So I think it is a good time to evaluate your progress.

by J.P. Kallio

Here are this week’s musician quick tips, part 20.. In my nearly two decades as a full time musician I have learned a thing or two about this business. I also have become very fast at assessing what works and what does not when it comes to promoting, recording and performing your music.

These quick tips are simple actions that you can put to use straight away

Also you check out my full blog for more HERE:

Validation

As artists we are looking for validation. I think is just the human nature to feel the need to be validated. We want people to recognise us, notice us, to make us feel like what we do is real, like we are doing it right, like we are real artists. Here’s the thing, it is all just waste of energy.

Validation in the arts does not exist! There are no committee of people in some big office building, or a court room, who decide what’s real and whats not. We have become to put value in things like reviews. The truth is, even if it’s the Rolling Stone magazine, still at the end of the day the person writing the review is only one person, and the opinion is theirs alone. There are no great authority out there who decides what’s real and whats not. As an artist as long as you touch people, evoke an emotion and make them think, you are doing it, you are real!

So the only people you need to “validate” you is your audience. If they enjoy your music and listen to it, then you are “validated”, certified, bona fide real artist! So stop wasting time trying to find some higher validation, and concentrate on your audience.

Evaluate your progress

So I think it is a good time to evaluate your progress.

In the past I did mention that you should document your statistics. But even if you failed to do this, most of these are saved by the good people who provide us with our social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, Soundcloud and so forth. Did you set up your Email list with Mailchimp, or others? Your website? You should have a lot of information available to you. So what do you do with it?

Here’s the basics. Simple blank document on any of your preferred text editing software. Write down what your social media sites following, plays, Email sign ups and website visits were at the beginning of the year, all of these go back at least one year. Then write beside it what those numbers are today. Was there growth? I know at the end of the day it is only a number and the quality of your engagement with your followers always wins over the numbers, but this will give you a general idea of how you are doing.

If there is growth, see where this is happening and figure out if you can keep it going. If there is no growth, figure out what you are doing wrong. Going back to the Quick tip 1 and reading them all through might not be the worst thing you ever do.

Never give up

I know life can get complicated from time to time. Job, relationships and family require their time and attention. And sometimes your dream to make it in the music business seems like far-fetched dream.

We have a resource of actionable and motivational steps you can take which most don’t take too much of your time to execute. The one thing that has kept me working for nearly two decades in the music business is my determination to never give up! If only I could get you to take one thing away from all of the 100 posts, it would be never to give up. Most musicians fail because they give up. It’s tough, and most of the times the growth of your career is so slow that it is actually hard to see but if you are smart, willing to learn and do what ever it takes, it is possible!

In fact I would go as far saying that if you play your cards right, utilise the right information, take action every day consistently and accept that it is up to you to do, not any record label, manager or a sugar daddy and create something amazing from your heart, it will work.

Be on Facebook all the time

The subject of this post is obviously bit of a joke The fact is spending too much time on Facebook can waste a lot of productive time you could spend creating your music, or other useful promotional content. But this does not mean you should disappear.

To be smart, you need to learn to schedule posts on your Facebook page. Both Twitter and Facebook allow this, but personally for Twitter, just by the nature of how much more you tweet than post on Facebook, I like to use third-party software. I will talk more about that soon, but lets look in to how to schedule posts on Facebook:

Unless you are good at sharing a lot of your everyday life in an engaging way, you should have a social media content plan. By this I mean, songs you want to share, blog posts, links to other stuff relevant to your followers, links to stuff you feel passionate about, maybe jokes, stories from rehearsals or concerts, photos, what ever you think your followers would like to see.

Once you have the content, you need to schedule the material to come out all throughout the day. For Facebook, I rarely post more than two posts a day, so I use their own scheduling option. On your page, write the post with relevant links, photos or what have you, then click the small downward arrow beside the post button. There you find an option for Scheduling your post. Once you click this, a separate widow opens where you can set the date and time you want the post to go out. Set these, press schedule and you are good to go. Your post will be published at the desired time even if you are not online.

Be on Twitter all the time

We’ve talked about scheduling posts on Facebook. Twitter is a much different animal. Many of you know I prefer Twitter much more over Facebook. Twitter seems to be more organic. People are much less hesitant to join a conversation on Twitter and you make new friends all the time.

But Twitter is also much more fast paced, and if you are out there to promote your music or art, you need to be active in the Twitter community. I use the Twitter mobile app, in fact it is one of the few apps I allow to send me push notices anymore. This is because I want to be able to react or jump in to a conversation as it happens.

Also I do schedule my blog posts on Twitter. I like using Tweetdeck for this. There are other options out there, for example Hootsuite is another popular one. Tweetdeck allows you to schedule a huge amount of posts long in advance, and the posts go out whether you are online or not. In fact, if you are organised enough, you could schedule your core posts once a week. But I would also add in to this some “in the moment” tweets. Otherwise everything starts to feel bit too automated. You are here to make connections with real people, so be real.

J.P. Kallio is a singer-songwriter Facebook / Website / Twitter

MAKE MUSIC