Maximum Impact tutorial for aspiring artists #1

[Max Parthas]

Let's call this
Hyperlinking 101

When soliciting for an interview, a gig, radio play, a tour, to a promoter, producer or booking agent it is important to keep some things in mind. As a long time supporter of the arts, I've provided all of the above from both sides at one time or another. They say knowledge is power and some things can only be gained though experience. In keeping with the 5 commitments of The NWO I've decided to offer you the benefit of my knowledge and experience as well as some useful resources.

Keep this in mind.
* People are busy.
If they're putting something together where they can hire or include you in the production, they're obviously not sitting on their hands whistling all day. Be considerate. Make your submissions function as simply and inclusive as possible.
Don't you DARE tell someone to go to your myspace and listen to your tracks. Or to download pictures, videos from your free page at thelatestbigfreesite.com
If you’re not interested in your own career enough to invest some time into professionalizing it yourself, then why should anybody else be?
Widgets are great for putting all your information into small simple flash tools. Especially those that are non obtrusive and have fully fleshed out functions. As a promoter I prefer anything that fits right into the body of a gmail. Yes GMAIL. If you don't have an account, get one. They are the only mail service I've found that allow up to 20 megs of material to be sent G2Gmail.
There are a couple gigs of memory storage as well. LISTEN. there have been times when someone asked me for 3,4 or 5 tracks, multiple large photos or flyer, design pdf's/psd's. I've sent out materials via yahoo, hotmail (does anyone still use that?); AOL etc and periodically they get kicked back unable to send. When that happens, odds are I don't have the time to recreate the email and send it in several smaller parts. So it gets put off till later. Do 12 of those "put off till later's" and you'll understand why it get's frustrating quickly. I think I can speak for many others when I say I'm really getting tired of working till 3-5AM every day. Help me out a little ok?

* Get an EPK.
There are all kinds. Freebies and others that can cost you hundreds of dollars. I've found 2 great FREE EPK's. I'll tell you about one you can buy after this.
Here are the 3 FREE services in order of my preferences. www.Ourstage.com & www.ReverbNation.com also, www.MusicNation.com has a decent EPK widget. I like OS best because the viewer can check out your rankings right there. PLUS -the entire body of your EPK is displayed on an image link within the body of an email. RN has a ranking system too but I'm not too impressed with it. They don't even offer Spoken Word as a category. BTW. I recently addressed that to reverb nation and the reply was "When we get enough requests for that forum we'll offer one". So send them "enough" requests. You, multi-email account hyperlinks should get busy on that. RN's EPK's don't fit into an email but they're fanreach program adds a great dimension to building your personal networks net worth. Get on both sites and dress them up nice. Music nation.... I used to use it quite a bit, but it got tired quickly. You be the judge. www.Musicnation.com
The site that sells epk's is sonicbids.com They have a deal where they send out your epk to various gigs for consideration. Also, as an exclusive deal, a number of venues will only book artists through that service. In a recent side by side comparison, ourstage.com had a better epk to offer.
Now, after you have an EPK here's the next step.

* Flesh out your site. Stock it and personalize it.
Get all your important items covered and easily accessible. Bio, audios, videos, photos (magazine quality), schedule, merchandise stores, interview links, achievements, awards and acknowledgments. Full contact info, reviews and endorsements.
The first thing to impress industry execs is an artist who takes the time to make their life easier. If you know they need it and you put it right where they can find it easily? You've just made a valuable friend.
5 average artists with they're presentation well done is worth more industry effort than 20 superstars with big egos and no easy information.
More often than not we hear 3 main excuses for not having your ish together. Let me answer them..

A- I don't have internet access
+ Go to the library. Order a computer from BlueHippo.com. Look on www.FREECYCLE.ORG and see if anyone is giving away a computer. Look on craigslist.com, on ebay.com. ANYWHERE. If you really wanted to get online you could. I didn't suggest you use a friends or family member’s computer because that would be too much imposition and you'll likely give them a damn virus messing around with things you don't know about.

B- I don't know how to use widgets, codes or html
+ Learn how. You want to learn to ride a bike you have to get on it first and start pedaling. Many of the sites I mentioned earlier have instructions. Read them. You want to learn how to write codes? Here’s my favorite teacher. www.Dynamicdrive.com -There are text, audio and video tutorials on everything. Search them out on google.

C- I don't have time for all of that.
+ Good for you. You've either got somebody doing it for you or your just such a huge superstar that you don't need it. yea, right.
You either go with the flow or get run over these days. Multi-platinum Grammy winners have these items. Stop acting like you’re so special and blessed that your career opportunities are flying off the shelf at you. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to do this. Just a little commitment. If you still can't do it, hire someone who can. Don't ask for a friend to do it free either. IT TAKES PRECIOUS TIME. If you’re passing the buck to some poor dope at least bring them a bucket of chicken or something to show your appreciation.

* Use quality work.
Don't underestimate an experienced opinion. Imagine you’re a world class producer and Joe blow the mighty rock star wannabe sent you a track he remixed at home from his session at a blogtalk radio open mic cipher. Come on people. Don't embarrass yourself. Save that stuff for less important requirements. Get into a studio. Record 5-7 vocal tracks. THEN reproduce those from your home computer or enlist a real producer to blaze your vocals up. There are plenty of places you can get free beats from if you want to produce your own work. Just google the key words "FREE instrumental downloads"
I've been using a free program to produce my demo work for years. We actually developed the entire Whispered Words series on Audacity.. There are better programs out there you can get or buy. But my purpose here is to provide you with items and experience that costs you little or nothing. Audacity is a very simple program that techno challenged people like me can understand without too much effort.
What I mentioned above should apply to all your materials. Here are a few JFYI's
-Photos -should be high definition 300 pixels+ images. Always give copyright credit to the photographer unless it's a work for hire. Be considerate of anther person’s contribution to your project by including them in the bylines. ie: photo by:
-Audios and videos should always be of the highest quality available. Don't send in dark shaky videos. Make sure they are clear, clean and that the appropriate bylines are included. I use windows movie maker for the simplest of video editing tasks. It comes as part of the standard computer programming. You can do a google search to find other downloadable programs. If you don't have a video of your performance get one asap. Many industry execs want to see who they're dealing with in action. NO 20+ MINUTE VIDEOS either. Send in a simple 3-5 minute performance. Any more than that is an imposing, time consuming turn off and may never even get seen.
Unless asked otherwise, Pick your best releases and try to always send in the same 3 or 4 tracks. You want your selected singles to get as much attention as possible.

* Make your product commercially available.
Use resources like www.cdbaby.com -For under $50 you can establish a hard copy purchasing location, ISBN # and extensive digital distribution outlets.

* Create personal business cards.
I would also include "develop a logo and provide graphic viral presentations. Use all of your social network pages to highlight your art. Create posters, flyers and slideshow displays. Use widgets that show them in the best light.
Some skill using Photoshop would come in handy here. You could literally do it all yourself. In fact I would strongly suggest you be the person in charge of your image development. If you add some basic web design skills to that, you could really express yourself artistically. Some of my favorite resources for these services are:

www.Slide.com
For slideshows I never use myspace or facebook. Other services may have clearer quality displays of the images, but Slide has more flexibility in presentation.

www.godaddy.com for websites and storage space. They are the most dependable web hosting and server providers we've ever used.

www.mytheme.com
For creating nice myspace pages without a bunch of promo links attached.

www.zazzle.com
is decent for turning photos into posters. Personally, I'd rather do it on adobe.
here's a zillion business card design companies. Again. I'd rather design my own on Photoshop and then order prints along with posters and flyers from www.PKGraphics.com. Tell them max sent you. They’ve always got great deals including free flyers every now and then. High quality work.


*Get credible reviews for you or your work.
www.Reverbnation.com has the best widget for reviews. Don't put a bunch of random myspace or social network comments up.
Ask people you feel have real credibility to give you an honest review. Make it easy for them to do so by providing a CDbaby or Amazon review link. If you get a good comment use it. If you don't, just call it constructive criticism. If you get a bad review don't let that deter you. Let it inspire you do better. Also. If you should quote them remember to give the author credit for the review and include a website link. After you've gotten all your items together here's your next step.

* Package your presentation.
I use my EPK in conjunction with banner and image links. All the image or word links will lead to more details. No need to clutter everything up on your presentation. Less is better as long as all the information is easily available.
Here's my example below. Another example would be Tsombe & Freedom Verse cafe. Our January 2009 hyperlink. Look at the front page and you'll see how well put together his package is.

My example:
-With any of the image links you can simply highlight/copy and paste directly in the body of an email to send that info separately.

~About Max Parthas & Tribal Raine~
Representing the Militant Muzic record label www.militantMuzic.com
Click the images below for more info

I could highlight/copy and paste all or parts of this into a single email. The only one which would not transfer would be reverb nation’s widget. As a rule, flash doesn't go through emails yet. When they do I'll be a happy camper. Here’s a link that claims to be a tutorial on how to make flash emailing a reality. If anyone figures it out, call me! Help a poet learn this new trick.

OK. Now that you know what you need, how to send it, and where to get all the item requirements.
It's time to find out where to send it and to who.

You don't need to look far at all. Check out the venues. Clubs, magazines, radio shows, video shows, producers, news... right here at www.TheNewWordOrder.com. There are plenty of people waiting to see what you've got. They just want you to have something to send.


If this helps someone and a few let me know it's being used I'll do more.


Max

www.MaximumImpactpoetry.com

if your interested in republishing this tutorial via magazines or blogs, simply send me a request to [e-mail]
I'm not going to say no. I just want to refer people to your site if you publish it.

[Amina1389 Definity]

Today's show was JUST what the doctor ordered. Great information. Essential knowledge.
I think I'll go back & reLearn from the archives.

[Tshombe (the Poet)]

Excellent work Max & Tribal, simple wonderful and to the point.

[Max Parthas]

Denise. You are more than welcome on both points!
Tama B. Junteenth on steroids?! Hahaha. No doubt. If someone becomes successful by using this little push, then I've done exactly what was needed of me. Please share the info. The only way we can truly excel is if our generation breaks through it's own glass ceilings first. The better our industry does, the more opportunities we'll have as a whole.

[Denise Valentine]

Max, Thank you for sharing such a wealth of information. And, for inviting me to join NWO!

[Tama Brisbane]

MAX! DARLIN'!!!! That info right there is Juneteenth on steroids. :>) You just empowered a lotta folks. A thousand thanks from WOW [With Our Words]. Tama

[Max Parthas]

Feel free to share this huniie. It would be a disservice of we didn't.

[Huniie(Holly)]

Wow! this is awesome information thank you very much. I am going to print this hope you don't mind and post it to use it as a check list as I learn to do these different things. I see I have a lot of learning to do.................................

Also do you mind if I post this on Hang out..............?

ummmmm as you as the author of course lol........

Huniie