An attempt to get Australian Artists off the Twitter Fence. How Twitter has worked for me.

3 Wise Monkeys masterclass in Melbourne

Greetings from the land of AUS! I have just wrapped up an incredible nationwide tour of this gorgeous country called The 3 Wise Monkeys and Ralph Murphy (hear No Evil), Tom Jackson (See No Evil) and I (Speak No Evil) met some amazing and inspiring artists as well as managers, producers and songwriters. We each delivered 6 hour master classes in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne & Adelaide.

My day: Speak No Evil, The Art of Promotion took everyone on a journey through the 5 critical elements of promotion and I spent a large part of the day on the 6 rooms of your Social Media House (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, Newsletter, and Pinterest). The main ah-ha moment I had was: Australian Musicians are not sold on Twitter. A majority of artists in all 5 cites were squirming in their seats at the mere mention of the word! Enter Broni, an artist who has been in the Cyber PR family for years to give you all a musicians perspective from the land down under! Thanks Broni for this insightful and straight-up useful and fabulous guest post. And thanks to APRA and all of the incredible sponsors who made me feel so welcome in my second favorite country on planet earth - x Ariel

---

This guest post was written by Broni - @bronibroni

Thanks to my heavily twitter based relationship with Ariel Hyatt (@cyberpr) I found myself (via a tweet) on the guest list for her talk in Melbourne for the 3 Wise Monkeys Tour (#3WM). This is certainly not the first time that twitter has proved its value to me and rewarded me for the time I put into being present, and being myself, on the platform. Ariel re-iterated and proved in the room something I guess I’d been aware of for a while. - Australian artists en masse seem allergic to twitter. So I’m putting my fingers to work today to try to convince those artists on the fence to give it a try. In the hopes that I might achieve some level of relevance with Australian artists I don’t intend to share statistics or hard data to sell you on using twitter. Instead, I’d like to share with you my top 4 personal twitter moments.

JJJ Play

For years, in bands, and then as a solo artist my band mates and I like many other Australian artists considered Triple J the Holy Grail. We spent money on PR and postage to have someone represent us in the offices of Triple J, have meetings with Kingsmill etc. As a solo artist specifically, this money and effort amounted to 2 whole spins on the radio that I’m aware of. I achieved the exact same result simply using Twitter, I tweeted @SarahHowells and @homeandhosed and put on some #twitter #charm. 2 Spins on the radio is still not huge - but this time it was for ZERO dollars and about 6 seconds of my life. If getting on triple J were still my daily goal, I’d be their best twitter #friend right now.

“A Packet of Tim Tams please”

I was invited to play a house show in Holland. (yes, via twitter) A week before I left the country, a follower from Holland asked me in 140 characters or less if I could bring her some Tim Tams to the house show. This was a great chance for me to build an even stronger connection with a fan and she brought me delicious Dutch treats in return.

Help me out

After many well crafted but quickly ignored emails in which I did my best to sell the idea of working with me to management companies and agents with a much bigger industry reach than I. 
I finally got what I wanted with a single tweet about 18 months ago and established a casual and very rewarding working relationship with someone I respect (who had in fact ignored a few of the aforementioned emails) and we still work together today.

Where in the world is Broni? San Diego!

Back in 2009 I had a dream to play in San Diego. 
I organised 20 gigs in 25 days via a series of tweets to San Diegan musicians I’d heard of from (you guessed it) twitter. In that first year, I didn’t talk to a single venue or big-shot booker. I started with the musicians. 
 

It went something like this

@bronibroni - “Hey @robdeez, I’m a musician from Australia… I’d love to play with you in September… any chance?”

@robdeez - “@bronibroni sure thing. I have a show at Lestats, you can open … ” etc.


That tweet got it all started. I’ve played in the US four times since, last year playing in 6 states on tour with @robdeez, @kennyeng and a few others. 
All 4 trips to the US predicated by a twitter conversation. These might not be YOUR idea of dreams coming true. But I hope my point is clear, Twitter is powerful. I have had many days made by a simple tweet from someone across the ocean that just perhaps likes my latest song and found it easy enough to shoot me a 3 second tweet to tell me. Twitter makes us casually approachable by a global audience.

To me, Facebook feels like I’m talking to an audience from the stage. People are there to listen to me, which is nice, but there isn’t a whole lot of back and forth going on. Twitter feels like I’m chatting to the audience at the bar after the show. They are sharing the whole night with me; they are even there when I get drunk. People go to Facebook to talk to their friends. They aren’t that into noise from me. People go to Twitter to discover. So I plan on being there for discovery multiple times a day. I’m not the most organized twitter user. I’m lazy with my lists and I tend to favourite more tweets than I should because I just like it when people want to talk to me. But what I do make sure of is that if people want to connect with me, by golly I’m going to get back to them with more than just a bland auto generated message from socialoomph.com. The key is to be you. Say anything. Have fun with hash tags I’m sure many people un-follow me because my jokes aren’t funny or they don’t care for my #moderndayrenditions. But that just makes the folks that stick around all the more special. Because they like me, for me. Not a version of me that is trying so hard to be likeable. So go on, and get tweeting. If you want to know more, why don’t you log into your seldom-used account and get the conversation started with me there. I hope I helped you on your Social Media journey.

#smile

Comments

[Neo Pitso]

I agree with Broni. When I first joined twitter and encouraged fellow Australian musos to join too they gave me puzzled looks. Anyway good article Broni!
Follow me on Twitter @TheOnlyNeo