# I am at an impasse.



## EastWest Lurker (Jan 20, 2013)

I joined Twitter and every day I seem to have new followers, many of whom are people I admire. But I don't really have any interest in tweeting or reading others' tweets, most of which seem trivial.

Also, I am on Linkedin and gets tons of requests to be linked, most of which I accept, and a lot of people endorse me for skills and expertise. which is very flattering. But I have no idea how to turn this into paying work.

Suggestions?


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## dgburns (Jan 20, 2013)

We were talking about this at work the other day.Seems like Linkedin does indeed seem to work for people in other industries,but I'm not convinced it does for those in ours.Maybe more so on the production side of the biz...?


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## mverta (Jan 20, 2013)

I recently left Facebook, because it's retarded. People sign up to be your "friends" because they want to hear what you have to say (not really, but still), and then the Facebook algorithm corrupts the communication so that only 12-15% of your friends actually see what they signed up to see. Facebook does this so your News Feed isn't cluttered with things you actually want to see, but instead has plenty of room for ads and sponsored posts and bullcrap.

At least Twitter, on the other hand, stays the fuck out of the conversation. But they only give you 140 characters to say anything with, brevity being the soul of those who can't handle depth or substance, so it's mostly just a steady stream of banal consciousness, which ironically makes a pretty good case for a Facebook censoring algorithm.

LinkedIn is a service which sends you emails you eventually click on just to make them go away.


My work originates from my website, this forum, and 20+ years of friendships; all places where I can speak/demonstrate/articulate at length what I do. With a solid foundational base, others can then forward links ("Check out this tutorial on VI controllers!") on their Twitters or whatever, and eventually the line of communication returns to me, but the analytics on my web presence are brutally clear about the fact that having a minimum number of comprehensive repositories for my work is best for returning more work.


_Mike


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## George Caplan (Jan 20, 2013)

not much help to jay but to say facebook is retarded is giving it the benefit of the doubt. in my line of business you just wouldnt even consider that or twitter. just the consideration of security would be issue enough but the kind of business im in would completely preclude facebook.


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## Mike Greene (Jan 20, 2013)

Funny you should start this thread today, because my wife has just taken it upon herself to make my Realitone Facebook page a little more relevant. We'll see how that works. (Make her happy and give me a "Like!")

I'm the last guy to take advice from with this, because I don't really understand it very well, but I could see Linked In being useful for a composer. With my Linked In account, almost all my friends (or whatever they're called) are former clients and their friends. So I imagine this at least keeps me on their mind, since they'll see the occasional _"Mike Greene and Bozo are now linked"_ notification. That could be just enough to remind them I exist and maybe get them to call me instead of using the needledrop they were about to use on their next gig.

This hasn't happened yet, mind you.

As far as getting _new_ clients, I don't see how that could happen through Facebook or even Linked In. I'd have a hard time believing anyone would see some composer on Linked In and call that guy, rather than asking their friends for recommendations. But like I said, I'm really ignorant about this stuff, so I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong about that.


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## Arbee (Jan 20, 2013)

Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc etc are IMHO 95% hype and 5% substance - designed mainly to give a voice, presence and ego stroking to people who don't actually don't have much to say. Useful? Yes, but not nearly as useful professionally as the hype would have you believe. 

My 2c

.


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## Guy Bacos (Jan 20, 2013)

For me FB has been quite beneficial, I made a lot of professional contacts though it, in fact it's an important contact source in my case. It's no different than any other communicative tool. It's up to you to use it wisely. I'm not interested in the gossip side, or to write on my wall: "I'm heading for the beach, Sue, here's my phone number... Meet me there in 5!" That's the "Get a Life" other side of FB.


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## synergy543 (Jan 20, 2013)

mverta @ Sun Jan 20 said:


> I recently left Facebook, because it's retarded. People sign up to be your "friends" because they want to hear what you have to say (not really, but still), and then the Facebook algorithm corrupts the communication so that only 12-15% of your friends actually see what they signed up to see. Facebook does this so your News Feed isn't cluttered with things you actually want to see, but instead has plenty of room for ads and sponsored posts and bullcrap.


Mike, I found Facebook useful for keeping up with your latest work and podcasts. I don't find this to be the case with Twitter. Plus its easy to link from one person to the next with Facebook (I use the chat links on the right). So despite Facebooks flaws, it seemed to serve a semi-useful purpose. Although I agree that all these social media services are 95% hype and fluff, but its the little gems and info postings that are useful.


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## Jerome Vonhogen (Jan 20, 2013)

Hi Jay,

What you need is a good book, like this one:
"Crush It!", by Gary Vaynerchuk (HarperCollins Publishers, New York 2009).

Gary Vaynerchuk is a well-known 'wine guru' who has turned his passion for wines into a successful business, using nothing more than social networking tools.

The book is not the usual motivational "you can be a millionair"-crap, but is instead written to inspire those who want to cash in on their passion, and build a profitable, sustainable social-media-driven business without having to spend a huge amount of money just to get started. It's easy to read (you should be able to read it in about an hour) and has tons of fresh ideas on how to develop a personal brand using social media, how to monetize online presence, how to design an effective online marketing strategy, etc.

You may still find a copy of the book on Amazon, or perhaps even in your local bookstore. I think it's worth reading. I never thought I would be influenced by a book like this, but after reading it recently, I finally decided it was time for me to join Facebook, depite the fact that I still don't trust the company's CEO, Mark Z. :evil: 

I hope this helps. :wink: 

- Jerome Vonhögen


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## Arbee (Jan 20, 2013)

Jerome, your post reminds me of an interesting point about online business and online presence in general.

It's my view that in general business, if you manage your online presence well, you are highly likely to succeed.

In artistic endeavours however, as soon as you become "corporate" you lose some of the apparent "mysitique" that is perhaps expected. In this context, an overactive online presence might be a hinderance rather than a help. Interested in people's thought on this. As a buyer of music for example, I pay no attention to the reams of bio and other background information, if I like what I hear I buy it - that simple. So, the only part that works is simply bringing it to my attention, basic publicity.

.


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## mverta (Jan 20, 2013)

synergy543 @ Sun Jan 20 said:


> mverta @ Sun Jan 20 said:
> 
> 
> > I recently left Facebook, because it's retarded. People sign up to be your "friends" because they want to hear what you have to say (not really, but still), and then the Facebook algorithm corrupts the communication so that only 12-15% of your friends actually see what they signed up to see. Facebook does this so your News Feed isn't cluttered with things you actually want to see, but instead has plenty of room for ads and sponsored posts and bullcrap.
> ...



Jay asked about procuring new work. I'm not going to be getting any from Facebook, directly or indirectly. And as for what you got out of my posting there, clearly you have other ways of getting the same info. In fact, I rarely updated Facebook, so I'd say the other ways were already more effective 

_Mike


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## R.Cato (Jan 21, 2013)

Though there's quite some trueness behind the statements about that topic, I feel I have to point out that many composers I've seen on facebook seem to not know what a social media presence is for.
Of course everyone cares about getting paid jobs or at least should as a composer. And yes facebook can lead to some opportunities, but it's not its main function. I for myself use facebook to generate contacts and discuss topics, which I can't seriously talk about sometimes in real life and yes there are quite a bit of such themes.
I don't ask every single contact if he or she has a job for me or knows someone who could, I just let it happen. Unfortunately most people don't know that I write music, so I post some pics, updates etc. which show what I am doing, connect my facebook profile to my soundcloud...
Well that would be my answer to Jay's original question.

@mverta: People send you friend requests, because they want to hear what you have to say. Yes you're right, but there's the problem. Everyone complains about facebook disrating the term "friend", yes facebook does that, but why? Because people are too stupid to read! If someone wants to know what you have to say, there's a better way called subscription. Most people don't use it, although it's definitely the better way and it doesn't suffer from the problems a friendship has on facebook. If you accept every friend request out there, it decreases the actual number of people you're able to reach, because of the reasons you've already said. The only problem left is, that you can't expect people to read things...the dilemma.


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## Markus S (Jan 21, 2013)

LinkedIn can indeed work for professional contact, but as said before, it works only in other domains. I know people who are regularly contacted for job opportunities, but it never happened to me as a composer. It allows me mainly to stay in contact with people, even after they change the company they work for and change email addresses. But on my linkedin profile are almost exclusively people I met in real life.

Facebook is another animal. I suppose it is done for your real friends. To share updates, photos and information. A friend of mine has over 5k friends and 50 requests a day. He is a painter and it never really brought deals in, I believe these friends are mainly people looking to auto promote themselves, so it's a bit of a non sense situation (everyone self promoting with everyone, no one has a deal to offer).

So, go out make friends, or contacts.. just kidding, let's not start again.


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## TheUnfinished (Jan 21, 2013)

I'm actually currently taking a break from Facebook. I got tired of having several minor arguments with people who didn't even disagree with me, simply because I had the temerity to write my own opinion on subjects on my wall.

However, having said that, I have developed a number of very good friendships in the music industry via Facebook, and also got a few decent jobs too. 

It's just networking. People are always banging on about having contacts to get work. Well, I have made contacts on Facebook and therefore have also got work from it. I have had conversations with people I could only have dreamt of having conversations with if it had not been for social media.

Any avenue of communication is what you make of it. It may not be suitable for you or you might even just pure suck at using it properly. But I have Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Skype, use forums and occasionally I even meet people face to face over a pint or a coffee. They all work for me in different ways, and without them I would not be working full-time in music today.


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## jamwerks (Jan 21, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sun Jan 20 said:


> But I have no idea how to turn this into paying work.



Paying work, to do what exactly?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 21, 2013)

Compose or orchestrate or conduct or help with Logic Pro or play piano or sing.

I would consider being a sexual surrogate to a pretty woman but my wife might have a problem with it


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## jamwerks (Jan 21, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> Compose or orchestrate or conduct or help with Logic Pro or play piano or sing.



Seeing as how you know tons (seemingly) of folks in L.A., I'm not sure why you'd expect business to come from "friends" on FB.

Use the phone & email, and let all your local buddies know that you want some work !!

Edit: and if I were you, and wanted writing and orchestrating gigs, I'd get out of the Logic, and internet circles, and get to writing & arranging all day.


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 21, 2013)

jamwerks @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Mon Jan 21 said:
> 
> 
> > Compose or orchestrate or conduct or help with Logic Pro or play piano or sing.
> ...



I know all that, but not everyone that needs what I can do necessarily lives in LA. so I thought Linkedin (more than FB) _might_ be a way to outreach but it seems that, as I suspected, nobody in our fields of endeavor is finding that to be true.

I just wanted to make sure I was not missing something about it.


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## christianhowes (Jan 21, 2013)

To me Social Media sites only are useful if you have a strong website to back them up. When you can point friends/followers to a post or page on your website it creates much more of an impression.

For instance, the other day we received word that an album our string team had played on was selling on iTunes, and that the band used some of our players for a live performance that was professionally video and audio recorded. Rather than just posting the video on Facebook, I wrote a short blog post (which can be found here http://christianhowes.com/2013/01/18/with-lions-equipo-album/ shameless plug) Then posted the link to the post on fb, twitter, ect... That way people can then have easy access to our reel, past clients and other infromation they might want to know about what we do.

Specifically talking about Facebook, I think it is important to have a "profile" (what you use to talk to family and friends) and a "page" (a place where you show off your work and connect with people in the industry.


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## midphase (Jan 21, 2013)

I wish VI Control had "like" buttons!

To me Facebook is a good way to keep tabs on what friends of mine are up to. It's also a way to do research.

For instance, if a FB friend of mine posts how excited he is to be in preproduction for a new film, it's a good opportunity to remind him that I'm available if he needs me. 

Another example of how I use it is if I hear of some interesting film that I'd like to be part of, I'll search the director and producer's FB page and see if we might have any personal connections. Linkedin can work for this too, but I actually find Linkedin to be pretty unintuitive. What Linkedin can help with however is to get some contact info.

All this in conjunction with IMDBpro can offer a great deal of connecting power in the way of info...however getting the job is a whole other story and I must admit that my 'hit" ratio when doing this kind of "cold contacting" isn't anything to write home about.

Regarding Twitter, I find it pretty useless although I do have my FB and Twitter accounts linked just in case I'm wrong. IMHO, Twitter should be a receiving device and not a broadcasting one for 99.999% of the users. What I mean is that if you are a celebrity, particularly a comedian who cranks out great quips after quips (essentially an ongoing 24/7 virtual stand up routine) then I can see the appeal in following such a tweet. Also if you're a journalist and you need to absolutely be in touch up to the second with what others are newsing about...then Twitter can be useful as well.

Other than that, I refuse to believe that anyone deep down gives two craps about reading about what average people are having for lunch, or that joe-composer is stepping into his studio for a great composing day.


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## RiffWraith (Jan 21, 2013)

Kays - how does IMDB pro help, where IMDB reg can't? Not that IMDB reg really does help anyway, but....


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 21, 2013)

And I just received ANOTHER Linkedin endorsement


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## Mike Greene (Jan 21, 2013)

Kays, those are good ideas.


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## Guy Rowland (Jan 21, 2013)

midphase @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> I wish VI Control had "like" buttons!
> 
> To me Facebook is a good way to keep tabs on what friends of mine are up to. It's also a way to do research.
> 
> ...



like


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## ThomasL (Jan 21, 2013)

midphase @ 2013-01-21 said:


> I wish VI Control had "like" buttons!
> 
> To me Facebook is a good way to keep tabs on what friends of mine are up to. It's also a way to do research.
> 
> ...



Great stuff, could be taken directly out of Music 3.0 (or should I say that it could have been a chapter in the book) by Bobby Owsinski. Recommended reading. More info here: http://music3point0.blogspot.com


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 21, 2013)

I use Facebook to read about how great a bowel movement someone I've never met had, and also to argue about politics (and in very few cases to learn something about world affairs). It's for when I need a break.

Twitter is ridiculous and I only go on rarely, but I'm subscribed to interesting talking heads who post links to interesting articles.


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## midphase (Jan 21, 2013)

RiffWraith @ Mon Jan 21 said:


> Kays - how does IMDB pro help, where IMDB reg can't? Not that IMDB reg really does help anyway, but....



Sometimes (big "sometimes") you can get direct e-mails of a director or producer from IMDB Pro.

There is also another IMDB Pro feature that allows you to see any "connections" between you and a person of interest. For instance that the art director for a film you scored was also art director for this other film produced by so and so.


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## TheUnfinished (Jan 23, 2013)

So, here's one of the reasons I like Facebook.

I'm a massive fan of a particular television show, having recently enjoyed it on the good old BBC. This week I discovered its soundtrack (which I really enjoyed) on Amazon and downloaded it.

Yesterday I put up a little artwork teaser on my Facebook page for upcoming Omnisphere soundset. Within a few minutes the composer of the television programme's soundtrack 'liked' the artwork. So, I got in touch with him and am now having a conversation with him.

To me, that's cool.


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## Marius Masalar (Jan 23, 2013)

Some thoughts...

Jay, if you have no interest in either writing nor reading tweets, then it would seem you have no interest in being on Twitter in the first place — which is perfectly fine, so why force it?

It might be that part of your frustration with these social networking services is that you're going into them with the wrong expectations: they do not — could not possibly — bring you work in the direct manner you're describing. The emphasis is on the "social", not the networking. This can be interpreted as them being useless.

I always advocate making technology work for you rather than using something just for the sake of it, and to that end in some cases the reality is that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. simply do not have a place in the day-to-day business operations of creative professionals. Rule of thumb: if all it's doing is confusing and pissing you off, then you either a) don't get it, or b) don't need it.

By way of example, I'll describe some of my uses for the three you've mentioned.

Twitter is my window into the community. It's a less insular VI-C with more immediacy, visibility, and influence. I have a Twitter list that brings me global news, one for music and gear news, and my main feed consists of a fascinating blend of game developers, directors, composers, celebrities, comedians, and friends.

As much as we all know composing is SRS BSNS, it's nice to wander into the always-open, everything-goes banter bar of Twitter now and then and remember that even the big guys (some of whom are hilarious) struggle with the same annoyances that we small fry do.

Great, but nothing concrete, you're thinking. Some examples of experiences Twitter has brought me that would not have been possible otherwise (this is a long list so I'll keep it to the past few months only):

- tweeting about a problem with a plugin, having that retweeted, having the developer catch wind of it and invite me to their beta team to help them
- being discovered by a local game development studio that I'd never heard of, being asked to score their new game
- participating in a conversation with two of my most admired game developers (you may have seen them in a film) about game audio and how annoying composers are
- having many of my past clients retweet the occasional interesting news I have, helping me spread the word to thousands more people than I could have done on my own; a favour I always reciprocate
- participating in a competition to produce fan art for a game, resulting in more than 10,000 SoundCloud plays, coverage on Kotaku, personal messages from tens of admired developers, a new friendship with the original artist for the game, and new opportunities with the developer

To some, those might be uninteresting. To me, they were tremendously valuable, and I'm grateful to Twitter for that. It's not a perfect service, but I wouldn't be where I am today professionally if not for it. 

My point being not that it must be useful for everyone, but that it can be genuinely valuable for some — and that it is certainly possible for it to bring you paying work, even if not as directly as some other means.

Facebook I use to keep in touch with friends. Some of those friends are composers, and that's great, but it's not a professional tool for me. I've gotten work through Facebook many times, but it's been because people thought it the most convenient way of contacting me (friends of friends, etc.) rather than any effort on my part. Oh, and if people post nothing but stupid banalities and game requests, I remove them. Quick and easy. Your Facebook feed is only as compelling as the company you keep.

LinkedIn is a thing I set up, revise periodically, and then ignore. Why do I maintain it? Because most clients that I work with will visit my site and then want to look me up on LinkedIn as well to check for endorsements, comments, etc. It's a trustworthy and easily accessible due diligence type of verification hub for them, and I'm only too happy to keep it active for that reason alone.

Ultimately if you already have solid connections and ongoing work, social networking is just a new way to connect you to your peers, fans, and community. If you don't want or need yet another means to do that though, then don't waste your time and don't feel bad about abstaining. Nothing can be all things to all people, after all.

Anyway, forgive the rant, but hopefully another perspective will help you find where you stand on the matter.


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 23, 2013)

Thanks for your insight, Marius. I am more bemused than frustrated.

Facebook/Twitter actually do work as i would expect and I probably should have left them out,

Linkedin, OTOH, it seems to me, implies that it s a professional networking tool, with the tantalizing prospect that if people "endorse" you for your skills, it might bring you some work and for some fields, apparently it does. But not so much for creative workers.


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## nikolas (Jan 23, 2013)

I just wanted to say that I use facebook to track people down, that otherwise I wouldn't have a chance...

In facebook people most usually use their names, so it's much easier to find them and approach them (especially if you have some 100 common friends or so (which for me means they are musicians)).


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