Build a Community to Build a Music Business - What I Learned From Cliff Ravenscraft

 

For the past two years, I’ve been immersing myself in a totally new world, online and off.  My new online world has taken me to places I never knew existed. Meetups, Second Life, the Blogosphere, Twitter, and to PodCamps.  And I’ve learned some amazing things.  And I’ve met some wonderful people, many of whom are friends today.

At this year’s Podcamp NYC, I met the delightful Cliff Ravenscraft, and his energy, enthusiasm and kindness were nothing short of infectious. Cliff gave up his day job in the family insurance business and he now he makes a living completely on podcasting and consulting.  Cliff runs GSPN http://www.gspn.tv, which is a network of 17 Podcasts.  The main podcast is about the TV show, Lost. And he has tens of thousands of loyal listeners who tune into his podcasts regularly. Podcasting has changed the course of Cliff’s life completely since he’s become involved.  

Cliff and I have very little in common and in the real world we probably never would have met (He’s from Kentucky, for goodness sake! And I have never watched Lost) But all kidding aside, we share a very similar philosophy on the merits of social networking and why it’s so powerful.

He gave an inspiring talk at Podcamp NYC and what he said has been with me for weeks and I wanted to share it with you.  Here is what he spoke about.

How To Build a Community Online
Cliff spoke specifically about how to build an audience for a podcast but I believe that is VERY similar to building an audience around your music and yourself as an artist.

Core Purpose
Behind Cliff and GSPN is a core purpose:
To inspire, educate and be in community.  

From his core purpose, he does exactly that.  He could never have made such a popular podcast without his community of listeners.

If you do not have a core purpose it’s like trying to navigate an unfamiliar place without a map.  Your core purpose is the reason you make music… is it to inspire?  Make a difference?  To empower?  To connect?  To Help?  To Heal? Choose a verb that motivates you.

Then what is your desired outcome?
To connect?  To bring peace? To create community?  

Here’s mine for inspiration:
To support and empower visionaries to further their careers.

You Cannot Pay Anyone to Build Your Online Community
Your community and the connections that you make in it has to be a very authentic thing that comes out of a core purpose, like his, but people can be shown the answers and the avenues on how to build relationships.  I think you can pay someone to help you find the right people to connect with but in the end the true expression has to come from you.

Community Building is a Time Investment
Building a real community that supports you as an artist takes time, effort, and skills and you have to build it one person at a time. The more transparent you are and the more you share, the more people will be open to you Cliff says that when he shares himself and when he shows love to others, he appeals to people on another, deeper level.  This is key. Take the investment of time.

Listen to Your Community - It’s About Them; Not About You
This is critical – listen to your community. They have voices and they want to speak too.  Make it easy for them to speak to you. Leave a feedback number or ask they to post feedback on your Facebook forum (this saves having to answer individual emails). Invite feedback in every episode.  Include your e-mail address and respond to absolutely everyone that responds to you.  Read the e-mails in your podcast or share them on your blog, get people engaged.  

Cliff Recommends:
K7 - http://www.k7.net
J2 - http://www.j2.com
Talkshoe - http://www.talkshoe.com

Be Consistent
Be consistent in your communications. If you are releasing a podcast, writing a blog, or updating your Twitter account (or anything you’re doing in the new media space).
Also, communicate when you are going to be there - be regular and consistent about it, weekly or daily or monthly.

So, there you have it, amazing community building advice from Cliff of GSPN, someone who I never would have had the pleasure of meeting had he not come to his first trip to New York City.  

Cliff: It was a real pleasure to meet you and I was very, very touched by who you are in the world. Please keep playing huge!

The moral of the story is, people are out there with similar interests and we as humanity have a very deep need to connect with one another.  

What are you waiting for? Go make your connections.

Go Straight to the Fan!

 

A recent blog post by Bob Lefsetz echoes the direct “focus on fans” mantra I’ve been preaching for years. Here’s an excerpt that addresses the age-old need artists have to “get the word out there”:

“Realize the focus should not be on the media, but the fan. Just like the Internet rid the music business of the need to manufacture and ship, this same Net allows an act to forgo interacting with the media, to go straight to the fan. You must go straight to the fan.”

Here’s another gem I highly endorse:

“A Website is no longer just a repository of information, it’s the front door to your fan club. You may be a musician, but second to that, you’re running a club. You have to spread the word on your music, you have to create demand for your tour.”

That’s right. You’re no longer simply an artist. As Andrew pointed out so well here, you’re also a community builder, a party planner, and a social director all rolled into one.

-Bob

P.S. I’m not suggesting you should ignore the media. The real lesson here is that all of your marketing efforts should be for the sole purpose of attracting fans and building relationships with them.

It's kind of not ABOUT you

I went to a blogging conference in Chicago the other week. I learned a lot about the business of blogging - how to attract an audience, how to monetise your website (see all the ads all over Music Think Tank? No. Obviously.) and how to rank more highly on the Google searches. All really useful and interesting stuff for someone who does what I do. Oddly, there was almost nothing about how to write - but it wasn’t really that sort of conference.

However, I guess the one ‘takeaway’ point is that when you blog - and if you’re involved in marketing at all (hint: you are), then you should be blogging -  it’s important to remember that your blog’s not about you.

I mean - of course it’s about you - but it’s not about you. 

Click to read more ...

Aging with music

First of all, I feel I should apologise. I’ve kind of been like an absent parent with Music Think Tank recently, and it seems to have grown up an awful lot in my absence. Mostly I’ve been speaking about this kind of stuff in real life and doing a lot of writing and the background invisible work - but I’m back now, and like any parent that abandons his child for a period of time, I’m going to assuage my guilt by showering gifts - or at least blog posts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about music consumption recently, and the ways in which the music industries understand music consumption. It occurs to me that a lot of thought goes into the teen audience, and what will attract their attention.

Historically, this is good thinking. Teenagers and the popular music industry go hand in hand. Rock and Roll was at the birth of the teen phenomenon when the first wave of babyboomers wanted to distinguish themselves as something other than just slightly smaller and more youthful versions of their parents. Performers from Jerry Lee Lewis to Marilyn Manson have understood that the best way to appeal to the teen crowd is to at least alienate - if not terrify and mortally offend - their parents.

Click to read more ...

1,000 True Fans - Another Perspective

If you have not read Kevin Kelly’s Technium today - artist Robert Rich has a very interesting perspective on 1,000 True Fans.  Here’s a quote:

I don’t want to be a tadpole in a shrinking puddle. When the audience is so small, one consequence of specialization is extinction. I’ll try to explain.

Evolutionary biology shows us one metaphor for this trap of stylistic boundaries, in terms of species diversity and inbreeding (ref. E.O. Wilson). When a species sub-population becomes isolated, its traits start to diverge from the larger group to eventually form a new species. Yet under these conditions of isolation, genetic diversity can decrease and the new environmentally specialized species becomes more easily threatened by environmental changes. The larger the population, the less risk it faces of inbreeding. If that population stays connected to the main group of its species, it has the least chance of over-specialization and the most chance for survival in multiple environments.

This metaphor becomes relevant to Artists and True Fans because our culture can get obsessed with ideas of style and demographic. When an artist relies on such intense personal commitment from such a small population, it’s like an animal that relies solely upon the fruit of one tree to survive. This is a recipe for extinction. Distinctions between demographics resemble mountain ranges set up to divide one population from another. I prefer a world where no barriers exist between audiences as they define themselves and the art they love. I want a world of mutts and cross-polinators.  I would feel more comfortable if I thought I had a broader base of people interested in my work, not just preaching to the choir. 

Ask the readers: What's important?

One of my main ideas behind setting up Music Think Tank - apart from simply to provide a community blog for some of my favourite writers and thinkers in the area of online music business - was to create a space where these people could come together and discuss - perhaps even attempt to solve - some of the biggest issues in digital and online music composition, production, promotion, distribution and consumption.

We’d like to have a go at some of the little ones along the way too. 

In order for us to do that, we need to know what the burning questions are in your mind. We’re building something in the back laboratory right now that will allow you to post your specific questions, so that we can put our minds to work and see if we can generate solutions that you can take and apply to your individual, specific circumstances.

But for now, we’re interested in hearing what your biggest concerns are. This is the big picture stuff. Is it copyright? Is it audio fidelity? Is it information overload? Getting a break?

Hit the comments, and let us know: what are The Issues That Matter?

Give us the things to think about, and we in the Think Tank will put our Thinking Caps on.