Music PR Is About Building Relationships Not A Mailing List

Music PR Is About Building Relationships Not A Mailing List

Pink-slimeDon't get me wrong, mailing lists are important, especially optin email lists of your fans who really want to hear from you regularly. But lists of people, whether fans, writers or influencers, can give one a false sense that your public relations all come down to distributing a regular email. Brian Solis and Hugh MacLeod recently released a free ebook, "What If PR Stood for People and Relationships?" [instead of public relations.] It may speak most directly to people in corporate settings but the cartoons, in particular, remind all of us to develop human relationships that go deeper than automated marketing can ever do.

Both Brian Solis and Hugh MacLeod blogged intros to the ebook which itself can be found in slideshare form embedded below.

A big part of the message, that connecting with humans is about human connections, is summarized in the thumbnail cartoon above (click for bigger size):

"People Don't Like Being Mistaken For Pink Slime"

What If PR Stood for People and Relationships By Brian Solis & Hugh MacLeod
More food for thought from the above ebook (p. 29):

If an Infographic Is Published and No One Shares It, Did It Even Exist?

Infographics are the new press release.

Native advertising is the new corporate journalism.

Snapchats are the new Instagram.

Vines are the new YouTube videos.

Instagram's Hyperlapse is the new Vine.

See the pattern?

There's always the next thing. The question is, so what?

It's how you use these platforms that defines your brand. It's how you engage people and inspire them to do something after engagement that defines your legacy.

Live your brands as your customers do. Let them, in turn, bring your brand to light in ways that inspire you. Technology should be invisible.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand and is relaunching Crowdfunding For Musicians. Contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)c

A clear writing mindset: Quitting sugar and Google

A clear writing mindset: Quitting sugar and Google
by Alex
Late last month, I felt like I was in a rut, trying to finish a short story for a collection. I'm still not done, but I feel like the end is in sight after a period in which it couldn't have seemed further off. A few changes helped me get back in the right mindset.

The Internet is often portrayed as an enormous distraction for writers. Writers like Jonathan Franzen have even made a big deal about disabling their networks in order to get some work done. I can understand the impulse. But I don't think such severe blanket action is needed.

Instead, I believe that many writers (and everyone else, too) would be amazed at what life is like if you just give up on Google's services. No Gmail, no YouTube, and no Search. Giving them up wasn't too bad for me since I'm not a big YouTube watcher and find Search too filtered and customized, so I understand how this technique may not be that extensible.

Still, avoiding Google's endless abyss of answers is liberating. If I wanted to know something, I would consult a book or use DuckDuckGo if I had to - both of which require much more effort. Not having it there to lean on was amazing - I could just write or think instead of trying to sate my curiosity about an inconsequential question.

Around the same time that I went off Google, I went off sugar. Not completely, but pretty close. I don't even put sweetener of any kind in my coffee now. After I felt terrible for days (sugar really is a drug, and withdrawal is palpable), I eventually felt much calmer and happier. It felt good to just write and not feel the background urge to eat something really sweet, which would take away time and then set me up for a crash after the high wore off.

Being a writer doesn't entail being puritanical like this (quite the opposite, in fact). I might relapse eventually - low-stakes, since we're talking about Google and sugar, not something more serious - but it's refreshing to know that it's not that hard to upend your entire experience of the world with a few simple actions