… Also, I’ve just put up a new post on my Fearless Creativity blog, so feel free to check that out as well: Fearless Creativity; All In The Family…

Hi everyone. Not sure there are a lot of you still following this space, as it’s been kind of dormant and my blogging efforts, sporadic as they are, have largely moved over to Fearless Creativity! at this point. Moreover, this whole blog will likely be replaced soon by a dedicated page for the upcoming Cliffjump! Manifesto – though I’ll keep the archived content available, ’cause that’s just the right thing to do.

However, since this was the venue for my Music Success In Nine Weeks contest blogs, I thought it would be a good place to announce that… umm… I seem to have come up a winner! (One of a few actually, as it seems like Ariel was overcome by some combination of generosity and indecisiveness… not that i’m complaining! I feel like I’m in good company there – some great work by all the other winners).

This is quite a surprise to me, even though I put a lot of heart and soul and sweat and toil into the posts… I’m just not accustomed to winning things (I guess I could get used to it…) and I had to write Ariel and verify that there hadn’t been some mistake. She and the awesome people in her office assured me it was real, so it looks like I now have a 3-month music PR campaign waiting for me!

I am really excited about this and eager to see where it might lead. I have been around a number of blocks a number of times now so I’m under no illusions that it will be some kind of magic ticket to instant fame and untold riches… but it’s bound to be a major boost to what I’m able to do on my own. So yes, excited and grateful for the opportunity and ready to do whatever I can to try to make the most of it.

I don’t have a lot more to add here, I just wanted to share that and wrap that phase of things up and redirect your attention to the new zone – in fact there’s a new post there today, On Confidence, Arrogance and the Crucial Difference Between Them… enjoy and as always, have a Fascinating Day!

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.

photo credit: Bernadette Ann

Things are a bit strange around here these days, which explains the radio silence – or doesn’t explain it at all really, since I actually haven’t explained anything at all. Oh well. Anyway.

Action and reaction

This post began as a comment on another blog, but it quickly became clear that it had delusions of grandeur, so I moved it back here. In fact it was a comment on a post that I suspect may have started the same way… so, to continue a kind of slow-motion threaded conversation, I’d like to react here to Stacey Cornelius’ post on the Studio Source, which was itself a reaction to Clint Watson’s post on Fine Art Views, which was itself a reaction to some comments made by Seth Godin during promotion for his latest book, Linchpin:

“Artist doesn’t mean painter or cartoonist or playwright. Artist means someone willing to stand up, stand out and make change.”

“What do we call a customer service rep or an insurance adjuster or landscape architect that changes the game, that elevates each interaction and that takes enormous emotional and professional risk with their work? I think they need a name, so I stole one. I call them artists.”

“A great waitress or conductor or politician can make art. So can David, who cleans the tables at Dean and Deluca. Art isn’t the job, it’s the attitude you bring to the job and work you do when you’re there.”

I haven’t read Linchpin yet, so I am in no way directly reacting to it; I just had some thoughts on the subject and thought I’d throw myself into the fray… For better or worse, here goes:

A problem of definition

I’ve been in a few interesting ‘what is art’ discussions over the years, though not for a long while. It’s a thorny question that never seems to go away, and somehow it seems intensely important to most artists at some point or another over the course of their development. I’ve also noticed that most artists who get a lot of art done seem to have either made some sort of peace with it, or left it behind as unsolved, unsolveable, or uninteresting.

In my own struggle with the Question that Never Goes Away, I became convinced that the main reason people want to draw these lines in the sand is to protect their turf and make themselves seem and/or feel more important. We use whatever definition lets us dismiss or feel superior to people who are doing things differently, because sadly it seems to be human nature to feel threatened by that.

Eventually, I found the whole discussion unconvincing, so I settled for a kind of cop-out non-definition: art is anything anyone says is art, anything someone does with the intention of creating art.

It’s not very satisfying, to be sure, but what else can you really stand behind?

Should the term be reserved for the work of ‘professional’ artists? I hope not, because amazing things have been done by amateurs for, well, longer than there have been professional artists. Is art required to be political? Or required to be non-political? I’ve met excellent artists who hold both positions. Do you have to be able to put it on your wall? I hope not, I’m a musician. Does art require an audience to be art? Someone forgot to tell Emily Dickinson.

The Artful Dodger

Now, I understand the lukewarm reception to Seth’s appropriation, but in fact it’s hardly anything new – remember ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance‘? How many times have we heard ‘the art of…’ applied to traditionally non-artistic endeavours? The phrase conveys the sense of a different or more mindful approach, some sort of ‘finesse’, an ‘artfulness’ brought to an activity normally thought of as dry or technical.

OK, what’s ‘artfulness’ then? Aren’t we just deferring the question? Hmmm. A heightened aesthetic sense? Poetry in motion? Deliberate or self-conscious grace? Wait a minute, now we’re back at the ‘art is whatever is intended as art’ argument. But how can you have an intention if you can’t define what it is? Or if there are as many definitions as there are artists?

I don’t have a better answer for you. I do find the idea of bussing tables artistically a bit of a stretch, but perhaps that’s just my prejudice, my line in the sand. I’ve certainly been served by highly theatrical waiters and waitresses before (actually, I used to work at a circus/cabaret/dinner show where this concept was taken to hilarious extremes).

You say tomato…

In the end, what does it matter to us what other people think art is or isn’t? I play improvised piano concerts. To my mind I am making art, but someone else might come along and say no, art is something you need to work at, slave over, take apart and put together 10 different ways, that process is where art comes from, you’re just ‘playing’ (I happen to feel that play is central to creativity and art, but your mileage may vary).

My proposition, then, is this: just go and do what you do, with whatever intention you want to bring to it, and call it what you want to. Try to do it a bit better every time you do it. That’s what I’m going to do anyway, and if someone asks me if it’s art, I’m going to tell them ‘actually, no, it’s spinach’. At least that’ll confuse them, and maybe buy me some time.

Well? What do you think? Can art be defined? Should we even try?

photo credit: Diegosaurius Rex

So, here we are at the last of my Music Success in Nine Weeks contest posts. It’s been an interesting journey, in some ways a microcosm of the somewhat larger personal and professional transformation I’ve been going through. I have to say it again: I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was looking for some tips on more effectively marketing my existing back-catalog of instrumental work, as well as a little multimedia-book project I’m launching. I got more than I bargained for.

I’m going to begin with a little wrap-up of what I’ve come away from this with, then segue into focusing on this chapter and what I plan to do with it.

As far as I can tell, there is really only one way forward at this point for independent musicians (and/or other creative types) who want a viable and sustainable way to make a living from our creative work in this brave new digital world as it careens forward into an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable future, and that is to play a bigger game. Take it to the next level.

It used to be simple…

We used to think the road to success was to write good songs, produce a good demo and send it to everyone we could think of that might possibly see the potential… and this would naturally lead to major label record deals, sold out world tours, fame and fortune, that sort of thing.

We used to think that we could focus entirely on our creative work and let the chips fall where they may… let other people handle the business of the music business, we don’t have anything to do with that. It would corrupt our art to think about that stuff, better not to understand it at all. Find someone to handle it, trust that they’re not going to completely rip us off (you listening, Leonard Cohen?) and hope for the best.

Whether this mindset was ever really based on reality is open to question, but there is certainly no question now that it’s now a dead-end street (sadly, one many are still trapped on). Labels, publishers, booking/literary agents, anyone traditionally seen as ‘gatekeepers’ for the content industry, are basically not interested in anything that isn’t a pretty sure bet – if you’re already playing 150 shows a year and selling decent numbers of CDs, or if you have 10,000 people on your mailing list and active subscribers to your blog, these people might take your call.

In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, you need to prove that you don’t actually need them. You need to prove that there’s an audience, ideally one with money to spend. Then you can decide whether it makes sense to work with someone who can kick it up a few notches, or continue with what you’re already doing.

So what do you do if you don’t have all that going on? Short answer? Get it going on.

Ariel’s book gives a roadmap for this, but all of it takes doing. I suspect it will take a lot longer than 9 weeks to put it all into action in any meaningful sense, and certainly to see any massive career-defining results. This process for me has mostly been about understanding just how big the mountain is that I’ve set out to climb… but it’s also been about seeing clearly that it is climbable.

In many ways, there has never been a better time to build a real career as an independent musician/artist/creative, but that does not in the remotest sense mean that it’s an easy thing to do. The tools are there. Most of them are free! But the work still needs to be done. A lot of it. If you think you can get around it, you’re fooling yourself. Probably better to wake up and smell the coffee sooner rather than later. ‘Nuff said.

Continuum programs.

OK. What’s this final chapter about? (Actually, there are some pretty hefty bonus chapters too, but the contest calls for 9 posts about the 9 core chapters, so that’s what we’re doing here…) It’s about continuum programs.

This is the core concept that creative people can embrace that will get us off the roller coaster (new CD this month! A tour! Money! Awesome! No new CD next month… no gigs… no money… not awesome…) and into a stable, sustainable financial situation. The closest we’re ever likely to get to a decent reliable salary. Monthly income from our biggest fans who want access to us and to more intimate, exclusive ‘premium’ content. Creating the demand for this is what most of the other stuff is all about.

This is a scary concept for some reason. I think it plays into our fears about productivity and the pressure to create. Some of our deepest programming about creativity tells us that it is scarce, unpredictable, not something to be conjured at will. The muse is fickle and frequently on holiday, or at least unavailable for comment. How are we going to generate great new content to keep our loyal fans happy every single month? What if we have writer’s block, the idea well runs dry, our dog dies and we can’t get out of bed for two months? (Teaser hint: watch this space for some help with this, coming soon!…)

OK, but even if we can somehow get our ornery artistic side into a solid enough routine to keep the good stuff flowing, who will buy it? Who would commit themselves in advance to paying money every month for stuff they haven’t heard and don’t know if they’ll like?

I guess the answer to that is if they aren’t willing, you aren’t trying hard enough; you haven’t convinced them yet. How do you convince them? Be more awesome. Put more into it. Engage more. Yes, your fans have to be positively rabid to want to pay your salary out of their own – but if they’re rabid enough, they’ll do it, and your job is to make it so. If you’re not up for that, maybe quit while you’re ahead. It’s part of the job description.

What’s the plan?

Still here? Cool. Ariel’s book offers some constructive and creative ideas for various flavors of continuum program. I think many of these are great, but I also think that as in other cases, things apply a little differently to me: I’m not a band, I don’t currently play live much at all, my business model (as it is taking shape) is almost entirely online-driven, and I’m doing a number of things that most of the book’s target audience are likely not doing, for example trying to become a ’serious’ writer of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as a blogger and overall Creative Entrepreneur.

However, despite the fears I outlined above, I’m definitely interested in one or more continuum programs as a component of the overall monetization strategy. Consequently, I’m doing a lot of thinking about what that might eventually look like in my case. While I won’t entirely write off the idea of membership-based access to my own music and other creative work, I am a little more intrigued by the idea of creating a real community around the ideas I’m cultivating for the coming repositioning of this blog and for the Manifesto with which I’ll be launching and evangelizing it.

I suspect that in the end it will be some kind of hybrid of the two. I’m not trying to make this entirely idea-driven, much as I like ideas. I am still very interested in keeping my own brand and music present and kind of ‘entwined’ with the more philosophical and/or practical side.

One of the most important lessons of marketing is that people aren’t interested in you or all the wonderful things you’ve done. They are primarily interested in finding solutions to their problems, and/or in finding themselves in a brand or image or story. Either way, it’s all about them.

My goal is to offer both – real creative solutions people need, along with a compelling story they can find themselves in. And, of course, a soundtrack that inspires… and fascinates.

That concludes my ‘contest’ blog posts, thanks for coming along for the ride… I’ll definitely be continuing with many of the same themes as this develops, and occasionally reporting personal progress as well… meanwhile, what are your thoughts on the notion of a membership site or continuum program? Would you join one if an artist you love set it up? Can you see yourself setting one up?

As mentioned, I’m kind of blasting through these as the contest deadline looms, which I feel a bit bad about as it’s not quite the spirit of the thing. At the same time, even though I’ve been too busy and all-over-the-place to post about it, I have in fact been reading and digesting all of these lessons over the past few weeks and things have been percolating, so now it’s really just a matter of writing down some of the results of that process.

And so: Chapter 8 is all about live networking – you know, the old fashioned kind where you actually meet people face to face and interact with them in person. Strange concept, I know, but most business used to work that way and if the truth be told, much of the important stuff probably still does.

On one hand the circumstances of my life present me with some obstacles in terms of doing this effectively. Firstly, I live in a foreign country. I have lived in Germany for over 10 years now, and my command of the language is not spectacular… actually, in Barth Gimble’s memorable phrase, it gives “new meaning to the word adequate”. Somehow it’s never been enough of a personal priority and the work I have had here has never really required it. Add to that being a very involved and more-or-less-full-time parent, and putting in more-or-less-full-time hours at night building and managing the online platform as previously discussed, and I am left with very few opportunities for effective live networking.

That said… of course I do meet people, and you never know when or where you’re going to make a connection that will open a door, so it’s really not a bad idea to be ready to rock those opportunities in a more effective way. I am learning gradually, and this chapter spells it out pretty clearly, that much of this has to do with mindset.

On one hand, it’s essential to be clear on what you want, but at the same time it’s suicide to go into every meeting with guns blazing talking about yourself and your work and handing your business cards out to everyone within arm’s reach. Ariel’s book gives us a simple, practical blueprint for a more effective tactic, and I think the best way to look at it is to channel George Castanza and Do The Opposite.

Do The Opposite!

Independent artists and musicians are often desperate people. We have never found the success that we know our talent and our work deserve. So when someone comes into our field of view who we see as a ‘gatekeeper’, someone who has the keys to unlock the secret passage to success that we’ve been searching for, our instinct is to pounce. After all, this might be our only opportunity! We have to get our message across, make sure they remember us, so (of course) the way to do this is to tell them All About what we do and why it’s so cool.

This doesn’t work.

Perhaps they run screaming from the room, perhaps they listen politely and take the card, but all the while they are thinking to themselves, what a pushy, self-centred bore. And the business card or the demo CD or whatever go straight into the circular file. Why would they want to work with someone so obnoxious?

And so we retreat and lick our wounds, bitter at the unfairness of it all, until we stumble across someone else we think could help us, and we do the same thing all over again.

The main takeaway from this chapter for me was this: don’t keep doing that. It doesn’t work, and doing it has gotten me exactly where I am now – which by definition since I’ve bought this book and am working through it, could be better. Continuing to do it will keep delivering the same results. I believe this pattern probably describes at least half the independent musicians and artists in the world, who would like to be ‘doing better’ but squander every opportunity for live networking by enacting more or less exactly the scenario described above.

What’s the solution? Do The Opposite. Instead of talking, listen. Instead of giving out business cards, ask for them (and of course, give them if and when asked). Instead of blathering on about our work and what this person might be able to do for us, ask questions. Listen and learn. As Ariel puts it, “The more that they talk, the more memorable you are!”

But all the while, know what you want.

photo credit: List

I’m kind of down to the wire on these ‘contest’ blog entries – I do like to finish what I start but I’ve had so much going on lately, largely as a result of how this journey has expanded in scope since I began it. I have to confess that other projects have in some ways eclipsed the MSNW book in terms of the amount of time they are taking… and consequently I have made less progress on the specific goals it concerns itself with than I could have if it were my only focus. On the other hand, said goals are kind of universal and are fundamental tenets of online promotion, so it’s not like I’ve been living on a different planet.

So. List building. I suspect it is the weak point of most people in my position, and it is certainly mine. I think many artists are conflicted about self-promotion generally and are uneasy about contacting relative strangers with news, views and offers – even when said strangers have willingly and knowingly asked to be on the list. Actively trying to get them to sign on really takes some getting your head around… but I get it, it’s essential. I like the suggestion to just set aside hours for it; make it a job that has to be done each week.

The first thing I did in terms of list-building as I began this process was to consolidate all the existing lists I had in half-built or half-baked states. This included CD Baby customers, FanBridge, Reverb Nation, a few pages of handwritten opt-ins from gigs, and a few other sources. I wanted to put these all in one place and MailChimp allowed me to do that with minimal fuss. It’s a tricky thing, some platforms are pretty free and easy about it, others are seriously paranoid – and with good reason: the more thorough the opt-in procedure, the cleaner the list, and this makes for better deliverability in the end.

If I build it, will they come?

OK, everything’s in one place, great – now we need some more names. Since I’m in a bit of a dip in terms of live performance I don’t have a lot of names coming in from shows, but I’m trying to pick up the slack by linking to tunes regularly on Twitter and Facebook and now, Buzz. These links lead to streaming preview and, ideally, subsequent download of whole tracks or albums.

Since moving most of my in-house music delivery over to the BandCamp platform, I am able to easily offer free downloads in exchange for opt-in email addresses. I’ve selected two entire albums (having ten or so in the back pocket has moments of usefulness) that are available for free – one a compilation of all the soundtrack / instrumental stuff I’ve done, the other excerpts from the solo piano works. If someone likes these enough to want to download the whole album, it’s pretty straightforward – but does require an email opt-in.

I also like the contest suggestion – I follow a wonderful visual artist on Buzz that recently used this to great effect and I’ve been thinking about emulating the process and hopefully, the results. I’ll announce that contest here when I get it together.

Finally, as mentioned in a previous post I will be relaunching and rebranding this blog in a few weeks and I have developed a list/traffic-building strategy for that which involves the publication of a kind of Creative Manifesto. So stay tuned for that!

Contingency

Well it’s Sunday and I’m a bit out of sorts. I was supposed to be in Toronto for an old friend’s wedding this weekend but my flight went through New York and the connecting flight was canceled, along with all other possible alternatives, due to snow (it sounds like they have had quite the storm over there! I hope things are returning to normal gradually).

Luckily I found out about this before getting on the plane so rather than being stuck at JFK along with 10,000 other frustrated stranded travelers I just turned around and headed home. Disappointed friends and an unexpected weekend off, and I’m a bit confused about what to do with it. Not for want of options – there is no great lack of things I should be doing – but shifting gears when the rug is pulled out from under you like that can be tricky.

This coincides with the publication, tomorrow, of my first ‘big’ guest post, on the wonderful Lateral Action blog. It’s a meditation on some of the ‘mythology’ we seem to have erected around creativity, and how it can hold us back, and what we might be able to do about it. I hope you check it out, and leave a comment! I’ll be monitoring and replying to comments there for the next few days.

I’m really happy to have my work featured there among such fine company, and I’m also happy to welcome anyone who might click through to find out a bit more about li’l ol’ me… so, if that’s you, welcome! Make yourself at home! Pull up a chair!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I confess that you’ve found me in a bit of a transitional period here, to use Jules from Pulp Fiction’s memorable phrase (though mine does not include firearms; I’m Canadian after all). I started this blog about six months ago, and to be honest I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I imagined it as a place to document a creative journey: the development, production and release of my online ‘novel in words, sounds and images’, Symmetricity.

However, it has quickly taken on a larger dimension: I find myself intrigued by the process of blogging, and more broadly by the global blogging community. I feel that I have something to contribute to (and, of course, learn from) a larger conversation about creativity. The Lateral Action blog and course have played a big role in this expansion of perspective, along with numerous others, and I look forward to engaging more fully with this community as things develop.

To which end I have decided to expand and relaunch this project, in a few weeks’ time. The new name (and address) will be what been using as my tagline here, which encapsulates in two words the essence of my message and the theme I’ll be building on: Fearless Creativity. There’s a splash page there for now, but if you sign up to the mailing list (or the the RSS feed) I’ll let you know when it launches.

As a bonus. you’ll also be the first to get my soon-to-be-released Cliffjump! Manifesto… I’ve distilled my creative method, mindset and philosophy – honed over more than 20 years as a professional pianist, composer, writer, photographer, and generally inquisitive searcher-after-pattern-and-meaning – into a practical and inspirational set of guidelines for creative thought and action… and a springboard from which to launch further explorations and conversations.

As always, follow the links to hear more music, read (or watch or listen to) the novel, connect via Twitter or Facebook, or find out more about me personally…

p.s. Anyone else out there find themselves in a Transitional Period? Want to spill the beans? Please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you!

photo credit: kenicii

So, it’s update time. Since time is a valuable commodity these days, I’m going to kill a few birds with one stone here (figuratively, of course – I like birds and have no intention of harming any). In a dazzling display of multipurpose efficiency, I’m going to combine a) a blog post… b) more precisely, a ‘contest’ post for the MSNW series… and c) an email newsletter. Since the next chapter of MSNW is all about email newsletters, I figure rather than telling you what I’ve learned I will just show you by including the newsletter here.

Before we get to that, I will preface by pointing out that my list is actually still pretty small, since I don’t play a lot of shows and have really only recently begun to get myself organized and maintain a list or a newsletter of any sort. Still, I’m a fairly quick learner, and I like to wade into the thick of things, so that’s what I’ve been doing: learning the ropes and laying the groundwork for more serious list-building later on…

I did some research and selected MailChimp as my email and list management platform – as far as I can tell the features rival anything out there, they have great tutorials and a very low-key, easygoing and fun vibe. Also, the whole service – not a limited or dumbed-down version, the full premium package – is completely free until you hit 500 people. From that point on their prices are in line with their competitors, so I figure this is both friendly and smart on their part. A nice way to get started on a serious platform without spending too much until you have the numbers to justify it.

So, without further ado, here’s what I sent to my list today:

The Latest Shenanigans
(what I’m up to, in case anyone was wondering…)

Hi everybody, this is tobias tinker with a little Newsletter update from chilly Berlin. For those further afield, we’ve been having a pretty wintry winter this year, definitely the coldest and snowiest in my 10 years here in Germany. We don’t mind so much, it makes the place feel a bit more like home (we’re from Canada remember!), but it’s getting a bit old now and we’re pretty much ready for spring.

Deep winter has its advantages, however, and for me this has been a very productive and indeed transformative few months. My crash-course on the business and marketing side of being a musician and creator (after avoiding it for 20 years) continues to challenge and surprise me. I won’t bore you with the details of that except to say: it actually hasn’t been boring at all. I’m completely fascinated in fact. This has been one of the pleasant surprises.*

So besides that, what’s cooking?

First, I’ve relaunched my official homepage, tobiastinker.com – it was high time it had a bit of spit and polish, though there are still a few things to iron out. Head over and check it out – there’s two free albums in it for you! – and let me know if you have any comments, questions or suggestions.

Next up: Still Waters… Chill-out nights by candlelight! This is a concert series featuring my trio, Stillness3. If you haven’t heard that yet, please give it a listen – it’s really a lovely project. These concerts are mostly of interest to folks here in Berlin, but I can still give you a taste of what we’re up to: here’s a free download of a live track from last week’s concert.

My blog, ‘Cliffjump’, is in a transitional phase and will soon be relaunched in a substantially different form, and under a new name: Fearless Creativity. I have some cool stuff in the pipeline, including a new Manifesto!… Meanwhile, if you didn’t catch my post on toddler creativity last week, I thought it was a pretty good one…

Finally, for those of you following my Symmetricity project (’novel in words, sounds and images’)… I’m getting ready to ship the next installment next week, again in multiple formats including video. Read, listen or watch Chapter One now at symetrk.com … and yes, I promise to pick up the release pace a bit as we go along, it’s just been a bit of a crazy time.

And that’s about it (whew!)… As always, if you don’t want to get these you can unsubscribe using the link below. Thanks as always for your interest and support, have a fascinating day!

- tobias

… so, there you have it: my life in a nutshell. Did I mention that I’ve been living in a nutshell? Frightfully comfortable, I’m sure it will be the next big thing.

Right, I’m off to make some stuff happen. More soon…

tobias

* I think that like many creative people drawn to the arts, I have harbored a pretty strong prejudice against the whole business realm, and certainly against the reality of considering my career a business and myself an entrepreneur. On closer inspection, I am finding that most of the preconceptions informed this bias, including the assumption that everything associated with business is inherently boring and soulless in comparison to the deep spiritual well of artistic creation, are baseless. Trying to understand marketing and entrepreneurship is bringing me up against some powerful and, dare I say it, spiritual questions about myself and how I interact with the world. It’s actually fascinating and I wish I’d done this years ago. Ah, well, better late than never!

photo credit: brettneilson

This is a kind of ‘meta-post’: a blog post about blogging. Well that’s actually not particularly unique, as I’ve discovered that there are currently 341,672 blogs out there that are more or less exclusively about blogging. I have no great interest in joining their ranks, but I’ve been doing more than a little sniffing around these past couple of months and have a few observations. Basically they can be boiled down to this: blogging is at the core of online promotion, and anyone who is serious about it has to be on board one way or another.

The Music Success in Nine Weeks cousebook takes a very pragmatic approach to the topic. As per the previous chapter, Ariel starts with some very basic resources for getting up to speed on how the blogging world (I’m deliberately avoiding the overused non-word ‘blogosphere’ here – errr… oh well if you can’t beat ‘em…) works. She runs down some of the benefits to a musician of maintaining a basic blog, but doesn’t bog us down with too much detail on setting up WordPress sites and so on. As per the previous chapter, again, she recommends hiring it out.

This is doubtless a good idea for anyone who wants the benefits of a self-hosted platform (as opposed to Blogger.com and the like, which are fine as far as they go) without having to become a half-mad, half-blind mole creature in the process…which latter course is the one I have chosen.

I set up the database for this blog and, while I’m not tech-minded enough to write my own themes, I have gotten my fingers down and dirty in the CSS tweaking them and I have the stains to prove it. (Truth be told, setup is not that complicated for reasonably tech-savvy types and the tweaking just takes time and concentration). I’m just funny that way. I like to know how stuff works and I enjoy challenges. However, it’s not for everyone. Let’s move on…

Why bother?

Ariel gives us 9 good reasons to blog, but I will take it further. Anyone that is remotely interested in marketing anything online at this point simply needs to use a blog as the hub of their promotional activity. It’s not optional. And it’s not enough to write it and stick it out there and hope people will notice it among the other 9 million. They won’t. You need to evangelize your blog, market it and work on it and generally treat it like the centrepiece of your marketing strategy that it is.

Like Social Media, it cannot be ignored and it is almost worse than useless to do it poorly, so we need to figure out how to do it halfway decently without sacrificing our creative work in the process. Luckily, as mentioned previously, it’s easy to get great advice for free – bloggers LOVE to talk about blogging. It makes them feel important. Which they are! We are! Really!

I have embraced the idea of this blog-centric marketing strategy wholeheartedly. This blog is no longer just a quirky ‘lifestream’-style journal of what I’m up to (though there’s an element of that, for sure); I have begun to transition it into something more outreach-oriented, less about me.

Fearless Creativity is my subject, and these pages will soon be populated with some ‘cornerstone content’ (as the cool kids call it, a.k.a. ‘pillar content’) designed to deliver real value to people interested in finding ways to get past what Stephen Pressfield, in his fast-becoming-classic book ‘The War of Art’ has dubbed ‘The Resistance’. And there’s more in the pipeline, too. Watch this space!

Community

One thing that distinguishes the blogosphere (there it is again! that word!) from more traditional media is that it’s inherently a community. The ‘lifestream’ model of telling the world what you are doing every day is simply not going to draw much traffic unless you are already a celebrity and people want to know what you have for every meal. On the other hand, a blog is an ideal way to play a bigger part in the grand Conversation that the world is now having with itself in the online world.

I’ve jumped headlong into research on how to do this in a better, more effective way, using popular resources like Problogger and Copyblogger (among numerous others) as well as dug into some great ebooks (both paid and free) and online courses (ditto). I’ve begun to contribute to conversations at a number of others where like-minded people hang out.

It’s going quite well – I’ve been asked to guest-post (a major traffic- and community-building tactic used by, well, anyone that wants to do those things) on a fairly major blog in the creativity niche, and my post will be published there soon. I’ll be linking to it from here, never fear…

Sounds great, but… what about the music?

But here’s where Ariel’s book has made it clear that I need to do more: I have not been targeting blogs that will likely review my music. I need to do that more. I will say that I actually quite like the process and seem to be reasonably good at it… but I do need to focus more on music blogs with audiences that might be receptive to my work. So that’s the next plan… or at least one of the top 10 next plans.

I have not filled in my 50 Blog Targets yet, but I have begun to research and locate and even engage with them. Perhaps more importantly however, I have developed some powerful skills and understanding of the culture of blogging that I am confident will stand me in good stead as I begin to take part in the grand conversation that is the (wait for it…) Blogosphere.