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What do they say it is?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
What do we say it is?
A micro-blogging platform. Twitter is a really simple way to update fans, friends and colleagues about what you’re up to. Think of it as the cool ‘status update’ bit of Facebook without all the nonsense with the vampires. Best of all, you can send and receive twitter updates (or ‘tweets’) via SMS – so you can do it anywhere.
What’s great about it?
As the recipient of tweets, it’s a fabulous way to get a collective impression of what all of the people who are important to you have been up to. But as a musician or music business – this is a great way of letting your ‘followers’ know what you’re doing, what’s coming up – where you’re playing… and so on. Best of all, it’s really simple – and the 140 character SMS limit keeps you brief and interesting.
What could be better?
It would be so great if the free messaging was rolled out to more places… and it’s a bit of a concern that there’s no clear way that they’re making money from this. It’s also easy to over-communicate and simply add to the information overload that we’re all feeling.
How can I use this?
Sign up and start telling the world what you’re up to. You might want to do it personally – or you may just want to stick to the professional side of what you do. If you’re a working musician, you pretty much need to be on Twitter so people who have a vested interest in what you do can feel in the loop.
Should I pay it any attention?
Absolutely. It’s not a perfect system, and like most people, you may take a few goes at it before you figure out how best to use it for your own purposes – but you will end up on Twitter, so you might as well make a start on it now.
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Here is an excerpt from an article I cooked up for my ezine a few months back to put Twitter into context for musicians:
So why should you, my dear indie musician, care?
At first it seems a little trite or weird but soon enough you will be part of a community and by just seeing their tweets you can keep on top of what everyone is doing on a daily basis. I have my tweets posted on my Firefox browser using a cool little app called Twitbin, and I watch my posts all day long as I work without having to log on.
To me, blogging has been a bit daunting, only because it takes time and total dedication to be consistent
OK – so here’s why Twitter is important and imperative for you as an indie musician to join immediately:
1. It’s free & very easy to join!
2. It will help you build your brand almost instantly & It’s much easier to stay current with than a blog because all you need to do is “tweet” small texts (the140 character limit ensures that you won’t blather on).
3. Use it to stay in touch with fans, fellow musicians, and friends all at the same time.
4. Your fan base will feel more connected to you, like they are interacting directly with you. And, bonus…you don’t have to follow everyone who follows you ;)
5. Text message tweets to your entire list from your phone, so when you are on the road you can easily send updates to numerous people without a computer or an Internet connection.
6. You can tweet quirky or mundane things that happen to you in real-time… Take a photo of your lunch, create a tiny URL (http://www.tinyurl.com), and and before that burrito is finished you will be sharing it with your entire community.
7. It’s an amazing way to quickly connect with lots of people – it’s like people chips! What do I mean? OK, I love and respect a lot of podcasters and there are dozens of podcasts that I like to listen to, but some weeks I don’t have enough free hours to listen to all of the updates – but I still feel like I am keeping up with everyone via their Tweets.
8. Twitter gives you customizable and cool “badges” which are widgets that you can drop onto your MySpace & Facebook pages as well as onto other websites so all of you fans can join and follow you from multiple platforms outside of Twitter.com. In other words: Update your websites every single day without paying your webmaster a dime! That’s right – stick a Twitter badge on your site and tweet regularly – it will keep your fans coming back for more.
9. If you get overwhelmed with the tweets coming into your phone, you can turn text messages off and use your phone to tweet out only. Catch up on your IM, Firefox browser (using Twitbin) or on your band homepage, MySpace, Facebook etc. only when you want to.
10. Web 2.0 is HERE NOW and its all about social networking and Twitter is the easiest of all of the current social netwoking apps to use because you don’t need to be in front of a computer to be part of the social networking revolution!
I’m just getting into the new Web 2.0 and re-doing my website using many of these tools. Both your various sites, Mr Dubber and those of Ariel Hyatt are proving extremely useful. I’m wondering though to what extent we, as musicians, should use these tools, especially something like Twitter? Having just read ‘Are Your Ducks In Order’ by Bruce Warila, should we use only the tools that will apply to our specific area/projected audience? As a jazz musician, most of my current fanbase will not even have heard of Twitter, so is it something that would still be of use, or is this an possible example of overkill? If you were to visit the Twitter page of a musician who was twittering everyday but had no followers, wouldn’t that send a negative, even desperate signal? Or am I getting completely the wrong end of the stick here? I’d be very interested to hear your opinion on this.
Thank you for the superb, and motivating posts so far.
Nik
Twitter has done amazing things for me. My music has gotten into the hands of people I never would have dreamed would hear it. I’ve been reviewed by blogs for Wired and Discover magazine. My sales of MP3′s and albums online went from a few a month to a couple per day. I found 6 friendly, tech-savvy, literate volunteers to help me with the admin work that has been overwhelming of late.
I now see all my other sites as archives of information, with a few interactive elements, and Twitter as my central hub where I coordinate all those peripheral sites and drive people to the one that they are most comfortable with.