A couple months ago I woke up, made some coffee and fired up the computer. I started my morning routine that includes checking traffic stats on my websites. When I popped open the stats program I almost spit out my coffee. WTF?! One of my sites, GreatMusicBlog.com was getting blasted with traffic. This was pretty unexpected since the site was only about a week old. I knew something was up and quickly found out that the source was a tweet from sports writer Bill Simmons (@sportsguy33) who, at that time had 1.3 million followers. Here was the tweet:

Here’s a video I took shortly after I found out about the tweet:

I had the site on a shared hosting account through HostGator and I wasn’t sure it could withstand a tweet of that magnitude without going down.  Fortunately, as far as I could tell it was able to keep rolling, even with hundreds of visitors on at a given time.

So what were the final results? Well, the day before the tweet, the site had 35 visitors. On the day of the tweet, the total was 7,153 with an average time on the site of 4m25s. Not bad! What was really amazing to me was that the traffic didn’t end there. People still came directly from that tweet for over a week! For the 7 days starting with the tweet, the site ended up with 10,130 visitors.

For the long term, I would estimate that that turned into a few hundred loyal fans of the blog who return on a regular basis. While clearly one tweet doesn’t take the place of building a great site and marketing it well over time, it was definitely a great way to kick off a new blog!

If you feel confused and overwhelmed by the endless barrage of new websites and technologies that artists are ‘supposed to’ sign up for and participate in, then you’re not alone.  It’s an awful lot to keep up with and it can be a real challenge to make sense of it all.  The truth is that if you don’t have certain underlying principles and reasons why in place first, then you’ll never be able to keep up with or make sense of all of the new tools that keep popping up.

The real answers to your questions about social media usually aren’t solved by learning about new services or techniques.  More often than not, the confusion and lack of direction in using these tools comes from a lack of a defined purpose or philosophy at the core of how you deal with your fans.  Once you know how you want to deal with people and what effect you want to have on them then you can view all of these tools through the lens of that cause.

For example, my goal here is to help musicians gain clarity and success.  I see all of these tools as a way for me to make that happen.  When I evaluate a new technology or social media tool, I look at it through that lens.  What I’d really like to do is to spread ideas and info to as many people as possible.  I’d love to have face-to-face conversations with every musician in the world and swap insights with them all.  Obviously I can’t do that, so instead I use the tools at my disposal to get as close to that as I can.

You might decide that you want to inspire people, capture their imaginations or entertain people and help them escape their mundane lives for a little while.  Whatever it is, know it.  Know what effect you really want to have on people and let that shine through in your communications and let it guide you in your decisions.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be on Twitter or Facebook or Myspace or any other specific site or service.  You just need a platform or platforms that work for you and allow you to connect with people and make good on your purpose.  Seth Godin, one of my favorite marketing gurus, doesn’t tweet. He don’t feel it plays to his strengths and he prefers his readers digest what he has to say on his blog.

Do what feels right for you. Don’t do things because you’re ‘supposed to’. Know the outcome you want and trust your instincts.

Remember, you’re trying to connect with real people, not to impress yourself or anyone else with inflated numbers. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how many people are your friend on Facebook or how many people follow you on Twitter.  Only the number of quality connections and relationships matter. One way or another, that’s what you’re really after. Seth Godin tells it best:

So remember this when you’re out there in the technology jungle.  The real goal is to establish and grow meaningful relationships and to exchange real value.  It’s not about running up meaningless numbers.  It’s about exchanging more value.

So my message is this:  Know your purpose as an artist and what effect you want to have on people and then use the tools at your disposal to establish real relationships with real people.  Don’t get lost in the medium.  You’re not looking to connect with cyber people.  There are real people on the other end of your interactions.  Treat them as such and you’ll be able to get results that translate to the real world.

Here’s a video/slideshow/podcast that illustrates some of the common mistakes people make on their Myspace music pages and explains why they’re mistakes and how to fix them.