This past weekend I was sitting down with Obnoxious poet/emcee George Watsky for some dinner. And as he went to the bathroom, I pulled out my iphone and I tweeted to our community, “hangin’ with George Watsky and discussing his latest ventures: writing plays, moving to LA for screen writing, and droppin new album this summer.” I put down my iPhone as George came back to the table (Tweetie is a great iphone app). He caught a glimpse of me typing and asked “texting your girl?“. And I responded, “nah, just twittering that I’m hanging out with you.” George just smirked. Well who wants to know that information?

George has been questioning for a little while where he wants to join twitter and whether it was advantageous to do so a music artist. And that’s a question many artists are asking of themselves. They are asking themselves things like:

• is it worth it to join twitter?
• am I over saturating my community of fans?
• do I want to get that personal with so many people at once?
• will this end up being more work for me?
• isn’t this just another way to invite people to stalk me outside of my blog?

Just like any other social networking tool out there on the web, Twitter is a tool. And the question is, how do I use it so that I get what I want? First, define what it is that you’re looking to do. Then figure out if Twitter can actually help. Don’t do it the other way since it’ll only make you more confused. If you do it right, you’ll figure out whether Twitter is the right tool or not. And then you’ll need to know how it is you want to use Twitter.

Pretty Much Amazing recently wrote a post entitled The Thinking Man’s Take on: Twitter. They take us through when its appropriate to tweet:

To Tweet: You are an inside source at a major news organization/important news happening!
Not To Tweet: You are an entry level intern at a major news organization!
To Tweet: You own a major sports franchise!
Not to Tweet: You spend 16 hours a day looking at excel sheets!
To Tweet: You are a regularly updating website!
Not To Tweet: You only re-tweet what other twitterers have tweeted.
To Tweet: You are a witty and well written parody!
Not To Tweet: You don’t understand twitter, but desperately want to seem hip to the jive like the kids these days!
To Tweet: You’re in Egyptian jail!

I think their insights are golden for artists to understand since tweeting can be done in so many fashions. You don’t want to be like the other boring / annoying tweeters. You want to set yourself apart and do something of value to you as an artist. As a fan of George’s work and music, here’s what I’m looking for:

• new music updates - are you working on a new album or is a new single being released? 
• encounters you have - did you meet someone cool that might potentially impact your music and/or artistic career?
• sources of inspiration - did you have an encounter or face a tough event that might shape a song or your creative process?
• performances - are you traveling to my town or somewhere where I have a friend that might want to check you out?

Of course if you have wit or can drop some comedy in from time to time, that’s also ok and a perfect thing to tweet about. But don’t over burden yourself with it. Make twittering a normal routine and do it when it feels right. The idea behind twittering from an artist’s perspective in my opinion is to develop a community. A community of supporters and people who really want to follow your rise. 

If you already have a community (Facebook Groups, A Blog, Myspace Friends, Ning Site), then twitter can still help. Instead of using twitter as a source of new content, use twitter to syndicate filtered content from your existing community. Not everything though - that’s annoying.

Another option is to use twitter as a way of connecting with your most exclusive fans. Make it a private and/or exclusive place where only the supporters you want have this limited access to you. This keeps away the stalkers and allows you to have very simple conversations with people that want to help you.

Though twittering has had a lot of hype around it, I find it extremely useful. You just have to be selective about what it is that you write about and what your intentions are for using it. As long as you got that down, your career as a musician can only be enhanced by twitter.