The internet has brought much opportunity to many people that would otherwise not exist in their immediate community. This has also created a supply/demand problem where everyone is doing it, but it doesn’t mean everyone is doing it well. If you do it right, you will make the right impression.

This article will serve as a list of places online where you can connect with other artists, producers, labels, A&Rs, and managers. Along with some best practices from my personal experience.

As you have probably noticed, there is an art to networking without coming across as spammy. So I’ll do my best to set you up in a way that allows you to nurture valuable relationships as opposed to spamming your content.

Facebook Groups

For us at Unlock Your Sound, this is probably our preferred platform for our online activity. Many of our friends and clients were made here, so it works great for us.

The first step is to make sure your Facebook Profile speaks to you and what you do. It’s no good when someone clicks through to your profile to find that it’s just irrelevant memes and cat videos. Your profile should speak to who you are, your ambitions, and most importantly, what you can offer others.

As a working example, you may choose to look at my facebook profile. You’ll notice that it’s quite obvious what I care about and what I am offering.

Once this is all set up, it’s time to get involved. Browse Facebook for some very relevant groups, but make sure you fully understand the culture of the group before you dive in. Read the rules and answer the questions appropriately. If you don’t respect the culture, you could easily get banned from the group. It’s the prerogative of the admins to do what they need to do to keep their community of the standard they want to uphold.

Once you have joined some communities, it’s time to get involved. Dive in and add value to the conversations you can add value to. Be nice, don’t go in with an agenda, just help people. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, then move on and find another thread where you can help. This advice is universal in and out of social media.

Some of our favourite groups:

MAKE POP MUSIC

Damn Good Producers and Artists

Music Business and Industry Discussion

Unlock Your Sound – Music Production and Audio Engineering Discussions

Twitter

Similar advice goes for Twitter. To get started, search for and follow people you would like to have in your life, and start contributing positively to the conversation. When they express themselves, reply constructively and with empathy. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to think of anything to say, or compose an original tweet.

You might also find it useful to use Twitter’s Search function as a keyword search tool to find tweets that contain information that you know about. For example, I will at times search for tweets that contain the words “mixing and mastering”, which invariably leads me to people that I could help or could help me. This is my favourite way to network on Twitter.

Again, make sure your profile speaks to you and the value you bring others. Have a link to your website, perhaps with an free offering of something, like our Free Mix Feedback Service.

Instagram

I’m not going to write much about Instagram here as it’s not a platform which I personally invest a lot of time to, but below is some great content from people I follow who’s strategies you can easily model.

My good friend and colleague Chris Pavey does great work on Instagram and it really helps him build the brand that is him and his Mastering Studio. He keeps it simple by documenting his journey as a mastering engineer, with the odd studio shot, a little story telling, and client releases. This way he is “turning up” every day on people’s feeds. It’s a way to remind his community that he is open for business, thus increasing the chances that he is the first person people think of when they need a mastering engineer.

Here is an excellent article from Gary Vaynerchuk about building your brand on Instagram. I highly recommend this strategy and much of the advice he says on his Youtube Channel.

Continuity

As you have probably realised, a lot of this is the same handful of principles when networking online and offline. One thing you might want to think about is well is continuity of your brand across platforms so it’s immediately obvious that it’s you on Twitter that helped them yesterday on Facebook. It’s not a big deal, just something to consider. Perhaps using the same profile photo across platforms will just help remind people it’s you.

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