Making Great First Impressions As a Musician Matters

I've had a couple of different experiences recently with small business owners that brought to mind that age-old adage of "first impressions count".

Do it right, and you might have a customer for life. Do it wrong, and not only will you lose a potential customer (and more importantly a relationship), but you may very well create an anti-evangelist depending on how badly you screw it up.

This ties in with digital music and online promotion in a very big way. Think of all of the different ways that you interact with folks online. Are you staying conscious of the fact that everything you write will most likely stay in the realms of the internet forever (shouts to archive.org), but also that each post, tweet, update and blog you write can affect your relationship with potential fans of your music?

Case in point: I follow a music blog that I respect very much from a knowledge-gain standpoint, but the first time I made the effort to comment and interact, the blog owner ripped me a new one with a righteous tirade discounting all of the points I had made to a particular post. I wasn't irked so much that his opinions differed from mine, because that's life. What irked me was the manner in which he responded to me.

Fast forward a few months --- this music blog owner posted a link and information to some new music of his that is being released. I'm not vindictive, so I took a listen. The album was that good; it was a brilliant piece of electronic music.

But do you know what I remember more than how much I enjoyed the music? I remember being ripped on my first contact point with the artist. He not only lost a sale, he also lost someone who would have helped to promote his music to a wide network of music lovers, for free. Something to remember -- that first impressions you make as a musician go beyond your video, your music and your image, they show something of who you are as a person. That's going to be a key factor in building a fan-base.

Related: The Lost Art of Mastering