I  need to practice writing shorter posts. It’s harder to keep people’s attention these days and often, you should just hit them with the sharp end of an idea.

Right now, I’m posting about my membership site and artist community New Music Marketing it’s really getting over run by spammers and I don’t even have much foundation content there.

So the outcome is a forum needs a lot more maintenance than a blog.

But I really feel I need to get active there.

I’m not worried about controlling the content. I’m motivated by creating a “tribal” environment. There is clearly a methodology I’m developing and I’m happy to discuss this on my blog in kind of broad theoretical terms, but first I’m desperate to ensure my customers are the first to benefit from my knowledge and I like the idea that inside the forum, discussing practical techniques as they apply to specific clients, as well as being completely open about what is available in terms of scripts, bots, automation, outsourcing, etc. - this is stuff I’m not keen to discuss on my by public blog, because I generally tend to charge for it, that’s my living!

The idea for the forum came from all the value I was putting into 1-on-1 email consultations and wanting other clients to benefit from that. A lot of my clients, are not very advanced in web 2.0 and often this is precisely why they’ve come to me. They don’t read my blog and for a lot of them the pieces of the puzzle are only slowly coming together.

The forum can become a platform which could provide controlled access to content and 3rd parties - outsourced staff such as graphic designers, web designers - who could work directly with clients. So all I need to do is focus on bringing my customers together on the forum.

I see this as being efficient without even thinking about the main point of such forums - you’re leveraging your user base for content and feedback. When you can control your tribe within such an environment which is perceived to be somewhat insular, we can talk freely about the issues and what blind spots might be coming up for artists in the process - I can respond directly to their actual needs, rather than waffling on my blog.

It’s just a mess in there right now! I did have plans. But those plans have been put on hold. These holidays I hope I’m able to rally and progress with this community. It’s something new, I see benefits, I see scalability, I just have to tackle the challenge of maintaining it to a point I can dedicate outsourced staff to it’s upkeep.

Or at least stop all the spam!

PS I also want to build a small business / home business marketng community one day . . .

Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.