When to CC and when to BCC!

I cannot tell you all of the cool email addresses I personally know. And I would like to thank you all for giving them to me! Seriously, I do have a great contact address for xxxxx at NBC Universal, xxxx at Tellabs, xxxx at Bank of America and xxxxx at BlackmanKallick. Sweet, don't you think?

If I was looking to hack a corporation I would thank my friends for the suggestion. Or if I knew one of the people in the list of email address and was attracted to them, I could now move forward with my advances. OR if you pissed me off, I can start a smear campaign. COOL!

Why do I have these great addresses, you ask? Because you sent them to me. Don't you remember? You sent me a joke email or a cause email or a band announcement? And you left the email addresses visible! Thank you!

But you didn't have to. You could have hidden these address by performing once simple change...ADD the ADDY to the BCC! When you open a new email you will see the To line and below that you will see the CC and below that is the BCC. Let's discuss the difference.

To: this is the line where you add an email address or two depending on the group you are sending too. Like co-workers or bandmates.

CC: this is the line you use to add an email address to include someone. If you want someone to see the message, but it is aimed at the address in the To line.

BCC: this line is always hidden. If you want to send an email to a larger group but respect the privacy of the recipeients.

I had made this mistake in the past and have taken measures to keep that from happening again. Protect your friends, protect their email addresses! Going forward, ADD the ADDY to the BCC!

On your honor, your Honor.

If Elvis were alive and happened to be walking down the street of your house and knocked on your door, you would certainly give him a moment of respect just for his overall accomplishment.

If CEO, Bill Gates happened to be walking down the street of your house and knocked on your door, you would certainly give him a moment of respect just for his overall accomplishment.

If the drummer of band XbarX happened to be walking down the street of your house and knocked on your door you would probably wonder if you had ordered a pizza.

Is that true? Is this how we treat each other? Have we gotten so lax on our appreciation of what each of us has accomplished that it would be easier to spit on our fellow musicians than to give them the respect for making something of themselves?

Remember, no one band stands alone. Do you think it was just coincidence that Eric Clapton asked Steve Winwood to go on tour with him? They have history together in the band Blind Faith. They have supported each other for decades. They are friends. Young bands have a long way to go. Making friends of other musicians and finding a mentor for your band will lead you to a future with possibilities. My first bands had other older musicians chime in to help us excel at our light-weight level of experience. And it poised us to join them in the heavy-rocking division! How cool is that? A local rock star as a mentor? My band signed up for that right away!

Most of us are already being treated like second class citizens by Jill and Joe AverageMusicFan. Why are we treating each other this way? At one of my jam nights about two months ago a guitar player came up on to my stage with another player that I had just met. They said his name was Gil. We played...WE ROCKED!!!! I had no idea who this guy was. He was older like me but played guitar like a decorated veteran. I was in awe, and I had every right to be, the guy was Gil Pini of the Boyzz from Illinoizz. This man has history. This man MADE history! He IS a local ROCK STAR. And now, he is my friend. Even though he doesn't LOOK like a rock star, he doesn't carry his six-string shooter with him wherever he goes, he still deserves the respect of accomplishment. I was humbled by his talent and the music he made. AND, those in the know are also. Those who don't know, generally get left out.

Know your local history. Makes friends with other musicians.

RESPECT each other.

Your Space, MySpace, work place

If you are a friend of mine on Facebook, you recently learned that MNO has closed its page on FB due to a clear inability to connect. Facebook is S-L-O-W and posting an event on the wall is pointless. PLUS, messaging your friends is limited the same way your Yahoo account is. There is no guarantee that the message gets to all 200 people on your list in a timely fashion. In other words, your out-going email is limited to 25 pieces per each send!

Well, let’s talk about the continuous use of MySpace for bands. It’s the next best thing to an actually web page. Truly. But I will tell you that many of you are wasting time with your MySpace page. Don’t believe that a computer newbie is going to opt into a MySpace account just to connect with your band. Give them an option. ADD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO THE PAGE!

In my previous blogs I clued you into the fact that an average user will trust their inbox before they trust a social web site. Don’t make them come to you and then let them go without an option in the way they contact you. Having them fill in boxes to capture their info is fine, but not always the best. Adding your email address to your MySpace site will give them the satisfaction of making the first step. Remember, your audience is fickle. You never know what is going to make them click.

And speaking of click, let’s consider what they may no longer be clicking…like their work computer. More and more people are losing their jobs to this economy. This means that they are NOT going to your websites, they are NOT getting your email in their company inbox, they are NOT checking their email accounts at Yahoo, Gmail or AOL. The computer at work may have been the ONLY computer in their lives. There is no way to reclaim these fans unless by chance they get a home computer, or a friend of theirs is also a fan of yours.

This means that face-to-face time and show handouts are now more important than ever!

Promo, ya know!

Fanbase and FaceBook:
It's not like the old days when the desire was how to control your growing fanbase. The desire now is how to maintain the dwindling fanbase. Something I have discovered after about a month+ on FB is that I do not see it developing into a good method of advertising for bands. Your ad will be quickly pushed down if your intended audience has many profiles to watch. I have more than 100+ profiles adding to my home wall everyday. Your news disappears quickly! By sending an invite is no different than sending the fan an email. And to spread yourself across Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook AND a website will be counter-productive. The best thing to do is to get back to basics!

Good tips for your band:
A. Jose Rivera of Five Guys Named Moe has the band at the venue 2 hours before show time to set up and be ready to meet and greet people as they come in. They chat the fans up and give them handouts of their schedule. The Moes always have a strong fanbase and play often with very little outside advertising. But it shouldn't stop there.

B. The next point is the quality of music. Practice, practice, PRACTICE! What’s the point in promoting something that should be out back on the Rockpile. (Back in the day, one of my first club bands, d’Rangers had a couple of mentors that stopped by practice to give us input. Ron Anaman of Trillion and Juan Rice of Rip Van Winkle, played a big part in how our band worked bookings and how we built our sound.) Consider that if your Schroeder playing Beethoven on a toy piano and you sound just as good as Beethoven you could draw an engaged and respectful fanbase. But If you play like a sea otter on a Steinway, your audience will leave you quickly or they’ll stay out of friendship…then leave.

C. Then it's the songs the fans want to hear. Learn to read your crowd. Play what THEY want to hear! I am not against playing a song for self-expressions sake, especially if you are highly talented. But I am not sure that most musicians understand the importance of playing to the crowd…it’s to keep your fans interested! Yet, you don’t want to become a jukebox. Often your chance for expression is in your solo or that song or two the band takes to expand the thinking of your fans.

D. While you are chatting up your crowd, ask them what songs they’d like to hear you perform. While you give them a little face time they will offer up things like birthdays, anniversaries, bowling league championships or the like. Use this info wisely at your gig and you may have a fan for life!

Point taken and Point learned
I was in a band called American Rock Club. We existed only on emails (and could have used our resources better to gather addresses) and sometimes chatting up the crowd. We put almost every dime we made...into our pockets(outside of some expenses). We called it quits after 3 years. The clubs loved and hated us at the same time. They loved because we were talented. They hated us because our fanbase was thin. We did not advertise in print, our bad. When I joined the Almost Brothers we had ads in the IE and NL besides chatting up the crowded and giving handouts. And a database of email addresses that would choke a horse. I played 40 shows in 6 months. The machine was already well oiled and the effort showed.

So I guess the answer is to cultivate email addresses. FB doesn't give you an email address to add to your database. The same for MySpace and Twitter. Having worked in computer support for over 14 years one thing is true: The average computer user will trust their Inbox. Go directly to your fans, don’t make them come to you. If they are at your gig groovin’ on your show, hit them up for their email address. Email addresses are the goal and the gold.

Your ISP and your email client may be holding you back.

In my last MNOtes, I talked about taking full advantage of your website to keep your email address from ever changing. In today’s MNOtes, I want to discuss the painful truth about your ISP choices and the use of a good firewall and antivirus.

I want to lay out for you a good model for your home network. I know that there are a few IT people on MNO, chime in with any further support.
First let me tell you that I speak from corporate experience in a support position over a decade plus. Mostly for corporate attorneys who need a secure home system.

BASICS:
An ideal system will include a hi-speed modem, a router and a computer. Sounds easy. Now let’s get specific.
The modem is you connection to your ISP and connects to your home system with a CAT5/network cable. I would refrain from using a USB cable as the speed is better with the network cable. Next in line is a router. Please understand that this is a necessary front line of defense for your computer whether it be Mac or PC. From the router you would use a network cable to attach your computer.

A little closer look:
OK, next level of specifics. I will not get into which router or PC is better or whether you should buy instead of rent your modem. I will tell you that a secure router is almost everything you need. I said ALMOST. Here is a scenario I have worked with to help you get the best for the least. If you get the best settings for your router, you can get away with AVG free version and the Windows firewall to be secure. Read that again! A secured router, AVG free and Windows firewall. I ran my desktop as thin as possible for two years now to see the effects. To make it ultimately secure – a secured router, Norton or McAfee Antivirus and firewall. AND THEN…be careful where you go on the internet! Very important. It’s where you go after you have built your system that gets you in trouble.

ISP’s:
Now let’s take a closer look at your ISP. I have Comcast, I have used Comcast or Covad DSL as my ISP for years. If you use SBC Global, AOL or AT&T - with all due respect, please understand that the hackers of the world are watching you. The general consensus is that these ISP’s are purchased due to budget constraints. Most users who go at that point alone generally feel that is all they need and are not interested in purchasing anything else…like a router or antivirus software. They spent about a $1500 or more on a computer and now $30plus a month for internet access??? “That’s enough!”, is what they are thinking. So, they get hacked or they get a virus. This thought is based on lack of education about a secure system. So let me follow this up with the fact that a secure router will save you from most harm. A solid antivirus and firewall are further commitments to safe surfing. And this goes for Mac users too. I have seen the signs, you are not all that safe.

Email:
Lastly, let me discuss you email client. With your ISP, you get a handful of email addresses. That’s included with your contract. Generally, this option is secure. So, what about Gmail or Yahoo or AOL? The fact remains that these are web based clients. They are applications that sit on the web waiting for you to access it. Okay, I get that. But they are not secure. In fact corporate America is on its way to banning Yahoo at the work place. Mainly because of its widespread use and lack of spam/virus seeking tools. It was consider the reason why the last major virus took over so many computers in corporations. In the legal community these email apps are consider a breach of security and not tolerated.

Another item to point out is that you are limited to 25 outgoing emails with any provider. So email blasts about an upcoming show are considered spam and your emails will bounce back to you. I added a listserv client to my account on my website so that I can send a blast without limits.

In my next MNOtes: Facebook, MySpace and other band promotion.

Email, a nightmare?

I would like to present another way for a musicians to handle their email issues.

Currently you use an email client such as Gmail, Yahoo on an internet service provider (ISP) such as SBCGlobal or Comcast. It makes sense to use the value added part of your ISP but to be honest, you probably have to deal with sending out a blast email when you change to another ISP or email client. Why? Why are you confusing people with yet another change.

When the consumer internet boom was in full swing in 1998, my wife wanted a website to help sell her antiques. She also wanted the fastest connection for her auctioning advantage. AND, she never wanted to change her email address again.

WOW! That was a tall order. But that is how she works, and that’s what works for her. And since 1998, she has never had to change her email address. Quite frankly, my email address has not changed since 2000. It has always been tamaro@drumt.com. Did you notice that? It’s not @hotmail.com or @sbcglobal.net. It is something short and simple. And yes, it relates to my webpage. (In fact, if you take the drumt.com and put it in your browser, you will go to my site.)

Magic, not really. It was part of my wife’s request. She wanted a website. Ok, I bought a domain, built a site. With it I got 5 email addresses. I used one for awhile and set one for hers. The next part was just logic. Whenever our ISP would change, we set the tamaro@drumt.com to forward to whatever our ISP email address was. We were with Megsinet for a long time until they were bought by a company in Wisconsin. So things changed a little bit. But we did NOT change our email addresses.

My wife dealt with the phone connection until hi-speed cable came to our neighborhood. Then she was out of control. Of course, within a couple of months of me not being able to get to my computer because she was auctioning, I had to build her a computer. Fast forward 10 years, we have a wireless network here at Casa de TA. A couple of Dell laptops helps us do whatever we want. Yes, a Dell running Windows…NO Problems! We do not worry about spam…ever. We don’t worry.


Next MNotes!, your ISP and your email client may be holding you back.