President Obama won an almost year long battle on Sunday when the House voted 219-212 in favor of passing his health care reform policy. On Tuesday, Obama signed the overhaul bill into law.

The law has been described as “the most sweeping social legislation enacted in decades” by the NYT, “biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees in more than four decades” by CNN and the “culmination of a yearlong struggle with Congress to make good on the central issue of his administration’s domestic policy agenda” by NPR.

Whether you agree or disagree with Obama’s policies, it is important to know how this bill will affect you. Here are eight ways that the Health Care Reform could affect you as an independent artist:

4. Reform will prevent insurance companies from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.

This is especially important for individuals, both children or adults, with chronic conditions that will require lifetime medical support. Lifetime caps will be banned immediately and annual caps will be reduced until 2014, when they will be banned as well.

5. All new insurance plans will include preventative care and doctor checkups without a co-pay.

Also, reform will require plans to cover basic pediatric services, as well as dental, vision, and hearing needs for children.

Hopefully this gives you a little better understanding of how the health care reforms affect you personally. If there is something that I missed or a specific question that you have, please feel free to comment and I will do my best to respond with useful information.

Social media has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for independent artists looking to promote their events and performances.  An individual artist can significantly increase their audience turnout without using any money by reaching out to the over 250 million active users on Facebook.   These tips will help you start thinking creatively about using Facebook as all the possibilities are still being discovered.

1. Use your fan page

Your fan page is like your base of operations.  This is your home on facebook where fans can learn more about you and your upcoming events.  With Facebook fan pages, you are able to “Target Your Update” to a specific area when sending messages.

For example, say you are going on a 5 city tour in New England.  You could send one message to all the states in New England, a different message to each city you are visiting with more specific information, and a general wall post with comprehensive details for your fans to see.  Make sure to follow the 5 Rules for Artists Using Social Media.

Tip: To increase your # of fans, try having a sign-in/sign-up sheet at each of your events so that you can email attendees thanking them for coming and inviting them to become your fan on Facebook.

2. Create friends lists

Facebook allows you to organize your friends into different categories, giving each of them various “tags” that help you more effectively communicate with the people that matter the most.  These are great for maximizing the support of your personal connections.  Organize your friends into different tiers so that you can send them more direct messages.

Facebook makes it insanely easy to quickly invite your 500 friends to an event.  So easy that we are constantly spammed with invites to events we don’t really care about (sorry, I’m just not that interested in your “Meatloaf and Jenga Party”).

Mass inviting guests can be dangerous because your connections that don’t really care will likely ignore you, and your friends that would gladly support you could be insulted that you sent them the “mass invite” instead of something more personal.  To avoid this, create different categories for your friends (ex. frequent supporters, occasional supporters, professional colleagues, etc.) so that your invites and updates can be marketed directly to them.

3. Hold contests before the event

Umphrey’s Mcgees Lights (TomK. on Flickr)

You want to harness the power of your fans to promote your event.  Word of mouth is viral and will help increase your exposure.  Try offering a weekly prize claimable at your event for fans that do a status update or tweet about your event.  Now your fans become your promotional partners, increasing the likelihood that they will attend and giving you viral publicity for very little cost.

Example: The Umphrey’s McGee held a scavenger hunt at the Rothbury Festival in early July via Twitter, where successful treasure hunters were rewarded with DVDs, keychains, and a hand written note from the band.

4. Collaborate with other artists

Collaborating is a great way not only to meet other artists that share your interests, but also to reach an entirely new audience that might not have known about you.  Try hosting a joint event that both artists promote.  Guest post on each other’s blogs leading up to the event, cross-link to each other’s facebook pages and websites, and feature the other person’s art on your page.

5. Do a daily raffle for free tickets

The week before your event, you want to kick promotion into high gear.  This is the time that people are finalizing their plans and you want to be on their calendars.  Create buzz by having a daily raffle for free tickets (or if it is an unticketed event, give away some other prizes).  This isn’t necessarily to get those ticket winners to come, as discounted tickets decrease attendance, but rather to give a daily reminder about your event and to create an incentive for your fans to tell their friends.

Or try this: Michelle Mangione will be raffling away a free guitar signed by Grace Slick.  To be entered you must sell 10 copies of her recently released CD.  Brilliant.