Making the Most of Your Online Presence

    One of the first and most important aspects of pursuing your career is maintaining your image. When you go to your interview, how do you look? When people look you up on Facebook what do they see? When a fan follows you on Twitter, are you making them laugh, or think, or providing them with quality content? Whether you choose to believe it's important or not, I think we can all agree that almost all people make assumptions about you based on how you present yourself. I can tell you that I've personally wished that many of my favorite artists didn't have an internet presence, but I've also been completely turned onto a random artist who seemed like a good person or made me laugh with their Twitter feed. 

    Phil Elverum, the man behind Mt. Eerie, is just such an example. His music I could probably live without, and to be honest I almost never listen to it, but I follow his Twitter feed with fervor. Simply put, he is witty and hilarious and he knows how to make you feel like you're a friend of his that he's PM-ing jokes to. He appreciates his fans, and provides them with entertaining and frequent tweets, and in my feed filled with news headlines and bland updates, it's invaluable. I wish Phil's online presence could be bottled and sold so that we less funny folk could pull more followers. 

    Jimmy Fallon's social media presence is similar: it's warm, it's funny, and it never feels forced or unappreciative. And sure, Fallon almost certainly has a person (or people) in charge of running his accounts, but the fact that someone is getting paid to do that just goes to show how incredibly, goddamned important it is to have a compelling and warm presence on the internet. For fans of the Tonight Show, it feels as if you're getting a tweet from a famous friend. Before you further your social network, make sure that you have a quality online presence. Put extra effort and thought into the things you release onto the web, always remembering that each post has the potential to gain or lose supporters of your work.  

    As a musician, if you're doing your job well, people will want to feel connected to you, often from a distance. You want retweets and reblogs, you want people sharing links to your new record on Facebook, and you want these people to stick around. Add people on Soundcloud, "favorite" bands on Bandcamp, share the work of other talented people on Facebook. Every person trying to make it in this industry needs all the help they can get, and every friend you make expands your network and theirs exponentially. I think I'm going to spend some time this week trying to expand my own online network. In the end, it's still a hell of a lot easier than standing outside of 7/11 trying to sell people CDs, so why not make the best of such an incredible and accessible tool?