This week's 'FREE Merch Friday' Winners Announced!

Russ Russell, Jerry Rabushka & Tina Ashing-Forsythe are this weeks winners! Congrats and be sure to send us an email to: rockums@yahoo.com and thanks for participating. Stay sharp for another one next week and if you haven't checked out the new website yet, stop by and check out the progress!

Short O.R. Url's For Easy Sharing Everywhere:

We now have a quick reference for some of our media and sites, where the url is shortened, this way if you like a particular song or site it is easy to share everywhere! Click the image above and F.Y.I. the link is on our blog permanently now too, directly above the 'Topher's Topics' bundle for RSS feeds via Google Reader. Just a head's up, thanks!

The brand new website is up and running now, check it out if you like, still a work in progress. http://bit.ly/cbOz5a

Tips for Musicians to tap into Twitter. 'Musician Monday' Pt. Tres

Twitter has become a great source for short posts of media, or status updates, in the form of micro-blogging. The maximum allotted characters are one-hundred and forty. When I first set up twitter I went on google and did some searches on twitter, learned the lingo, then watched for how-to-guides. I found lots of great resources and I will touch on a few in this post. The first thing I did was follow some like-minded tweeters in the Saint Louis, MO. area and soon learned that, over time, some don't follow back. Twitter then introduced the twitter lists and I was even more confused on my approach. Once I got a small amount of followers going, I made sure to list our band on every twitter-directory site that I could find. Most of the twitter directories that we are on can be found on our list: @Ockumsrazor1/Resources For Musicians. (Now this list is dissolved into others, just google the keywords: twitter directories.) Also, another great site to be on that I must mention is Twibes. It is more than just your average directory site as it is also comprised of very comprehensive categories, lists and groups. Definitely worth the time and effort. Adam Loving, the site's administrator, is now beginning to offer a thorough webinar on how to do pretty much anything on twitter.


Another thing to keep in mind, being a band and all, is that you do not want to make it all about you and promoting your music act. There are numerous twitter-tip sites out there, but one relevant post that I found is as follows: 5 Things Every Band Should Know About Twitter. Tweeps like users that follow back and list them, etc. I like to also shout out all of our new followers to welcome them, etc. Re-tweeting others posts, use of hash tags, participating in 'Music Monday' and 'Follow Friday' will increase your chances of being followed. You will quickly notice how other tweeple perceive you, as to how they list you. There will be profiles that choose not to follow back. This is just a fact. I have even found that users purposely follow us to be shouted from our profile, getting them more exposure, then unfollowing. I just don't do it again for them. I have even found a way to address this problem too. I created a list just for this scenario, because of the fact that we follow back everyone and list them, plus shout them out. When time allows, I will block these people, so I don't have to waste time on following the same people or having them follow and then unfollow.
A good site that I use is Tweepi and it helps by doing bulk unfollows. However, twitter recently made them complicate the process of doing so, by making one manually click on each user not reciprocating your follow. Another thing to look for when trying this out is that if you have recently followed someone, make sure to give them a few days or so, in which to follow you back. Once you have allowed a window of time, you can see when each person's last tweet was and whatnot. Keep that in mind when on twitter following a person, as well. In addition, the best two twitter browsers that I personally enjoy were listed in our first 'Musician Monday' post. HootSuite and TweetDeck are good ways to keep up with not only twitter, but a couple of other social networking sites, as well. Last, but not least, when posting a link from twitter you want to use a url shortener. Some browsers may provide a shortener for you, however, I recommend that you use a site like bit.ly.


For those who have not seen our blog yet, I went back and added links to particular sites, and also added a link for you to email the post and also to share it on any social networking site of your choice for easy sharing. Stay sharp...