An eventful/Creative Partnerships project saw me back at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, (they let girls in for A’ level),  I didn’t enjoy my time there to be honest, but working on this project gave me a new perspective on the place (some of the teachers are still there!! That’s 14 years!! WTF!!) I ran social media sessions documenting a survival skills project, think Ray Mears meets web 2.0. Highlights were toasting marshmallows, firemen coming to Sutton Park – even though we informed them in advance about making fires (they were quite cute however) and working with some bright, lovely young people. I really miss my group.(Sniffle).

Also ran social media (and music sessions) for Paganel School – to help document their Scalextric project which was fun. I also created music for the final competition hosted at the Hippodrome.

Blogging hiccups throughout though, posterous doesn’t have user hierarchies like wordpress and blogger, and wordpress is utter shite rubbish at embedding content it doesn’t approve of, so no to easy embedding of audioboo.fm, dipity.com etc. There were ways around it but still…. We also did some live streaming in Sutton Park – which you can watch here.

Now, after being outdoors and working mainly in schools, I am chained to my mac typing up evaluation forms for the soon to be no more Creative Partnerships. This is my procrastination, a happy one.

I can’t recall where I’ve got all the info from, but would like to thank the Internet and bloggers who helped me collate this info for you.

Blogging for Musicians

Recommended free blogs to use are blogger and wordpress

Pros

A platform for your band/group to talk to your fans (demonstrated by comments function – sometimes the discussions here are more interesting then the blog post itself)
Can meet new/potential fans through search engines – so make sure you tag your blog posts for good SEO

You can build contacts in your sector
Enables you to establish yourself as an expert in your field, niche or work.
Your blog gives the public direct access to you (bar phone/face to face).
Document education projects, (images can be of hands/instruments to protect vulnerable adults).

Can be used as a reflective tool, build up an online portfolio
Initially free to use (once you decide to add more bells and whistles a cost is incurred, not expensive)
Can sell your music on the space/include audio etc.Cons:

You need oodles of motivation
Readers of your blog won’t necessarily comment, lurkers are rife
You should blog at least once a week (but you can be creative with that, you don’t necessarily need lots of text),

there’s not right or wrong, I certainly don’t blog that often

Time consuming, when you’d rather be writing music & securing gigs

Examples of blog posts which have lots of comments, creating dialogue with your readers:

My naively written blog post on community arts (accidentally got a lot of readers and comments. Think there was a link on CIB), be careful what you broadcast!
Jeremy Hunt message Created in Brum
Competition  for Created in Brum

Twitter:

A microblogging site, it’s all about real time, knowing what is being talked about right now, like Facebook status updates but more advanced

Some people still use it like that, twitter is different things to many people, but you can utilise it in different ways (and get a lot out of it)

A nice blog post written by music industry top thinker Andrew Dubber

Search engine for twitter (community music results) and music education

One of my favourite twitter usages is by this bakery in Shoreditch, clever marketing!

Pros

A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information
Re-enforce Your Brand
Marketing Opportunities
Networking Opportunities
Drive Traffic to Your Website – be careful, you don’t want to sound too corporate
Cons

140 character limit

If your readers aren’t online they can miss what you are promoting/discussing

Twitter love:

Twitter basics

How to on reply/twitter mentions for conversation, quite succinct

What is twitter? It’s still being defined

Audioboo.fm

“Social audio sharing site – mobile web application that lets you share audio to online audiences’.

Audioboo.fm is a online app that allows you to record 5 mins of audio and upload it in a short space time, your ‘boos’ then appear in chronological order. When you record and upload your audio file, you can include you can geo-tag (include your whereabouts) like a journalist working from location. You can also post your latest boos on your blog and comment on other people’s boos. You can also upload to itunes and have your own podcast channel.

Pros:

Geo-tagging function, your audience can see exactly where you have submitted your audio
You can use audio boos to replace text blog posts
Can update fans straight after gigs, more personalised fun way to interact with your audience
No limit to the amount of audio boos you can upload

Cons

Restriction on audio time (5 mins)

Flickr

Flickr is primarily a photo-sharing community, owned by Yahoo! You can embed photos into other sites, like your blogs, use it as a search engine, find images you like and use (permission granting).

Useful/Pros

Tapping into a large photo sharing community (that you can potentially market)
Lets you display the best, relevant photographs to advertise what you do
Actively participate in the Flickr community. Find groups relevant to your business and join them
Tag your photographs with terms that are relevant to your work. Provide a link to your Flickr account on your website

Directed for the performing musician:

Facebook And ReverbNation’s MyBand

With MyBand, you can upload, host, & stream your music, create mailing lists, showcase videos, etc.

Bandcamp

You can sell your music virtually here, wen you create a Bandcamp page, you can create virtual albums, not just individual songs. Bandcamp provides useful tools for downloads, selling music online, and more.

Tips for bands

How musicians are using social media

Cool stuff/Other stuff:

Soundcloud – more artists are opting to use this, snubbing our aged friend mysphere.

Showmehowtoplay

Twiturm.com – lets you to share your music with fans and followers on twitter.

Locals who blog about doing music stuff:

Chris Mapster

Scott Evans

Robin and the Friendly Fire Crew

Elixir – local promoters who aim to introduce their listeners to new artists relevant to their music policy

Local alternative music venue

Me

Reggae promoter and DJ

This is my twitter wordle cloud:

What’s yours like? It’s made me think about how I use my blog, my SEO keeps showing hobbit references, because of this hippy blog post I wrote some time ago, maybe I should pander to the interest, write some hobbit/Tolkien inspired music.

To quote:

“‘Following’ someone on Twitter means next to nothing. The interaction is everything.”

Nice one Steve! I sometimes struggle with twitter and this blog post succinctly makes micro-blogging more palatable.

Blogging has been less frequent cos I have been mega busy- yippee!

I scored my first MediaSnackers gig on Sunday. I travelled down to Lambeth, South London to help train some friendly, young people from all over the UK. We equipped them with enough social media skills to become budding digital sports journalists. They will document a project called Street Athletics which is run by Linford Christie’s management consultancy Nuff Respect and has the support of Darren Campbell. I quote:

“Street Athletics is a series of community focused events throughout the UK where all youngsters are invited to race against each other over 60m, giving them the chance to compete in the Grand Final in Manchester and win a year’s kit contract with Reebok.

The ultimate aim is that all kids from all areas feel welcome to actively take part, providing the opportunity to broaden their existing horizons within sport and other non-sports related areas
Nuff Respect are working with Positive Futures, Reebok, Sport England, Sony, Gaz de France and local councils to run Street Athletics events in various areas of the UK.

We hope that it will encourage kids to utilise the sports facilities provided by the Council and ideally join a local Athletics club, or that the opportunity provides a trigger to kids to believe in their own abilities and they go on to be motivated in other non-sports related areas.’

I had a wicked time bonding and watching confidence levels grow as the young people involved got into the swing of blogging, vodcasting and using all the equipment.

I then went to Hammersmith and Fulham and supported 2 digital journalists as they documented the event. You can read their blog post here. It was staged in the area where Linford Christie grew up, right next to his old primary school.

Other exciting news: I will be going to Paris with one of our digital journalists to document the 2007 winners’ trip to the Grand Prix de Paris Athletics event this month. Yay!

It was lovely to hang with the gang, and learn about the past, present and future intentions DK has for the company. It was nice to learn how Media Snackers had influenced the growth and confidence in youngest member Jess; our youth liaison officer and discussed ways in which our training sessions can influence and bring about change in education and the youth sector. 

I am really excited to be working for such a young, cutting edge company and hope we all have fun being as kick-ass as we can!!! 

I was one of 6 candidates bidding for the trainer positions. We had to give a 20-minute presentation on a social media platform/tool and then after playtime faced the MediaSnackers dons for the serious bit; a 30-minute interview.

It was really stimulating to see the vast array of people talent that was brought together. Different fields brought to the table were; music theatre, community music, video bloggers, really technically advanced developers/consultancy and law.

All of us were connected by a love and fascination for new technology developments. What really came across was how we’re all avid users of social media platforms and are aware of how it is changing and shaping the way humans interact. I did not have one boring conversation!

I think my presentation on a wiki called wetpaint.com went quite well, but my fatigue and nerves during the interview saw some average answers…. hmpf!

Keynote is sooo much better to use than Powerpoint- well impressed! Yes, I know everyone has been saying this!

It was a pleasure to meet such interesting people!

Here are some (not all) of their blogs:

Chris Unitt- also from Brummage. Licensing consultant
Phil Campbell the super, street tech guru! Project manager for media mashups
Beth Taliston- Video blogger and has a teaching background
Guy- for a day job works in PR but game designer, online community and digital strategy dude
Tim- an MA in music theatre but again web head. Will get blog address up soon.

Time to pack for Japan!