band – Fiona Z – The Musician’s Five Star Assistant

Twitter rolls out a fresh new look.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful week and the start to your weekend is going great. I’m so happy spring is FINALLY here. I’ve had quite a week with events kicking off the spring and summer season, so I’m happy to be enjoying a little down time to balance out the festivities.

To add to the excitement, Twitter has rolled out a whole new look for its users. Part of my position as assistant is to keep my clients updated on social media – if there is a new feature, a new rule, or in this case, an entirely new look. As you know, this happens quite often.

First things first, have you seen it? (You have to – I love it!) Check out the first two featured musicians who switched over: John Legend and Weezer.

Here’s what you need to know to keep your profile updated with Twitter’s new look.

Larger, customizable header photo – You will notice on the two examples that now the header is larger and more prominent, and they got rid of the background image. John Legend uses the space to promote his latest album and makes his profile picture a photo of him, while Weezer, a more established brand, focuses on featuring their band members in the large banner and their infamous logo as their profile photo. Either looks great, but you will want to figure out what you want to feature.

If you have a new album that you really want to push, you might want to have a header featuring the release. Or if you have an upcoming tour, you can highlight the band and dates on your header.

The size of the new template is 1500×500. TWELVESKIP offers great advice on the dimensions as well as a really good template to help you build your best looking header, which includes invisible vs visible space. Check it out here.

Filtered Tweets – Social media platforms are all about featuring only the best of what they have, so it makes sense for Twitter to start filtering, pinning and featuring tweets. Your best tweets (ones that have received more engagement) will appear larger than the others. You can now pin tweets, so if you want to make sure everyone sees your tweet on your new concert date, or what you had for lunch, you can pin it to the top. Lastly, you can choose from different timelines when looking at profiles. Select from these options: Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies.

If you haven’t seen the option to switch over yet, don’t worry, it is coming. You can prep ahead and have your team design a new header photo while you wait!

Are you ready to make the switch? Log into Twitter, then visit this site. Scroll all the way down and click ‘Get it now’. The change will be instant!

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!

Social Media - 05/02/2014

Morrow, GA

We spent two nights in Atlanta, GA for a matinee show at Clayton State University at the beautiful Spivey Hall on Sunday afternoon. A really great surprise for me to see the magnificent hall. Check out my shots during soundcheck:

Set up and soundcheck went much quicker this time around – the band is jelling and getting more comfortable with the sound they want to create so the process is smoother. We got some delicious Vietnamese food for dinner (first time I had it!). My first lesson was to try and get the restaurant to bag them individually and label them with either their name or order number. This is just to make it easier on the band. They don’t need to be searching for their order in a big sea of orders!

I was able to hang backstage this time as the hall had to control selling merchandise, so it was nice to relax and chat with the band as well as stay on top of them for show time and 5 minute calls.

It was a sold out show and the audience was really warm. The fiddle player in the band said there was a “wow-er” in the audience – after every song, this woman would say, “wow!”. Things like that I found give the band a confidence boost and a little spark of joy, making the concert that much more enjoyable for them!

During intermission, I walked to the box office to make sure merch was doing well and took some shots of the lobby:

I stuck around after the show and sat by the CD signing table. It was so great and rewarding to hear folks talk to the band and tell them stories of how inspiring they are, when they last saw each other, kids being starstruck…it was really nice to see that at the end of the night.

Off to Evans, GA as I type for a show tonight! More stories are still to come, I’m sure. 🙂

Tour - 12/09/2013

Kennett Square, PA

Day 1:

Half of us took the train from New York Penn on Amtrak, while the other half flew in from Chicago, Nashville and Austin! Already loving how touring brings folks together.

Taking the Amtrak is always, well…thrilling. For a Monday afternoon, it was fairly crowded at New York Penn station. Thanksgiving travel, I assumed. One tip I did learn after boarding that plane is when making reservations, is make them separate so you get separate tickets. When they announce the gate number, a herd of people with luggage just crams into the escalator door, making it hard for the 4 of us to go through together. I had to stand back and wait for everyone to get through and tell the impatient ticket man that these 3 guys are with me as they walked through.

I am with musicians who travel and tour for a living, so they knew to go right to the end of our coach class cart so we could find seats and luggage space easily. Done!

The ride was very easy and once we arrived at the train station, the driver was there to greet us. With one SUV for our 6 bags of LARGE luggage, it reminded ME to remind presenters that we are traveling with a lot of luggage and they need to prepare for that.

Once we all checked into the hotel, I planned a little welcome dinner for everyone to meet and catch up, and it was really fun for me to hear their conversations of past gigs, past collaborations, current state of the industry, current opinions of the industry…all of it. Something about being immersed around people who are really ‘doing it’ feels great to be a part of.

First day had some bumps, but nothing that can’t be handled. What I learned from the day:

1. Print out tickets for each person on the trip – take into consideration folks being late and getting lost in lines.

2. Don’t go for the first door on the train, walk down to the end to find a decent seat with luggage space.

3. Tell presenters you will need a large vehicle for transport – with musicians on the road for 3 weeks, that’s a lot of luggage.

4. If there’s time, plan a little meet/greet/catch up event, whether it’s a quick bite at a bar or a relaxed dinner. You are going to be on the road for weeks with these guys, make the effort to get to know each other! And also, hear some juicy stories.

Tour - 12/03/2013

Thanksgiving and Tour Annoucement

I was lucky enough to have 2 Thanksgiving celebrations with friends (my nephew responded with a “no FAIR!” over the phone) and it was days of red cabbage (my favorite side dish), pumpkin pie and of course a few games of Apples to Apples (get this game now if you don’t have it!)

While most might be relaxing and winding down the year, I, on the other hand, am planning a nationwide, 12-city tour for 6 musicians that starts December 2! Whew! Sounds easy, right?

I’m not only planning and coordinating the appearances, I’m also coming along for the ride. For the month of December, I’ll be on a large sleeper tour bus with 6 musicians and a sound engineer to tackle the “road life”. I’m going to learn first hand what it’s like to be a traveling musician and I certainly can’t wait to handle the inevitable hurdles and things that WILL go wrong.

So, to honor this new journey, I’ll be ‘live-blogging’ throughout the weeks with photos and stories! You are going to hear about the good AND the bad (no shame here), because it’s a learning experience. We all deserve to know what really happens on the road!

Let’s get this party started.

Life / Tour - 12/02/2013