Every social media or other platform you DON’T use does two very harmful things:

1. It leaves money on the table.
2. It allows other artists to build fanbase and funnel customers away from you!

In a marketing MBA class I had, we had to work on a project for a local pro football team. The professor asked the class what other “attractions” in direct competition with this pro team. A lot of the class kicked other regional pro teams, and then some local major college teams. Finally I raised my hand and said, “Netflix, local PeeWee baseball teams, the Opera, and anything else where people must spend their limited resource of time, or money, being entertained.”

The professor looked at the rest of the class and said, “That is correct–all entertainment venues are in direct competition with ALL other entertainment venues. People only have so much free time, and only so much disposable income.”

Your problem is you need to build a solid fan base, and get them purchasing your goods. In a good plan, every venue that you are on steers customers either to sales of your products, or to your presence on other venues. Think of it like a Las Vegas casino–they are designed so that the entrance is a grand area, but once you enter, the gaming area is set up to steer foot traffic into other gaming areas, and away from the exits.

The exits are there, but you will not often randomly stumble upon them. They pay behavioral psychologist tidy sums to designing the lights, colors, carpet patterns, and games arrangements to subconsciously steer you around and around the gaming area. They know that if you stumble to an exit, you might leave, so the games area is set up so you never stumble upon an exit–you must make a conscious decision to leave and then you find it.

They also pump oxygen into the gaming area under the pretext of “flesh air” but the realty is when the O2 level is higher, you have more energy and stay awake longer–so you play a few more hours.

Your art is a product. Your social media sites should be designed to reinforce and steer to each other. Your goal is simultaneously offensive (sell product) and defensive (steer fans away from other artists–after all, you don’t want them buying someone else’s work when they could be buying yours, right?)

You should also being doing strategic alliances with OTHER artists and commercial establishments.

I know that is a lot of work, but if you want to make it big, you need to either focus on your art and have someone else manage the social media business, or you need to work 18 hours a day and devote half to art and half to business.

Or, you could just be like James Patterson–you do the business and slap your name on other people’s work 🙂