I have my own registered business named "Candlestick Productions, LLC." I do various things with the LLC, most at present have to do with being a professional musician. One part of my business is that I give guitar lessons.
I am going to make reference to some of the concepts of social media listed in this Wikpedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media (under the "Shaping" heading.) (Wikipedia could be considered a form of collaborative social media...)
There are certain forms of social media that are convenient to use while teaching students music. YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) technology allows users to upload music videos that can be viewed over the world wide web. If one of my guitar students wants to learn a specific song, and neither of us have a recording of the song, I can often go to YouTube, type in the name of the song and find a CD-quality recording. I teach guitar as learned "by ear" and not by the written music format, so having a recording of nearly any rock and roll song ever recorded redily available is very handy.
If I want to refer to a certain type of guitar or piece of musical gear, I can use the Google search engine to find pictures of just about everything sold in musical marketing. Many times along with the pictures or ads for the gear will come a great description the student can read to inform him or her about that particular product. There are a lot of floor-based special effects units for the electric guitar that alter the sound of the instrument just before it gets to the amplifier. When instructing new electric guitar students about these types of effects units, the content on the Internet can be very helpful. Sweetwater is one of hundreds of such sites out on the web: http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/guitars/guitar-pedals/
E-mail is important to my lessons. My students contact me via e-mail for their first lesson (I advertise on the Craigslist, see below) and the might contact me for any issues about lessons in the future. I also sometimes offer additional training to them via e-mail if there was a question they had at the end of the lesson, I'll get back to them by e-mail. We can also communicate via e-mail pertaining to scheudling problems and it is a handy way to send them hyperlinks to any specific web pages we might talk about during the guitar lesson. I use my home computer for lessons and I have a 37" Toshiba HDTV monitor hooked up to my system. This make for nice plain vieiwing during the lessons.
I advertise for my lessons with several differently worded postings on what is called "The Craigslist." The Craigslist is an online community catering to the Internet-based world as a form of classified ads. Many kinds of items can be found for sale on the Craigslist, and there are threads where you can post your services for hire. Here is their main page: http://annarbor.craigslist.org/ You might notice in the right hand column there is a specific Craigslist for many cities in Michigan. There are also links to "us cities" and "us states," the Craigslist community has grown to huge proportions in the last 5 or more years. There is a Craigslist type page for nearly every major US city, and quite a few minor cities.
Another aspect of Candlestick Productions, LLC pertains to the playing of live music performances for monetary compensation. I have a MySpace page set up that carries several of my music mp3s as well as gives a detailed bio of my life as a performer. http://www.myspace.com/jamhandy07 I will often attach my MySpace address to an e-mail when referring to my music and I have this web link printed on to my personal business cards. ("Jam Handy" is my self-created stage name...).
One of the technologies listed in the Wikpedia artcile is Voice Over IP (aka "VoIP). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP) My home phone system is a VoIP system. I do not use a regular AT&T copper-based land line. I get my high speed Internet and telephone service from Comcast. The digital signal comes in from the Comcast main system to a Comcast modem/router, the router splits the didigital signal into two forms, one form of the signal has a recepticle where I plug in a CAT-5 type computer cable which goes to my computer for the Internet connection. The modem/router also has an RJ-45 jack on it that I plug my regular home telephone in to. I can talk on the phone at the same time I am surfing the web. This is a lot different than the old style dial-up networking which was very slow and required that you had to hang up your telephone in order to log on to the Internet.
Candlestick Productions, LLC would not be the same without the use of these types of web-based social media functions. It goes well beyond a simple PowerPoint presentation. With a good Internet connection, a fairly new computer (which I built myself...), and a large enough computer monitor, I can tap into the potential of the Internet as I train my students, advertise, and generate an income for myself. A music business is a little different than a corporate system, but at a higher level, music can take on the corporate robe as well. I believe the Internet and the use of my home computer during lessons gives me an edge over music store based music instructors that cannot use this same amount of technology. It was a pleasure to share this with my new friends at the ASTD community.
Take care.
