Social Media Part 2- A waste of time?

It’s been really interesting talking to people about how they use social media. Interesting because the general view of social media amongst musicians seems to be a fairly narrow one, which goes a long way towards explaining how they use it. Or don’t, as the case may be. Now I fully admit that my research has been fairly ad hoc at this stage but the results so far seem to suggest a basic assumption:

SOCIAL MEDIA = FACEBOOK (+/- TWITTER) = WASTE OF TIME

But it this really the case?

I would suggest not (well, of course- otherwise we might as well all pack up and go home!) but this flawed formula and its misapplication makes for a fascinating study into how musicians (and I would argue especially classical musicians) are integrating into the 21^st century.

By way of example I still have a very strong memory of standing in a lunch queue with another harpist I had just met at the Australian Harp Festival in 2012. I told her the topic of my presentation there (similar to this coming one) to which she replied ‘Who’d be interested in that??!!’ Suitably chastened I took my lunch roll and got back in my box.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to work my way through the ‘Waste of time’ formula to see what lies behind it, all the while examining my own use of social media. Is this really a waste of time?

PS- As an interesting footnote, since really starting to take this Social Media stuff seriously I’ve picked up several new followers, and booked a gig through Facebook. Mmmm, maybe there’s something in this after all…

Social Media Part 1- It's about time

Well, it is about time. It’s been over a year since I last posted on here. And it’s not that I didn’t want to. Not at all.

But it’s about time.

With a full personal and professional life, trying to fit in blogs of some kind of substance (not to mention sense!) became next to impossible. Until I got the kick up the pants to get back to the keyboard.

Coming up in Sydney in a few month’s time is this fantastic event.

www.whcsydney2014.com

For anyone who hasn’t been to a World Harp Congress before I can highly recommend this week of harp overdose. I was fortunate enough to have attended the 1999 Congress in Prague and it was AMAZING.

This is the first time the WHC has ever been in Australia (yah!) so it is wonderful opportunity for locals to see a world beating array of harps and harpists, and an even better opportunity for overseas harpists to come and see what we have to offer.

And at 4pm on the Friday of the conference I’ll be presenting a paper on ‘The Harpist’s Guide to Social Media’.

It’s a fascinating topic for any gigging harpist that I explored first in a paper for the Australian Harp Festival last year so I’m really chuffed to have another chance to delve into the wonderful world of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in a little more detail.

To help gather my thoughts (and get some feedback too I hope!) I’ll be blogging my way through the research of this little baby. I’m always on the lookout for interesting harpists to follow so feel free to get in touch with your suggestions.

But it’s about time. That’s the big disadvantage of social media. It might be free, but it is costly. It can cost A LOT of time. In this regard the theory and reality of my paper isn’t necessarily going to match up. But I figure that’s ok. Because we all live in the real world and not everyone can tweet twice a day while posting on Facebook and Instagram as well. Even with a product like Hootsuite it still takes time.

So how do you balance the theory and reality of social media?