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If you want to put “social media expert” on your CV — a real necessity in today’s job market — you’ll need to tone those Twitter muscles. You don’t want to look like a social media dummy, do you?

Example: I was watching a Padres/Angels spring training game the other day where they “turned over the broadcast” to Padres bloggers, and one referred to his Twitter name as his “hashtag”. Rookie move. Don’t make the same mistake!

If you’re going to be tweeting about #RFF13, you may as well follow some of the artists. I’ve gone through the lineup for the 2013 Regina Folk Festival and seen who’s on the site and reasonably active. For your convenience, I’ve broken it down into four categories, based mostly on a quick glance at their feed and some guessing. Correct me in the comments.

PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTING AND FUNNY We’ve got at least one real Twitter star coming: Neko Case, a funny and prolific user.

There’s also Hayden, Rah Rah, Don Amero, Elisapie Isaac, Northcote, Don Brownrigg and Amelia Curran.

PEOPLE WHO MOSTLY PROMOTE SHOWS Nothing wrong with that; you don’t always need to see a Vine video about how they made their stir fry.

We’re looking at Feist, Rosanne Cash, Man Man, Bahamas, Niyaz, Carolina Chocolate Drops, H’Sao, Briga and Reuben and the Dark.

PEOPLE WHO’VE CLEARLY GOT SOMEONE ELSE RUNNING THEIR FEED FOR THEM C’mon, Charles Bradley shouldn’t have to learn how to use Twitter. Leave him be! Same for Loreena McKennitt.

AL SIMMONS AND BUBBA C THE MC These two get their own category. Just go ahead: follow the delightful Al Simmons and the equally delightful Bubba B the MC. Quick tip: make sure to not follow Al Simmons Guns. They Twitpic pictures of guns, which is scary.

And as long you’re in a following mood, follow the Regina Folk Festival themselves. (Heck, go for Prairie Dog, too, if you haven’t already.)

For a few years now, the Regina Folk Festival and the Edmonton Folk Festival have shared some artists, especially headlining acts. Right now, for example, if you look at the artists Edmonton has announced so far, you’ll notice they also have Neko Case.

This is no coincidence, of course. When it came to be that the EFF and the RFF would be on the same weekend, it opened up opportunities for our festival.

“The size of our city and our budget would not allow us to get the people we’re sharing with Edmonton,” says Sandra Butel, RFF artistic director. “For more of the artists that are really well known, and sometimes internationally too when we bring in a big group from overseas, it’s more convenient to share the costs between two festivals.

“Especially when the other one has a bigger budget and sells a lot more tickets than we do. They’re a really big festival. It really helps us out a lot.

“There’s still a lot of artists at our festival who aren’t there. We don’t start to look the same. We’re selling tickets to the same people.”

This means to some degree, Butel winds up working with Edmonton on bringing in artists. There’s no one way it works; Butel describes it as an “organic process” that could involve direct consultation between the two festivals or Butel hearing from agents who’s been booked for Edmonton that they might be able to get a deal on.

Her Edmonton counterpart, Terry Wickham, a “a good Irish dude”, Butel tells me.

“He’s pretty old school. He writes things on foolscap. He doesn’t have a spreadsheet of artists or anything he’s working from. For years, we’ll be trying to work on an artist with him and then it’ll finally happen. Neko’s been a long time coming.”

For all the benefits of being able to work with Edmonton on bringing in artists, it also means that there has to be some give as to when she puts them in her schedule.

“I have to be more flexible in the way we present. We have to do a weekend of music instead evenings of music. That’s hard for me.

“The one year, we had John Prine and he was only available for Friday night. And, well, that’s the kids night! But that’s the only time he could do it. So what do I do? Do I pass up the chance for John Prine because it’s not the right night in my head?”

The answer: go with John Prine, even on a Friday night.

Many of the artists performing at the Regina Folk Festival this year have their fair share of history behind them, including plenty of records to dive into before RFF weekend. A few, though, have records still to come before we get there.

A couple have dropped recently. H’Sao put out Oria earlier this year, and Hayden is just now touring across Canada in support of his new album, Us Alone.

Charles Bradley’s follow-up to 2011′s No Time for Dreaming is coming out April 2. That he’s releasing Victim of Love this quick after the last is a good sign; I really want Bradley to make up for lost time. He’d spent most of his life in odd jobs all around the U.S, only getting the opportunity to record now that he’s in his 60s thanks to Daptone Records. Im thankfully for that. His everything-on-the-line soul is amazing, and promises an even better live performance.

2013 also sees a new album from Matthew Goud, a former Saskatchewan boy gone further west. He’s releasing the second album under his folk monoquer Northcote, a self-titled effort due May 7. He recorded it with producer Colin Stewart, who’s done great work for Yukon Blonde, Ladyhawk and Dan Mangan of late, so that in itself is a really good sign for Goud’s new one.

We’ve clued you in to all the artists who’ve been booked so far for the 2013 Regina Folk Festival, and I’ve told you all how jazzed I am about it. It may come as a surprise, though, that putting together this lineup was easy for Sandra Butel, artistic director for the RFF, at least relative to other years.

“This year, there may have been one offer that was turned down,” says Butel. “Everything else that I put out as an offer was a ‘Yes’, which never happens. More often, there’s a round of offers, and then most of them go away, then you start again.”

A lot of those offers happen to have gone to great female acts, who make up a large part of this edition of the festival, headliners included.

“It was really odd, because I was telling my graphic artist, ‘All I can tell you is there’s going to be lots of hot women, so play with that.’”

One near the top of the list that will interest many is Neko Case. The alt-country singer was last part of the festival when she played with the New Pornographers in the early 2000s. Since not long after that, Butel’s been trying to bring Case back on her own.

“I’ve put offers in the last five or six years, where it would just be like, ‘Hey! Is Neko available?’”

Butel thinks she got Case thanks to having a good relationship with Case’s agent, who also represents former RFF performers like the New Pornographers and Calexico.

“It’s really interesting to me how many bookings happen because I know the agent. You’d think it would be, if you have the money, you can book the artist. That’s not how it works. They have to trust you. They’re putting their artist in your hands.”