Tonight I got to record an interview with Mark Schulman, drummer for P!nk. In addition to drumming, we discussed empathy, attitude, his corporate speaking engagements, and much more. I hope to post it within the next week or two.

​Good advice -- no matter what your line of work -- from client Troy Luccketta of the band Tesla...

"As you are influenced by other artists you meet or admire from afar, be careful not to lose yourself. Find yourself in their music and learn from them, but continue to develop your own voice."

​Thank you to Peter Durand for having me as one of the first guests on his new podcast, "Eating Crow." I can only guess he wanted someone who would set the bar really low. Pete gets people to talk about the messy, off-kilter aspects of business and entrepreneurship, but in the kind of relaxed, fun way usually only achieved through alcohol consumption.

Listen to the episode. 

​One reason I like "Humans of New York," besides its great content, is that it does not engage in any of the gimmicks, tricks, and scams pushed by so many people in social media. They don't use hashtags, polls, contests, questions just to drum up comments, lines like "tag a friend who...", text that is nothing more than a collection of keywords, click bait, etc.

Based on what many marketing "experts" say, the reach and engagement of "Humans of New York" should be less than zero. And yet, they absolutely crush it.

Michael McDermott, drummer for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts: And you sort of see that also with the drum videos (some people) do. You're like, how many times did you practice this song before you decided to record it? Sometimes you've got to practice it a couple more times. But everybody's for the right now. Just slow down. It's not about how fast you can get that video out and uploaded and how many hits it gets. Learn the song. Love it. Really get into the tune and feel it. You can see when somebody is earnest about what they're doing.
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Watch the full interview

​A number of professional musicians apparently gave up on their social media, their blogs, etc. It is like, without touring, they don’t think they have anything to post about.

However, I would argue that they actually have a wealth of stories, knowledge, and insights to share. Being off the road does not mean you have to be offline. And just because some artists no longer talk about music, but instead just push their perfumes and fashion lines, that does not mean music fans want to see that.

If you are a professional musician and are struggling with your content, let me know. Because I would rather see more posts about music than… well… almost everything else currently online.

​I think the entire hashtag system is broken. As I understand it, hashtags were developed to bring a sense of organization to messy environments like Twitter. 

Then people gamed hashtags to get more attention. This led to posts with one line of text and 75 lines of hashtags. People also frequently used hashtags that were trending but that had nothing to do with the posts they were attached to.

The latest hashtag advice I read was a blog post from a social media “guru” about building a large following on Instagram. They said to load up a comment under your post with as many hashtags as Instagram will allow. However, Instagram will penalize you for using the same hashtags repeatedly. So three days after your post runs, delete that comment. Then use those hashtags all over again with a new post.

Maybe this is why you see posts where people clearly devoted hours to setting up the tricks and gimmicks for getting attention, but only about 30 seconds to the actual content. And while I see many people dumping a bunch of hashtags into their posts, I don’t know anyone who looks for content using hashtags. It seems to be a case of massive production and no consumption.

If this is the state of things, then maybe hashtags are a waste of time.

Gregg Lohman performing with Easton Corbin on the Today Show this morning. Listen to his Bands To Fans interview.

​A post I developed with a client who is a drummer got positive feedback from other professional drummers. Making an impression on a few people in your target audience is better than reaching thousands of people who will forget about you 10 minutes later.