As 2008 comes to a close we are in high spirits here at Cyber PR and so we are holding:

Our First Annual CYBER PR 2008 Holiday Fundraiser

http://www.arielpublicity.com/holidaydrive

STEP ONE. You ask your fans to make a difference (it’s tax-deductible for them).

STEP TWO. We reward you with a free PR Campaign and gifts to help you get ahead in the music business.

STEP THREE. We all make a difference together!

Take a look at our charities:

Here’s how it works:

1. You send out your e-mail newsletter (or a series of newsletters) to all of your fans and friends wishing them a happy holiday and requesting that they make a donation to any charity of your choice (I have supplied a list of 5 musician-oriented charities to consider).
2. Your fans e-mail you their proof of contribution email or a screen shot that they donated.
3. You report it back to us to qualify for complimentary prizes that will help you grow in 2009!

I can’t wait to see what we all generate together!

Here’s How to Signup:

Send an e-mail to holidaydrive@arielpublicity.com

Include:

1. Your name
2. Your e-mail address
3. Your band’s name
4. The charity that you choose
5. If you have a holiday song that you would like us to promote attach it as an MP3

Let’s make a difference together this season.

We will be reporting all of our progress on this blog: http://www.arielpublicity.com/blog

Click here for details on how to participate and prize information: http://www.arielpublicity.com/holidaydrive

Please click right away - we are only having this drive through December 31, 2008

Here’s to Our Success!

Ariel

One of my best friends is an artist - a dancer - and she literally takes to bed after she has to write a press release; it literally makes her sick.

You will NEVER achieve the success you want it if you try to do it all alone and take on things that stop you dead in your tracks!

I can not stress this enough: You MUST learn to delegate, and get the stuff that makes you completely stressed out off of your plate.

Two issues are up for you right now from reading this:

 1. You can’t afford to pay someone to help you
 2. You don’t want to give up control and you feel a need to do it all yourself

Right?

Step 1: Figure Out What To Delegate
The first step in your journey is you need to figure out what you want to get off of your plate. Is your MySpace page hogging up too much time? Do you need help with PR & Marketing? Do you just need someone organized to help you file papers and organize your home office?

Step 2: Write A “How To” Guide For Each Task
I urge you to take the time to do this BEFORE you get anyone in to help you! Take a few hours to write a guide on each task explaining it exactly the way you do it. This is called systematizing and it will be critical for your success in achieving your goals around outsourcing. Imagine that the person you are writing these guides for has NEVER done any of the tasks you are about to assign. Type them out.

This is CRITICAL to your success with delegating because when people are left to their own devices they may not perform in the way you want them to.

Start With Small Tasks - 1 to 2 Hours at Most
Start with small tasks that can be achieved in an hour or two to see if your new intern / assistant is up for it (not everyone will be good at everything) and make sure you ask them what they would like to focus on – Facebook or MySpace. Or maybe they are better in person, and they want to pass a clipboard around at your show to help with newsletter sign ups.

Or maybe they are creative writers and their talents will be best used writing press releases or designing logos and graphics for posters, flyers and websites.

Hold Them Accountable
If they are working for college credit make sue they provide you with a spreadsheet of all they are doing, or at least a report that breaks down their time and what they did with it. They will probably need to do this for school anyway.

Inspect and comment on their actions - remember when you were in school how you were graded and checked-up on. If you do not inspect the work that interns are doing for you they may go off course.

Where To Get Good Marching Orders

Cyber PR’s Sound Advice
http://www.arielpublicity.com/sound_advice/index.html

I have written many step-by-step guides on how to be your own publicist, how to get reviewed on blogs, how to get started on Twitter, how to install Facebook apps, etc. Look through my articles, have your new intern read them and follow along to the letter!

Bob Bakers Buzz Factor
http://www.bob-baker.com

I love Bob and he writes great material and wonderful books that your intern can read and follow along. I love his MySpace and Guerilla Marketing books - buy them.

Derek Sivers’ Blog
http://www.Sivers.org

Derek has many marketing tips plus a great FREE book to download to get your interns motivated.

Inner Rhythm
http://www.innerrhythm.org

Download Kavit’s free ebooks here. They will walk your interns through the new realities of the music business. Start with the fabulous “How To Design A Winning & Profitable Music Business.”

New Music Strategies
http://newmusicstrategies.com

Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies attempts to unpack and explain what’s going on in the online music environment - and from that, develop strategies. I love his ebook called “20 things” it’s indispensable

Rockstar Life Lessons
http://www.rockstarlifelessons.com

Carla Lynne Hall is my Mastermind forum manager and an amazing strategist herself. Her blog is wonderful too! I suggest diving into the “Recession Proof Musician” series.

Chris Brogan’s Blog
http://www.chrisbrogan.com

Expert social media strategist Chris Brogan has a great blog packed with ideas on how to create a social media strategy that works for you, and yes a great series of ebooks too.

The Musicians’ Atlas
http://www.musiciansatlas.com

An indispensable guide to help with tour PR, and marketing

CD Baby Podcast
http://www.cdbabypodcast.com

Free audio podcasts for download crammed with ideas to get your interns motivated

The Indie Bible
http://www.indiebible.com

I love this wonderful directory of outlets to send your music for every imaginable genre; plus tips written by industry thought leaders.

Step 3: Go Get Help
Here are some solutions to consider… this is my guide to getting the help you may need. I broke it up starting with free solutions that won’t cost you more than your time to options that you will pay for:

Getting Help FOR FREE
Get students to help you while they earn credit for school:

Entertainmentcareers.net & Music-Jobs.com
These websites will let you post as an employer for free - post as a record label (that’s what you are) and ask for help with PR and marketing. Offer college credit only. You will be amazed at how many young people who need to get credit for school are turning to these sites to find interesting internships.
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net
http://www.music-jobs.com

Your Local College Or University
There are a few places on campus to try:

The Career Services department
Music school
Communications department

Look for classes on PR, marketing and online strategy. I suggest that you connect directly with the professors and leave a courteous message asking them if they require internships and if they have any students who like music and may be interested in working for your record label.

There is always a class that is studying marketing and PR and students need to come up with “marketing plans” and “publicity plans” all of the time. Ask the professor to have the class come up with one for YOU as an artist instead of a hypothetical business. You will be amazed at what a team of young people who are not jaded by the music business may come up with.

Photography and Film Schools
Students studying photography would be delighted to take photos of a band - they get an assignment complete and you get free headshots!

This also works for film students (free video for YOU).

Production Schools
Students learning about audio production may also need to record. Research which audio schools are in your area and call them up!

Identify Your Superfans & Motivate Them
Ask your mailing list if anyone on it can give you a few hours a month assistance in exchange for free show tickets, T-shirts and beers at the gig.

Email Signup At Gigs
You can also create a column on your email signup list that you pass around at gigs asking - would you like to be in our virtual street team? If they say yes - add them to your team!

Email Signup On Your Site
And you can add a signup box to your website using a free widget from Reverb Nation to capture your fans who may want to help you.

Free Online Tools To Use

Reverb Nation
http://www.reverbnation.com

Reverb Nation has an entire street team management system that you can use for free to delegate tasks and keep everyone organized

See How Others Do It - Then Copy Them!
By joining other musician’s street teams you can see how they delegate and copy what they do. Google will get you there in a few clicks.

Paid Services

In some cases you do get what you pay for so you may want to spend some money. This does not have to break the bank at all - here are some of my favorite places to go for paid help!

Elance
http://www.elance.com

Elance is a fabulous site where service providers of all types bid against each other (eBay style) to work for YOU!

There are tons of categories here and you will find almost anything you need - graphic designers, copyeditors, writers, virtual assistants etc. You can also get a MySpace page skinned for a lot less than you would imagine.

I have used this site to get my books designed, powerpoint presentations done for a fraction of NYC prices and through this amazing site I found Kristie, my fabulous VA (virtual assistant) who checks my email, helps me keep track of all sales of my books at Amazon, and runs both ReviewYou.com and my affiliate program; yet I have never met her face-to-face. There are countless reliable VA’s who prefer to work from home (many are moms with children in school so they have extra hours during the day).

You can set the price you want to pay. The best part is that Elance has an escrow service so if the provider does not deliver a satisfactory job, you will not release your money until they do!

TIP: look at each person’s reviews and only use providers that get fabulous reviews and high ratings from other Elance users to avoid disappointments.

Bio Writing - Ben Lazar
http://www.arielpublicity.com/ariel_publicity_site/AP_bio_writing.html

I have a full-time bio writer on my staff who will craft an excellent bio for you. He is a 17-year music industry veteran and has served as a major label A&R guy for years at Island Def Jam. Plus he has also booked the entire CMJ Music Festival so he really knows how to hone in and focus on a band’s message and help you get it across.

Review You - Guaranteed CD Reviews
http://www.ReviewYou.com

I created this site to help musicians get one review at a time guaranteed from expert music writers - buy one or buy 10 and save a fortune in postage and PR pitching / following up agony.

Bandletter - Will Design and Send Your Newsletters For YOU! http://www.bandletter.com

I co-own a service that is hands down the easiest solution to managing your newsletters - why? Because my partner Kevin will do it all FOR YOU - all you need to do is write the copy. Kevin will design, and send each newsletter, clean up your mailing list from the bounce backs and advise you on the best strategies for getting your fanbase to buy.

Hire a Teenager in Your Family

Trust me THEY know how to work MySpace much better than you again don’t set them off to figure it out on their own - give them a syllabus with steps to take.

TIP: Buy them Music Success In 9 Weeks, The Indie Bible, Musicians Atlas or Bob Baker’s fabulous books!

Good Luck with delegating and please post your stories in the comments!

Here’s to your success!

Ariel

http://www.singleoftheday.com
http://www.myspace.com/jodywhitesides

Essentially this is a daily blog that will be a song that fits the mood the writer is in for the day or what’s currently happening in the world. It will always be a band or artist the writer thinks the audience should know about, and support by purchasing the music or seeing them play live. Who knows, you might dig his taste in others enough to even support him in his creative endeavors as well.

Q: How long have you been blogging?

A I’ve been doing the Single of the Day blog since June 27th, 2006. That puts me at a little over the two year mark and counting. That’s a post for every day! It’s not always easy.

Q: In your opinion, what does a good song need to consist of?

A: Being that I’m a songwriter I’m probably more critical of the music I select for the blog. If I come across a song that somehow grabs me and does fit my normal ideals, I’ll point that out on the blog. I’ll explain what it is that grabs me in the song.

First off an intro that has a vibe that either piques my ear or draws me in is a major plus. That could be a hook of any sort, be it a vocal, a guitar, a piano, a bass, a drum, something that clearly denotes that song as soon as I hear it. Once the song comes in it has to have some sort of flow. A vibe, often times a bounce or swing. So much music these days lacks flow. How good the people playing their instruments are comes into consideration as well. Being in tune helps a bunch. With that typed, production rarely makes a bad song better. The real trick is getting me to feel it in some way. Then come the lyrics, can I remember them? Is the melody supporting those words? Does the music support that melody? Does the singer sing in tune? Do they have a voice that is pleasing to my ear? Do I get a nice journey in the lyrics? Tell me something that I can relate a portion of my life to and do it in a way that is unique.

Q: What is your favorite band or favorite genre of music and why?

A: I used to have favorites when I was learning to play. Once I got to a certain level of playing ability on my main instrument I no longer had favorites. Then my focus shifted to songwriting, a different beast from being a technically good/great musician. Some bands have had great players that are/were great writers. At this point, I really don’t have favorite bands anymore. As for genres, well… I primarily dig the all encompassing field of Rock. However, I’m very much into combining that with other genres. For my listening though, I really will listen to a lot of genres and if a song really grabs me, I’ll buy it. If the whole album is really strong, I’ll buy the album. I much prefer an album over a single. But it has to kick ass front to back. That’s hard to do, even for me (with my own releases). I think the real question is: What music gets one to part with their hard earned money? Anything that can do that is probably able to be listed as a favorite.

Q: What changes in content laws, broadcasting rights, etc. have effected you most?

A: I’m probably about to shoot myself in the foot with this answer. My rep at SESAC, Derek Sivers, Brian A. Whitney, and many of my musical peers, were all really excited to hear about the blog when I started it a couple of years ago. I’m actually amazed I’m still doing it. Every single day. I tend to focus mostly on non-signed or blog/podcast friendly artists. Which makes it easy for them to give me permission to have their song play when someone visits the site. I could allow the player to play the music in the RSS feed, but I’ve opted not to do that incase I get attacked with some arcane law. In a way, I get the feeling, I’m sorta flying under the radar. Who knows what the future will bring. I don’t make anything substantial off the blog, maybe a few pennies here and there based on google ads. It’s not much money, certainly not enough to justify why I do it. I don’t take money or bribes to be on the blog either. It’s strictly stuff I choose that shows I love music, it’s that simple. If I got hit with a lawsuit, I’d first see if there’s some arrangement to avoid the lawsuit. Otherwise, I’d probably have stop the idea of playing the music and continue by only talking about it.

Q: A recent study found blogs to be more effective than MySpace in generating album sales, do you feel blogs have that power?

A: At risk of being a dick (I have a sticker that says, “Don’t Be A Dick”) I will say the following about Myspace. Myspace screwed themselves with poor usability. At first it was an ok way to find music and match it with fans. The closed system did not, and still does not allow for easy personalization of a page - not exactly what I would define as ‘my’ space. It took 3rd party developers to come up with ways to make myspace more useful. Smart peeps used the programs to target very specific profiles and gain fans. There was some weird belief that if you had X amount of friends on Myspace you’d get signed. So bands would spend hours a day on myspace looking for anyone to friend them.

Since I’m not a fan of promoting my music to other bands and vis versa, I don’t accept band requests on my myspace page. Of the 19,000 or so peeps I have there, maybe 50 are band pages in my friends list. But they’re all bands I know personally or have written with. My reason on that is: it’s a waste of time if it’s not making a sale. Which is probably why Myspace failed to really generate amazing sales for most bands, attempting to sell to other bands. I’m sure a few people got something out of myspace. I doubt you’ll see any new band come out of it now. Why? Myspace killed off all the ability to mass communicate. They’ve turned their back on the artists that helped create the site and are now bowing to the major labels. I understand it from a business sense. But it’s going to prevent them from returning to the “cool” status they had two years ago.

Blogs on the other hand are a whole different beast. They are generally much more personal. A way for a human to expose themselves. If that exposure of the self is something others happen to like, it ends up creating a community. When Single of the Day first got off the ground, I had a lot of people offering me suggestions to check out music. Some were great suggestions, lots of others not so much. The idea of an artist doing a review of other artists seemed to be something people really liked. My blog has morphed a bit. I’ve incorporated way more of my own musings of what I go thru as an artist into it. I remember the blog post where I made that switch. I then attempt to relate me to the song I pick in some way shape or form. I actually have no idea if people truly read it or not. My desire is readers get something from it. That something is the song. It always surprises me when people tell me “oh you know when you wrote…” it shows they are paying attention. I know artists have made sales because of Single of the Day. That makes me feel good. I also get emails from readers saying how much a song meant to them so they buy it, that’s great too.

I would say that if the blogger is worth reading, people will follow. It can make a great way to connect music. We all still need a filter system and a blog is a very nice niche filter.

http://www.electricallanguage.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/electricallanguage

Electrical language is a weekly music podcast of 4 or 5 podsafe songs by independent artists from around the world. The music ranges from acoustic to electronica to catchy pop to good old indie rock. It is hosted by me, Gabor Kovacs, from Hampshire, United Kingdom.

Q: With the Electrical Language Podcast in operation since December of 2005, how have you kept your content fresh for so long?

A: The basic format has been the same for about 2 years: I usually play 5 songs, of which 2 are by the same artist. Sometimes it’s hard, and there are times that I have felt that it’s perhaps getting stale.

What really keeps the content fresh, what re-invigorates me, is finding some great new music. Periodically I find something, or have a song sent to me, that is just so good. I get the same feeling I had as an 18 year old in 1977, going to loads of gigs by struggling young bands. It really is all about the music.

And the icing on the cake is when I get e-mails. Not so long ago a listener from New York e-mailed to say he’d been listening almost since I started electrical language, and listed about a dozen albums by artists from all over the world that he’d bought as a result of my play. That list included one band I’d never heard of, so I checked them out and got to play their songs as a result. And earlier this month an artist from British Columbia told me he’d made a sale to an electrical language listener in Hungary. Things like that give me a real buzz, and help keep me excited.

Q: Since that time, what changes in content laws, broadcasting rights, etc. have effected you most?

A: I have always taken great care only to play podsafe music. I know of podcasters who have been forced to take an episode off the server and remove a song. I can do without the hassle!

What I have noticed in the course of the last couple of years has been an increasing use by record companies of podcasting as a means of marketing artists, new and established. There are definitely people out there who use podcasters as part of a viral marketing strategy. I’ve even been asked to play a song by Duran Duran! I avoid playing artists who already have an established name. There are so many people out there with so much talent, and music is a cut-throat competitive business, and so I see the mission of my podcast (I’d never thought of it as having a mission before!) as being to help promote bands and artists who are trying to establish themselves.

Q: How has the show evolved since its inception?

A: I’ve noticed that my own musical tastes have evolved, no doubt about that. I think the answer to this question is that I have grown with the show. I still don’t like heavy metal, though!

Q: A recent study found blogs to be more effective than MySpace in generating album sales, do you feel podcasts have the same power?

A: Yes, I can understand that if you take the view that word-of-mouth is a major part of using the internet to spread the word. I play music that I like, and every week I send out what amounts to a tape of songs I like, saying “Hey, you should check these guys out”. The funny thing is I have no idea who about 90% of my listeners are, but I suppose those who stick with me do so because their tastes and mine are similar. So my podcast is a kind of audio blog, listened to by people who want to hear the kind of music I play, which could be seen as a start. MySpace does seem to be something of a blunt instrument in comparison. I suspect that to use it well as a sales tool, you need to do more than send out friend requests and post bulletins.

Q: What’s coming up in the future for the Electrical Language Podcast?

A: I am trying to get more listener and artist involvement in electrical language. Every week the show opens with an ident by a listener or an artist. Sometimes I ask a band or to record a couple of minutes of audio to link two of their songs. I’m still working that idea through. I suspect I ought to take the plunge and try Skype interviews!

Here’s the good news. I have an amazing, new, special report available on my website and it’s an in depth interview with Randy Chertkow about how to create multiple streams of income as a musician during this crazy time.

Here is a brief excerpt of the entire interview which includes the list but to read the entire in depth conversation I conducted with Randy just a few days ago, please visit http://www.arielpublicity.com and enter your name and your e-mail address on the boxes on the page. Don’t worry if you’re already opted into my newsletter list. You will not get opted in again, I’ll make sure of it.

As a way to jump-start your multiple streams of income, I am launching my cyber PR Roadies program. It’s my new affiliate’s program which will help you earn more money by sharing my book, PR services and products with other musicians.

Click here to find out more and download the full special report on how to make more money

http://www.arielpublicity.com/affiliate

37 Ways for Musicians to Earn Income
Randy Chertkow’s Multiple Income Stream List
(With a few Additions from Ariel)

Randy: The easiest path to multiple sources of income is to have a day gig, and make music your night gig. I don’t know why more musicians consider it so terrible to have a day gig. Most of the stuff you’d do with music is at night anyway, so the day gig doesn’t tend to get in the way as much as you’d think. In fact, in our own band, we found that our day jobs made us spend our time much more wisely, and we were actually more productive. (We released 365 songs in one year from thesongoftheday.com, all while having day gigs. Our nights were spent in the studio.) We found that others that we knew that quit their day gigs in order to “dedicate themselves” just organized their lives around meals, and still did their work at night.

If you want to dedicate yourself to music, let your music career tell you when that time has come. This is what happened to the musicians that we interviewed for “The Indie Band Survival Guide” that went out on their own. They started to make some money from the music, and at some point, they got enough income that it made sense for them to quit their day gigs.

If you want to make money at music and solely at music, here’s a list of stuff that’s all related to music just to give you ideas. We’ve either done these, or know people who do them:

• Live gigs
• T-shirts
• Selling your music digitally
• Selling ringtones
• Selling CDs
• Merchandise
• Sponsorships
• Advertising
• Songwriting for money
• Recording for money (which you can do over the internet too!)
• Teaching music
• Licensing music
• Accompanying
• Playing weddings/corporate events/etc
• House concerts
• Playing conventions
• Instrument repair
• Music retail
• Music for TV/radio/podcasts
• Music publishing (PROs)
• Master licensing (SoundExchange)
• Backing a theater company
• Music arranging/notation
• Music photography
• Graphic arts for musicians
• Web design for musicians
• Band manager
• Band publicity
• Radio promoter
• Booker
• Recording engineer
• Live soundman
• Live lighting guy
• Mastering
• Selling other bands music and products
• Online affiliate marketing
• CD duplication

and…the list goes on. Your best bet is to take a talent that you’regood at and apply it to music somehow.

The full in-depth interview on how to make money with Randy can be downloaded from my website – http://www.arielpublicity.com/affiliate

Just enter your name and email address and it will get sent to you automatically! (Don’t worry you will not be opted-in to my list twice, the magical email elves will make sure of it). You will be signed up to My affiliates program as well so you can recommend us and make money!

Our CMJ 2008 digital press conference was not really a digital press conference at all this year. This year our Digital Press Conference was done as a CMJ Media Meet-n-Greet for all invited and badge-holding bloggers, journalists, writers and photographers! The mixer featured performances by Sarah White and a DJ set from the Beatards. We also had complimentary drinks courtesy of Sparks, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Makers Mark. The Beatards were awesome and spun some amazing old school Hip Hop . I couldn’t really hear anyone that was talking to me, and the club was fantastically dark but I sure had fun!  We had tons of local, national and international media & bloggers, unite for this event and they all got a chance to mix and mingle with their media peers.

We took some great photos of everyone in attendance that you will find on our flickr site:

www.flickr.com/arielpublicitypr

Our next digital press conference will take place in January, but I wanted to thank CMJ for letting us co-host an event with them as well as The Bloom Effect, and also thanks to the other Ariel, the owner of Sutra, for her hospitality. Thanks to all who were able to attend!

I’m writing this while flying over the ocean on my way back from an extraordinary week in Reykjavik, Iceland. The land of fire and ice has long been on my list of dream places to visit since I fell in love with The Sugarcubes’ “Birthday.” As a freshman in college, I used to put that song on repeat and imagine a far away land where the sounds were coming from.

I went because I was invited to participate in a music conference called “You Are In Control,” a two-day conference produced by the Icelandic Music Export. Fabulously, it coincided with Iceland Airwaves, one of Europe’s most celebrated music festivals. I arrived in Iceland the very week the world had all eyes on them and it was being reported that the country is going bankrupt. Their tiny population of only 300,000 people are no doubt headed for some very rough times. Many people, if not all, will be affected in some way.

Here is what stood out most for me: The creative community. My guide-book pointed out that Icelanders have a rich cultural heritage, and a “impossibly high literacy rate.” It claimed that most young Icelanders play in a band, write poetry, or create some form of visual art. From what I could see, this seems true. Such a small population forces deep community.

Throughout my visit on streets and in clubs, I spotted one of Iceland’s most well know musicians, Jónsi Birgisson’ the lead singer of Sigur Rós, who goes everywhere unmolested. I met many of Iceland’s most popular artists including members from the band Jeff Who, and had a great hang with them. One of them pointed out that even their prime minister works out at the local gym.

Another thing I noticed is all the artists and musicians played together in multiple projects. This level of co-collaboration breeds an incredibly rich community, and a serious flow of musical ideas. As I was heading for the airport, Terry McBride of Netwerk Management commented to Anna Hildur, the organizer of “You Are In Control,” that the level of talent that he witnessed in Iceland was very high, I couldn’t agree more.

I had the pleasure of speaking on panel with one Mugison an artist who newspaper Fréttabladid claims has released best album in Iceland this year. He is a hard working musician who told an amazing story of how he recently toured 13 dates through Canada and personally sold 2,500 CDs just by meeting his audiences and selling his CD directly to them.  I was floored.  Even though he was not officially playing Airwaves Festival I saw him repeatedly at other musician’s showcases and around town.

No one seemed to be in a panic or freaked out about the state of the financial situation in Iceland.  One taxi driver said to me when I asked if the crisis would affect him, “those who don’t anything in the beginning have nothing to lose in the end.” I met with a social media expert who I met through Twitter and he told me that he had lost all of his savings in less than one week, and then in the next breath he informed that he was going to be taking his entire family on a three week vacation to Disney World next month.  The boys from Jeff Who told me that their new album is supposed to be out by Airwaves but because of the credit crisis the masters were not released to the CD manufacturer on time and so the album was not ready.  Judging by how packed the music venues were and by the happy and appreciative audiences were behaving it felt to me that young Icelanders are takig it all in stride. Maybe they have more faith in their government than we do in the USA.  Definitely they are a hardy lot.

I know during times of crisis the only thing to look forward is the great art that comes out of it because of great suffering comes great art.  Mugison said on our panel and he’s got a point.  Here’s hoping that Iceland can quickly come through this crisis and I’m betting that there will be much more great art coming from them.

My Photos: http://tinyurl.com/IcelandAriel

Some of my new Icelandic favorites:

LayLow
http://www.myspace.com/baralovisa
Icelandís bluesiest chanteuse Lovisa Elisabet Sigrunardottir ñ a.k.a. LayLow - is ready with a new album. After setting worlds ablaze and topping the Icelandic charts with her 2006 debut ìPlease Donít Hate Me,î the unassuming starlet is back with a new record that continues her forays into traditional blues and country sounds.

Mugison
http://www.myspace.com/mugison
“If you dumped blues, power pop, psych rock and heavy metal into a transmogrifying machine, the machine would rumble mysteriously, then spit out a brightly colored block of a hitherto unimagined polymer known as Mugison.”
-    Paste Magazine

For a Minor Reflection
http://www.foraminorreflection.com/
The band For a Minor Reflection has been active for over two years now. It started as a hard rock duet in a small garage in Vesturbærinn, Reykjavík, then got into an indie rock trio which lasted for about a week or so, after that a blues quartet and then finally the type of band they are today, an instrumental post-rock quartet.

FM Belfast
http://www.myspace.com/fmbelfast
FM Belfast started out as a duo at Christmas 2005 when Arni R Hlodversson and Loa H Hjalmtysdottir made a song as a present for their friends. What was initially thought of as a studio concern became a live band in the summer of 2006 when Arni and Loa performed an art opening in a cave in the Faeroe Islands. Later that year Arni Vilhjalmsson and Orvar Th. Smarason joined the band. In October 2006 they played their first full concert at the Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavik
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Borko
http://www.myspace.com/borkoborko
Borko brings together melancholy and rhythm-machines in a unique way, playing on his passion for the repetitive and altogether explosive enthusiasm. It is a scintillating blend. Borko has been profilic in writing music for both theatre and modern dance as well as honing the art of “lifskunstner” to a frolicky science

Ólafur Arnalds
http://www.myspace.com/olafurarnalds
Ólafur Arnalds brings his unique classically inspired music to the clubs, warehouses, and festival stages. At only 21 years of age, Ólafur Arnalds is Iceland’s latest export. Having already sold out The Barbican Hall in London, toured major European festivals and having opened for Sigur Rós on their most recent European tour, the future seems bright for this young, extraordinary talent.

Klassart
http://www.myspace.com/fridaklassart
If you like the sound of Cowboy junkies or early Tom Waits you should not miss Klassart. Smári and Fríða Dís, brother and sister, are Klassart. Their 2007 debut CD, released by Geimsteinn, hit the stores and it is getting good reviews all over. Örlagablús, their Icelandic version of the Tom Waits song Invitation to the Blues, was one of the most popular tunes on local radio stations in the spring of 2007.

I recently interviewed my friend Laura Fitton AKA Pistachio (that’s her twitter handle) and I asked her to walk with me through creating a musicians roadmap for Twitter. It answers the question: If you wanted to create a community to promote yourself as a musician on Twitter and you didn’t really have a lot of technological “social networking know how” How do you do it?

The full interview can be found on my blog here: http://arielpublicity.com/blog/archives/148 and I encourage all of you to please go to my blog and leave your feedback.

Step One - Think About Your Brand First
Set up and account and use your brand name, your band, whatever name it is that you want people to be able to find using Google. That’s very important. Don’t just pick a name you like. Whatever name you choose on Twitter it becomes very Googleable.

So the thing you want fans and prospective fans to find you as. If you’re just starting out, you might use a generic like singer/songwriter or something. But choose something you’re comfortable with, that you want to do well in search results and that’s the name you want to get out there.

Step Two - Sign Up
Go To: http://twitter.com to sign up.

First: You may want to watch the video that gives an easy-to understand overview of Twitter - It’s right on the homepage - just click the button that says Watch a video!

Second: Twitter will take you through a few sign up steps and you will enter your username and your password and your email

Third: Twitter will help you search your email address book to see if anyone you know is already on it. You may be surprised at just how many people you know are already using it. You will also have the option of sending email invites to your friends.

TIP: Take some time and set up your profile properly. Think about it this way: You probably had a website made for your music and that either involved spending a bunch of money or hitting up a friend for a favor. You put a lot of thought into it and you really worked it out. Well, here’s a chance to have a free website. It’s not going to be as souped up as your own website, but put a little bit of time. You can set up a static electronic image as your background, just single image, maybe an album cover, maybe a candid of you on the road. Put up a good profile picture. Tha’s the little, tiny square picture that goes next to all your messages. If you’re in Twitter, you’ll see what I mean. Write a couple things about yourself. Make sure there’s a link to your web page. Just get it all nicely set up so it looks cool when you get there.

Step Three - Link Your Mobile Phone
You should enter your cell phone number (it is up to you if you want to accept tweets via texts) this depends on your text messaging plan and your tolerance to loads of texts hitting your mobile constantly. You will have the option of receiving tweets to your phone from individuals so you can have only a few select people tweet straight to your phone.

TIP: To text from your phone send messages to: 40404 and they will immediately go to your Twitter feed

TIP: To message friends that follow you from your cell phone you can type d (for direct) then their username.

Step Four- Search Keywords
Next go to the search page: http://search.twitter.com

On this page, start searching key words, words that are important to you, topics that you like to write about, words about the music you play, whether it be the genre or the instrument. And f you want to really bond with other musicians just to start, you can even search the brand names of your band equipment. Like your amplifiers are from so-and-so, you search that keyword, you’re going to find a bunch of other people who’ve made remarks about that word. That gives you a jumping off point.

You can click in each of their profiles. Remember how I said reading one to four pages of someone’s Tweets gives you a surprising accurate sense of their personality? Just find random strangers that way and start following them and see if you have anything in common. If you don’t, you just stop following. That’s the way to find people with common interests.

Step Five - Link Twitter To Update Status At Facebook
Next go here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543&b&ref=pd and you can link your Twitter page directly to your Facebook and you will be able to update your status on Facebook by using twitter from your phone

Step Six - Follow At least 100 People
Twitter does not work in a vacuum (OK - unless you are Dave Matthews!) But even Dave is directly responding to people and really connecting with his fans - It’s amazing to see.

Here are some people to check out and follow:

TIP: Take the time to look at each persons profile to get to understand them more deeply

Ariel
http://twitter.com/cyberpr

Laura
http://twitter.com/pistachio

Musicians Who Twitter
http://twitter.com/DaveJMatthews
http://twitter.com/SLessard
http://twitter.com/QtipTheAbstract
http://twitter.com/matthewebel
http://twitter.com/NicholasHoward
http://twitter.com/Reykjavikband
http://twitter.com/andrewhand
http://twitter.com/joshcharles
http://twitter.com/kellyrichey
http://twitter.com/NatalieGelman
http://twitter.com/carlalynnehall
http://twitter.com/HeatherMariePh
http://twitter.com/jodyg
http://twitter.com/steinebone
http://twitter.com/MarkWilliams13
http://twitter.com/johntaglieri
http://twitter.com/KaitlinMcGaw
http://twitter.com/RBPviolinist
http://twitter.com/IncaMaya
http://twitter.com/kalliopimusic
http://twitter.com/bjork
http://twitter.com/tellingontrixie
http://twitter.com/SaraBareilles
http://twitter.com/JeffKrantz

Music Industry Thought Leaders
http://twitter.com/dubber
http://twitter.com/kavitharia
http://twitter.com/MrBuzzFactor
http://twitter.com/sivers

Music Bloggers & Podcasters & Zines
http://twitter.com/rnrgeek
http://twitter.com/coverville
http://twitter.com/fave
http://twitter.com/weheartmusic
http://twitter.com/indiefeed
http://twitter.com/cc_chapman
http://twitter.com/billpalmer
http://twitter.com/jeffhinz
http://twitter.com/wellroundedradi
http://twitter.com/zaldor
http://twitter.com/MikeyPod
http://twitter.com/rubyfruitradio
http://twitter.com/cybster
http://twitter.com/indieradiochatt
http://twitter.com/fascinated
http://twitter.com/DprShadeOfSoul

Web Thought Leaders & Brilliant Marketing Peeps
http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan
http://twitter.com/briansolis
http://twitter.com/davedelaney
http://twitter.com/cspenn
http://twitter.com/leelefever
http://twitter.com/stevegarfield
http://twitter.com/charleneli
http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale
http://twitter.com/jeffpulver
http://twitter.com/jowyang
http://twitter.com/jasonvo

The Superstars Of Twitter
http://twitter.com/BarackObama
http://twitter.com/scobleizer
http://twitter.com/leolaporte
http://twitter.com/kevinrose
http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis
http://twitter.com/dooce
http://twitter.com/laughingsquid
http://twitterholic.com/twitter/ijustine/

News Feeds, Celebrities & Products
http://twitter.com/cnn
http://twitter.com/nytimes
http://twitter.com/CNETNews
http://twitter.com/bbctech
http://twitter.com/nprnews
http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn
http://twitter.com/digg
http://twitter.com/JohnCleese
http://twitter.com/andersoncooper
http://twitter.com/woot
http://twitter.com/macworld
http://twitter.com/amazonmp3
http://twitter.com/pandora_radio
http://twitter.com/GuitarWorkshop
http://twitter.com/RhapsodyMP3

People Who Work At Ariel Publicity/ Cyber PR
http://twitter.com/cyberpr
http://twitter.com/cyberprvideo
http://twitter.com/cyberprurban
http://twitter.com/cyberprsports

Step Seven - Tweet 3x A Day
At first it seems really weird - just keep answering the question “What are you doing?” It will feel strange to just broadcast what you are doing at first but soon it will all make sense!

TIP: Don’t Over Hype Yourself If you set up a Twitter account and every day, every Tweet just says, buy my album, buy my album, you’re not going to get any audience there.

Step Eight - @ People you like!
To comment back at things you would like to react to or to connect directly with someone just tweet: @ and then their username. So if you want to say something directly to Derek Sivers type @Sivers - this will turn up in the @ Replies in Derek’s Twitter dashboard and he will see your comment.

TIP: This is a public message that everyone on Twitter will see.

Step Nine - Connect Directly
To send someone a direct and private message - go to your dashboard homepage at Twitter and click on the right where it says “Direct Messages” and then choose the person you want to send a message to from the pull-down menu at the top of the page

TIP: This is a private message that only that user will see.

Finally, please read the full and in-depth interview with Laura which will give you useful strategies and insights about how to best maximize Twitter!

Ariel: If you could just start by introducing yourself and I’d love it if you could maybe just give a very, very Cliff Note version of how in the hell you found Twitter and how you came to it, kind of what your life was like.  What happened and how did it happen?  Then, I love the way you talk about it and how it’s radically shifted your life.  Then we’re going to go in and I’d love to get your opinions and input on how a creative person can use it because I’ve been getting a lot of push-back from my community of musicians who are a little bit skeptical.  They feel like being musicians is very, very important but they don’t really understand the concept of the whole thing and why and how it could benefit them.  The goal here is to kind of get them…win them over and then towards the end of the call I’d love to talk about just some practical things that they can do that could help get them on the courts quickly, so that they feel like it’s making an impact.  The few that I have had sign up end up signing up and then saying things to me like, “well, this didn’t do anything.”  That’s when I look and they’re following no one and they didn’t really get it.  That’s a lot, but please introduce yourself and if you could just start with a little background on who you are in this community.

Laura: Absolutely.  The first thing you asked was how did I find Twitter in the first place.  I found it in a fairly typical way, which was just that as I started my serious blogging in March and April 2007, it was definitely the talk of the town.  The blog-erati or whatever you’d like to call the particularly well-known bloggers in the social media space were all saying, “oh my God, this thing is great.”  None of them could really articulate why in a way that was particularly convincing.  But they talked about it enough that I went and I signed up and looked at it and I thought it was dumb.  Just like everybody.  It looked stupid.  Twitter is the dumbest thing you will ever see.  But the truth is it…  Now I sound like an evangelical crazy woman.  It has incredible power and it takes time to learn that.

What happened was that those first couple months I thought it was dumb.  I even blogged it was dumb.  Yes, the post is still up.  You can go read it and laugh.  Around May, I noticed a guy and he mentioned it very incidentally in a blog post and I clicked into his Twitter stream and it was full of really productive things he’d been doing.  He’d been taking mentoring meetings.  He’d been going to networking events.  He’d been doing a bunch of really smart things.  This is a 19-year-old kid out in Silicone Valley who’d already founded two companies.  He was kind of an inspiring person to watch anyway and this idea that you could watch little snippets from his life as he felt inclined to unleash them made me realize that’s one of the oldest rules in the book of business success, is surround yourself with successful people.

So I started following him and because of the way Twitter is set up, you just kind of wander around and find people.  It’s very much accepted that you would be reading someone’s Twitter who you don’t know.  So I wandered around who he was following, who he thought was motivating, and I picked up maybe a dozen, maybe twenty people to read.  They say follow on Twitter, but follow’s a little freaky.  I call it read.  Who were just doing interesting things and saying smart, interesting things.  I really enjoyed watching that stream come by when I had time.  It’s a great work break.  It is easy to get drawn in and spend a little too much time there.  You do have to watch for that, because you’re going from being who you are your whole life to suddenly being surrounded by people who are really intellectually stimulating, who maybe have common interests with you that you didn’t know that many other people were into the thing you’re into before.  It’s a really refreshing, exciting experience.

So what happened, four days after that blog post, a group in Boston got together in public and just said, okay, you know, if you’re following me on Twitter, you’re invited to come out for a beer.  Okay, that struck me as really bizarre.  But I went.  Young mom, two kids under two.  I did not need big excuses to get out of the house.  We were all meeting at a public place so it wasn’t particularly worrisome.  These turned out to be some of the real rock stars of social media.  Scott Monty’s gone on to head up social media for all of Ford worldwide.  Steve Garfield, who’s one of the first video bloggers ever and has been in Time Magazine and all this stuff.  Brian Person, who’s just the heart and soul of Twitter for many of us.  We had a great time and that really cemented it.

Fast forward about four months.  People started to really start following me out of nowhere and I wasn’t sure why because I really wasn’t trying to build an audience or pursue an audience.  But from the New Media & Podcasting Expo…  Do you remember that last year, Ariel?

Ariel: Sure, absolutely.

Laura: I think I had somewhere between 300 and 600 followers then.  Now I’m starting to approach 7,000 already.  It’s really kind of crazy.  So one of the things I’m trying to show other people and especially musicians, my God, the opportunity for musicians is huge.  If an ordinary person like me can suddenly get an audience and a micro, micro, mini celebrity kind of thing going on, someone with a bona fide audience and something to constantly give their audience, like their music, and relationships to build and peaks into their lives, can really build something substantial using Twitter.  The other thing to remember is you’re not just sharing text and it’s not even just text and links.  Through those links you can share audio, you can share photographs, you can share video, you can share live video streaming off a cell phone that you carry with you.  Imagine that.  You’re backstage at a gig warming up and you suddenly give your fans a little sneak preview into what the sound check is like.  The type of content you can offer your fans for essentially free, because it’s just the time you take to put into it…  And from a mobile base, because I think if you’re on tour, musicians, actors, and executives all fit this profile of probably having some kind of mobile phone with them and being constantly in motion.  So it’s very hard for someone like that to sit down and blog or really spend a lot of time in front of a computer trying to share content.  Being able to do it through your mobile is really powerful and cool.

Ariel: Awesome.

Laura: You also asked me a little bit about how my life changed.  It’s been absolutely surreal.  I’m being followed now by somebody who’s known me since I was born.  It’s another kid I grew up with in an extended family vacation that we take every year.  There’s like 36 of us and we’ve been going for 36 years.  It’s pretty crazy.  So he just started following me on Twitter, because he just went to work for a company where a lot of my Twitter friends work.  It’s so funny because he knows me from real life.  We hung out in May.  Now he’s sort of stumbling through my work life.  Last time I told him about the Seth Godin thing.  He said, “oh, you really ought to write a book or something, ha, ha, ha.”  I said, “oh, yeah, no, actually I have an agent with ICM, I am writing a book.”  He’s like, “really?”.

So even my friends kind of don’t understand what’s happened and I’m really still coming to terms with it.  But I’ve been in a lot of newspapers.  I’ve been in some magazines.  I’ve had a lot of professional opportunities come my way.  Sorry, I just kind of alluded to, but we didn’t talk it recorded here on the call, I just found out this morning that marketing and business guru, Seth Godin, in his new book Tribes mentions the effect of what I’ve done with Twitter and what’s happened to me and the kind of business outcomes that have come from it.

It’s something to explore and I always encourage people to feel free to rip on it.  Feel free to say it looks stupid.  Feel free to say, “I don’t get it.”  But give it an honest try.  And I met you through Twitter.

Ariel: Yeah, this is the back story of how I met Laura.

That was a great story, that we were following each other somehow and so we had some vague awareness of each other.  You were, from the kindness of your heart, when I was coming to New York for Pod Camp and said, “anybody got a couch I can surf?” you opened up your home to me.  That meant so much.  I can’t even say.

Ariel: That’s the other thing I’ve found about Twitter.  It’s amazing how people show up.  I had someone I was following the other day and his dog got really, really sick and actually passed away.  It was someone I didn’t really know, but because I love animals I wrote him a really sweet note and just said, so sorry.  I actually ended up meeting him at a conference and he said, “you know, some of my best friends didn’t say anything to me and you did.”  It’s interesting.  You think it’s this weird impersonal thing, this giant IM in the sky which is how I like to explain it to people who don’t know what it is.  And then you can end up making these real, real connections through it.

Laura: I tried to blog about that this weekend because I got going on a few Tweets in a row about, look, it’s…  A lot of what makes Twitter so powerful is that it’s not in-your-face business communication.  It’s not that face-to-face, I want something from you, here’s my business card, trying to really make it transactional.  It’s this very authentic…  First of all, you’re only remarking on stuff that you would just remark on out of the power of your own heart.  For companies learning about how people feel about their products, it’s very powerful because it’s very, very authentic information.  That depth and authenticity also means that you could go to a total stranger’s Twitter page right now and read their last one to four pages of Tweets, just little, short, 140-character SMS links comments and remarks and jokes and complaints.  You read four pages of that, it’s maybe 80 little Tweets.  So from 80 little tiny remarks about somebody, you get an amazingly accurate sense of what they’re like.  It’s very hard to convince people that that is so, but the more I’ve interacted with people, the more I’ve discovered new personalities on Twitter that…

Incidentally, one big mistake that people who haven’t seen this before make, they think it all happens online.  The really major friendships and business relationships and opportunities that have come to me have been a lasagna, different layers.  Meeting online, meeting at a conference, hanging out online more, seeing each other at another event, building up a big kind of connected thing.  But when I do meet the people in person, it is true that I know them pretty well, just from those little offhand remarks.  And it always astonishes me.

Ariel: It always astonishes me, too.  People will see me and be like, “how was California?”  “How do you know I was in California?”  Then I realize, oh, yeah.

Laura: And it’s not just knowing you were in California.  It’s the remarks you made when you were on the Pacific Coast.  They feel the same way about the Pacific Coast and you’re that much more connected to them now.

Ariel: Exactly.  Let’s move on to Twitter specifically for musicians and some practical things.  We’ve kind of now given you an overview of who Laura is how she ended up doing it.  But I think that there is a plague that happens in the music and artistic community.  That plague is thinking that the only way to make a community is by exposing people to your music.  I see artists make this mistake consistently.  They’re so trained to talk about their music and just go up to someone and give them a flyer or whatever, that they forget there’s an entire other side to them.  This, as a traditional publicist, discovering Twitter and getting into it, I had to really lobotomize my old self as the person that was trained.  Okay, this is how you create a promotion.  You write a release and then you release it and it’s very one-way [unintelligible].  I think this is how a lot of us see promotion to this day.

Laura: Right.

Ariel: It’s all about I must tell everyone everything in one page and blast it.  What Twitter is about is it’s the antithesis of this.  It’s actually scorned upon to over-hype or over-market.  Can you talk a little bit about that and then I’d love to maybe try to set up a roadmap for musicians that might be interested in joining but are completely confused and they don’t know who to follow and they don’t know anyone.  That’s another big complaint I get.  No one I know is on it.

Laura: Yeah, you need that critical mass for it to make sense.  One of the first thing I would say to any musician listening to this, let’s face it, obviously, you only write music and you only perform music so you can sell it and make money.  You don’t do it for emotional connection.  You don’t do it for artistic expression.  You don’t do it because you want to change something in the world.  You don’t do it because you feel a certain way and you want other people to understand how you feel.  Right?

Ariel: I kind of beg to differ, but…

Laura: Come on.  All the basic motivating things that drive you to be a musician are the things that are going to make you really good at something like Twitter.  Because Twitter isn’t about push, push, push the music.  Obviously, you need the music to sell, to survive and to be able to pour more into your art, but all the things at the center of your art itself, the work you’ve put in, the talent you’ve acquired, the things you know about music, the things you’re trying to figure out in your lyrics or in your performances, all those really soulful things…  This sounds silly when I talk to executives, believe me.  But for musicians it’s great because all those soulful things are going to be what makes you successful on Twitter.  People want personality.  They want authenticity.  They want a genuine look at the person behind the music.  The beautiful thing, especially as you start to get famous as a musician, is that these tools give you the control over your privacy.  You’re not dealing with paparazzi coming in and invading.  You’re saying, “well, when I want to share something personal, I’m going to let it get out there in a way that is totally on my terms and in a way that benefits my business as a musician financially.”

As for pushing your music, the key is to get…  It’s pull.  It’s really pull.  The key is to get people involved with your life, get people involved with your artistic ideas and expressions, even share little snippets of your music.  You can share a photo, say “this is where I write most of my songs.”  You can share what you care to share and get people excited and involved.  Then, when you do have a new album, when you do have a signing party, when you do have a tour going on, you can let your fans know in a way that they’re going to be excited to tell other people and advocate for you.  Because you’ve spent most of your time just engaging with them as humans.  If you set up a Twitter account and every day, every Tweet just says, buy my album, buy my album, you’re not going to get any audience there.

Ariel: That’s totally right.  What would you do?  If you were a musician and you were coming to this site and you didn’t really have a lot of technological social networking know how?  What do you do?

Laura: Set up and account and use your brand name, your band, whatever name it is that you want people to be able to find and Google.  That’s very important.  Don’t just pick a name you like.  Whatever name you choose on Twitter it becomes very Google-able.  So the thing you want fans and prospective fans to find you as.  If you’re just starting out, you might use a generic like singer/songwriter or something.  But choose something you’re comfortable with, that you want to do well in search results and that’s the name you want to get out there.

Sign up.  Then go to the search page.  I think it’s search.twitter.com.  It’s that simple.  On the search page, start searching key words, words that are important to you, topics that you like to write about, words about the music you play, whether it be the genre or the instrument.  Even, gosh, if you want to really bond with other musicians just to start, you can even search the brand names of your band equipment.  Like your amplifiers are from so-and-so, you search that keyword, you’re going to find a bunch of other people who’ve made remarks about that word.  That gives you a jumping off point.  You can click in each of their profiles.  Remember how I said reading one to four pages of someone’s Tweets gives you a surprising accurate sense of their personality?  Just find random strangers that way and start following them and see if you have anything in common.  If you don’t, you just stop following.  That’s the way to find people with common interests.

As far as musicians themselves, I know if you ask Ariel or I’m sure you blogged this somewhere, there are a bunch of musicians who’ve done a great job on Twitter and they’re good to follow, just for their examples.  I think of Matthew [unintelligible].  I think of Samantha Murphy.  You may not know that Henry Rollins Twitters.  He doesn’t talk about music a lot, but man, that guy has a personality on him, as anyone knows.

Ariel: The other day I got the best.  I got a Twitter that someone had re-Tweeted, which you can do.  If you see something you like, you can post.  It said something like Henry Rollins just destroyed everything that was cool about him.  You went to the page and it was Henry Rollins who had Twittered folding laundry on my bed.  Just this image of this iconic man…

Laura: There you go.  Henry Rollins folds laundry, too.

Ariel: It was just hilarious.  I looked at it and cracked up.  If Henry Rollins can admit that he’s not promoting all the time…

Laura: Right, right.  So much in music is about generating a buzz, right?

Ariel: Yes.

Laura: The image that Henry Rollins admitted he was doing laundry made someone re-Tweet it, made you re-Tweet it, made you tell the story here.  It’s noteworthy, it’s interesting, it’s a funny story to tell.  So if you want people to talk about you, you need to give them things to talk about.

Ariel: That’s right.

Laura: That’s an example of one that’s memorable.  Certainly with somebody like Henry Rollins, he was huge.  But now pretty much just his devoted fan base remembers him and follows him and stuff like that.  So he’s able to kind of create new buzz and new information about him by just being him.  Which is pretty cool and that can still sell albums.

Ariel: It sure can.  They find a few people to follow using keywords.  Then what’s the protocol?  What should they say?  What should they do?  What’s the first step they should take?  What should they Tweet first?

Laura: Sure.  Here’s some jumping off points.  One, take some time and set up your profile properly.  Think about it this way.  You probably had a website made for your music and that either involved spending a bunch of money or hitting up a friend for a favor. You put a lot of thought into it and you really worked it out.  Well, here’s a chance to have a free website.  It’s not going to be as souped up as your own website, but put a little bit of time.  You can set up a static electronic image as your background, just single image, maybe an album cover, maybe a candid of you on the road.  Put up a good profile picture.  That’s the little, tiny square picture that goes next to all your messages.  If you’re in Twitter, you’ll see what I mean.  Write a couple things about yourself.  Make sure there’s a link to your web page.  Just get it all nicely set up so it looks cool when you get there.

As far as the first things to actually say and write, Twitter’s cue question, the jumping off point is, what are you doing.  That’s a fine thing to answer.  You can just say, “oh, I’m having lunch.  Oh, I’m meeting with a band.  Oh, we’re rehearsing.”  Especially because, as a musician, your life is thought of as very interesting by outsiders so just simply answering that will get you some cool stuff.  But I challenge you to maybe take a note here or write down a couple other questions you can think about answering.  One of the big things that I think we’re all doing on Twitter is that we’re answering and at the same time asking, “what do we have in common?”  I know I’ve gone into situations that I thought were fascinating and I’ve Tweeted, okay, I’m here and I’m doing this and I’m seeing this.  People are kind of like, “oh, that’s cool.”  But then I Tweet something really dumb like why do we all throw rocks into water.  Why is that so compelling?  And I get 40 replies because everybody knows that feeling of standing on the shore and just lobbing rocks into the water.  So it’s the things people can really identify with.

Here’s an anecdote that has good play into the music world.  This was specifically regarding promotion for a play in New York.  The person Twittering it was telling about the play and giving a link to buy tickets and saying, “yes, this is my client, but it’s a good play.”  I said, “look, I think a more effective approach would be to Tweet questions about the experience of going to a play.”  If you say, “what was the first play you ever went to?  Have you been to a Broadway show and which one?  What do you love about being in the theater? “, people are going to really engage with that and then you can still deliver the same content with the name of the play and the link to buy tickets.  But you’ve gotten people’s attention around it.  They have a reason to think about that experience and maybe even an urge to want to go see a play.  You can do the same thing with concerts, with albums, with whatever stuff you are talking about at the time.

Once you get to be a little more comfortable with the platform and a slightly more advanced user, or right away if you have good tech support, you can create something called a Widget.  A Widget is just a little box that can go on any website in the world that is going to contain all the Tweets you’re doing.  Because one point for a musician is you’re trying to use this to engage your audience and to share more with them.  They may not be on Twitter yet.  They probably aren’t on Twitter yet.  So rather than try and teach them about this new platform and make them go sign up and make them go log in, you can deliver all the stuff you’re sharing, the photos, the videos, the audio, the remarks, lyrics, whatever it is you’re producing on your own website using a Widget.

Ariel: And you can synch it with your status updates at FaceBook, which I think is an amazing little…

Laura: Exactly.  So Twitter almost becomes a little engine for generating content that can go anywhere else.  If you have one of those Widgets built, which they’re not expensive, there’s a ton of ways to do it for free, you just need a little tech know how, your fans can pick that up and put it on their own websites.  So, again, it becomes a way to help your fans help you and help them have a little piece of you to engage with, to have relationship with and spread the word about.

Ariel: Couple of questions.  First of all, how do we follow you?  Let us know.

Laura: I am Pistachio.  So all you have to remember is the nut and then you have to figure out how to spell it, which can be tricky.  But I’m Pistachio on Twitter and if you have any doubt about what I said about the search engine thing, pick a name that you want to be searchable, go to Google from anywhere in the world and search for the word Pistachio, which by the way, is a product, a nut, something people buy, lots of people selling them.  Nonetheless, I’m the third result.  Sometimes I’m number four or number seven.  But generally I’m behind Wikipedia and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  Just by interacting with people with that name, I’ve come to own that word in Google.  So, yes, please come follow me on Twitter.  I’ll warn you, I Tweet a lot, so follow a bunch of other people, too.

Ariel: Aside from Henry Rollins and Samantha Murphy and Matthew Ebolt(?), do you have any other creative people or people that stand out in your mind as people we could…

Laura: There are gobs and gobs of them and they’re going to be different from people’s specific genres.  So I can’t think of any other names offhand, but I would say use that search tool.  Sarah Burelis(?).

Ariel: That’s right.  I think she signed to Sony.

Laura: She’s kind of getting up to speed with it.  I wouldn’t say she’s an uber-user.  Henry Rollins is like he totally gets it.  Many people are on Twitter but don’t quite get how to use it to their advantage.  MTV did a promotion from the Music Awards almost over a year ago and it was cool, but it kind of fell flat because there wasn’t a lot of run-up to it and there was no follow-up after it.

Ariel: Yep, they used it.  That’s the incorrect use of Twitter.

Laura: Once you’ve built your network there, it is fantastic for organizing little flash mobs, getting extra people to come to your show.  It’s just such a great tool for that because people see the Tweet.  Oh, ten o’clock at the Orpheum?  Yeah, actually I’m around tonight.  Maybe I’ll run into town and see that.

Ariel: Thank you so much for your time.  I might be sending you a couple questions via e-mail.  If you don’t mind, I might want to include this in my new book that I’m doing.

Laura: That would be fantastic.  Quick little plug for most musicians starting out, just do this on your own.  If you have a lot of success and a lot of traction and you just don’t have time to go figure this out, this is exactly the kind of thing my business does now, is help people understand it, help set them up, help teach them how.  We don’t do it for you.  We will not outsource it and sort of write your blog for you.  But we can make it really easy and fun and show you ways to actually make money off doing it, not just do it for fun and general feel-good audience building.

Thank you so much.

Here is an updated version that explain how to set up a page from scratch and my favorite apps for you!

Getting Started & Ariel’s Top 6 Facebook Apps For Musicians

Facebook is here to stay. I know a lot of artists who are already overwhelmed with MySpace tend to feel daunted by the whole concept of introducing yet another social network into their lives. On September 4, 2008 Facebook launched “new” Facebook and the new interface is easier to use than before.

You won’t believe how many people who you never saw around MySpace are on Facebook. All of a sudden you will be back in touch with your babysitter from grade school, a ton of old friends, and even the drummer from your first band. And, if you have been resisting because you think Facebook is just for kids in college, you are mistaken. The largest demographic on Facebook is over 25. It’s the 4th most-trafficked website in the world and it’s the number one photo sharing application. Read the full stats here: http://www.new.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

With over 110 million active users it’s here to stay so my advice is DIVE in (if you haven’t already).

Here is a quick rundown for newbies on how to create a page as a band / musician and my favorite apps for Musicians when pimping out your Facebook profile!

FACEBOOK FOR NEWBIES – HOW TO SET UP A PROFILE

STEP ONE: Create a Band / Artist Profile
Go Here: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/create.php

STEP TWO: click on the third button down, it will say: Artist, Band, or Public Figure

STEP THREE: Select Band or Musician After you select it, a pull down menu will pop up. Select band it if you are a band, or musician if you play solo or want to create a solo-page (you can create as many as you want so you can create one for you and one for your band).

STEP FOUR: Enter Your Name Name your page and select create page. You are now off to the races!

The rest is pretty self-explanatory – you will upload your photo for your main user icon, your bio, band members and photos and details.

STEP FIVE: Click Create Page Now you are live and ready to add Apps! What is an App? It’s short for application and it is simply a cool additional tool that you can add to your page so that you can display features such as music, photos, and videos.

Facebook has a great page that explains how to help you with apps. FAQ’s are here: http://www.new.facebook.com/help.php?page=25

And the whole list of available apps is here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/

Here are my top picks for musicians and links to where you can download the apps for your own profile.

1. Music By Reverb Nation
Play Your Tunes
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6452028673&b= &ref=pd_r_c

Musicians and bands can post unlimited songs for streaming or download, add bios and band photos, sell your music and have your friends add your music and share with their friends (viral marketing for you!). This app also includes links to your homepage and you can add up to 30 of your songs (full-length) to your Facebook Musician Page. And the best part: great stats track song-play activity.

2. Vod:Pod
Display Your Videos
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2398125241&b&ref=pd

I am a big advocate in creating small casual videos to share with your fans. Videos are an excellent viral marketing tool. This app is the easiest way to show your videos and your favorite videos. This is a good place to display backstage moments, live shows and of course your music videos

3. zuPort
Show your Flickr photos
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2893465429&b&ref=pd

If you are a Flickr user zuPort automatically imports your public Flickr photostream so you can show off even more photos to your friends. zuPort: Flickr keeps your sets, collections, tags, comments and everything else linked so you only have to update only once.

4. Twitter
Tweet Away and Have It Synched! http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543&b&ref=pd

This app allows you to update your status on Facebook straight from your mobile phone. So you can be on the road but your facebook page can be updated from your van! Pretty cool eh?

5. Facebook Mobile
Bring Facebook on the go
http://www.facebook.com/apps/#/mobile/

This app allows you to use Facebook on the go. With it, you can quickly to upload photos and notes from your camera phone straight to Facebook. You can also receive and reply to Facebook messages, pokes and Wall posts using text messages, or use your phone’s mobile browser.

6. iCast By iLike
Tell your fans your news
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6917629807&b=&ref=pd_r_c

Send bulletins to fans with iCast, the best bulletins system on Facebook. You can send multimedia or mobile bulletins, or just plain blogs. Your bulletins will show not only to Facebook fans, but also via iLike across 10 different networks. They are the go to app for communicating your music to your fans.

7. iLike this Artist
Show off to your fans
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6627984866&b=&ref=pd_r_c

Musicians, you can show off your fans on iLike on your artist page. This will add an “iLike this artist” button on your page, and will show your (larger) fan count across the entire iLike network.

Happy facebooking and please find me and join our group which features loads of free tips for musicians:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ariel_Hyatt/571390595