the dead record

In today’s fast-moving, digital society keeping completely on top of your online presence is absolutely vital to your success.  This series of posts discusses how you can do just that and provides tips and advice on all aspects of your online image management, whether you’re in a band or a business.

In the last post in the serious I talked about how to manage your email list, a vital tool of your online promotion but now we move onto something a little different. The very first post of this series talked about using social networks effectively to begin your online promotion which is an important part of things. Today we talk about professional networking.

This is a shorter post than others in the series but no less important. It is split into two parts, online and offline.

Online

Now it might seem a little counter-intuitive to talk about online professional networking as we see the Internet as mainly social but if you want to get business online, you have to look the business and it takes a little bit of thinking. Here are some tips and resources you can use.

• Make a professional email signature. Include your phone number, email address, mailing address and perhaps a memorable tag line.
• Use LinkedIn to network with professionals in your industry. Make connections, join groups and get introduced to business leads by personal referral instead of cold calling.
• Write properly. Simple as that. A comment on some YouTube video reading “wow man luv ur trak wanna managa? WB” doesn’t exactly show you in the best light.
• Another great website for spotting and following up opportunities is UK Music Jobs.
• Keep stuff consistent! Whatever you send to people, invoices, press releases, information requests, emails, whatever it is, keep it consistent. Make sure it is from the same person unless you introduce them to others in your organisation and address them with the same tones each time.

Offline

When you actively network you have to make sure you’re not making contacts just for the fun of it, you need to ensure that the people you are talking with can actually do something for you otherwise you’re wasting your time.

That’s not all the time of course! Don’t not talk to anybody at a gig or a party because they can’t give you business, I’m talking about the times when you are proactively attempting to make contacts that will benefit you and/or your business. And you may need to step out of your comfort zone to get them.

Lets take an example. Say you are a graphic designer and would like to get involved with a bunch of bands, labels and music industry people in order to carry out their work. You can do graphics for merchandise, album covers or websites and you are good at what you do. The trick is getting these people to find out about you.

So, get some smart clothes on (yes I know its the creative industry and you want your individuality and all that but if you don’t look the part, nobody will believe you are the part. Take your image out of the equation by wearing something reasonable and you can concentrate on wowing them with your competence instead), get your business cards together (you do have business cards right?) and high-tail it to an event that you wouldn’t normally go to. That’s right!

Your clients aren’t at graphic design conventions or workshops, those people are you competitors. Your clients are at gigs or PR conventions or seminars on music industry marketing or even music management events.

In order to attract prospective clients you need to go where those clients are and talk to them.

Well? what are you waiting for?