Thomas J. West Music

Here are a few new musically-related folks that I've had some great chats with on Twitter recently:

MeLikeGoodMusic @MeLikeGoodMusic has a really cool website where he features a song by a different underrated artist daily. He spans multiple genres and styles from hip hop to broadway. We've had some cool chats about show tunes in particular.

Gae Phillips @gphilli is a 6-12th grade band director from Columbus, Kansas. He is one of the growing number of music educators who are joining the cyber age. His band website is a great resource for his students and even instructs them on how to use Twitter to learn new things. We've been swapping band director war stories!

Alex Choral @AlexChoral is the official Twitter home of the Alexandria Choral Society of Alexandria, Virginia. They are a community adult choral organization and just had their auditions for the new season recently. I've had fun following their process and giving them some tips on how to get some sound clips on Twitter using TweetMic.

It was only a matter of time before I crossed paths with Andy Zweibl @Zweibz7 online somewhere. Andy is a Music Education major at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. In addition to his own website, Andy also blogs on MusicEdMajor.net and somehow manages to find time to manage the UM Band website, be president of his school's CMENC chapter, and meet all the requirements of a Music Ed major (which are hefty, folks). Andy is one of those aspiring music educators who has already embraced social media as a way to network, learn, and discuss music teaching with other music educators everywhere. I'm looking forward to following and sharing regularly.

More music tweeps next week. Thanks to these folks for chatting with me and sharing their experiences.

This article (c) 2009 Thomas J. West. Please contact the author before publishing on or offline.

So now that I am back to school, time is limited. I thought I'd put together a quick list on Follow Friday of people I've met on Twitter. The criteria I used for who I'm highlighting here are simple.

1. They are people who have engaged me in actual real discussion on Twitter rather than just spamming links or twittering incessantly about their business opportunity.
2. They are people who tend to tweet about music-related topics, but are not necessarily professional musicians or music teachers.
3. They also make the cut if they have something to offer about Twitter or Internet Marketing, as most businesses are moving to this model.

So here's this week's list. More to come in the future:

Bernie Brice @trumpette1 is, according to her bio, "A trumpet-playing single mother!". She lives in Kent, UK and according to her website is part of a trumpet-playing duo that plays all kinds of events. We've had some nice chats about music, our kids, and daily "life stuff". Now that I've looked at her website, I guess I'm going to have to start following @trumpette2 now too!

Mike @woodwindtech is a middle school band director from New Jersey who, in addition to his own blog, writes reviews of new apps for the Iphone for AppVee. Mike and I have chatted about band director stuff and have enjoyed retweeting eachother's messages as well.

Lewis Partridge @NinjaDrummist is a skilled set player from Lutton, UK who plays professionally and teaches professionally as well. His website has lots of great free drumset lesson videos and more. He really digs the info on my website and I have agreed to make his drumset videos available on my video page. Look for them soon.

Laura Lowe @lylowe is an "Independent piano teacher. Freelance organist and pianist. Golf widow. Ballet mom." from Evans, Georgia who shares a lot of great experiences on her blog. She and I have chatted about the use/uselessness of practice logs, individual student techniques, and more.

Josee Deschenes @dimeaglass is a manager/singer/songwriter/guitar player/violap player based in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to managing bands at Dime-a-glass Entertainment, she plays in the band Trevor Finlay. We've swapped some stories, and last Follow Friday, she listed me as someone who's tweets are "fun and interesting," so she gets the props this week!

It's All About Relationships

Marketing online is all about building relationships with people. I've enjoyed chatting with these and other folks in recent weeks. Please pay them a visit, and if you have interesting music-related tweets of your own, be sure to follow me and say hi.

This article (c) 2009 Thomas J. West. Please contact the author before publishing on or offline elsewhere

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I joined Twitter on July 25th after much resistance to the idea. I was first introduced to it by my some good friends who are computer programmers. They've been on board with Twitter since nearly the beginning, when it was mainly for cubicle monkeys who are on the computer all day as part of their job. When they introduced it to me originally about two years ago, my initial reaction was, "What a time sink! That seems pretty pointless. Who wants up to the minute updates on what I'm having for lunch?"

Since then, Twitter has exploded and now that I'm on board, it's easy to see why.

Hyper Social Marketing

Twitter enables anyone who has anything that they want to bring attention to online to build a targeted list of followers who are interested in what they want to bring attention to. The 140 character limit makes you choose your words carefully, which means that there's less static to read. Unlike Facebook, where you have to have mutual friends, Twitter allows you to follow someone else without following you back, which means you can build a list of followers just like an email subscribers list.

With the ease at which you can insert web links and share links with anyone, and the amazing built-in, minute-by-minute search engine capability, it takes practically no time at all to find your niche market and begin sending them information they are interested in.

The Twitter Learning Curve

Like everything else in Internet marketing, it takes some time to find out how Twitter works, what tools already exist to help you, and how Twitter users function. Just spending these first few weeks on Twitter has taught me a lot. Here's just some of what I've learned in the past month:

1. People can search for any keyword, but using hashtags is a powerful way to get you attention (both welcome and unwelcome) very quickly.
2. There are lots of ways of getting hundreds of followers with zero effort, but few of those methods give you true "targeted" list, no matter what they claim. The best way I've found to get a targeted list is to simply search for a keyword related to your niche and start following people. Simple, effective, and high quality.
3. Every Twitter user has an "at" name. Mine is @thomasjwest. When you use their @name in a tweet, the person who is mentioned can track it and respond to you. All @names are also clickable, so it's another way for people to get to your profile page.
4. This was confusing at first: Originally, Twitter called its messages updates, but as Twitter's popularity expanded, the favored term is now tweets. There are still places where you see the word "updates" being used.
5. When you want to share something another person said or a link that they posted, you do a retweet. Retweeting is a great way of getting people's attention. There is proper etiquette to do so! First, you type "retweet" or "RT" followed by the person's @name, then their message or link. Because of the 140 character limit, it is acceptable to alter the original message to make it fit. Retweeting gets attention for the person you retweeted for, and often they will return the favor.
6. A person with 1,000 or more followers is called a whale. Bigger does not equal better, however.
7. Spammers exist on Twitter, too. When you get a follower who follows hundreds of people but has a very small following, and they have 5-10 tweets that are either links or nonsense, you've most likely got yourself a spammer. Some spammers open hundreds of Twitter accounts and use an automated third-party application to build huge follow lists to spam people. Twitter has strict guidelines about this practice and shut down spammers constantly.
   
8. Celebrity Twitterers register with Twitter and have a "verified account" so that you know it's really them and not someone pretending to be Ashton Kutcher.
9. Direct Messages, or DM's are private 140 character emails within Twitter between you and one other person. A lot of people will use it as a welcome message to new followers, or when they want to say something without the rest of their followers seeing it. It also is a popular way to throw a spam link at someone.
   
10. There are lots of great tools out there to use with Twitter. So far, I'm using TweetDeck, TweetLater, Twitter Analyzer, Twitter Grader, Twitter Karma, Screenr, and FileSocial. I haven't used them yet, but Twitpic and Tweetmic are probably going to find their way into my arsenal as well. All of these tools have a free version with a paid version with added features.

My Results After One Month of Using Twitter

Once I began really expanding my follower list, I broke the one-day record for visits to my website. I also am consistently getting a higher quality of visitor to my website. Before Twitter, I had about a 75% bounce rate (visitors to the site who remained on the site for less than 10 seconds).  I have had several days the past week where my bounce rate had dropped to 45%.

More importantly, I made contact with some amazing people. @winkieflash inquired about my live online webcam music lessons and tried a free lesson with me (she's a flute player from The Netherlands!). I was also contacted by @MartinDeBourge with an offer to write a review for the Sing Clear vocal coaching product. I am enjoying working my way through the CDs and will write the reiview soon.

As I continue to refine my approach to Twitter, this trend can only increase.

My Golden Rules for Marketing with Twitter

Based on my year as an MLM business owner and my year of promoting this website, here are my guidelines for promoting anything using Twitter:

1. Anything that free takes a lot of time to build. On the internet, if it's free to use, you are leveraging your time in exchange for spending the money. Don't expect miracles, even in a week or a month, no matter what "lead generating system" someone tries to sell you on.
   
2. It's all about building relationships. Find people in your niche and then share. People who like what you have to offer will naturally share it with other people on their list who have the same interests.
3. Offer your followers value. Make what you tweet about something that is worth your followers' time and something that will interest them. They will be more likely to retweet it. If you have a lot to offer, tweeting great stuff every fifteen minutes will still turn people off (learned that one the hard way).
4. Take the time to find high quality followers. Some people swear by going to a Twitter directory such as WeFollow, selecting a keyword, choosing one of the top Twitter people on that keyword, and following their top 20 followers. This doesn't guarantee you good followers for a few reasons: the top 20 are the most recent followers, not the followers with the largest following. For broad keywords like "music", the chances of those followers being interested in your niche is low. Nothing beats using the search engine to find people talking about your niche right now. That way, you know they are active Twitter users and are more likely to follow back and retweet your content.
5. Use hashtags. Hashtags allow new people to find things they're interested in and follow you.
6. Use quotes. People love to retweet quotes. Find some quotes about your niche and tweet them. Be sure to follow @SteveRamirez and @twuotes who retweet quotes that use the #quote or #quotes hastags.
7. Have a good profile page. Twitter gives you a very simple profile page that is the only way for people to find out who you are.Make sure your bio is interesting and full of keywords. It amazes me how many people don't have a website listed either. Twitter allows youto upload a customized wallpaper. Pro Twitter users have wallpaper with pictures of themselves and additional ways to contact them. See my profile page for an example.

8. Follow successful social marketing people. You are known by and learn from the company you keep. I suggest people like @nhangen, @tomduong, @davidrisley, @problogger, and @craighcollins

What Works For You?

So, I'd consider my first month on Twitter to be a success. Twitter is definitely worth my time to continue to work with as another way to promote my work. Until the day that I am further out of debt and able to actually sink some money into promotion, I continue to have to rely on social marketing and relationship building as the main tools at my disposal.

If you are using Twitter to promote a website, product, or service and have other tips and tricks to share, please leave a comment, @reply me on Twitter, or send me a message.