This is a guest post by Manuel Marino where he shares how he has combined using LinkedIn for connections with blogging to build a community of artists helping artists.
Is it possible to merge an artist’s talent with social networking, adding some blogging spice for a perfect mix?
My name is Manuel Marino and I’m a music composer and producer, but I consider myself an all around artist, blessed with many talents, from music to painting, graphics and design.
I have many websites, most important are my weblog about music and arts ManuelMarino.com and my studio homepage MarinoSounds.com.
Why YOU Should Use LinkedIn
From my profiles, the best one is the LinkedIn profile where I have more than 27,000 direct contacts. Is it important?
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network
with over 120 million members and growing rapidly.
LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.
For a music professional, this means Heaven.
85% of my projects come from LinkedIn contacts.
I’ve been able to meet online impressive guys like Vince Desi (I consider him a friend) and many other powerful individuals from the video games, music and entertainment worlds.
I use many LinkedIn tools to contact artists all over the world and collaborate with them on music and multimedia projects. You can really feel like a world citizen this way!
IMPORTANCE OF BLOGGING
What about Blogging? Is it more or less important than networking?
If networking is the pillar of the Internet world, blogging
is the way to communicate your ideas inside the networks.
What inspired me initially was the idea to freely surf and read everything about anything. This always fascinated me. I think this is why people love to have many blog feeds to read daily. Next to this idea is the one to freely write interesting articles for the Internet community. Both give a kind of freedom that I never felt before.
This freedom is the foundation of my blog. ManuelMarino.com is about music, arts, philosophy, poetry, independent artists, humanities and freedom. I invite experts and sincere professionals and artists to write articles. I believe very much in freedom, honesty, sincerity and I’m able to feel these when I meet people. There are many good people in the world, but sometimes we are too obsessed by everyday life to understand and find this.
When I write my blog posts – usually my ideas about news, culture and art – sometimes my intuition is what’s behind the post. We need more intuition, people tend to forget the importance of it and uses too much their left brain. (Want to see the right brain in action? Just check my sketch lady, and my 3d works beauty and vampire night).
After you find the right idea, it’s the word of mouth that can make it a success on the Net! Backlinks are even more important, but the two are very related. I’m talking about the natural backlinks from fans and readers and word of mouth can only maximize the effect even more. That’s an awesome connection toward success!
What connects networking to blogging? Freedom. Yes, this amazing freedom feeling the Internet gives. Building an online network of contacts gives you freedom and the ability to “move your mind” in so many projects, countries, cities. You are able to find new traditions and culture.
As an example, I learned important details about Buddhism and oriental culture through a friend in Singapore. We also had much fun playing GO, an oriental board game. Singapore is very far. It’s not easy to reach it through a “real trip”. Internet can help, when distances are so far. The world is just one click away.
I just want to mention a success story that helped me realizing all of this.The mp3.com experience has been very important for me. It showed me the great potential of the Internet and gave me the ability to meet new friends and collaborate with them through the web.
It has been about 12 years ago. Musicians were working together and many projects were born. First Internet radios provided an important community of listeners who were supporting us. We were able to produce albums at no cost to us. (It was a real innovation in that period). The royalties mp3.com was giving us were fair and honest. I will always be delighted to remember those years.
For the rest of January, obtain your FREE copy of my Audio Mastering Guide and participate in our community to promote your blog or Website and connect with other musicians and artists.