Here we have Hannah Tidd from Tiger Bam talking about how social media can be misused by some companies.

Publishing Yourself

• If you’re promoting yourself, don’t publish the same thing every half an hour, people will stop following you/un-friend you. Aim for around 4/5 promotion posts throughout the day.
• It’s important to talk about other people, not just yourself. Promote others at least 4x as much as you promote yourself. People are much more likely to return the favour.
• Don’t publish anything you wouldn’t want your least favourite person to read about you.
• Don’t swear in every update, it might seem okay to you, but everyone has their own threshold.
• Your avatar should be you. Cars, cats, children, cartoons, quotes, QR codes etc. are here-by banished!
• If you’re using Twitter, try and leave room for re-tweet text.
• People don’t care what you’ve had for breakfast, be interesting!
• If you’re trying to network with professionals, always act professionally. That includes spelling and grammar.
• Twitter is not a replacement for texting.
• Interact with others, don’t just commentate on your own life. The internet is a conversation.
• If your response isn’t interesting, thought provoking or at least funny, make it so.
• If you can break some news, do it. People are always after the latest information.
• Be passionate. People love enthusiasm.
• Try and help others out, if you can answer their question, do so.

I hope this has given you at least a few ideas or inspired some changes to your social network habits. If you have any suggestions of your own, feel free to add them in the comment below.

I’m in charge of publicity & communications for my events company Front of House Events. We host underground house club nights in the Birmingham region. There are four co-owners that make up FOH (all BCU students). We have a number of online spaces that we currently maintain, including many social media platforms, which it is my job to keep the content flowing on.

I think first and foremost what’s most important with using social media as a tool for promotion in industry is that you regularly use the spaces. It may seem obvious but the amount of brands, artists, companies etc. in the music industry today that I see with say a Twitter account that was last used a year ago is striking. Put someone in charge of social media, it does pay.

Secondly, I can’t stress enough the importance of blogging. There are so many platforms out there to use and it’s one of the simplest ways to connect to your audience. The digital age caters for all; anyone can become a producer from the kid blogging about their day, to a top 100 company blogging about their latest products. It’s that personal touch that wins you a new fan or a consumer. If audiences feel engaged with the material it’s likely they’ll come back. In terms of Front of House, I will blog about upcoming events, review similar events, equipment and even a diary post from time to time about what we’re up to as a group. It’s difficult to be stuck for content. You can see our blog here. 

It’s pretty easy to present your content in a professional manner. Most of the platforms do it for you. For example, embedding players to your sites or blogs doesn’t require knowledge of html coding, it’s just a simple copy & paste of the link into your post (unless it’s more advanced stuff of course). But the point I’m making is tailor your pages for your specific needs and do it neatly. For example, add a band page on your Facebook or player that allows fans to listen directly. There’s that saying if you can do it in fewer clicks, the better.

Reckon you’ve got too many social media links? I wouldn’t say you can ever have too many, but choosing the right ones again is more important. Whether you choose to have a few, or loads are down to you. For example FOH have a Mixcloud, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Blogger, plus our own website which we feel is more than enough. I try not to over-complicate things personally, but having a person on your team that’s always on the lookout for the next best thing to use is always handy. The music business is a fast-moving industry.

Now with all these social media links to choose from, it can cause confusion if you don’t manage them properly. I would suggest you need one space which brings them all together i.e. an external website. This doesn’t require a massive budget at all, as you might think. We personally had a good helping hand (we all know this doesn’t go adrift in the industry), but templates like a WordPress blog are easy to set up. There are plenty of tutorials out there to help you if you know nothing about it, or Tumblr is another good platform to bring all your spaces together. Check out the WordPress Codex site for tutorials.

The new Facebook timeline is a good way to pull things together, as it can provide you with links to almost everything, but I wouldn’t advise on solely using Facebook as the focal point for your branding. In the professional world of PR and creating successful promotional campaigns it’s important to have consistency throughout your platforms, so whatever the message is, this should be clear throughout. For example, be clear on the link you’re going to use as the main place for people to go.

I hope I’ve been able to help with outlining the main points when using social media in a professional context. Check out the site for more in depth lessons on specific platforms or if you’re struggling don’t hesitate to contact me below. 

Guest post by ASH DHINDSA
Front of House Events | Publicity & Communications
www.fohevents.com
ash@fohevents.com

So, Google+ is pretty special simply because of how much they’ve thought through the network. Not only do you have the usual status and a stream of activity, they’ve integrated YouTube in one of the coolest ways I’ve ever seen, a little button on the right hand side that will make a playlist of videos to show in a pop-up window based off one search (great for getting music to listen to while surfing!). You can video call up to 9 people, compare that to Skype where you have to pay to talk to more than 1 person at a time!

You can send your messages out to certain groups of people (or circles) so you don’t annoy people with irrelevant content. You can even sync your mobile phone and tablet to Google+ so that when you record a video, or take a photo, it automatically uploads it to your account. How many times have you been bored waiting for Facebook to upload 250+ images from a night out or an event?

There are a few grey areas about what Google is doing with search results of people on Google+, but it’s safe to say that your history on the social network will influence the results you see on Google Search, in theory bringing you more personalised and relevent results. Take from that what you will, but there’s no doubt Google are doing things other networks can’t dream of.

If you’re interested in Google+, why not check out our profile and set one up yourself?

We get a quick and simple overview of the YouTube Dashboard!

We take you from the very first step!

A lot of people think their work is perfectly safe online, but many don’t take the time to watch out for online copyright theft. Bob Calver shares an experience he had with photography theft.

You might want to put your work out there. And what better way than to use the network you have built up on social networking sites? But, have you considered the risks involved? Bob Calver talks you through your options once more.

Bob Calver is so kind to go through copyright for us. One for the creative types!