A Quick Tip on Social Media

Something I'm hearing pretty frequently these days from fellow company directors and organizers is that due to our powerful social media tools, we can have a pretty fair idea of what singers are actually doing when they've declined or cancelled something. The result: eyebrows are being raised.

Singers are (necessarily) in the public eye, so a lot of our daily activity lands squarely in other people's newsfeeds. This is sort of scary, but consider what it looks like if you're too busy to answer an email yet not too busy to bang around on Facebook, or if you say you're too sick to sing an audition right before Foursquare checks you in at a nightclub. Now, benefit of the doubt: you may very well could have completely lost your voice to the flu and your method of healing is to dancedancedance it all out- BUT how is an organizer going to know that? It will look to him/her like a blow-off, and it will be noted.

Sometimes we forget that it isn't only our friends who can see what we're doing: frequently friends of friends can see it as well, and those friends' friends might be the people you just ahem, blew off. And sometimes you won't realize that someone following you on social media is actually one of those "people". I was watching singer cancellations come in at some recent auditions and then also watching them post about activities on Facebook which didn't involve Kleenex. Of course I know these folks are pros and must have been vocally impaired that day if not physically (happens to all of us), but it occurred to me that they likely didn't realize those posts were being seen by the panel, because they probably didn't know I was on the panel at all. Really, you never know to whom your cancellation or decline message might be forwarded.

So consider being mindful of how social media is supporting your image in this trust-based business. Couldn't hurt, right?