It was a hot August day, the summer of 2005. I stumbled out of my dorm room at college into the path of a pretty girl. After a brief chat, there was mutual interest and she asked me a question I’d never heard -- “Are you on Facebook?”
At the time, Facebook was a young, feisty, startup website for college students. Concepts like the Timeline, Video Sharing, and Pages didn’t exist yet. It was built as a way to quasi-stalk your classmates, form communities of like-minded individuals, and to share photos of you and your friends. Believe it or not, Facebook is called a “social” network because it was built for people.
Eventually, the world caught on to the power of an online public square, and Facebook exploded into the behemoth we know today - a hub for business information and content, the world’s leading social video platform, and a marketplace to buy and sell your old couch (or your brand new guitar pedal.) By 2015, everyone and their grandma had a facebook profile. Like all things, the smashing success of the ability for business pages to reach their audience and acquire new customers faded precipitously as Facebook made it increasingly difficult to reach your goals without putting some skin ($$$) in the game.
As a result, many businesses are pondering now more than ever what an effective strategy for best-use is on Facebook. Some are even writing off the platform all-together. When I do one-on-one consultations with PG clients, social media strategy is one of the most prevalent topics discussed and my message is always simple: Success on social media is still very possible, it’s just that the goal needs to be adjusted.
Unless you sell personalized T-Shirts or low-cost consumer goods, Facebook is not a place to expect direct revenue to be earned. But, that doesn’t mean Facebook should be abandoned or that it can’t bring value to your online presence and brand. So, here are my tips to maximize impact and help your business on social media:
Build community by engaging your followers on a regular basis. Ask them questions about their experience with your brand and invite them offer feedback that could help convince others to buy your products.
Offer them something they can’t find anywhere else: exclusive follower discounts, rebates, or offers that entice them to stay engaged.
Post content that puts a human face to your company. People like to support people. This could be behind-the-scenes photos/videos, a company blog or Q&A, or stories about the history of your company or products.
Create a series of low-budget facebook ads that will allow you to test messaging, content, and results. Vary your messages for content, new follower acquisition, sales, etc. See here for help determining your facebook ad budget and strategy.
Define a budget to commit to boosting your content to your followers and relevant related audiences. This will help you grow your reach.
Inquire with other, larger, pages that produce coverage of your brand about partnering to boost and promote your coverage to their followers. Make sure your page is tagged when doing this.
These are just a few, simple ideas to get the most out of social media. If you need a more personal touch, PG’s Marketing Lab is here to help with any and all of your marketing questions. We’d love to help you develop a strategy specific to your social media presence, including how PG can help you spread the word via our social media channels. You can sign up for a free, no-pressure consultation with me using the calendar below. Happy posting!
Robillard has made more than 40 albums fronting his own band and with Roomful of Blues.
One of today’s most notable DeArmond players is the revered blues and jazz guitar virtuoso Duke Robillard, a deep student of vintage tone who has learned how to recreate many historic guitar sounds. We asked Robillard to share his expertise and experience with DeArmond pickups, which goes back to the mid-1950s, when he and his father built his first guitar for a school science fair. They took the neck from an old, acoustic Kay Kraftsman and cut a Tele-shaped body from two pieces of 3/4" plywood, inspired by the guitar James Burton played on TV’s The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Then, they recycled the Kay’s bridge and tailpiece, and ordered a DeArmond. “A week after that, I was in a band,” Robillard says.
DeArmond originally referred to its pickups as “guitar microphones,” as they were designed to amplify acoustic guitars without altering their organic tone. Of course, once plugged into an amp all bets on that were off, given the breakup characteristics of the small combos that were common at the time. The RH pickups, which James and Szabó, for example, used, are held in place by clamps. The FH and Rhythm Chief models are floating pickups, mounted by what’s often called the “monkey-on-a-stick” method. Essentially, the pickups are held in place by a metal bar that’s screwed to a guitar’s body, and the pickups can slide up and down the bar, like a simian might scale a tree, to find the sweet spot.
DeArmond’s Rhythm Chief 1100.
By the time Robillard founded the swing and jump blues band Roomful of Blues in 1967, he was playing a Gretsch Synchromatic archtop fitted with a DeArmond, in quest of the authentic vintage tones he heard on records from the ’30s, ’40s and early ’50s. “Then I went to a Gibson ES-125, where I ended up finding a way to make a Rhythm Chief 1100 work in the neck position,” he recounts. “Then I added a P-90 for the bridge. I didn’t want to use a guitar with a cutaway because I wanted every setback that the guitar players in 1940 had. That stopped me from going high on the neck all the time, which I think was a discipline that made me a better musician.”
“The cheapest model [the 1000] is really the best sounding one.”
Today, he uses a variety of DeArmond pickups on his guitars, but his favorite is the vintage DeArmond that was marketed as, simply, the “Guitar Mike,” which has screwdriver-adjustable pole pieces. And he applies the tricks he’s learned over the years, like placing stick-on felt pads under DeArmonds positioned near the bridge, to raise the floating pickup to the correct height. He also notes there is an alternative to attaching the monkey stick behind the bridge. “A lot of jazz players would shorten the bar and have it flattened out, so you could screw it to the side of the neck. That became popular with guitarists who played Strombergs, D’Angelicos, and L-5s, for example.
“The cheapest model [the 1000] is really the best-sounding one,” he continues. “And you need to use a wound G string on an archtop, or it’s going to howl like crazy. It isless of a pickup than a microphone. You can actually talk into it, and I’ve done gigs where something went wrong with the PA and I’ve sung through the pickup.”
Robillard’s latest album, Roll With Me, includes “You Got Money,” played on his DeArmond-outfitted J.W. Murphy archtop.
These days his favorite archtop is a J.W. Murphy with an 1100 with a shortened bar attached to the side of the neck. He puts stick-on felt pads under the treble side to keep the pickup height as he likes, and to preserve the natural sound of the guitar. You can hear Robillard play his DeArmond-outfitted Murphy on “You Got Money,” a track from his new album, Roll with Me, on Bandcamp.
One more recommendation: “Use a small amp because that’s what they sound best with,” he says. “Small tube amps are what these pickups were made for, but if you’ve got a closed-back cabinet they tend to feed back on the low end. Keeping the bass side of the pickup lower helps with that. When you’re setting up the pickup, press down on the last fret and get the treble side high and the base side low, and then just balance it out till you get the right sound.”
Gibson Les Paul Studio Electric Guitar - Cherry Sunburst
For years, the Les Paul™ Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models. Now, the Les Paul Studio has been refreshed and is better than ever. It features an Ultra Modern weight-relieved mahogany body with a plain maple cap, a mahogany neck with a traditional heel, SlimTaper™ profile, and a bound rosewood fretboard with acrylic trapezoid inlays, Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons, and a pair of Gibson’s acclaimed Burstbucker™ Pro pickups wired to push/pull volume controls for coil tapping and individual tone controls for even more sonic options. Available in a variety of gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes with matching trim, this is the essential Les Paul, refined and updated for today’s players. A soft shell case is also included.