Musician’s Guide to Automating Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, oh my! Nobody should have to keep up with it all. Some people look at Twitter, some people are just on Facebook, some just text, some use YouTube, some only talk face to face. But they all want to know when you’re playing. How do you get the word to all these places without having to update each thing individually?
For instance, I’d like to put my shows into one place, and then have that automatically propogate to my website, blog, twitter, myspace, and FB both in calendar format and as an update on the date I perform. I can never remember to put it on FB. Currently I do this through Artist Data, but am open to suggestions. Artistdata.com
If I put a video up on YouTube, I’d like to alert the FB and Twitter, but not duplicate. If I put a new song on Soundcloud, I’d like people on my Twitter and FB to know that it’s there, but not have to update each individually. There are a lot of services that want to help you with it, but nobody does it all; you really just have to set it up yourself. This is not advocating farming out your twitter! Like I said, this is just designed to make it easier to keep up with it all, it’s not supposed to take the place of real human interaction, etc. There are some who would say that the auto updates make your profile look spammy. I don’t have access to FB and Twitter during the day, so it’s nice to be able to let Artistdata do it for me. There is a certain amount of balance to consider. The automation is mostly for the little stuff – like blog updates, shows added, new songs added, new videos, etc. Just stuff I wouldn’t want o have to repost everywhere.
Basically, have it all feed into Twitter, then have Twitter feed everything else, so it doesn’t get duplicated. Notice you can still add stuff to your Soundcloud, or Tumblr, or Myspace, or FB, and then it will all automatically go to everywhere else. Personally I would like to be able to update my FB but not have that go to Twitter. FB is personal, Twitter is more industry oriented. You just have to go into the settings for each service to do this.
UPDATE: Another option I just discovered: PING.FM
You can update all your social networks at once with this. However, it’s not really geared toward musicians. No soundcloud, artistdata, reverbnation, etc. So I still recommend going the old fashioned way and having it all go through Twitter.
What do you think? Comment below! How do you manage your social media?
