You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Social Media Tips for Jazz Musicians (Or Any Artist) - #53

Episode Date: March 24, 2018

In this episode of "You'll Hear It", Peter and Adam discuss some social media strategies for musicians and artists. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to give you seven social media tips for jazz musicians or any artists. Yeah, tip number one only accept friend requests from people that have had an account for longer than four hours. That's right. Or look friendly. That's okay too, right? But not too friendly. Not too friendly. That's right. Okay. Tip number one. Actually, no, this isn't even going to be tip number one. We're going to give you a bonus right up at the beginning. So we say seven social media.

tips. Tip number one. Call everything seven, 17, 27, 77. Man, we're riding that on this podcast. Why are we always using seven? Well, dude, it's working. It's working. People are eating seven's up. Last week we had seven listeners. This week we have 17. So obviously it's listening. Okay, tip number one, be authentic. Always be yourself, be transparent, be you, you do you on social media. And oddly enough, this is the same IRL in real life. You know, be yourself. I think things will go a lot better. I mean, if you're a jerk, people are going to see that. But if you try to hide being a jerk and then you're still going to be a jerk and they're going to figure it out. I don't know why people think on social media it's so much easier to hide. I mean, I guess it is because you're kind of

behind the computer. But I mean, no way, dude. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. They can, I mean, people have enough experience with it now that they can tell. So just like in real life, you're better off being yourself. I mean, if people like you, great if they don't, but it is what it is. Yeah, I mean, unless you're truly terrible, then try to find a different personality to put just in real life. Just don't go on social media. Don't go out of the house either. Or improve yourself, you know? Number two, find the platform that works best for you and leverage that. You know, we just had this week, the great trumpeter, Sean Jones was in here, and he was kind of showing us his Instagram techniques. And it was amazing. You could see that like, this is the

platform for him. He just felt it. intuitively his followers were feeling connected to him, you know, his audience was growing, and he just enjoyed using it. I think that's sort of a very key thing in this, is that, like, it shouldn't be a chore. It should be something that you want to use to engage with people who are connected to you and your music. So, you know, I think the important, whether that's Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, you know, find the one that fits your personality the best. Bebo, I think that went out of business. I love Bebo. See, that says a lot about your personality, actually.

Right. So, no, you bring up a great thing. So for number three, I would just say experiment with new platforms. That's another thing I learned from where I kind of knew this, but it was reinforced from Sean this week. Like, yeah, his Instagram game is great. But he was talking about, he actually, we had him do a lesson on social media for musicians, for jazz musicians, which I thought was super interesting. And he's, he has a very nuanced and refined concept on this. But he was saying that he's experimented with a lot of different platforms. And then he, he, found the platform or platforms that he could most be authentic on and that he could connect with that work for his schedule and stuff. But you're not going to find that out unless you experiment with it. You can't just read something and be like, Snapchat is the new it platform. And then you're like, I'm throwing out all my other stuff. I'm just going to do Snapchat because they're saying it's going to be the platform for this year. If it doesn't fit your personality or your schedule, you're not going to be able to leverage that platform very well. So that's right. It's why Peter Martin's always showing up here with like, really,

crazy social media apps on his phone trying all kinds of crazy live streaming stuff. Yeah, I'm constantly experimenting. Haven't found it yet, but I'm trying. So our next tip is to show the processes that are interesting, you know, whether that's creating or writing or practicing or just the behind the scenes, having fun, you know, this is kind of the advantage of social media is that you can let people who might be interested in not only your music, but your personality in as much as you want to. You know, I mean, like, everybody has a different comfort level with privacy, with this kind of thing.

But, you know, people who are into your music might get a kick out of seeing how you develop it, how you work on it. I think it's a big part of social media. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's, you know, as artists, some things that maybe seem mundane to us are actually really interesting to people. I mean, think about it. We, what we do for work, quote unquote, you know, is play music. So people pay money to come and see us perform music. But what goes into making that music is really interesting to people. I mean, think about, like, you know, Adam, you and I are really interested in wine,

drinking wine, but we're also interested in, like, learning about how it's made, learning about the people that make it, the processes. I mean, that's super interesting stuff, you know, different places in the world. So to get a little bit of behind-the-scenes thing, like to them, it's like, oh, we're just here stomping on the grapes. This is just, this is the hard work. It's like, wow, that's really cool. How does that go from that to this juice in my glass? That's pretty cool.

That's right. Yep. So the next tip I would say is to follow other artists and venues and arts organizations, anything that has to do with your world for ideas and for inspiration and for connections. You know, a lot of the ideas that I've gotten are from following people like Sean Jones and then copying their different ideas, you know, still keeping it authentic for my personality. But it's also a great way to connect with folks, specifically. And we should talk about separately also, you know, following and connect. with the audience because that's a wonderful thing about it.

But specifically with artists, I mean, I've met different jazz musicians in like Australia and New Zealand when I traveled there last year. I had been there before, but I think it was kind of, I guess it wasn't pre-social media, but I just had my game a little bit better last year. So I was able to meet some musicians through Twitter, actually, that kind of knew me and knew I was coming and we dialogue back and forth. I followed them. And so by the time I actually met them, I kind of knew a little bit about them,

heard some of their music, saw where they were playing and stuff. So it was a great resource. It's awesome. And that leads right into number five, which is to tag other artists in venues and locations, you know, to get them involved, to share their posts. And not only does that help with your own social media followers to develop that and to grow that, but it helps you connect, like you said, with those artists, with those venues, they see your sharing, they see your tagging, you know, they start sharing you, they start tagging you, they start understanding who you are. Yep. And I mean, there's nothing like helping out somebody. that's at the beginning of their journey or is that, you know, everybody wants to talk about like viewer, you know, what is it, view count and followers and all this.

And it's so cool when you see like a young, you know, aspiring jazz musician that's got seven followers. I want to like share their stuff and put their story out there and maybe a leverage. I mean, I don't have this huge audience, but I've got an in audience and I've got an engaged audience, I think, so they're following me for a reason. So I want to, it's not just about me saying,

oh, look what I'm doing, look what I'm doing. It's like, look what these other people are doing. and look at all this great stuff. And that's just, for me, it's like share, share, or really just give, give, give, give. Like, that should be the mindset of social media. It should not always be monetizing. Yes, you can ask for something.

When you have a new album out, absolutely say, hey, everybody, my new album's coming out. You can pick it up here and give a link to it and stuff. But that should be like one out of 20 posts or one out of 50 posts. The rest should be like, you know, check out this great group that I saw. Or here's a tip on how to play a C7 sharp 11, and check this out, or here's a little bit of behind the scenes from the session we're doing. You know, giving people entertainment, giving them value, giving them joy, giving them,

just like you're on a gig, like we're supposed to be giving people something interesting and entertaining. Don't, I mean, and I would say even worse than asking all the time is like, don't give negative things. Like if you're posting, man, I'm so depressed. And look, depression is a very real thing. I'm not saying that we don't communicate with people, but I'm saying like you don't want to bring negativity. you want to bring positivity as much as you can. And then when you do ask for something, say, hey, I've got a gig coming up at such and such. People are like, wow, well, I've seen his music.

I like his stuff. And I'm glad that he's letting me know about that. Now I'm going to decide to buy a ticket. Yeah, I mean, it's actually a very valuable thing that we as musicians have. I mean, look, we're sitting here right now doing a daily podcast because we know that connecting with people with some of this information is a great way to, you know, to get them into our universe. Yep. And I think it's just an awesome way to use social media.

Yeah, and I mean, we, you know, we went into this really hoping to charge every day for this podcast, but Apple and Apple podcast and Google Play won't actually let us do that. So that screwed up that whole plan anyway. I know. We're literally losing dozens of dollars every year. Dozens of Dolores, yeah. So I think that's seven, but let's just do a little bonus one that kind of dovetails, I think, nicely. And that is to, you know, promote other artists social media content. This is really nine things, man. Is it? Are we at nine? started off with a bonus. I said give, give, give, give, give, ask, you know, but we're still giving.

That's all right. All right. But, you know, promote other artists stuff because then they'll promote your stuff. And maybe you'll never have to ask then. Maybe you never have to promote. So it's almost like you'll share it. You'll share it. I like it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello. You can do that. Absolutely. All right. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review and a rating. Thank you.