And whenever I mention that I'm on dial-up someone always says 'I can't believe you post that much', but since I'm using this blog primarily to get a job, I feel I need to post as much as possible. If I weren't in the job market, I would probably post about 2-3 times a week, at the most. Actually, perhaps my strategy for growing this blog is probably a bit of a disconnect, since I post more in an effort to grow traffic, but then I go totally 'grassroots' when trying to grow readership, in that I spent a lot of time on other blogs. I could give a damn less about their Technorati score or whatnot, I'm just interested in making friends and learning from other smart bloggers. I never wanted to go the 'just link to A-Listers' route, because I'm more interested in community, not some A-Lister who has no idea who I am, or why he should care(or who calls me MaRk). And it all works out in the end, since I've had some of the TRUE A-Listers go out of their way to help me, such as Ben and Jackie, Joe, Laura Ries, and of course Ann.
(Starting to see where the title of this post comes in, eh?)
Oh BTW, this is something I have been thinking/wondering about for a while now, but you guys DO know that if you want to leave a comment DISAGREEING with me, that's cool, right? I've noticed that while I love all the comments you guys leave, very rarely does anyone actually disagree with me. And I'd love to think that's because I am a genius with minty-fresh breath, I bet that's not always the case. So if you guys have a different opinion, PLEASE share. I'm here to learn from you guys as much as anything, so if you think I'm wrong, you need to call me on it, so we can discuss it. Personally I *love* it when someone disagrees with me, because that challenges me to re-examine my idea and look at it in a new way. And your different opinion may cause another reader or commenter to re-examine THEIR idea, and who knows where we could take this. Again, this is your space as much as mine, so feel free, to grab the 'microphone' and let your voice be heard!
Something else, I have finally caved and started using Bloglines to read blogs. As I've said before, I prefer to physically go to the blogs and read the posts AND comments, but I've found so many great blogs lately that there's simply too many to keep up with, and this will let me keep an eye on my favorites. Asi and I were discussing this on his blog recently, and I said I had about 20 or so blogs that I read every day. I added all of these to my Bloglines, and it was actually almost 60. Here is my list, and basically what I told myself a long time ago, was that if anyone was nice enough to comment regularly here, I was going to read their blog daily. That's how I came across most of that list, so it's mostly frequent commenters and friends. So if you are nosey and want to see who I am reading every day, there it is. Of course I read probably another 100 or so, but not daily as I will this group.
Oh yes and in closing, let me once again shill myself and beg you to please add me to your Technorati Favorites, if you haven't already. Thanks to my sis, and Anne for adding me, and I've added you both as well. As of right now I am just 15 more members short of cracking the Top 100, so if you haven't added me yet to your Technorati Favorites, please take a few seconds to do so by clicking on the logo below, and I will return the gesture. Thanks guys!
3 comments:
I think I've added you as a favorite a while back. If I haven't, please let me know.
Once you get a job, I may have to start charging you royalty fees for using the word "Ramblings" in your title :)
Ok, fine. I disagree, I think your name IS MaRk, and you've just been snowing us the whole time!
And, as far as physically going to blogs, I usually prefer that as well, but it's just easier to click over to them from bloglines. You get the best of both worlds.
First, let me say that MaRk might actually be a better name, especially with the capital R. It would really separate you from the pack and give you a vaguely cyberpunk vibe that might help counter your disastrous location in Alabama!
Since you're sharing your Ramblings(r/jd), I'll just ramble back. I'm getting caught up and I'm reading a bunch of different posts so it will affect my comments.
I read your Donnas post and I think the most likely way to reach bands is to check for press releases and to contact them through their pr people, if it's for pr purposes.
They often won't be listed on the band's sites but they will be listed on the press releases.
When I used to try to contact major labels through publically available email addressses, they never responded. Managers probably won't either because it's not what they do.
If you still want to go direct, try the phone. I think highly visible folks are so inundated by email that they aren't going to respond to email if they don't know you and it's not on their job description. A lot of music industry (and media) folks still privilege phone communication over email, even when communicating with bloggers (weird).
Trying to reach anybody major through their myspace page is most likely a waste of time. There's a high likelihood that they have an intern fronting like they're band members or just giving generic responses. In fact, I know of relatively unknown but serious acts that already have interns on the Myspace gig.
On that note, I had a Myspace page for ProHipHop and recently shut it down. I had three months of email I hadn't answered and it was just getting embarassing. When I announced that I was shutting it down, I got a couple of responses saying that I should have gotten an intern but I had no intention of turning the public/personal face of my business over to someone working for free.
But that should tell you something about how deeply the "get an intern" mentality is ingrained in the music industry.
Considering that a lot of labels also use interns to go through stacks of unsolicited cds from unsigned artists, you can get another glimpse into some of the problems of the music industry.
I have some ideas about your job search so drop me a line if you want to brainstorm. However, my ideas generally tend towards freelance activities but they may help you leverage more permanent status somewhere, just as your blog is intended to do.
One thought I'll drop here is fairly obvious. Why don't you find a band that you like and offer to execute the 100 CDs idea for them as proof of concept? If they covered the expense and you volunteered your time, they might go for it. Maybe that's where you're already headed but it might be worthwhile for what you'd learn in the process.
I think Jaffe said something about proving the worth of new approaches by using those new approaches, i.e. rather than trying to convince people via supporting evidence, cut to the chase and show them how it could work.
Hit me back if you want to throw around some other ideas.
And look for my Snakes on a Plane post featuring a lot of your posts! Now that I'm getting caught up, I see you did a lot of my job for me.
Thanks!
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