One of my portfolio of jobs is that I teach singing at the London College of Music. This is a three year musical theatre training programme and I teach students across all three years. The current graduating class started with me last year and I have been teaching them now for two years. This year […]
When to Walk
I posted a slightly smug message yesterday about how I was going to leverage an opportunity. However, after meeting with the potential client, I’ve got cold feet. He’s young. He’s ambitious. He’s got big plans. These are all fantastic traits. What he doesn’t seem to have is a solid business plan. Don’t tell me how […]
How to work for free (without losing your shirt!)
It’s raining, it’s pouring and this old man is (hopefully) scoring. Off to have a meeting with a young editor of a new, local online magazine. One of those ‘grand ambition, no budget’ type organisations. They had a post on Gumtree (or Craig’slist – I always get them mixed up) which was looking for young […]
Advance Warning
I saw this sign on my way to teach the other morning and it made me stop and take a picture. I love that we need advance warning of when we will have fun, as if it’s somehow detrimental to our health or such a low priority that it needs to be scheduled into the […]
6. Follow the leaders in your field
In your quest to keep your ear to the ground, you should be following all of the leaders in your field on social media. Set up bookmarks for their blogs, follow them on Twitter, or follow their fan pages on Facebook. You may decide you want to try and connect with them directly on LinkedIn, […]
5. Listen first, then talk
Good face-to-face conversation involves listening more than you talk. Likewise in social media. You want to spend more time listening to what it already being said, and seeing where you can contribute to the dialogue, rather than shouting overtop of existing conversations or trying to monopolise the bandwidth. This is true at all times, but […]
4. Establish metrics
Once you’ve set your goals for social media, you want to figure out how you are going to measure your progress. Think of ways that you can tally up your reach on social media. This will allow you to track from year to year your progress; afterall, you will need to invest time in social […]
3. Define your goals
This is part Three of my series ’65 Social Media Strategies for Performing Artists’ What do you hope to achieve with social media? Who would you like to meet? Without goals, you will be floundering around not really making any impact. You will also have no idea if the time you are spending on it […]
2. Stake your claim
The first thing you want to do is to stake your claim by registering with all the major social media platforms in order to capture your name, or a close to your name as you can get, on the popular sites. Even if you don’t use them all, or don’t want to set them up […]
1. Why you can’t ignore social media
If you look at the history of showbusiness, each new technological advancement has brought about a colossal shift in how the performing arts are both created and consumed, not to mention who benefits economically from that transaction. When film came along it changed stage performing. When radio became widespread it caused a massive shift in […]