Build it and they will come! If you do enough leg work to make sure they see you, anyway.

How many other people do what you do? How many of them do it well? What makes you different from them? What makes you stand out? What makes you outstanding? What makes you special? Are you really special, or do you just feel that way?

Say you are, "that special". What are you doing to make sure everyone knows that you are? How do you draw people to your brilliance? I hate to break this to you, but they aren't exactly like moths to a light. You may build it, but they're not going to break down walls to get to you.

We live in a time where communications with our potential audience, fans, or clients, is easier than ever. But, it's also harder than ever too. Why? Because we, as a society, are jaded by advertising and marketing. We've seen it all before. We've heard it all before, and we have DVR!!! We don't have to watch commercials. We switch the dial on the radio when the adds come on. Well, those of us dinosaurs that still listen to terrestrial radio, anyway. We block pop ups. We drop all the asshat network marketers from our Facebook friends list. WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!!!!

We are in a position though to get back to the real basics of building a following or finding the right clientele. It's communication.

If we do what we do, and talk about what we do, then we're going to start catching the interest of the people who actually give a shit about what we do. Those are the ones we want to talk to anyway, right?

Doing is 100 times better than talking about doing. No, if you build it they will not come. However, if you build it, and talk about building it, and post pictures of the process of building it, and promote the people that are helping you build it, you will see them come. Whether it's in trickles or in torrents will help you determine if you're talking about it in the right ways and in the right places.

Traditional advertising and marketing are becoming less effective. Now's the time to just talk, openly and honestly, about what it is that we do. Don't sell to people, become indispensable to people.

It's a matter of Auditude

Here's an interesting file sharing idea. Auditude has developed a plan that would decriminalize file sharing by turning each file into an advertisement for the publisher. Now granted, I'm not familiar with all the fine print of this thing, but it appears that both MTV and MySpace think it has some merit, as they have both signed on.

Now, as I looked over the blog that I've linked below, I got to thinking about how something like this might work.

How would the artist have to innovate to still be able to make money under a business plan such as this? Even with the ad embedded in the file, the song is now totally free. Would it then mean that you'd go with a lesser quality file and then offer an "ad free" higher quality file for a download fee? Would it be advertising for your CD, a medium I see fading fast? Would it throw the artist into having to rely on merch and live performance monies to survive? Would it lead to an over saturation of music availability making it that much harder for people to find you?

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out, and it certainly demands more looking into.


Read more here, http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4160