Blog Archives

Bootstrap web presence

10/28/2009

5 steps to a useable and highly search engine optimized web presence for little cost, other than your time investment.

Use a blog site as your web presence's content management system (CMS)--essentially this is where you log in and make updates to you site or write a new blog. You can even usually purchase the domain name you want for an affordable annual fee if you want "yourcompany.com" as the site name (the cost is usually between $15 and $25 per year). Blog sites are nice because you can choose a template that already exists if you're not ready to design something, or you can sometimes manipulate the template code, or create your own code, if you want to customize it for your own use. You can add pages that act just like traditional web site pages, yet you have the freedom to update content and add new blog posts at will, which isn't always easy if you hire someone else to design a traditional web site for you. There are several blog sites available to choose from...WordPress, Blogger, Weebly, and many more.
Build a social networking approach that makes sense for you and your target audience. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, etc...whatever makes sense for you and only as many as you think you can reasonably manage. Add these to your blog site.
Content is king. For your blog site and social networking sites to all work well and work together you have to regularly create new content and participate in conversations to build relationships with those in your targeted social network...you're really building a community to create reciprocated conversation. Meanwhile, you're positioning yourself as the go-to-person for the area of expertise you/your company focuses on.
It is important to participate in conversations. You can create as much content as you want and publish it to the world, but you'll gain more credibility more quickly by also participating in the conversations related to your area of expertise on social networking sites and blogs. This shows that you pay attention to whats going on in your "community" or industry.
Finally, simply by having all of the content from your blog site, and blog posts (with various pertinent links embedded in them) and all your social networking sites linked from your blog site as well as your participation in social networking conversations. search engines with crawl out and grab what content they can to push your search results higher and higher. The typical rule of thumb is that the more content you have the higher your search results (to a large extent that's true, but this concept does have a few other variables involved...you can do some more research here).

Too many musicians take a passive approach to marketing themselves for the purpose of booking of gigs. It's only one part of the equation to post stuff online, send emails and even mail out flyers or postcards to get gigs. The second part of the equation is to follow up after sending those things with a different channel of communication to ensure the email, flyer or postcard reached its intended recipient.

Plus, it just makes sense to be professional by following up to check that the correct person received the message you were trying to send them. Then once you have them on the phone or they respond to your email you can recap your interest in their venue and pitch yourself for a gig.

By following up with your marketing efforts it communicates to the booking folks at a venue that you're serious about what you do. Now, I will remind musicians that, depending on the venue you're marketing to and trying to get a gig at, the booking person there is likely busy so be respectful of their time. For example, if the venue you're going after is a restaurant/bar that has live music and the owner is also the booking person it's probably a good idea to try and follow up sometime between lunch and dinner when the restaurant is likely to be less busy. That may be the difference in actually getting to talk to the venue owner or getting his/her voicemail.

It can also work to send a quick two sentence email (short and sweet is always key) identifying yourself and why you're writing, but the main purpose of the email should be to ask when a good time to call and talk further by phone would be. That way the booking person can get back to your email and the two of you can schedule a time to actually talk on the phone and then you know you have that person's attention. You do have to be careful about this approach because emails can go into spam folders if your email address is not a recognized address. Also, it's helpful to use an informative subject line that identifies a bit about your email, you and the purpose of your message to increase its chances of being viewed. For example: "Attn: [booking person's name] local musician seeking gig at [venue name]."

So remember, getting the word out to a particular venue that you're looking to book a show is only half the battle, following up can ensure that your message was received leading to an increased likelihood that you'll land the gig.

Check out more from Nick Venturella: business site and official music site

Nick’s previous Examiner articles
Rock out to burn out time management for indie musicians
A little planning can go a long way
Local begets national and international exposure
Professionalism in the music industry
The power of do-it-yourself publicity
Follow through

The power of do-it-yourself publicity

10/8/2009

Many musicians fail to fully utilize the power of regular publicity regarding their endeavors. The great thing about technology these days is that there are no excuses. The internet allows do-it-yourself musicians to regularly let the public know about their various upcoming gigs, tours, appearances, etc.--anything that may be newsworthy or of note to the public/fans.

Regular contact with the public and, more importantly, your fans through press releases, blogs, articles, Facebook and Twitter is the best way to keep at the top of your fans' minds.

Also be sure to mention how fans can find you online during your live shows. Let them know that they can subscribe to your regular posts and e-mail list to keep up-to-date with you and your musical adventures. This helps fans to feel a part of your unique music culture.

You'll know your efforts are working when you see increased traffic to your websites as well as increased fan participation with blog, Facebook and Twitter comments as well as an increase in subscribers to your e-mail list. All of which will likely result in an increase in audience attendance at your live shows, which will hopefully create an increase in merchandise sales--anyway, you get the picture, it can have a positive and profitable chain reaction effect.

So keep your fans and the public informed about anything and everything you think they might like to know about and publish as often as you can to the internet. This will also help increase your websites' search engine optimization (the more content you produce on the internet the easier it is for search engines like Google to find your sites) making it easier for fans to find you.

Nick’s previous Examiner articles
Rock out to burn out time management for indie musicians
A little planning can go a long way
Local begets national and international exposure
Professionalism in the music industry
The power of do-it-yourself publicity