Business Smarts: Broadcasting Yourself

If you position yourself as a marketable dancer, then you need to package yourself in ways that others can buy into your story. You’re creating a public self-image that will be your best advertising campaign. It brands you. These are just some of the thoughts that Zulu Gremlin shared at his business class at Culture Shock LA’s H4 conference last Sunday. Today, we’re focusing on the need to broadcast yourself. It’s closely related to our earlier discussion about packaging.

The tools to promote yourself and your work are easily available online. We can create grass-roots movements using social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube to attract a following. With these many channels available to the general public, it’s become a necessity for dancers to broadcast their achievements to remain relevant as well as to celebrate their ventures. Got a great set from the last VIBE showcase? Make sure to put it online and share it with the rest of the world. Anbu Black Ops has done that with their VIBE XV performance. And it’s quickly being spread virally around our dance community.

There’s so much noise online that dancers have to be saavy about how they broadcast their accomplishments. We have to take cut through the cloud to get our point across. With these social networking tools at our fingerprints, we’ve become our most immediate agent and manager as we interact with the larger public. Coming from the street dance culture, we can take that guerilla, street sensibility inherent in our approach to dance and apply it to marketing and advertising.

So being a marketable street dancer now means having an online presence and persona. Celebrate your accomplishments. Let others know what you’re up to. Otherwise, the fear is that you will get lost in the shuffle. While these ventures should not take priority over crafting your artform, it doesn’t hurt to be aware of what it takes to build a following. When you’re broadcasting yourself, you’re taking control of how others will perceive your market value.