A musician's guide to social media

Wonderboom

To us normal folk, social media is the perfect way to see what the cool kids are up to, and we all know there’s nothing cooler than a Fender-wielding, bearded muso in skinny jeans. Later today South African rock veterans Wonderboom will stop by to talk about a social media strategy for the band. Here’s what we’ll tell them about social media:

1. Your blog is your HQ

Fans want to know everything about musicians, including what they eat and who their friends are. Take a moment to thank MTV for that. While most social media platforms allow you to share your entire life, your band’s blog should be your social media headquarters. Your blog should have:

Your band name as a URL, for example www.wonderboom.co.za
A link to each of your band’s social media accounts
A Twitter feed widget
A gallery with show and promotional images
A very visible gig guide
A media player with samples of your music
A link to an online store where fans can purchase your music
An RSS option

2. MySpace isn’t enough

For years MySpace has been a favourite among musos. While sharing music is fairly easy on MySpace, these days all blogging platforms allow you to share music and videos. Your band should be on MySpace, but your MySpace account should be secondary to your blog.

Blogs are fully customisable, whereas MySpace can only be altered superficially. MySpace pages tend to be cluttered and hard to navigate. Load your music to your MySpace page, and add a link to your blog.

Visit Wonderboom’s MySpace page here.

3. Twitter is your friend

While many South Africans seem reluctant to join Twitter, there’s no better platform to share gig information and last-minute changes to line-ups. Twitter is easily accessible from cellular phones and gives fans the chance to interact with the band directly.

Your band’s Twitter account should be active and interactive. The idea is to talk with your fans, not to them. Take a look at Ashtray Electric’s @rudi_cronje and Werner Olckers’ @wrestlerish to see how it should be done.

4. You should have a Facebook group

Facebook is the security blanky of social media. If your fans aren’t on Facebook, they won’t be on Twitter, they won’t read your blog and they’ll probably only come to your Barnyard shows.

Facebook groups allow you to send invitations to shows; share links to your blog entries; post photos and music and to interact with fans. What’s more, your Facebook updates can be duplicated on your Twitter account automatically.

View Wonderboom’s Facebook group here.

5. Foursquare is worth it

Because bands travel all the time, checking in on Foursquare will let fans know when you’re in their area. Your Foursquare updates can be linked to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, which means you can update all three accounts in one go. Do it! Do it now!

Six tips on technical writing

Corporate copywriting can be bitch. Copywriters have to interpret technical information and translate it into something the target audience can understand. Over the past two years, I’ve produced copy for a variety of industries, ranging from engineering to fashion to solar water heating. What’s been seen can’t be unseen, my friends, and sometimes understanding the advantages of low iron anti-reflective tempered glass just isn’t worth it.

Because the left side of my brain is a mushy pulp, dominated by my right brain in a severe and kinky way, I’ve had to find other ways of understanding technical information sufficiently to write about it. Follow these steps when dealing with a particularly challenging topic:

1. Identify the expert

Every company has one person that understands your subject matter better than anyone else. Let’s call him Mister X. In all likelihood Mister X will be part of the technical team or in management. Mister X will be your best friend. Be warned: Mister X is never the beefy surfer with the washboard abs and guitar. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true.

Mister X

Not Mister X

2. Schedule a face-to-face meeting

If the person you have to speak to is part of the technical team or management, odds are your emails will be ignored or a low priority. Schedule a face-to-face meeting in a boardroom or a coffee shop away from the office. Odds are you aren’t the only person craving a moment of Mister X’s time, so do all you can to get his undivided attention.

3. Have questions ready

Never walk into the interview unprepared. Do research on the product or field and identify specific questions relevant to your article. Don’t expect Mister X to educate you. Respect his time and his skill if you want him to respect yours.

If you’re writing an article on solar water heating, familiarise yourself with the basics, like how the systems work and the kinds of systems available. Look at solar water heating in South Africa, at competitors, at major industry players like Eskom and Nersa and at recent news coverage on the subject.

Identify how Mister X and his company fits into all the information you’ve acquired, and then work out questions based on the Five Ws (and one H) principle. If you don’t know the Five Ws (and one H) principle, look that up and then start reading this blog from the beginning.

4. Write it down

Jotting down information while Mister X pontificates is uncomfortable and distracting (especially when Mister X keeps rubbernecking to see if you wrote ‘thermosiphon’ just like ha said), but it’s a necessity. You will forget. Trust me.

5. Ask permission to follow up

The writing process involves sorting and structuring information. You’ll probably find that you forgot to ask for Mister X’s official title or how to spell the surname of the MD. Prepare Mister X for the fact that you’ll be dropping him a line for urgent information within a day or two of the interview. Ask him if you should contact him directly, or if you should talk to a Lesser X.

6. Share the first draft

While I’m not advocating taking writing advice from technical staff or management, it helps to share the first draft with Mister X. He’ll be able to tell you if you misunderstood any of his points. If you did, it’s best to find out before you spend too much time writing the wrong article.

High five if you read to the end of this very wordy post. Let me know if I forgot anything in the comments section.

Apostrophes and possession (not the demonic kind)

This morning I drove past an Eddies Removals truck. What, thought I, would Eddies be? Are Eddies a group of individuals predestined to become movers merely because they’re named Eddie? Are Eddies the Igors of the modern world? It must be, I mused, because Eddies Removals certainly isn’t a removals business belonging to a man named Eddie. I had no doubt, because the English language has a little blob called the apostrophe. This little blob exists to help people like me understand when something belongs to someone.

It seems the rule of thumb for people who are unsure of apostrophe use, is to use it when they shouldn’t. Therefore, I’m suggesting the following: If you don’t know how apostrophes work, do the opposite of what you think is right.

Of course, you could read this The Oatmeal comic. It explains apostrophe use. You can even buy the poster if you find that you’re ready to commit to the apostrophe in a big way.

Visit The Oatmeal

Media freedom – Is that really, really what you want?

Over the past couple of months I’ve shared my opinion on the importance of the media in general, and investigative and in-depth journalism in particular. I wrote about journalism here, about the Mail & Guardian school of investigative journalism here and my respect for editor Nick Dawes here. I think it’s obvious that I find the idea of controlling information preposterous.

Yesterday Pick n Pay’s chairman Gareth Ackerman joined the press freedom debate. According to this article by The Times, Ackerman pointed out the link between economic and political freedom and the dependence of economic freedom on the free flow of information.

I find it ironic that one of the first businesses to join the debate would be the first business that ever made me doubt press freedom in South Africa. A couple of Jozi years ago, I was part of the ZOO editorial team. While the kind of reporting we did had no effect on national security, we did a lot of important in-depth research.

Keeley Hazell in ZOO magazine shoot

The magazine irritated a lot of people, including my poor parents who couldn’t reconcile my Christelik-Nasionale education and promising start at Beeld newspaper with my sudden interest in tits and ass. I think they finally accepted it when they realised it would have been a lot worse if I were actually in the magazine. In my time at ZOO a lot of us came under fire for the kind of content (or lack thereof) we published. However, we were all secure in the knowledge that we live in a democracy where press freedom gave us the opportunity to cater to a niche market.

ZOO UK cover page

Despite our relative notoriety in the industry, the only business owner that ever actually boycotted ZOO in my time there was none other than mister Ra Ra Press Freedom Gareth Ackerman. If memory serves his outrage had something to do with a photo editing blunder that rewarded the more perceptive among ZOO readers with an eyeful of punani on page seven.

I appreciate the fact that he’s taking a stand in this whole debate in his capacity as an important participant in the South African economic environment. However, I have a problem with the fact that mister Ackerman is advocating press freedom on the one hand while preventing the distribution of publications that don’t fit in with his idea of journalism on the other. I’m sure the media coverage of his patriotic point of view didn’t hurt either.

If we accept the South African Oxford Dictionary‘s definition of freedom, it means that the media has “the power or right to act, speak, or think freely”. Media freedom therefore encompasses all forms of media, regardless of quality or subject matter. Mister Ackerman is talking the talk. I sincerely hope that he and the rest of the press freedom choir remembers to walk the walk when this blows over. Live and let publish.

What do you think of Gareth Ackerman’s participation in the press freedom debate? Let me know in the comments section.

If only they had a copywriter

Between my Google Reader subscriptions, my Twitter feed and content shared by friends and colleagues, I consume a busload of online information every day. Pair that with the fact that I’m obsessive compulsive (read: anal) about language, I have certain standards when I take the time to read something.

I understand as well as the next person that mistakes slip in, but unless you’re still rocking a typewriter, spell checkers and tools like After the Deadline should eliminate most spelling errors. I can forgive the your/you’re or advice/advise slip, but badly written copy puts me off a product or service completely.

A colleague forwarded me the below email recently. I changed the name of the company and the suburb, but the rest is verbatim:

I hope that you are well.
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce X Company to you,
We are an up market and ultra modern Conferencing and special events venue based in X Suburb. We boast with over 9 different meeting rooms and our capacities can accommodate from 4pax – 500pax.

We can do EVERYTHING from product launches, conferencing, banquets, exhibitions, teambuilding, seminars, training, amazing themed yearend functions, cocktail parties etc, basically whatever your heart desires!

Our prices are really competitive!

I would like to Extend an invite to you to attend a site inspection of our venue at a time convenient to you.
It would be my pleasure to show you our venue and meet you in person.

I don’t know if an “ultra modern” company that does EVERYTHING instead of everything, Conferencing instead of conferencing and that Extends instead of extends is the right company for my “teambuilding” function. I thought pax had something to do with kissing. Also my heart desires! a company that’s not quite so competitive! in the ! department.

I’m not saying everyone should spend thousands on a copywriting service. If you can’t afford a permanent copywriter, pay a linguistics student or an underpaid newspaper subeditor to do it. A couple of bucks could save you a lot of embarrassment.

Freelance writers, editors and such folk, feel free to link to your website in the comments section below.

Bloggers I love – A Women’s Day Tribute

I’m not much of a feminist. I don’t feel the need to argue women’s rights or equality, because the women who raised me taught me that my place in this world is not up for debate. Also, I don’t like going braless. I have immense respect for women in general, and the women in my family in particular.

In honour of National Women’s Day, (or is it Woman’s Day? I don’t know) I’ve compiled a list of South African women whose blogs inspire me every day. These women are beautiful, fearless, honest, creative and, most importantly, unapologetic. Thank you, ladies. You enrich my life.

I subscribe to all of these blogs, so I’m listing them as they appear in my Google reader, and not in order of preference.

Dustbunniesproject

heat deputy editor, Wordsmyth guest blogger and my friend Donnay Torr draws inspiration from the creativity of others to express her own creativity. I love her blog, because it reminds me how similar we are in some ways. It also helps me to appreciate our differences. She’s the perfect combination of dark and giddy, mysterious and open, complicated and simple. She’s the original zombie loving, angst-ridden, Indie-kid and she’s pretty damn funny too.

Read Donnay’s blog here.

Follow Donnay on Twitter.

Nielen Bottomley’s Blog

Nielen Bottomley’s photographs are like antidepressants. She has a way of extracting pure happiness from the light around her subjects and injecting it into my brain through my eyes. Painlessly. There’s something about her photographs that make me want to walk on wet grass with bare feet, drink homemade ginger beer, run in the rain, row a boat, kiss a boy and jump into a river with all my clothes on, all at the same time.

Read Nielen’s blog here.

Follow Nielen on Twitter.

A Case of Nerves

Dorothy Black is well known and well loved. As sex columnist for Women 24, her witty and unabashed openness is a breath of fresh air to many women who grew up thinking that sex is something to be ashamed of. I love her blog, because I can relate to so much of what she goes through. I love her self-deprecating sense of humour; I love her depression and the way she picks herself up; I love how she learns from her mistakes. I especially love that she uses a pseudonym. Her true identity is the identity of every woman. That’s rad.

Read A Case of Nerves here.

Follow Dot on Twitter.

Jou ma se blerrie blog

If I ever had maternal instincts, I suspect I lost them in a bar. I have no kids, I don’t plan to have kids, I don’t like other people’s kids and moms (especially new moms) have no respect for those of us who choose not to talk about lactation and haemorrhoids. Margot breaks the mommy mould. Over the past two years, I have read and enjoyed every moment of Margot’s journey into motherhood (oh, vom, Kristia!). I’ve always had great respect and admiration for Margot. Her approach to motherhood just reinforced my opinion of her. Her blog is always funny, with just enough heartbreaking moments to make it wonderful. I remember feeling particularly sorry for her when her first-born refused to sleep for months on end. I suspect I’ll revisit my sympathy in a month or two.

Read Jou ma se blerrie blog here.

Life Quest (and other stuff)

Suki Lock is the nicest person I’ve never met. I love her blog because she is so committed to getting the most out of life. She’s always positive; she’s always striving to do better and she’s always, always kind. I love her approach to 2010. Over the past eight months, she has set and shared goals aimed at beautifying and improving her life. I always look forward to hearing about her progress and to find out what she’ll get up to next. Her blog reminds me to take in the journey, and for that I’m very grateful.

Read Life Quest (and other stuff) here.

Find Suki on Twitter here.

The Answer Lies in Pie

Carina van Heerden is an immensely talented writer, a talented photographer, a talented cook, beautiful in a Zooey Deschanel sort of way and an upstanding human being. She also loves pie. A lot. I know all of this because she’s also my cousin. I can’t get enough of her sense of humour. She’s singular and irreplaceable. I love her blog because it keeps a record of everything that I love about her. If only I could get her to post more.

Read The Answer Lies in Pie here.

Follow Carina on Twitter here.

Feel free to recommend the South African bloggers you love in the comments section below. Would love to hear from you.

Guest blog: Letters of apology

I have the priviledge of contributing to the Medios Marketing Communications blog. This week, I wrote about letters of apology.

Follow Medios on Twitter here.

We all make mistakes. Opening a blog with a horrible cliché like “We all make mistakes” proves my point. Over the past two years, I have written many, many letters of apology (on behalf of others. I’m not that dreadful!). Although the events leading up to the letters differ, all letters of apology share certain traits (an apology, for instance). Should you find yourself at the sharp end of the disciplinary stick, follow these guidelines to write a kick-ass letter of apology. Read more here.

What a fun pun!

If sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, pun is its hillbilly cousin. Pun lives up in the mountains of humour and generally gets thrown with rotten fruit when it ventures into town in its Chevy pickup. This might be why pun is my favourite form of humour. Us arm blankes stick together, you know.

Had I been the one-liner (punny!) kind of copywriter, my love of inbred humour would probably earn me a pat on the back and some blow. Just look at the success of the Nando’s advertising team. Remember the “Well hung chicken” ad? Hilarious!

Why lines like, “I’m from Vereeniging. When we say “dice” you put foot!” hasn’t earned me fame and fortune in the advertising world goes beyond me. That’s, like, pure gold, man!

Seeing as I’m not that type of copywriter, I treat myself to a little pun in an article or press release from time to time. Unfortunately the recipients of articles on subjects like solar water heating and infrastructure management aren’t really the pun loving type, so much of it goes unnoticed. It makes me happy, though.

In honour of the hillbilly of humour, I’ve compiled a pun gallery from webcomics that I read and adore every day. Click on the images to enlarge. Also, subscribe to these comics. You won’t regret it.

I tried to think of a really good song with a pun, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Feel free to enlighten me in the comments section. Good songs, though. No pop music.

Surviving the World

Dinosaur Comics

xkcd

Cat and Girl

Planning to plan a plan

My friend Faraway is amazing. He always has some sort of plan. He knows what he wants to do years in advance, and gradually takes steps towards achieving his goal. His ability to plan means he’s hardly ever frazzled or caught off guard. It also got him into Cambridge. What I admire most about him is that he doesn’t panic when things don’t go according to plan. It’s like he knows each step is simply a means to an end, and that it’s not the end of the world if things don’t work out exactly.*

I admire Faraway, because I’ve never been structured in that way. I always knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I never actually knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. A combination of benevolence and luck and a very scientific method called going-with-the-flow got me to my current state of living the dream. Win! However, it also got me to a point where someone is actually willing to go into business with me.

Because I never planned to own a business, working out quotes and business strategies scares the living shit out of me. My current boss and future partner informed me recently that I would be in charge of the financial aspects of the business. This is pretty much what I felt like.

After I soiled myself thoroughly, I realised that I’ll have to be a little more like Faraway. That’s right, folks, I am perpetual student no more. I am Growing Up. Wordsmyth isn’t just an idea anymore. Someone else is investing in it, and the success of failure of this venture will also be his success or failure. In other words: It’s ooooon!

Seeing as I’ve never been the structured type, I’ll admit to feeling a little intimidated by my new quest. I’ll have to start by drawing up a business plan, with short-term and long-term objectives. (Look at me embracing my new role as grown-up with business clichés. My plan is working already!) For the rest I’ll consult Faraway. He seems to have the process down.

To the future!

*He’s also very modest, so I expect he’ll deny all of this as soon as he’s read this blog.

The Internet and the comfort zone

I’m a big fan of the Mashable blog. The blog is a one-stop shop for everything Web 2.0. (Happy cheesy cliché day, everybody!) In addition to producing a busload of content daily, the Mashable team regularly draws on the expertise of industry players. A couple of weeks back I read an article on how the Web is affecting social relations. You can read the article here.

This quote caught my eye:

“The internet makes it easier for me to avoid disagreement and compromise and encourages me to become more strident and polarized in my views. That’s a problem.” —Tim Marema, vice president of the Center for Rural Strategies

This view ties in very closely to an article by David Gelernter published in Popular Mechanics. Sparrow wrote a blog on that article, which will be published on the Medios blog soon. The article basically states that the most valuable Internet resource is the person using the Internet. With all the information at our disposal, do we do enough to ensure that we’re exposed to the things that help us grow?

I spend at least an hour a day doing industry-related research online. It’s wonderful to have access to a world of information whenever I need it. However, Tim Marema has a point. The Internet is all about the niche. For instance, I love Dinosaur Comics, even though most of my real life three dimensional friends don’t find it funny. The same goes for my taste in music and my preference in visual arts. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about horses, so it stands to reason that I spend absolutely zero percent of my time reading about horses.

Then I read this quote:

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

If you accept that this is true, the challenge we all face is staying open-minded enough to expose ourselves to different points of view, even if it makes us uncomfortable. This can be achieved by reading news sites and by following a variety of people on online communities like Twitter.

On the other hand, if you feel the chocolaty goodness of the old comfort zone is for you, niche away. Just remember to include this blog.

Speaking of niches, a Facebook friend posted this link today. It really made my day. Have a look if you have a moment.