Huddle Ups and Womb Rooms: A little help from friends
When I speak about marketing I first focus on emotional and psychological preparation (ie spiritual, yeah I said it). A lot of times we go to marketing workshops or watch a number of youtube videos that say do this or try this. Its like a pitch man’s paradise. But an action is nothing without a plan. And a plan is worthless to an artist who doesn’t have a sense of her/his potential, strengths and weaknesses. So most of my advice is what I call Soul Research and focuses of making real what seems intangible; your career.
Another important and often overlooked aspect to marketing oneself is the use of time. A category I refer to as the Tic Toc Box. Time management or lack of it is a one way ticket to frustration or even worse procrastination; then ya hands start to sweat and you drop the f*cking ball (let’s remain real about it). If you don’t respect your action plan enough to a lot sensible and organized time to do it then you have wasted most of your time and sweat. Sweat made running marathons around the left side of your brain. And any artist that spends too much time on the left side looses touch with their right. Proven fact (ok, I heard it somewhere) that your right brain is what makes you an artist and your left handles the business. So both sides are necessary to develop and sustain a career, but your right brain has to be prioritized (time wise) in order to simply create art. So don’t spend most of your time online draining your right brain of creative energy because you don’t know how to manage time in your left.
I am big on learning how to streamline and consolidate your actions. There are tools to help us streamline updates on facebook, twitter, etc like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. But then there are the tools that are made of flesh, laughs and love. They come in the form of friends. I’m referring to real life friends, not vague facebook, myspace or I kind of recognize you so I’ll accept your request kinda friends. I’m talking about your inner circle, longtime, my peoples, my dogs, take a bullet for ya (or at least help you run) kinda friends. Because these are the people you would invite in your home to burn some midnight oil with. So I want to write about a tic toc tool you can use that I call a Womb Room or Huddle Ups.
I’ve heard womb sessions referred to as war rooms but we are not making war, we are creating a career for someone we love and respect. So the Womb Room it is, but for those who cannot relate to the word “womb” then you have the alternative name “Huddle Ups”. That’s what they do in football right? Ok, we are all good on a name, then let’s get to working towards the same goal.
So say in your marketing you have a single that you want people to listen, hopefully like and then take action. These actions can be befriending you or following you on twitter or buying that single on itunes. You have done some initial research and have a good idea of what niche marketing either you or your song fit into. But part of locking in this niche market is reaching out into the ocean floor, womb, football field that is the internet and netting them in. This is a daunting idea just thinking about sitting in front of a computer and following and befriending and direct facebooking/twittering and commenting or submitting to blogs etc. But let’s focus on one task at a time:
Let’s say you have a link that leads folks to listen to your single. With ONE CLICK someone is brought ota page where they can listen to your music and immediately buy it. A good site for this one page experience, would be a bandcamp.com . If the single is promotional then I would suggest Swift.fm or Song.ly where folks can retweet the song (Song.ly also provides a link to buy it as well). So instead of tediously going through your friends and your friends friends asking each one to listen and hopefully buy this single you have a group of friends cut the work in half.
Call up 6 to a dozen of you actual friends who have a decent amount of friends on facebook, Twitter or some other social network. Invite them over for snacks or make it a potluck. Turn your home into a cafe. Have a friend spin some music r just put on a CD. Its a work party but everyone is working for you; at least for just a few hours. Within these hours they are writing their friends individually. Making each letter unique to that friend. Keep the letter short and sweet but in it they encourage folks to check out your music or project etc and why they would like it? Most likely your friends have mutual friends and those friends will get several differently written letters from different people talking about your music/project. This creates buzz when people get news from more than one source. Especially when the news is delivered by a trusted source.
When trying this, I have a few DON’TS when it comes to friends!
DO NOT use a template letter. It will undermine your project and some of your friends with their friends. this is why it is a party because people are writing short distinct letters. The party helps with the creative juices.
DO NOT abuse the Womb. Use it at crucial moments in your marketing plan. Like when your single debuts on Itunes. OR your play is in it last stretch of promotion before opening night. OR your film is going to screen at an important festival in your town. If you try this more than once a month you will again undermine your efforts and of course wear your real friends out.
DO NOT offer wine, liquor or other intoxicants at this party. Very little work will get done. Instead offer gourmet coffee, good-non-itis-causing food.
DO NOT forget to thank your friends in a very public way. Ie. In the program of your event, on your site, call them all up personally etc.
So in just one evening of fun and creativity you get a week or more worth of work done and it gets done more effectively and more authentically.
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