NPMT: Day Two: Notes From The Trenches

 Rawking   

I totally flaked out on seeing bands last night. But I did get here early and was glad to be able to check out Avi Buffalo (representing LBC!) who was pretty awesome. Also happy to speak to Pyles about yesterday’s music review session and Tony from SubPop for a bit. I’ve decided I am going to live blog the Social Networking Panel, so these updates will be frequent throughout their panel. I’ll also pull in tweets as needed so you can get some reactions as they are happening.

So the formalities:
Panel: Social Media & Music Online: Making the Internet Work for You
Panelists:Mat Diablo (91X/Slacker.com), Rob Marlbrough (webwized.com/robdowntown.com), Dave Brown (Holiday Matinee PR), Jordan Glazier (eventful.com) and Jason Fisher (Epitaph Records), Chris Cantore (Online Media Director, Street Scene)
Quoteable:
“There is no excuse for you to suck on twitter” - Dave Brown
What You Missed:
1.46 pm: Diablo and Marlbrough are already here - Mat has his laptop up and is drinking a beer. Cantore came by to chat with me which was nice.
1.57 pm: Owen from FM 94/9 just came in.
1.59 pm: session is about to start and the crowd is still sparse.
2.00 pm: Bart introduces the panel.
2.03 pm; Mat takes over and lets us know that they are not going to talk about Social Media in the abstract.
2.09 pm: Cantore is talking about his new project - The Green Room.
2.10 pm: Intros are over. Diablo is steering the convo to twitter.
2.14 pm: Dave Brown with the first great quote of the panel. Cantore tells everyone that you will lose followers and piss people off.
2.20 pm: Cantore is emphasizing how to be interactive and how to build a presence and “your brand”.
2.22 pm: Fisher (from Epitaph) tells us social media has leveled the playing field. He talks about the evolution of twitter and how it has transformed into a way to broadcast information. Twitter has a 6x greater click through rate than a myspace bulletin.
2.26 pm: Brown gives a slew of options a band can use in lieu of myspace.
2.27 pm: Q & A starts. Blogs to look at for tech info. Mashable.com is mentioned.
2.28 pm: Rosey and I get a shoutout from Cantore.
2.30 pm: Fisher emphasizes that you have to keep your fans engaged. He also tells everyone that your photo is more important that your music. Controversial!
2.32 pm: Cantore emphasizes that you need to keep your content updated. (side note: this is true, as a person who reads blogs, there is no reason to go back to a site unless there is new content. the most successful blogs have timely updates.)
2.35 pm: Follow counts? Do they make a difference? Quality over quantity is the rule.
2.38 pm: Downtown Rob talks about being engaged with your followers.
2.39 pm: Some tweets during the panel:
@MyMelodie Love that theres a Social Media panel @ music fest! RT @DowntownRob I uploaded YouTube video Social Media Panel at #NPMT http://bit.ly/RsaUj
@auroraawakes @holidaymatinee just want to say I’m enjoying your advice and opinion on the social media panel.
2.41 pm: How to monetize? Some guys is giving a business plan...blah blah blah.
2.43 pm: This lady who has been asking wack questions in every panel I’ve attended is asking another wack question.
2.45 pm: Facebook does not have as much functionality for musicians but now is the time to get familiar with it.
2.47 pm: Next question - you tube. How do you get people to look at your you tube vids? Downtown Rob says to use it as a storage place - send your links via your social networks.
2.48 pm: Tumblr is mentioned - free resources for bands are good.
2.54 pm: Fisher says that email is dead, collect phone numbers instead.
2.57 pm: Panel is over. Woo hoo.

K, that’s it for me today. Gonna see some bands now!