Artists: What NOT Do On Social Networking Sites

I must apologize from my straying away from something that was once so important to me - life has a way of pulling you away and distracting you with other accomplishments and the little things are overlooked; Music Marketing 101 has been overlooked! My little blog may not be much but many of the people I have featured as an "Artist To Watch" were featured here first, including The New Boyz, Chris Classic, WISH, Producer Dawaun Parker (Longtime Dr. Dre Production Team Member @DawaunParker Readies EP 10/20/10) Bertell and Kevin Ross. Lately I've sorta turned the blog into a Diggy Simmons blog without even knowing, lol!

Tonight I was inspired to write a post on Music Marketing and Social Networking - What Artists Should NOT Do....A friend reached out to me with some tips and not to share his complete idea, I just want to point out things I would never suggest an artist does while trying to networking with persons on social networking sites.

Facebook

Personal Messages to friends: This is not suggested. Although your personal friends should be your biggest supporters if life were perfect, truth is, some of them have NO interest in what you are doing. It's not anything personal, it could be them not having the time to really sit back and listen to everything or just simply not interested for their own personal reasons. What then happens is, you're sending them all of these messages and they're getting alerts on FB, which some may use just to log in here and there and not how you use it, and they're annoyed by you - they consider you a pest. Stick to the Fan Page. Sending one message inviting them to join the Fan Page is okay. Be sure to never assume that they saw your status updates because again, not everyone uses FB as you do and newsfeeds are not always read. I repeat ONE MESSAGE alerting them of your Fan Page is fine. If they don't join, they just don't join. They possibly do not care to have the messages and alerts that come along with being supportive - it doesn't mean they do not care.

Daily Status updates and encourage friends to do the same - Encourage NOT harass!

Twitter

DM people - NO! This leaves for an awkward situation. You're corning and pressuring them to support. They may have possibly overlooked a tweet or two about your new project but as much as we like to think people sit on twitter all day and read EVERY tweet on their timeline, its not possible (even for the Mayor *smiles*). Contacting people and being social/casual works best. Which leads me right into the next thing on the list.....

@ People - DO NOT SPAM THE HELL OUT OF PEOPLE! Your timeline should NOT read a page full of tweets with you "mentioning" people and your link following. Starting up a conversation that leads into you sharing your music is the best option. You'll walk away from the conversation with at least "I'll check it later".

Encourage people to RT - Encourage NOT harass!

Hopefully the tips will help out. For reference of other postings and tips: MusicMarketing 101: Building The Right Fan Base - Interviews - Tips to Reach New Fans - Networking 101 - **Five Things NOT to do** - Digital Distribution - So You Want to Get on Radio - Copyright Your Work!! - Professionalism: Bloggers vs Artists