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Negative Space Web Marketing will be a consulting firm helping you build your brand by creating a strategy using new media. I am still ironing out all of the wrinkles and working to open the doors wide for business. It will all start with a blog.

This new blog will keep you up on music news and how it relates to social media. More importantly, it will keep you up on social media and how it relates to your band or business. The industry is changing and its changing fast. We can thank the influence of social media and internet business for that.

I must thank you all who have been following this blog. Please redirect your attention to the new Negative Space blog – and resubscribe. I will be discontinuing this blog when everyone has gotten the message.

Thank you again. See you at the Negative Space blog!

Baratunde Thurston spoke at a Web 2.0 convention recently about the use of hashtags on Twitter. Baratunde is a standup comedian who works for The Onion and is a twitter genius. You will see in the video he has started joke twitter accounts and developed followings for each of 2000+ in two weeks through the brilliant use of hashtags.

If you don’t know – hashtags in twitter are the things you see with the pound sign before them (i.e. #swineflu, #howblackareyou, etc.). Hashtags connect you with people who don’t follow you. Search a hashtag in Twitter search and you will stumble upon thousands of conversations, you may want to jump in.

Deeper Meaning

What interested me most about Baratunde’s talk was this use of “crowdsourcing” information. Using hashtags to tap into the ideas of the crowd. It’s a way to start a conversation in 140 characters or less. This is an opportunity for you to tap into the masses and see what they have to say.

Experiment

Create a hasthag for yourself and start the conversation around it. See what kind of response you get back. Make it a question or a bold statement and hashtag it frequently. As the conversation grows it will breath a human aspect into your brand 140 characters at a time.

Watch the video, try it for yourself, tell me how it goes. Mention me – I will jump into the conversation! @jakelarson.

Who doesn’t have friends starting businesses nowadays? That almost completely invalidates what I’m about to tell you but I am going to tell you anyways.

My friend Kevin started a record label called Lemondrop Records. As the music industry is aching through a wicked growth-spurt right now record labels are hurting the most. Kevin decided to take a different route. Lemondrop has “emerged from the capitalistic rubble as an all-art-inclusive non-profit organization” whose mission is to nurture local creative culture by promoting artists, enabling their art, and facilitating compensation for their work.

I think it is brilliant.

Lemondrop provides access to equipment, funding, and assistance in producing their creative work in an industry where that kind of thing costs your next three records and all of their earnings. They will help create a community around your work through traditional marketing and by embracing the “pay what you want” pricing model. Believe it or not, consumers are loyal – look at Radiohead‘s In Rainbows.

Kevin keeps a blog about new music, movies and art called The Pelicans Perch. I have been following this blog for years to get all of my tips on emerging culture and its gems. In fact, most of my iTunes library is comprised of Kevin’s recommendations.

The point of this post is threefold:

1. My friend Kevin has created a new model for record labels — one that might just work.
2. The music industry is siding with the artist (finally).
3. Follow Kevin’s blog for your own good.

Your story:

Everywhere I look I see another story of someone keeping music afloat and sinking the big industry ships. These are exciting times and I want to hear more. Tell me about how you or your friends are working for the cause of art. Comment below.

Your tweet score is comprised of four things: your influence, popularity, engagement, and trust.

Nothing too deep today. Just check out TweetLevel!

Here are 9 blogs you must follow to keep up with the times:

1. Twitterati
2. Mashable – look at the twitter section
3. Twitter Blog
4. Twitip
5. Twittercism
6. WhyFacebook
7. Rotorblog
8. Twittips
9. Tweetyourblog

Let me know if this list helps you as much as it helps me. Are there any I should add to the list?

I’ll start with a story:

I have been working for a woman who needs help with household tasks every once and a while. It is a nice arrangement — I go over to her house for a little while after work about once a month, do some heavy lifting, hang some pictures, clean some gutters, or whatever she needs and she gives me a little cash. It’s great for both of us. Last night, we got to talking about what each of us does for a living. She’s a publicist for a handful of artists, and I work for an artist management company and am starting a web marketing consulting business on the side. Long story short — I got hired to consult (my first clients actually, this is very new for me) all of her acts.

My point:

You don’t have to be a schmoozer. You can do the rubbing shoulders thing and attend networking events, but you have to be genuine. Most of all: What are you good at? Better yet, what can you do that someone else can’t? Clean gutters? Move a couch? Pose for a live re-enactment of a Da Vinci painting? (That only makes sense if you love Arrested Development as much as I do). All in all, be available. Help people. Be genuine. It WILL work in your favor.

I know there are great stories about how this style of networking helped you. There are so many ways to be creative in how you help people. How did you do it? Tell me some story about how you painted all the doorknobs in someone’s barn and they gave you a job as a web analyst.

The music industry is collapsing, it’s no secret. The big record label model is driving this ship straight to the bottom of the ocean. Why? Because they refuse to change their business model away from selling full length CDs at unfounded prices.

Fans need something new and fresh that they can take part in, that they can experience. In today’s market, there are 10 year-olds who know their way around torrent sites better than their own playgrounds. Everyone steals music — unless they can get it for free from the artist.

How can you boost your bottom line? Give away your music.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. And, sure, this will not work for some, and others will be too scared to try it. But if you build an experience around your free content that will get your fan hooked into your world, you have created a loyal brand evangelist. That is worth much more than $9.99.

If you simply cannot give your stuff away, then create free content outside of your music. Example: Recently I heard of a band called Live, whose lead singer tapes a flip camera to his mic stand at every show and gives away the video on his website. The result? Live’s loyal fans visit the band’s merch store to download the video — and many of them add an album or a shirt to their cart while they’re at it. This a great model for driving up sales without spending tons of precious marketing dollars.

Check out this blog post on Copyblogger about free content.

I feel a rant about the music business coming…

Blogging, Twitter, and Facebook are your strong arm in connecting with your fans they way they want to connect with you.

Your blog shouldn’t just take space on your website, it should be the main event. This is where fans will go to read about what is going on, funny stories from the road, an opportunity for their voice to be heard by their favorite act.

You should blog every day. And it should be good.

Chris Brogan is kind of the poster-child for social media and web marketing. He has over 100,000 followers on twitter, and his blog is one of the most respected blogs on social media and connecting with your consumers. Somehow he comes up with a new and interesting blog post every single day – sometimes two or three.

Chris just revealed his secret formula for coming up with interesting blog ideas every day. Here it is: (preface: this blog post has been deleted by Chris, it’s from a couple years ago)

1. Answer questions. You get emails with people asking you for your thoughts on X. Write the post instead of just replying to the email.
2. Take pictures. I see strange things out and about. When I snap them with my cameraphone, I have a post waiting to happen, when I think about how that thing applies to the people I write for.
3. Read blogs way outside the scope of what you write about. I use Alltop to find topics far outside of my blog’s topic. Amazing what I learn about from fishing blogs.
4. Think about what’s next and work backward.
5. Mash two ideas together and explain them in your own words.
6. Write about ways to improve your industry or space.
7. Write speeches that you’ve yet to give on a stage.
8. Rant. Yes, I’m afraid that good old rants and complaints are still a powerful anchor tenant of most blogs.
9. Point out people doing the good stuff. That’s what I prefer to do instead.

Look at David Bazan’s blog. He is a stellar example of this idea. He used his blog to reach his core fans – and they helped him buy a tour van!

I suggest carving out 30 minutes every day to run through these points, and write something your fans will want to interact with, comment on, and discuss with each-other. Even start out by writing an outline and having 7-10 ideas in your pocket, just incase you get behind.

Do you have a similar list? What gets YOUR ideas moving? Leave me a comment or drop me a line and I will add them to the list.

I hired this company called MissingInk to run the web merch stores for all of our clients. From the start they seemed like a huge operation. They have a giant list of clients and their services are virtually endless. On top of that, their customer service is outstanding. They are amazing. I even dreamt of working there every once and a while.

The other day I had to drive to their office to drop off a car load of CD’s and realized the power of the internet. There are literally three people in that company. The owner, his wife, and a warehouse manager – who I think is a long time friend of the owner. Check out this companies website. After working closely with them for months, I couldn’t believe my eyes at the sight of how much output these three have in this cozy little space.

What makes this work?

Smart people.

That’s what makes this kind of company explode into a new stratosphere of output. The tools for anyone to grow their business or personal life are there on the internet for everyone. Smart people use them. Smart people find a need and fill it – then make themselves look awesome on the internet. They are genuinely good at what they do, and they genuinely care about their customer.

Don’t be dumb. There is always a smarter way.

How do I get smart?

Keep reading this blog. When I figure it out I will tell you for free.