twitter

At the cutting edge of “social networking” is twitter. I am not even sure how I found my way there. Can’t remember. The first account I started was luigiman, one of my many nicknames, the others being: Luge, Deluge, Luigisan, Luigi, BlackBeltMan, Louis Volare, Landon Volare and Double L. And I thought Sinatra had a lot of nicknames: The Voice, Chairman of the Board, Old Blue Eyes. I have Sinatra beat in the nickname department. But I digress.

I soon realized that it was critical to have my real name, or “brand”, if you will, on twitter. So I started another account as louislandon. I still had other people hitting luigiman up and when I first started I couldn’t tell which name I was logged in on. It was very confusing, like many new things. I think I have been using twitter for a few months now, and I am very pleased with some of the connections I have made. I am also happy that twitter opened up the blogging world to me. Most of the people on twitter are serious bloggers and many of them do it full time. There are a ton of marketers on twitter. What I find amazing is the abundance of intelligent and informative blogging going on out there that I had no idea existed until I got on twitter. And on twitter, you don’t hawk your wares. You do that on your website or on your blog. More on the website it seems to me. The blogs are more about reporting your area of expertise or about sharing your particular views on whatever subject that interests you. My new WordPress blog is already light years ahead of my Blogger blog. I am really thinking about how to set it up to let people know who I am and what I am trying to do with my music and my mission. And about anything that really comes to mind, quite frankly.

Although twitter can be used to point people to your blog, I find that it the real action is to connect with people personally on twitter. You can’t keep saying “me, me, me” every time you tweet. You know those people who are always talking about themselves. God knows, I have been very guilty of that one as a self-centered artist. But it’s important to really reach out and get to know other people. And help other people and work with other people. At least that’s what I think. As Perry Belcher, one of the most happening (and seems to be the happiest) social networking marketers on twitter, says in one of his video tutorials about social networking,  that it’s all about the party. It’s the hang. And you are partying with a lot of very intelligent, positive, successful entrepreneurial types. And some of the people on twitter now are very well known, well connected, and some very famous people. I just left a message for Wayne Gretzky to get in touch with Gary Vaynerchuk, because Wayne has a vineyard, and Gary is such a promoter of wine. That would be a great combo. Gary is such an incredible lovable lunatic. The guy is so passionate about wine and connecting with people and motivating people. And after hearing him speak, it motivated me to contact him about possible selling my unwind CD with wine because it’s such chill music. Gary told me to get back to him in January, and I will. Now, of course, there are no guarantees here, but just meeting someone like Gary on twitter and getting the idea to hook up my CD unwind with drinking wine. Again, another winning combo.  As a matter of fact, there are a few wine people I know that I should probably sound about it. The ideas keep coming. I am also hooked up to a bunch of news feeds: NPR, The New Yorker, CNN, and The New York Times. It’s no surprise to me that the newspapers are going under. Who needs them when there are tons of stories crossing the grid with different perspectives and I can pick and choose what interests me. It’s excellent.

Looking forward to seeing where this can go. I think think there are tremendous possibilites here. And connected with facebook, the possibilites only increase. They can now be linked so that tweets get posted on facebook automatically.  Really looking forward to meeting new people and increasing my networking capabilites. Twitter is a great tool for that. I’m excited about it, but not too exited about it. My tendency is to get blown out of my orbit by new things.  I am going to remain calm about this new find and watch how it unfolds.

love and peace always and everywhere,

LL