These days, she’s applying for undergrad internships in the law and public policy field under her ucla.edu address. For obvious reasons.

Or maybe it’s not so obvious to everyone.

I receive emails all the time from musicians and entrepreneurs who haven’t yet hosted their email with a personal domain name – even when they have a Website with a branded domain.

Your email address says more about you than you might think.

The satirical info graphic Website The Oatmeal published a hilarious list of what your choice of email provider says about your technical savvy. My personal favorite – AOL users are most likely to print out emails and bring them over to your house. I’ve witnessed this first hand. The LifeHacker blog surveyed its readers back in January 2010 about their feelings on the subject… the consensus was that your AOL address is really saying “Hi. I’m from 1996. What is this internet you speak of?”

When it comes to business correspondence, email is the primary way we communicate. And how you choose to present yourself  definitely leaves a first impression. If you are in business – whether you are a singer-songwriter, advertising executive, motivational speaker, music promoter, minister, etc. – it’s in your best interest to adopt a professional email address, preferably you@yourdomain.com.

If you own a domain name that you use for your Web site, chances are your hosting provider also offers unlimited email addresses associated with that domain. Make sure that it’s not just set up as a forwarding address – when someone write to you@yourdomain.com it forwards to your personal AOL or gmail or hotmail account. Once the email is forwarded to your personal account, when you reply it comes from yourpithyname@hotmail.com rather than You@YourDomain.com.

TIP: Use initial caps when printing your email address to help people remember it.
Capitalization makes no difference in email address delivery.

What’s wrong with YourPithyName2012@hotmail.com? Let me count the ways. Here are some of the things I see coming into my email box:

musicboy32@hotmail.com

I’ve mentioned Music Boy before in my post about email best practices. If you don’t use you@yourdomain.com, at least please customize your name. In most email systems you’ll find this option in your profile, or account settings. Use your full name, or the name of your band. Which leads me to the next example of what I see too often…

dave

This really only works for Cher and Bono. People get a lot of email, and they know a lot of Dave’s, and Megan’s, and…. you get the picture.  When you customize the name on your email, use your FULL name, or the name of your band.

The Simpsons

It’s cool to have a family email account if that works for you for personal correspondence. But when it comes to your business (music or otherwise) you need a business email address. People need to know they are talking to YOU.

joe@comcast.net or joe@aol.com or joe@gmail.com or joe@….

You may actually have several email accounts – many people do, for different purposes. But keep consistent in your business communications. Your contacts don’t know the difference between your Comcast and your gmail accounts and they may assume that one is older and out of date… but which one?

nstewart@bigcompany.com

Don’t use your day job employers email address for your music business. There are so many reasons why… professionalism, primarily, both in your day job and your own business. Did you know, also, that many companies are required to log and archive email and instant messaging communications… and now social media conversations as well? There is no assumption of privacy when you communicate on a work computer or even on your personal computer when you use a work email account.

The bottom line is that when you use a “real” You@YourDomain.com email address, you are perceived as businesslike and professional. I have to say that gmail is gaining wide use and respectability, so that MyBusiness@gmail.com is becoming an acceptable alternative.  If you use it, though, be consistent with it. And ditch the Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo accounts… and even the Comcast, RR and other ISP accounts… or just leave them for personal use.

And then there’s the use of wild backgrounds and multiple, colored fonts of various sizes… but let’s leave that for another day, shall we?

I guess I shouldn’t be. Surprised, that is. It’s super easy to set up a Facebook page and we’re all surrounded by the voices screaming that we should all be on Facebook… but for some, taking that next step to actually use the page to your advantage, can seem like leaping the grand canyon.

Yes, developing a sound Facebook engagement strategy requires some thought about your audience, your call to action, and some realistic soul searching about your ability to follow through consistently.

However, there are some really basic things you simply must do, and they’re simple.

1. Make your Facebook Page name easy to remember, not too long, and different from your actual real name. 

There was a trend for awhile to create Facebook page names that included complex messaging, such as “Sugar, the real alternative to artificial sweeteners” or something like that. Yes, branding and messaging is important, but to me, this goes a bit too far in a medium that’s all about authenticity and engagement.

Short, sweet and to the point is best. But if your’e a singer songwriter who’s name is Sally Songster, you should differentiate between your personal profile which is undoubtedly called Sally Songster, and your music/fan page which you could call something like Sally Songster Music. More about that in my previous post 5 Things You Are Doing Wrong on Facebook.

2. Get your required 25 LIKEs quickly so you can e Establish a meaningful Facebook URL instead of the cumbersome placeholder URL that Facebook assigns to you. I’ve seen pages with more than 100 LIKEs that haven’t done this yet. It’s really easy… no excuses for putting it off. 

March 20, 2012 update:  Facebook seems to have lifted the 25 LIKE requirement, you can now claim your URL right away

When you’re logged in to Facebook, just go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and you should see your page name displayed – or a drop down menu if you manage more than one page. Select the page, enter your desired username (no spaces or odd characters) and click Check Availability. You’ll get a warning page to make sure you know that…

• You can’t change the username once you set it.
• You can’t transfer the ownership of a username to another party.
• You can’t violate anyone elses trademark rights.
• If you are acquiring a username to sell it in the future (squatting), you will lose it.
• Usernames may be reclaimed for other unauthorized usages.

Assuming your’e not squatting or infringing, go ahead and click CONFIRM and you’re done.

3. Set your privacy and post settings to allow who can post what type of content, prohibit profanity and assign your default landing tab.

March 20, 2012 update: With Timeline for Pages now implemented, default landing tabs are a thing of the past… so disregard the information on that here… but DO continue on to the part about blocking profanity.

Click Edit Page, in the upper right hand corner of your Fan Page. On the menu on the left, click Manage Permissions.

Assuming your goal is encourage conversation, in the second section leave the “Wall Tab Shows” set to All Posts. If you’re just starting your page then leave your default landing page set to “Wall.”If you have an app installed such as Root Music or ReverbNation for musicians, set that as the default landing page… this means new visitors to your page will see this tab first. Once a fan LIKEs your page, they will always land on the wall, no way around it.

Check all the boxes under Posting ability – again, assuming you are going for engagement. You WANT fans to be able to post photos and videos to your wall, and to tag people in the photos you post.

Lastly, use the drop down menu under Profanity Blocklist to select “Strong.” Unless you like, want or don’t care either way about profanity on your wall. There are other settings to chose from.

These are the basics. I’m assuming you’ve already picked a profile photo… if not, use one that is 180X500 pixels, to maximize the space you have. And don’t be afraid to use Photoshop to add your name, or messaging to the photo. This is prime real estate you can take advantage of.

The disclaimer here is that very soon, Facebook will roll out Timeline to pages as well as profiles, so the whole graphics issue will change, giving you a ton more messaging real estate. But use it wisely. No one is going to want to hang out under your cluttered billboard. That’s why they left MySpace.

At this weekend’s Southwest Regional Folk Alliance Conference (SWRFA), we heard some sound advice from KC Clifford and David Broyles of Dr. Pants on connecting with, and more importantly, ENGAGING with fans via social media channels.

KC and David focused on basic resources and troubleshooting some of the issues brought up by those in attendance, and I volunteered to recap the session in a blog post. Yes, sometimes I just can’t help myself. Plus, there were some interesting questions, some new resources I hadn’t heard about, and an enticing Facebook problem to solve from the Kerrville Folk Festival.

The Dilemma of the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Presence

When the folks at Kerrville decided to create a Facebook presence, they started with a Profile rather than a Page. This is a common issue with organizations and artists because once you hit Facebook’s 5000-friend limit, you’ve got some decisions to make. Organizations like Kerrville (and artists developing a large fan base) are best served by a Facebook Page. Kerrville established a page, but has had difficulty getting people to switch over to fan the page. Right now, the Kerrville Festivals Facebook Profile has 4948 friends, while the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page only has 807 fans.

The obvious move is to try to encourage the Profile friend connections to transition over to the Page. Easier said than done. KC suggested increasing the posting frequency of the “please fan our new page” plea to the Profile page.

One more simple thing they could do would be to link to the new Page in the “work” section of the existing Profile. In the photo, you’ll see that Kerrville Festivals “works at” Kerrville Music Festivals. The problem is, if you click on that link, it takes you to a Facebook-generated Community Page that aggregates conversation about Kerrville Music Festivals. The steps to create a proper link from Profile to Page are here on my 5 Things You are Doing Wrong on Facebook post.

Here’s another idea for engaging fans to help with the transition.  How about creating an image badge to say “I”m a Fan of the REAL Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page” and encourage fans to post it on their walls? When the photo is created within the Page, and people follow the link to comment, they’ll be right where they need to be to hit the LIKE button and become a fan. To make it more effective, the Page should be tagged in the caption of the photo as well. As for what you want, and make it obvious how to do it.

For now, I’ll do my part:

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE REAL KERRVILLE FOLK FESTIVAL FAN PAGE

Another option for Kerrville might be to take advantage of Facebook’s new(ish) option to change a Profile to a Page. Facebook offers information and instructions on the conversion here. This is irreversible, so it’s not to be taken lightly. In the case of Kerrville, though, it may be the best option. It will be easier to move the 800+ fans of the existing page to the “new page” than trying to get nearly 5,000 “friends” to take action.

Blogging

KC and David hit the points I always bring up about blogging. I’m reminded about a friend’s comment a few years ago: “does the world really need one more guitar player blogging about life on the road?” Maybe not, but what if that artist has a specific interest that can develop into a connection point with fans? In my musical life, Greg and I blog about ways people are actively changing the world by looking at each other with love rather than fear. This is a theme for us, so our Love Can Change The World blog ties in with our new CD by the same name.

KC shared that after a period of completely unplugging from engaging online, she was ready to blog again and chose to video blog her discovery of cooking and crafting with her fans. Cosy Sheridan, one of the artists I regularly work with, has started a blog called Persephone and the Pomegranate: The Musings of a Modern Day Persephone as the platform to begin her book of the same name. After writing blog posts for some amount of time, the book will be ready to be refined and taken to the next step.

Resources Mentioned

It never hurts to hash over the resources available for making social media and online marketing easier. Here’s a list of resources discussed at SWRFA:

Tweet Deck and HootSuite - aggregate your social media channels (Twitter feeds, Facebook page) in one place to make it easier to listen and effectively engage.

Nimbit and BandCamp- create your own merch store on your Web site and Facebook page. Nimbit is widget-based, which means you update it once at the source and all the sites where you’ve placed the widget will be updated. The main difference with Nimbit is that your fans stay on YOUR site. Clicking on the download or purchase links in a Bandcamp widget will take you to your separate BandCamp page.

ArtistData - update your calendar once and sync with your Web site, etc. ArtistData was bought by SonicBids a year or so ago. It’s a terrific free resource, but no one is sure how long it will stay that way.

CrowdBooster and Visibli - understand what’s working and what’s not. Re-tweets are a good way to judge the reach and effectiveness of your engagement on Twitter. Each of these resources offers a free version with basic analytics. The paid versions provide more in-depth information about who is engaging with your tweets.

Here’s an analysis of Austin-based Jean Synodinos‘ tweets for the past 14 days using Visibli. Jean mounted a social media campaign during September to offer a free download of her new album, “Girls, Good and Otherwise.”

l

Like many of these analytics products, you can get information on anyone’s Twitter account or shared link. I chose Jean’s because I personally re-tweeted her link yesterday and I was curious about how many others did as well.

I think that covers everything. Whew. Back to SWRFA now. If you haven’t been and you’re interested in the folk and acoustic music community in the Southwest, put it on your calendar for 2012. Its a terrific conference of a manageable size, so you can come away really feeling like you’ve met and connected with a lot of people!

So “5 Things you are Doing Wrong on Facebook” may seem harsh, but don’t worry…. these are easy fixes. That’s not to say that the bigger issue of engaging fans is a quick fix, it is not. But let’s at least start with these easy steps in the right direction.

What are you doing wrong?

1. Sending fans to random Community pages rather than your Fan Page
When you filled out profile information, what did you put down for Employment? Did you use something clever like “employed by my guitar” or “self employed and loving it?” Click that link and see where it goes. Wouldn’t you rather be sending people curious about your business to your actual Facebook Fan Page? You can link directly to it there, and you should.

2. Inviting ALL your friends to your local events
Facebook events are quickly becoming “just so much noise” because the greater community is not policing itself to take the time to target invitations. If you want your events to have impact, use them judiciously, target them appropriately, make them interesting and engaging, and follow up.

3. Exposing your low attendee list
When you create your Facebook event, you have the option to hide your attendee list. Do that. Leave that little box clicked until your event has reached a critical mass of committed attendees.

4. Tagging your photos to your profile rather than your Music Page
Did you know you can now tag a Fan Page in photos? Do that, and encourage others to do it as well. The point of tagging is so you can follow the link back to the place to connect with the person who is tagged. You want to send people to your Fan Page.

5. Not differentiating between your Profile and your Fan Page
I can’t tell the difference between Suzy Songwriter the profile and Suzy Songwriter the Fan Page if Suzy has them identified with the same name (as opposed to Suzy Songwriter Music for her Fan Page) and if she uses the same profile picture for both. What’s more, if she posts exactly the same thing to both at the same time (as happens when you use a social media aggregator like HootSuite or Artist Data), I’m going to eliminate one of them – probably the Fan Page.

And what can you do about it?
Most of these are easy fixes. Truly engaging your fans, however, takes a bit more thought and ingenuity on your part. More on that next time… For now, here’s a quick tutorial on how to link to your Fan Page as your employer.

1. From your Facebook Profile page, click EDIT PROFILE

2. From the menu on the left, click EDUCATION AND WORK

3. Click the X at the far right of whatever you currently have listed as your employer.

4. Click inside the box for EMPLOYER and type in the name of your Facebook page, exactly as it appears.

5. Click the Blue Bar that appears below the box you are typing in, and you’ll see the photo icon of your page. If you see a blue suitcase icon, you have not entered the page name correctly, or you are not an admin for your page.

6. Click ADD JOB at the bottom of the employer section of your screen

Facebook Lists

Facebook’s help pages are pretty helpful, including how to create Facebook lists. The bigger question, though, is why create a Facebook list and how can you use it to your advantage?

If you’re like me, you have friends, family, acquaintances, business contacts – all kinds of connections on Facebook. My personal policy is that I don’t friend people I do not already have a relationship with. But between high school and college friends, fellow songwriters and musicians, presenters and DJs I’ve met through Folk Alliance, fans of our music and music business contacts not to mention 25 years worth of clients, reporters, analysts and other contacts from my business career, well, I have a lot of Facebook friends.

I use Facebook lists to categorize my contacts for two reasons. First, I can filter my news feed only on the category I’m interested in. I might want to look at just what my local friends are up to, for example. Second, I can target my Facebook posts to certain groups.

The danger to Facebook as a useful resource is the “blast to all” mentality. When you blast everything to everyone – even things that are only relevant to a subset of your friends, pretty soon people tune you out. I posted a while back asking if anyone had experience with shredding services in San Jose, California, for example. I targeted that post only to my local contacts, so as not to clutter the news feeds of my non local friends.

This is the feature that our kids love, by the way. I know I’m not seeing all the photos and wall posts from my daughter at UCLA – which I’m quite grateful for, thank you very much.

Twitter Lists

Likewise on Twitter, lists are a great way to categorize those you follow… and to see a news stream from just those in a certain category. And you don’t have to follow someone to put them on a list. Twitter’s support page has a good tutorial on how to create Twitter lists. Lists can be private, so only you can see who’s categorized in what way – or public so others can reference the list you’ve created. Public lists  are a great way to discover new people to follow and connect with. I’m on several public lists of musicians, songwriters, PR consultants and friends.

Organizing your Feeds

Making sense out of all the friends and followers can be a challenge, even with lists. I’ve used various social media dashboards over the years, starting with NetVibes, then TweetDeck and now Hootsuite. I love the Hootsuite browser-based interface as well as the iPad app – which doesn’t crash like the TweetDeck app did. In addition to your own Twitter stream, mentions and DMs, with Hootsuite you can create news streams based on keyword searches or individual Twitter accounts. Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds can be customized into your view of your online world.

For the creatives that I typically talk to, this all seems overwhelming at first. But if you’re in the process of embracing social media as a way to engage your fans and potential fans, getting organized is essential.

The nugget from this interview (and his new book, Tribes) is both obvious and familiar, yet it bears repeating because we still don’t seem to get it. Remember Robin Williams as the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin? He tranformed himself into a bee to give Aladdin some discreet pointers when he was wooing the princes… buzzing around his head he said “beeeeeeee who you are.”

You don’t need anyone’s permission, and trying to please the mainstream is a recipe for failure. Be who you are, make the music you want to make, sent the message that’s important to you, lead this charge with integrity and skill on the path of your choosing and your tribe will follow you.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Well, the plan is simple, but it does take a lot of work. You can’t take short cuts and expect the tribe to find you. You have to nurture and develop the tribe from its infancy. You have to put the time and effort in to not only create great music, but communicate and interact with the tribe that resonates with you.

I spent Sunday afternoon writing personal thank you emails to those who’d signed up on our email list at shows this past month. Why do I take time to do this? Two reasons.

First, I want to connect with those who want to connect with us … especially those who have indicated interest in hosting a house concert or who have offered help connecting us with new venues. Second, it serves as a check to make sure I’ve got their email address correct. We’ve all been there, pouring over those little slips of paper or that clipboard email sign up list with scribbled entries… was that kelly1@aol.com or kellyl@aol.com? I can send the personal email from my desktop email account and if it bounces using the 1, I can easily resend it using the l and when I upload it to my Constant Contact database, I know its right.

Yes, it took longer than if I’d just entered the addresses and moved on, but it allows me to nurture the tribe and when I take the time, good things come of it.

What we do is all about connecting with people who resonate with the messages of the music we create. It’s about communicating. And that takes time.

Follow Seth Godin’s blog here

I don’t think I’ll regret it. It was really on auto pilot for the past year or so, anyway. The only reason I logged in was to clear out comment SPAM, and I figured it was better not to be there at all than to leave a social networking profile on autopilot. 

Nowhere on our Web site was there a place one could actually purchase one of our CDs. Seriously. I posted my gaff on Facebook and my fellow music marketing blogger Michael Brandvold commented that I must have had my band member hat on at the time, LOL. Kind of.

No One Man Bands

The take away here, is that none of us are effective alone – we all need someone else to check our work. WE are not our audience, after all. A little bit of market research goes a long way.

So, who is the audience for your web site, and what do you want them to do once they arrive?

This conversation popped up on one of the music list serves recently, and radio expert Sonnie Brown and I chatted about it on the phone this week. One of the things Sonnie is great at, is being an outside sounding board. If you’re not in the position to hire a consultant to help you, she suggests asking a fan or friend to look at your Web site while you look over their shoulder. Just keep your mouth shut and watch what they do, where they go, how long they stay on each section. It really can be eye opening.

How someone looks at your Web site depends, of course, on why and how they’ve arrived there and what they want to get out of it. Bookers will typically go right to your calendar page to see where you’re playing, or look immediately for the audio or video link to hear you…. and while they want to be able to find the music player easily, by and large they frown on sites that launch music players automatically. And if there’s no obvious way to turn it off, the page gets closed pretty quickly.

Fans on a mission will probably gravitate to the same two places – calendar and music player, while the casual wanderer by may not be sure why he or she is there so its up to you to give them a reason and guide them to your call to action.

Bottom line: Its not about YOU. If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll recognize this as a recurring theme.

Who is Doing it Right?

San Francisco band Blame Sally has an inviting presence that immediately guides the visitor, at this point in time at least, to buy tickets to their CD Release Concert and sign up for their email list to get a free preview download from the new CD. There’s also a music player widget right on the home page from one of their live concerts.

Celtic fusion band Molly’s Revenge does a nice job as well, especially in balancing fan and booker/promoter content.

Singer Songwriter Erica Wheeler remains my number one heroine in the online music world. She has artfully blended her music career with her passion for connecting with nature, creating a way to connect with new, like minded fans.

What are the Pitfalls?

Conversely, there are several singer songwriters and bands that I personally love, who do not do such a great job with their sites. I love them, so I won’t call them out. I know some of them are working on re-designs, anyway.

Here’s a list of what frustrates me about most music web sites.

1. I can tell its a template, and so can everyone else. Differentiate yourself.

2. Black backgrounds are so 1999.

3. Script isn’t readable. It’s just never a good idea beyond an accent.

4. Music players should not be automatic, and it should be clear how to turn the music off.

5. Too much text confuses me about what you want me to do. Even if you have a 40 year history you’d love to tell me about, pick a direction and send me there.

6. Don’t make me work so hard – make ACTIVE links to ticket/venue information for your shows.

7. Once you have me, please don’t send me away to view photos hosted somewhere else, unless, I suppose, you make a point of telling me first.

8. Keep it up to date. You’d think this would be obvious, but apparently it is not.

9. Many people are looking at your site on phones and iPads – make sure you know how it translates there, and understand that iPad users can’t view flash.

10. Spelling does matter.  Get someone to check yours.

And one last comment…”I’m not worried about it, my fans love me anyway” is not an appropriate response. It indicates lack of respect for the fan base that has supported you – not to mention those who are attempting to promote you to their audiences. The “cute, helpless artist” persona only goes so far.

This may seem severe, but aren’t we all trying to put our best foot forward? Isn’t our goal to build and nurture our fan base?

Do you have pet peeves to add to the list?

This is HUGE.

Just in the past week, another musician friend told me she wanted to focus on her Facebook Fan Page identity, keeping  her personal Facebook profile reserved for family and close friends. The changes announced today make that much more practical because you can now post and participate in conversations on other profiles and pages as your PAGE rather than just as your PROFILE.

This was the major obstacle preventing me from creating a Blender Brain Facebook Page – I thought “what’s the point if I still have to post elsewhere from my profile identity?”

But, as we’ve come to expect from Facebook, the improvements always seem to come with some bloopers.

YAY to being able to join the conversation based on our PAGE identities.

NAY to re-ordering wall posts hierarchically rather than chronologically

YAY to showing Page Likes

NAY to moving Tabs underneath the photo

YAY to easier navigation to Insights and Page editing

NAY to reducing custom tab real estate

That’s okay, we’ll get used to it. So let’s just be grateful for the Yays!

Trouble is, most of us are very busy and as entrepreneurs we wear many hats. So its no wonder that when we see something that might make our lives easier we jump on it – and when we see something that looks like it’s just going to take more time, we wisely shy away.

I get asked these same questions over and over again:

• Do I really need a Facebook page in addition to my profile?
• Should I be on Twitter?
• How much time should I spend on social media?

Engaging in social media marketing is a time consuming endeavor, as is creating and diligently executing and effective marketing plan day in and day out. What I try to do through my workshops and consulting practice is first to educate clients and participants about what’s changed in the way we communicate online, and how social media might fit into their overall fan engagement and marketing plans. And yes, we talk about why you might want a Facebook page in addition to your profile, as well as the ins and outs of Twitter. Only by understanding the options can you make qualified decisions about what you want to take on, what you want to hire out, and how to manage your resources wisely.

Back to that question of “how much time.”

To really engage an audience via social media takes a lot of time.   The Cloud Spark Agency surveyed social media practitioners about how much time is required for effective social media marketing. This was the bottom line result:

It takes at least 65 hours a week to maintain 4 social media channels for 1 brand.

Yes, WOW, that’s a lot. The Cloud Spark agency survey was focused on branding teams within marketing agencies, so that 65 hours amounts to one full time and one part time person to plan the campaign, create the presence, engage the community and measure the results.

No wonder it feels overwhelming.

As an artist entrepreneur, its obvious that you don’t have 65 hours a week to spend on social media, so what’s enough, and how can you best manage your time?

There are as many approaches to managing time on social media as there as unique individuals battling with the question. Only you can determine what works with your balance of office time/creative time, but remember that its not all about you. It’s about effectively engaging with your audience, so look at your choices from their perspective in addition to your own.

1. Your followers can tell when you’re cramming all of your posts into the two hours you’ve carved out one day a week.
2. If you’re not engaging in the conversation on a consistent basis, your promotional announcements will tend to fall on deaf ears.
3. Try engaging one channel first, rather than trying to be everywhere at once.

Remember, its not Facebook or Twitter that will engage your audience, its you.