Who are your fans on Facebook?

Aspiring singers create an official profile on Facebook to promote themselves. They hope to get many fans.   However, few of these will be TRUE fans.   The same applies to Youtube and Myspace. Most of the people who click “like” or subscribe to you on YT, or friend you on Myspace,  will be doing so simply to advertise themselves.

Let us promote you … (really?)

There are many online companies which give advice to emerging artists and charge a fee for promoting them online. I’ve checked many of them out and  found out that they themselves have a couple of hundred friends on Facebook, two or three subscribers on YT and maybe 40 friends on Myspace…it they can’t promote themselves, can you trust them to promote you?  Think about it.

Social Networking…a vicious circle

Anyone who is associated with the music world knows that it makes sense to have a presence on  Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, ReverbNation, Twitter, Flickr and the other numerous social networking sites. This is the way to get people and fans. What I’ve noticed however, is that wherever you go, it’s the same people that follow you. Suppose you’re an emerging singer and  you open up a YT channel. Who will find you? Your friends, family and people you’ve informed about your channel. You’re not known so no one will find you unless they know you. So you  advertise on FB and those people will look at your Twitter, Myspace, etc. But you want to be known outside your circle of acquaintances, you want more fans. Wherever you look on the web, the advice given to emerging singers/artists is to join the social networking sites, but they don’t tell you how to get NEW people to hear you and/or become fans. Sometimes some people will share your videos with others and you might get new fans, but even that will be limited. What gets you publicity and fame ? In the next post I will write about marketing/promotion websites that promise you the moon, in terms of publicity that is.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED MATERIAL

The course I mentioned in my earlier post was on music marketing. It didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know: an artist needs a personal website, a myspace profile, a Youtube channel, a presence on ReverbNation, Facebook and other social networking sites; a press kit is a package consisting of the artist’s biography, picture, 2 or three demo songs, press articles  and contact address. Then sent everything off. To where? That’s just the point everyone wants to know…where does an artist send his material? The author of the book (and course teacher) says  send it to  the record companies. How? It’s easy to find the address of labels and record companies, but when you go to their website, under contact you inevitably read “WE DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED MATERIAL”. So that’s that. You then look for music writers, as advised by the course teacher.   Again, unsuccessfully. Their names are all over newspapers and magazines but how do you contact them to tell them why they should write about you? Their contact address is nowhere to be found.  Then you look for a publicist, as the course book advises, actually it even gave some names.  When contacted, these publicists reply that they cannot take on the artist because the artist is not ready for their services, or, listen to this…they don’t take on artists whose MOTHERS are their manager!

Cordon Bleu adieu!

Cooking has been my passion since I was first forced into it by my brother’s divorce. I was a very happy and satisfied career girl, getting up early in the morning and finding breakfast on the table  and dinner ready when I came home from work. My mother had spoiled me. I never went near the kitchen. Then my brother started coming over everyday so in order to impress him I bought cookbook after cookbook…Greek, Russian, Spanish. I actually realized I liked cooking and got deeper and deeper into it. By the time I got married, I was quite impressed with my progress. We went to live in Southeast Asia, where we had little or no access to Western food, especially cakes and pastries. So I started making my own brownies, gingerbread (lots of ginger in Asia), cinnamon rolls, zuppa inglese, tiramisù (no mascarpone so I used paneer), chocolate cakes, pound cakes and whatever cake I found in cookbooks. No Internet at that time so I explored the few bookshops I found and bought any cookbook available. Then a friend brought me a book from Bangkok called “The Joy of Cooking”.  That was that!  I had found my calling…cooking!  Travelling around for work I enrolled in cooking classes in Russia,  in  Bangladesh,  in Italy,  in India  and even took a Sushi and Japanese food course in Japan.  Then in Europe I discovered Cordon Bleu and became a pastry chef. By this time my first child was born. I became a chef  mother, cooking up dishes and desserts from all over the world. As my child grew up,  it was evident that she wanted to be an entertainer so I started looking into the entertainment world, in my spare time from cooking.  I got more and more involved until I decided I should take a course in artist management. So I enrolled in an online course.  Little did I know what I was getting into!

Web marketing manager and pastry chef.