Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

‘Performing Artists Clinic’ Summary

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of hosting a very animated and informative #DCWEEK panel discussion about how performing artists can use the web to their advantage. On the panel was Sean Glover, Director of Artists Relations at SoundExchange, Dave Sherbow, owner of onefanconsulting.com and musicbizguy.com and Keith Center, frontman of The Dreamscapes Project and owner of Figmental Records.

A number of important points were made during our discussion. For those of you who were unable to attend, here’s a summary:

  • In order to maximize your online experience, you need to address the foundational elements of online marketing – define your identity, define who/where you target audience are, and define your attitude towards the web. Ask yourself how do you view the web? How would you google yourself? What is your competition doing? Go to your fans and make it easy for them to identify you. Don’t expect them to come to you.
  • Key words in online marketing, via Jeff Pulver, “Listen, Connect, Share, Engage”.
  • Emails are golden! Artists should prioritize collecting and owning fan data (such as email addresses, zip codes and cell numbers) and endeavor to collect this information via all their online platforms. Having a fan newsletter is one of the most important e-marketing tools. Email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing avenues as it’s permission-based marketing. You can also be targeted in your marketing.
  • MySpace (the grandfather of social networking sites) is not dead. It’s still a very effective promotional tool within the music industry due to its user-base, the familiarity of its lay-out and effective music player. Its power as an interactive platform has decreased, as social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have taken over. Dave Sherbow talks further about this in his blog post “Making Myspace Into a Tool That Matters”
  • Artists need to protect their digital assets! Thousands of musicians have still not signed up to SoundExchange.com to collect their digital royalties. SoundExchange is an independent, non-profit performances rights organization which collects statutory royalties from satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), internet radio, cable TV music channels and similar platforms for streaming sound recordings. In order to receive these royalties artists MUST sign up to SoundExchange (it’s FREE).
  • To stop yourself feeling overwhelmed with online management, choose solutions that are right for you. Two task management solutions recommended were  Evernote.com & Rememberthemilk.com.
  • Online marketing only works in conjunction with effective offline marketing. If you are not aggressive and proactive with your offline marketing, the impact of your online marketing efforts will be decreased. The two compliment each other.

That’s it. In a nutshell.

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Posted in Music Industry, Social media, marketing | No Comments »

Why every musician should have a Facebook fan page

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

I’ve been noticing more and more that some musicians are sticking to their personal Facebook page to promote their music rather than opting for a Facebook fan page. I think it’s extremely important for every musician to have a Facebook fan page for the following reasons:

1. It strengthens your online brand instantly by keeping the personal and professional separate.

2. It’s automatically set as a public page so it’s more effective for search engine indexing and viral marketing.

3. It offers the “insight tools” function which provides information on how fans interact with your page. You can view traffic and fan demographics. You can also export your data into an excel sheet.

4. You can send messages to fans according to their geographical location and demography. Therefore your marketing becomes targeted.

5. You can exploit the power of indirect connections to boost your fan base. For example you can ask your fan base to recommend your page to their friends.

A great book on Facebook marketing is ‘3,000 fans in 30 Days’ by the New Media School. I thoroughly recommend it!

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Posted in Music Industry, Social media, marketing, music | 14 Comments »

imaginePR Music Marketing Workshop Series

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

I’m really excited to finally launch my ‘Music Marketing Workshop series’ in Washington DC! I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now and really wanted to offer another service to musicians and music industry pros outside of my usual monthly PR and marketing campaigns.

The first installment entitled ‘Online Marketing For Musicians: Part 1’ is co-hosted with Sisarina, DC’s leading web marketing company. I really wanted to host a workshop that would provide both a music industry and non-music industry perspective. All musicians should see themselves as a small business. Therefore I was keen to combine my knowledge with Melanie Spring from Sisarina, who has successfully helped to launch numerous small businesses in the DC area.

I encourage all musicians and music industry pros to provide as much feedback as possible as to what they would like me to cover in future workshops. I want to cater these workshops around their needs, and make them as interactive as possible.

You can download the flyer for ‘Online Marketing For Musicians’ HERE.

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Posted in Music Industry, Social media, marketing, music | 1 Comment »

A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter for Musicians

Monday, November 9th, 2009

WHY IS TWITTER SO IMPORTANT?

  1. It helps extend your online brand almost instantly.
  2. You are communicating to a group of people who choose to listen to your message.
  3. You are communicating directly with fans on a regular basis!
  4. It’s personal but you control your message.
  5. It’s highly Googleable so it increases your search engine optimization.
  6. It’s one of the easiest of all the social networking sites to maintain.

SET UP
- For a step by step guide on how to set up a twitter account, check out this video on Youtube - Youtube twitter video

THE GOLDEN TWITTER RULES

  1. Always add a good description of yourself in the “Bio” section. This will be what people will read first to work out whether they want to follow you or not. Make sure it is consistent with your branding.
  2. Always add your website URL or myspace URL to the twitter page so followers can link through to your site and find out more information about you.
  3. Search key words at http://search.twitter.com in order to find people who are interested in the same topics as you.
  4. Avoid direct “auto-tweet” messages. They are impersonal and spam-like.
  5. Aim to tweet about 3 to 4 times per day to ensure visibility but not over saturation. You want your followers to want to read your tweets, but not be sick of hearing from you!
  6. Offer insights into life as a band, beyond your music.
  7. Do not plug your new CD/gig dates etc on EVERY tweet. This is boring and too spam-like. Make your tweets personal, interesting and informal. By portraying your personality, people will enjoy reading your tweets, recommend you to others, and be inspired to check out your music.
  8. Re-tweet others. If you read an interesting tweet then be friendly and re-tweet this person. This will help to extend your community.
  9. Do NOT protect your updates so no-one else can see your tweets other than followers. People will not follow you unless they know what you tweet about.
  10. Set twitter up on your mobile so you can tweet while on the road. There are numerous applications for both Blackberry and iphones. I use Twitterberry for Blackberry.
  11. Insert the twitter widgets on your social networking sites to encourage new followers. You can get twitter widgets in the ‘Goodies” tab at the bottom of your twitter page.
  12. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of social networking and blogging updates you have to do, then use ping.fm or hellotxt.com which will instantly post a message to all your social networking sites at the same time.
  13. Increase your visibility on Twitter by entering your info on this site http://wefollow.com
  14. Reply to fans’ messages using @username replies. It shows you value their input.
  15. Educate yourself about the use of hashtags (#) on twitter. Hashtags are a great way of creating groups on twitter and tracking conversations about certain topics. They can also increase your search engine optimization. Two great Hashtag trends are #FF (Follow Friday) whereby the twitter community recommend people to follow on a Friday. The second is is #MusicMonday whereby the twitter community recommend music they like on a Monday (yes I am stating the blindingly obvious!).

USEFUL TWITTER TOOLS FOR MUSICIANS
There are numerous twitter tools available to help musicians (and non-musicians!). Here’s a handful:

  1. gonze.com/playtwitter – Enables you to embed an MP3 in with your tweets.
  2. twiturm.com – Similar to the above.
  3. Tweetree – Allows you to follow peoples @replies and DM/RT more easily.
  4. Tweetdeck – Allows you to sort who you are following into categories eg. friends, media, fans. This is one of the most effective organizational tools for twitter.
  5. http://twitterfox.net – Allows you to twitter on your desktop without accessing your twitter page each time.
  6. Twitpic – Allows you to share your photos on twitter.
  7. thetwittertoolbar.com - Increases your functionality.

Download a PDF document of this article HERE!

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Posted in Music Industry, Social media, marketing, music | 16 Comments »