As Carl noted above, I’d also be very interested in guidelines about the other platforms. My biggest problem in this area has been MySpace. I thought that to get listeners I would just get lots of friends. Now I have almost 10,000 friends and very little conversation and no extra listeners. I think I’ll follow your example and cut down the number of friends to people actually interested in bass. Put relationships and conversation above numbers.

it wasn’t intended as the first of a series, but looks like it could become one! Need to finish the Social Media First Principles for Musicians series first

But you’re right, we should look at each platform, what they get right and wrong, and how to make them work. I’ve been doing that in workshops and consultancy situations of late, looking at the pros and cons of specific platforms for different areas of the arts and business…

And email… yes. we do.

That’s bang on for Twitter I would say. And applicable in part to other platforms.

But I’d be curious to read your specific guidelines about the others. They could go a long way towards matching the elegance and simplicity of Twitter!

e.g.

YouTube suffers as a social medium because of the number of haters and negativity in the comments. It’s too anonymous – you can comment and vanish, without even an avatar next to your name.

Facebook take a dim view of members who are not people. A couple of venues I know had their accounts instantly deleted after gathering several hundred friends! (Bands take note.) The “correct” way enforced by Facebook is to use groups (for communities) and fan pages, but the difference is not intuitive.

I think we all need to sit down and sort out email too… Yes, email.