I work with artists and deal with marketing every day. As a result, I’m re-reading Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk to get a little more inspiration…and I have it. Gary makes me feel like I’m not crazy! I feel like every day I’m talking to someone about caring for their audience. (thus, Gary makes me feel like I’m not crazy).
Here’s why…
I’ve probably showed chapter 9 of Crush It! to twenty people in the past few days.
The title of the chapter is “The best marketing strategy ever”. Know what the answer is?
“Care.”
That’s it. It’s also the entire chapter. Brilliant!
It’s not any more complicated than that. Give yourself to your audience. Care more about others than you do about your awesomness. Be about something bigger than yourself. Talk to your fans. Build relationships.
And Gary does. All you have to do is check him out (twitter | blog). You can’t deny that this dude truly cares about people. You also can’t deny that this is why he’s more successful than you. You must check him out and read this book!
What’s sad is that I keep seeing people in the music industry who’s actions communicate that they don’t care. They’re too busy to blog, tweet, make a video, answer comments on their website, respond to fans on Facebook, host a tweetup…they’re so busy being awesome artists that they say they don’t have time to interact with their fans. The can play shows, do interviews and promote their awesomeness but they don’t have time to talk to the folks who give them their sweet lifestyle?! I say they need to reevaluate their priorities. Maybe their problem is that they don’t care.
Soon enough, their fans won’t either.
