The New York Times has an amazing story of how one man quit his job, and is using social networking to not only sustain himself, but create a thriving community around his music. The entire article is a revelation, and highly recommendated, but here are a few key take-aways:
- Social networks can be powerful tools to enhance your offline career.
- Making frequent posts to your website gives your audience a structure by which to form a relationship with you.
- An audience (readers, users, etc.) wants a closer relationship with experts. In this case, fans to a musician.
- The web can provide powerful data that upends traditional ways you do business, with huge success. For instance, instead of playing shows in big cities, he identifies small towns that has a cluster of fans, and books crowded shows in places he never would have dreamed.
- Building an audience can be more profitable than monetization when you first start your web venture.
- Direct access to your audience is not only possible now, but can be vastly more powerful than traditional channels.
I can’t recommend this article is enough!