successful in running an internet radio show, podcast or internet TV program.  But know that those platform and communities also exist as another source of content.

Instead of producing your own – I recommend looking at what show(s) you could be a guest on.

Wrap-up
Hopefully you’re starting to get the idea of what’s out there and you’re starting to see how it’s suppose to come together.

Knowing the difference between your landing/end points and your extensions is important because it’s how you’ll judge where your time is best spent.

The other sites, your hubs and your aggregators/promoters are also important but we can hold off talking about them.

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Posted by Ann Bernard

I was on MySpace back in early 2005 when it was a little social network that nobody knew about.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never been able to delete my old profile since I lost my login information and Tom won’t give it back to me…bonus points to anyone who can find it!

MySpace and the web have drastically changed since then.  There’s no doubt that I and MySpace have matured since 2005.  We both figured out how to be better at doing business...for MySpace, things started to change after News Corp bought them for $580M.  However, I would say that what really changed MySpace was opening up their platform to third party developers.  An effort lead by Facebook, social networks opening up to third party developers to make applications for their users became the thing to do in late 2007.  Open social followed and now with widgets, it’s very easy to add applications to all and any social networks and blogging platforms. 

I’ve been spending a great deal more time on MySpace again.  I’m scared by some of the profile pages I see and impressed by some others. What I’ve been looking for are the applications that make business sense.  What qualifies as a good business application – an application that meets one or all of the following criteria: 

1. It sells something – You make money from it
2. It captures information about your visitors
3. It allows your visitors to provide feedback
4. It promotes you and your shows

Five Applications That Are a Must for Your MySpace Page

Lets have a look at my selection (and this is aside of the obvious ones like the MySpace Music Player) and why I picked them.

Video and Picture Applications for Quality Videos and Pictures…Emphasizing the word Quality

Whether you choose YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo or MySpace videos or on the picture side Slide, Flickr, Photobucket or MySpace picture share – it’s a good addition to your profile to add video(s) and pictures.  Don’t go overboard on the videos, but if you have a song video, a live performance, an interview or some other video that compliments finding out about you and what you do…add it. 

As for pictures…people are totally into voyeurism and love pictures, so give them plenty of what they want. Don’t expect them to go click on your pictures in your profile – Add an application that’s on the main page.

Using MySpace applications is good but using 3^rd party is better and we’ll talk about why in a later post. (This falls under #4 above)

The Eventful Demand It Application

Every entertainer that tours or intends to tour should have that application on their profile.  It’s a great way of knowing where your fans are located and figure out where to plan your next show(s).  (This falls under #2 and 3).

Selling Applications

No brainer on this one.  If you have a product and/or merchandise and you aren’t selling it on your MySpace page... you’re a fool.  You need to be selling, selling, selling.

Email Newsletter Application

Obviously is you don’t do a newsletter or monthly email to your fan base this application doesn’t make sense (but we probably need to discuss why you don’t contact your fan base on the monthly basis…) if you do, then you really need to have this application on your profile.  Having ways to contact your fans is pretty important – this falls under #2.

Mobile Fan Club

I didn’t see this application on too many profiles but I think it’s definitely a must add.  You can use it to capture your fans phone numbers so you can text them when you have a shows coming up in their area.  Hey, if your fans are going to give you their phone numbers – take it!!  You can’t have too many ways to contact your fans.

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Posted by Ann Bernard

This is one of your first entrepreneurial (and social media) lesson.  Since you can only do limited business on MySpace it’s not sufficient to solely rely on MySpace.  I’m saying MySpace but it could be any other networking site you use. 

Where’s the Best Place for you to Conduct Business?

The answer is multiple places (we’ll talk at great length about that)…however, one main place on the web you need to be conducting business is on your own site and domain.

It’s natural as an entertainer to be drawn to and rely on MySpace…the social network is after all packed with millions of users and potential fans. You can brand your profile page so it’s also powerful for building your brand, you can blog, message people, post upcoming shows and with the addition of widgets and applications you can pretty much bring everything to your MySpace profile (something else we’ll get into great details about) but there are many pitfalls to only relying on one social network. 

Pitfalls of Social Network(s) – Find Solutions on your own domain

Biggest Pitfall – Conducting Business: Seriously, how much selling can you easily do from MySpace or other social networks?  Or how much serious selling can you easily do from MySpace and other social networks?  Even with the advance of widgets and applications…your ability to SALE is limited.

Solution: Creating a store on your own domain is pretty darn easy these days…why wouldn’t you do that!?!?

Pitfall – Reliability: MySpace has been around for awhile so it’s “pretty stable” but it’s not full proof.  Just a couple of weeks ago the blog features were down. I’ve also heard complaints about play counts.  No matter what third party site you trust to conduct business – you rely on them being and staying reliable.

Solution: Having your own domain is a forefront and a backup to all your other profiles.

Pitfall – Control: You don’t own your profile on a social network – the social network owns your profile.  You have to play by rules of the terms of services (TOS). Your account can be deleted if and when they feel like you’ve violated the TOS.  Or on the flip side, it becomes impossible to get your profile deleted.

Solution: You are the master of your own domain and the content there. You are the owner of the TOS.  You can say, add, delete and do whatever you want.

Pitfall – Wall Garden:  This can probably also go under the pitfall of control as well.  So pretty much all social networks require people to become members and users of their social network to communicate with you.  Do you realize how many people don’t bother to do that?

Solution:  On your own domain you make it much simpler and easier for people to communication with you.

Pitfall – Limited Ability to be Discovered:  As you will read below in the answers provided from great peeps on twitter: solely relying on one social network really limits your exposure to multiple audiences.  No matter how large a social network is – Not everyone is on it!!

scottpalmer @AnnBernard Like cell phone carriers, imagine only calling people on your network!! Don't know where folks are, you have to be everywhere.

wei_yang @AnnBernard Like all advertising, if you limit yourself to one channel, you miss out on testing and reaching the other channels

andrewbadera @AnnBernard haha PERFECT: 140 characters just ain't enough bandwidth, in the case of Twitter, to do everything one needs to do biz-wise.

andrewbadera @AnnBernard any one network fails to be universally inclusive. different features have different business value. etc. etc

JoeyN @AnnBernard not everyone uses the same social networks for the same reasons. Some cater to specific demographics & audiences

Solution:  Your own domain will get indexed in search engines and with proper SEO you’ll can make it super easy for anyone to find and discover you. 

I’ll be exploring the websites of artists in upcoming posts and we’ll find out how well it’s been paying off for them!

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Posted by Ann Bernard

Back in early 2007, May 13th to be exact, The New York Times released an article on Jonathan Coulton titled “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” written by Clive Thompson.  In case you don’t know, Jonathan Coulton is an American singer-songwriter, famous for his songs containing themes of geek culture as well as his rise to popularity through the use of the Internet. 

The article is a great read – it talks about how Jonathan has come to make a very comfortable living doing what he loves because he figured out how to properly leverage the web to promote himself and his work.  Through his “a song each week program” that he posted to his blog; Coulton developed an extensive and loyal fan base.

You will also read about a few other artists (OK Go,  Dane Cook, Arctic Monkey, Hold Steady) who also found their fame through the internet. 

“…seems likely that the artists who forge direct access to their fans have the best chance of figuring out what the new economics of the music business will be.”

The quote above, taken from the article, doesn’t just apply to the music industry.  Anyone in the entertainment industry looking to grow in popularity, spread their art,  grow a fan base and make a living from their work has to properly leverage the web and technology to make things happen.

You’ll also read in the article about some drawbacks and challenges of using social media (the web).  It’s a process that creates a cause and effect - it's important to maintain the right effect.  Once you engage with your fans there are responsibilities and consequences that are best known from the start.

It’s also useful to have an idea upfront on how you want to spend your time online and how to turn that time into a solid return.

I’ll be introducing a few bloggers in the next few weeks that are going to help you figure all that out.

One of you those bloggers is Kenneth Yeung.   Kenneth has been working in the world of interactive marketing and social media since 2003.  He has a great deal of knowledge to share, but he also looks forward to exploring how social media differs and is best leveraged by people in the entertainment industry. 

His posts will start out with rudimentary explanations of what is social media, take a look at social networks and what purpose they serve, and how to engage in the “conversation”.

We’ll make sure that you can be like Jonathan Coulton – be in charge of your own destiny, build a solid fan base and enjoy the popularity of a rock star!

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Posted by Ann Bernard

To come talk with us about your Social Media Journey!!  We’re looking for artists, actors, comedians, musicians and athletes who want to discuss and learn more about social media.

We’ll discuss *Blog and Internet Radio Show*:

• Your thoughts on the importance and impact of social media.
• How you have leveraged social media to promote yourself and your events.
• What social media mediums (platforms, widgets, social networks) you use.

The good, the bad and ugly of it all!!

• Who does your social media campaign?
• How time consuming is it?
• What kind of return do you get from social media?
• How does social media compare to your traditional promotional methods?

We’ll Provide Feedback

We will review your social media plan/strategy and provide feedback on how well we think you are executing it.  We’ll also give you pointers on how to improve it. 

Many people are talking about social media – this is your opportunity to voice your opinion, provide your feedback and be heard.

Contact me ann.bernard@yutmedia.com if you are interested.  I’ll schedule an interview, book you for our show and get the conversation started!!

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