Open Letter - for musician new to Twitter

Hey - a very long note. I apologize, but this is the crash course that took me 4 months to complete!

The first & best thing I could do is refer some people that you may want to follow on twitter. If I send you a tweet recommendation to a person, they can have a look and be impressed. Really helps to get a few key people at first. They know Twitter and other people who are GENUINE. You can read a lot by reading their posts and understand social media and all the tricks that way. Doesn't cost a dime. Many helpful people are out there who are not trying to take your money or control your career. Obviously, there are sharks out there but they really can't bother you if you don't pay attention to them. If anyone every claims to promise you 1,000 followers in 1 week, don't listen to them because it's just a form of spam marketing that pisses real people off.

Because I'm an instrumental composer and not a performer, I need to make connections in order to make my own opportunities. It is slow since I don't live in L.A. or New York but I am finding some solid people. Just want you to know that if you spend a bit of time using Twitter, it will surprise you. You can save some time also by avoiding some of my mistakes too.

And just a word of caution about the automatic tweets that link to some other site. Don't. Just put in a simple addition before the link like "got a great show lined up on Oct-10 at the _______," and then the link. Just a little bit of personality will make them real. Being real and then providing a link is actually easy to do and makes people want to actually follow you for what you might say about your music or life or whatever.

There was a musician (won't say who) whom I had to stop following because all they had on Twitter was auto-posts from Facebook or Myspace. Lots of them too. It got really old really fast because nothing was unique or the least bit about them. It was like reading a bank account statement, boring.

And, be sure to login to twitter.com and check who is following you at least once a week. Lots of bullshit people trying to sell porn out there and you don't want them hanging around your list of followers. It actually is better to weed those out of your list so that real people won't be scared off. The goal isn't having a million followers but having some real people who actually read and get involved by buying music and/or spreading the word.

If you want to actually speak sometime, you can try a video chat with me on Tokbox.com. I use that free site to send video messages to a few fans and it helps me learn. Also, I'm using it to collaborate with musicians.

Cheers,
Jonathan