For reference here are all the ‘contest posts’ I entered in Ariel Hyatt’s ‘Music Success in Nine Weeks Blogging Challenge’ – in the order they appeared, rather than reverse chronological order, which hopefully will help them make a bit more sense.
Introduction: This time it’s personal…
An introduction to where I’m coming from, what my background is, why I bought the book, what I hope to get from it and from the contest…
1a. Goals, part 1
Part 1 of post number 1… I talk about various approaches to goal-setting, and why it’s been an uncomfortable thing for me… and can’t quite bring myself to actually do it. But wait! In the nick of time, here’s:
1b. Goals, part 2
… a meaty follow-up post with the results of my middle-of-the-night frantic inspired scribbling. Edited for clarity, although not exactly for brevity
2. Not A Belly Itcher…
In which I channel my inner little-leaguer in coming up with a one-sentence, 15-second ‘Elevator Pitch’ to convey what my music is all about. At least, I give it the college try.
3. Spinning A Web
In which I make various excuses for my rather haphazard, all-over-the-place web presence. What can I say? I’m a curious guy, and have never been able to limit my interests or activities to the point that a single website is going to really adequately cover them. I need, like, ten. Or so.
4. Let’s Get Closer
In which a classic Brat Pack movie from my teenage years becomes a metaphor for social media and online networking. RIP John Hughes.
5. Let’s get Meta – blogging about blogging
Blogging is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, that started with ‘Lifestreams’ – people writing about whatever they do or think or find interesting – and has evolved into a massive and massively complex international movement/community/phenomenon that in many ways is more relevant than mainstream media. If that isn’t vague or confusing enough for you, read the rest of this post!
6. All the news fit to send
Email is just email, right? Just like old school snail mail but faster, cheaper, more convenient, more ubiquitous? Well, kind of – but using it effectively, for the purpose of building your music tribe, requires a certain approach. Ariel offers her spin, and I follow through with my interpretation of it.
7. List but not least
All the email skillz in the world are not going to do you a lot of good if you don’t have anyone to send your newsletter to, so next up is List Building. Which is basically all about creative bribery. You can decide how you feel about that, but the reality is that it works, so at some point we need to make our peace with it.
8. Live Action Hero
An unlikely anti-hero (“We are not men!”) gives us the magic formula that unlocks the deep, dark and perilous world of Live Networking. That’s right, I’m talking about actual contact with actual people. Yes, this is 2010. Yes, it’s still relevant. Yes, your eyestalks will hurt for a bit from the sunlight, but these things must be faced.
10. To Be Continued…
What’s a continuum program? That’s when you get your fans to actually support you in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, in exchange for continuing to provide them access and value and exclusive content and the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with all of that. It’s a bit of a trick, but if you can pull it off, you’ve arrived.
