Twitter as Tool

When Twitter came about I was like, "oh, great the next Myspace/Facebook/Linkedin... can't wait to sign up."

My Twitter.

Then I notice how much time all the record industry people spent on it. In the studio engineers, producers, artists, musicians were all "Tweeting" each other throughout the session. One inside joke after another for all the world to see. I didn't really feel like I was missing any fun, but because I wasn't on Twitter I wasn't able to be tagged as working with any of these amazing people. I was "connected" so to speak, but not so as anyone would know.

So I signed up. It was mildly entertaining to tell people that I was going to the store to get unsalted peanuts. And by "people" I mean my son and a couple people from church. I had less than 100 followers much less.

Being followed is half the equation. Following is the other part. When you follow someone; a friend, Beyonce, Barack Obama or even Fender Guitars, what ever they post appears on your tweet feed. In real time. But you can also go to their tweet list and see all of their tweets, retweets (tweeting someone else's tweet), instagram photos, links, etc. It's kind of like high tech stalking. Want to know what that big producer is up to? Follow him. It's legal. In fact he wants you to.

As you work with people, you follow them and they follow you. Remember to tweet them. Keep it fun. Upbeat. I avoid negativity and politics as a rule.

When Justin Bieber followed me I suddenly got 1200 followers in a 24 hour period. Then later that day I got called in to work with him on another song. It's turned out to be a pretty good tool to stay in touch with people I work with and want to work with.

You can check and see who some producers follow, maybe some up-and-comers, follow them, if they are artists check out their music. Comment on it. Remember be positive. A big time manager I know followed these producers in NYC and so I followed them too. Forgot about it for a while and one of their tweets appeared on my feed and retweeted and then they followed me. Soon we were working together. Me in LA, while they were in London. We've written several songs together.

It still remains to be seen if twitter is a good tool or not. But I think it just might be.