The Devil is in the Details

As an up-and-coming musician, singer, songwriter, or entertainer of any kind, don’t you want to stand out for all the right reasons?  I always tell college students that when they’re applying for a job, if a potential employer is holding their résumé side by side with another that they feel is comparable, one little extra – like design skills or a second language – could set them apart.

And yes, spelling mistakes or poor grammar could, on the other hand, be the difference in that company choosing the other candidate.

So when you’re managing your artist website or your social media or your e-newsletter, don’t you want to make sure that you double and triple check?  After all, if a record label, a publisher, a radio station, or a venue is looking at your content, all it could take is one broken link to get them to quickly decide, “Eh, the heck with this person,” and move on to someone else.

Already this morning alone I experienced two head shakers.

First I was looking at an artist’s website and endeavored to click on the icon for the link to their music page on Facebook.  Except that it was putting the domain name prior to the facebook.com/(rest of link here).  As a result, I was getting the Not Found page that we’ve all come to know and hate.  I know I’m a patient guy, as evidenced by the fact that, back at the artist’s website, I then went through the same frustrating mouse clicks for Twitter and YouTube, each met with the same result.  Countless others would’ve stopped after the Facebook frustration.

Apparently a full case of the Mondays hadn’t been delivered yet, but it didn’t take long for the balance to arrive.

Arriving in my email Inbox was something that I could tell was a blast, and not just because of the turnoff that was the salutation.  I am for all intents and purposes copying and pasting when I show you that it began with, “Hi <first name>,” which is about as unacceptable as it gets.  Since the sender was using a popular email program, my first guess is that he was maybe doing so for the first time.  Rather than testing it, he probably assumed that my name would automatically get filled in there.  Of course we all know what a bad word ‘assume’ is.

Did this person get my attention?  Yes, but in a bad way.  So, did I act on his email?  Well, I didn’t even bother to read it.  However, I did scroll to the bottom and click on Unsubscribe.

It happens that quickly and that easily.  And that’s all it takes to not get your music listened to.

Please be thorough.  Test (all) your web links.  Test your email program to see that it’s going to send your emails you want the recipient to see them.  Or, sit back and watch the competition get the Yes replies while you get anger and frustration in the form of (as Genesis once sang) no reply at all.