创造力需要专注

音乐家有一种奇怪的工作方式。作为一个音乐家，我可以证明这一点。而且，虽然通信技术可能不是我们的首要任务，但它实际上可以帮助我们腾出时间，用于我们的手艺。我们需要专注，以保持在创造性的泡沫中。但是，虽然音乐可能是你的主要工作，但与使你的艺术成为可能的人保持联系也很重要：你的粉丝。

如果你是一个有追随者的艺术家，你可能已经花时间考虑用创造性的方式与你的粉丝保持联系；使那些使你的艺术成为可能的人能够直接与你对话。虽然社交媒体可以很好地进行沟通，但它往往会让人感到不近人情或过度。如果能将其提升到一个新的水平，那就太好了，但你不能只是去给你的电话号码，对吗？

Well, actually, you can! It might be unrealistic to share your personal number, but there is another way for musicians to lift the veil and let their fans in on what they’re doing — just get a virtual number. 虚拟移动号码（薇薇安s） are numbers that can be used with online services like MessageBird. They’re not connected to a physical SIM card, which is where the “virtual” part of the name comes in. It’s a straightforward process to set up, other creatives have used them, and I guarantee it won’t interrupt your creative flow too terribly. Here, let me explain…

让你的听众接近

With a 薇薇安, a musician can create a direct point of contact with their fans. Some well-known artists like 奎斯特洛夫 from ǞǞǞ Roots, and YouTuber/singer-songwriter, Tessa Violet, have published their numbers online, enabling fans to text them. Tessa Violet’s Twitter bio calls it out, saying, “text me so i can tell u if i have a show near u 5412036998”.

This isn’t a totally new concept. In the 1980s, the indie band They Might Be Giants set up a service called “拨号歌,” where fans could call a phone number and listen to one of the band’s songs on the phone.

不同的是，今天，公开你的电话号码要比当年容易得多，而且成本也低。你甚至不需要签署合同。你可以简单地注册MessageBird，为你的账户充值，并以少量月费购买一个号码。例如，一个美国号码，每月只需花费0.50美元。

Buying a VMN through MessageBird

It only takes a few small steps to set up a publicly available phone number with MessageBird. After you’ve signed up for a free account 在我们的网站上, you can quickly top up your account to buy a virtual number. Think about how you want your fans to contact you—do you want them to call you or send you an SMS? Once you’ve decided, it’s easy to get a number that supports that. Sometimes, you can even buy numbers that accept both text messages and calls, in case you’re undecided.

It’s important to remember that VMNs只在国家层面上工作. This means that if you get a US number with the country prefix +1, the number can only be texted or called by real phone numbers from the same country. If you want to be reachable in more than one country, make sure to buy a number for each.

自动化你的互动

Okay, so we’ve established that buying a number is easy. Now, what? As much as you’d love getting to sit around all day answering phone calls and SMS from your fans, that’s not exactly scalable. Luckily, we’ve got a tool to help you automate the whole process, while still keeping things personal. With MessageBird 流程建设者, you can decide what should happen whenever someone calls or texts your virtual number, such as sending an auto-reply, playing an audio file, or even making a call or sending a text within specific ‘open hours’. ǞǞǞ best part is, you don’t need to be a developer to use it.

让我们看看一些例子。

比方说，你在推特上发布了你的新号码，并要求歌迷如果想了解更多关于你即将推出的单曲，就给你发短信。你可以发送一个自动短信回复，里面有一个YouTube视频的私人链接，里面有30秒的新歌片段。

你也可以让粉丝给你发短信，了解你是否会在他们附近演出。比方说，你有一个北美巡演的安排。你的对话可以是这样的。

然后，你可以将回复转发到一个电子邮件地址或Google Sheet上，以跟踪你的粉丝位于哪些城市。当需要预订下一次巡演时，你可以增加几个日期，让这些地区的歌迷有机会来看你的演出。这整个过程可以在几分钟内完成设置。而且，如果你有一个以上的电话号码（每个国家一个，记得吗？），你可以简单地在同一个Flow中使用多个号码。

为你的粉丝、客户和潜在客户提供一个简单的方式来联系他们

The great thing is that you, as an artist, get to spend more time being creative while 在 same time offering your fans the tools to get in touch with you in a pretty special way. Of course, this kind of setup isn’t just applicable to music. A lot of our customers use VMNs and 流程建设者 to a similar effect for things like customer support or 收集客户反馈.

Whether you’re in music, business, or other fields, having a dedicated VMN is a great way to offer your fans, customers, or leads an easy way to reach out. It’s more personal than email, less stressful than a live chat, and it saves you time thanks to MessageBird流量生成器. And for me, time saved on marketing means more time to figure out how I can get my new Akai MIDI sample pad to work in Logic.

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