Promoting Your Music On The Web

[john]

Hi Guys

As a discussion topic I thought it would be helpful to look at ways to promote yourself on the internet.

What tools?

What methods?

What should you promote?

How do you grow your web presence?

Cheers

John

[Boff]

I'd say get an account at myspace, soundclick or such, and then put the link on every possible place you can. In your signature, on profile's pages, in your shows at local places.. If your music is good enough it will spread. There are probably more ways to make the spreading process go faster..

[Lazz]

MySpace - yes (though I haven't yet got even that together)

Soundclick - don't like it - communicates wrong message

[john]

Hi Boff

Well that is a start....

Lets look at the tools you have....

Forums, message boards, newsgroups,Blogs, home pages, artist pages,Social networking sites,newsletters,news feeds,podcasts,video promos etc....

To keep the flow going I'll post that for now and start listing some of the tools and methods.

Lets not forget mechanisms like the box standard press releases!

Cheers

John

[Boff]

Soundclick - don't like it - communicates wrong message

What do you mean?

[john]

Hey

Forums

There are many. First thing, follow the rules of a particular board. Don't spam it or you could find all your links removed.

Many artist focus on musician boards. Great for feedback, crap for getting fans. Identify bands like yours, join those boards so you can post topics either as direct promo where allowed, or in your signature or board profile. Focus your effort on active communities from a promotion perspective. From a web presence perspective you want to have links on as many RELATED websites as possible.

Web presence wise, try and refresh links etc at least every 3 months.

Also include links to a variety of your pages for web presence but specific pages for web promo.

Spend some time on key active forums so your name gets known and respected as a member, not a self serving, self interested spam engine.

Cheers

John

[Lazz]

What do you mean?

To me it says "amateur" far too loudly and clearly.

I wouldn't want to be associated with something like that.

I am not a hobbyist.

[john]

Hey

Just a quickie on web presence... links and crosslinking.

CROSSLINKING

Try and cross link your pages, but when posting on other's sites make sure you follow their link guidelines. Post to appropriate topics, and don't swamp it with links to the same page.

So, in my signature you can see I link to several things. Those pages generally cross link with each other (but self promo hasn't been what I have been about as I have not been pushing my music the last few years.

Exchange links with your musical friends.

Ask other friends to link to you, but provide them with the link code. make sure your customized link code is available on your site for others to directly copy.

Cheers

John

[john]

What do you mean?

Lazz is a full time musician and label owner. Soundclick is very much amateur musicians. To start separating yourself from that association having your own website and domain is essential.

I have a soundclick page but don't use it much. Same goes for Songramp and others. I DO use the features of them though for bring people to my main music site.

Cheers

John

[john]

Newsgroups

These are something you need to use regularly so that the members respect you more and take more notice of your posts. Does little for web presence but it does help with promotion of specific items.

Yet again there are a multitude of newsgroups. If you don't invest the time, you don't get the gain.

Cheers

John

[john]

Blogs

A great tool. An online diary. You can run several (chose popular music sites to host one, but try and run your own on your own site too. Myspace gives you one, so do lots of big popular sites where you have the chance to make "friends" and gain blog subscribers.

These are great for crosslinking and for promotion, and fundamentally giving your latest news to your fans.

Almost all blogs (including Songstuff blogs) include RSS feeds. That means that people and other websites can take an RSS link to your blog and either display it in a desk top application (aggregator) or they can display it on their web page.

There's more but I'll come back and edit this probably like the others posts....

Additional

There are tools that will allow you to write one blog entry and that post is pushed onto your other blogs. i.e. write and post once update multiple blogs.

I would still suggest that you create several versions of the post and post each version to several different sites.

Blogosphere

Register your blogs with services like technorati... more or less blog and social networking combined.

[john]

Your Own Website and Domain

Essential. This is a long term thing.

keep it active and interesting. Add new content and of course have a page that links to ALL your other pages. Try and have links out there in web land that point to ALL your main pages, not just the home page.

This is the HUB of your musical universe.

Cheers

John

[Lazz]

Bloody hell !!

It's a full-time gig.

I need an intern.

[john]

Artist Pages

Great for web presence, generally crap for your image. It says amateur to most music fans. Ideally you want to move from being a big fish in a small pool, to at least swimming in the big pool. Can be worth using if you have no web presence or a small web presence. Yet again I'd suggest only one track and a catchy page (wish I followed my own advice on the look and feel!)

Yet again cross linking is essential.

Main benefit is to increase links and put you in contact with another web audience.

[FinnArild]

SEO and the likes has been discussed before on this forum, so I want to put my finger on something (that should be) obvious:

The right way to use the web is the way you build relations IRL (In Real Life). So - the very first thing you need to do is to start cataloging your relations. Salesforce is a great tool I have discovered here - and it is free for personal use! I have moved all my contacts in there: mails I receive go in as leads. Magazines, radios, websites, blogs and such go in as accounts with connected contacts. I log all my contact in there and since I can do a wee bit of programming, I have connected it with my e-mail account. Now I catalog all mail against the contact instead of in a mess in my mail-inbox!

Salesforce is a great tool - but if you don't want to go to that level, at least catalog your connections and when you contacted them last. Stay in touch! Don't be a stranger - and don't send out goofy auto-mails. Take 2 minutes and write a personal message - check your log and try to make it relevant.

Remember: the web is a web of people. It's basically the same thing as traditional PR, only scaled up a bit. Think not of only what you want - think of what you can give in return for it - or how you can aim it so what's good PR for you also benefits your relation. Like you would do it for a radio: give them 4-5 CDs they can use for competitions and such - or T-Shirts, posters ... something good.

[john]

Social Networking Sites

These are great for building fans, and you don't necessarily need to do a myspace music page... create a normal one if you don't want your music up there.

Myspace of course does allow you to sell your music now.

Other social networking sites to set up a page on are:

Stumble Upon : Social bookmarking site. Can get you a lot of traffic. yet again takes a little time/effort to build but you can do this as you go along.

Facebook: Useful for news but harder to target people by topics. Good once you have a fan club of sorts

Del.icio.us: Social bookmarking site. Bookmark your favorite page (go on link your musical friends pages too, including Songstuff )

Twitter: Ok, but not great. Like Facebook.

Lots more, I'll add to the list... if there are some missing please post up...

Also of interest are browsers like Flock, that incorporate support for multiple social network sites and features. Ideal in that yet again you can make a post and update many sites.

[john]

Newsletters

Set one up! Post to it regularly if you can, every 2 weeks is ideal.

Once you have those email addresses for your mailing list you have an ideal way to tell your fans when you do a new release. you may have newsletter facilities through some of the other sites mentioned in this topic. They all do the same job... allow you to push information to your fans.

[Nightwolf]

Good info

BOINK

[chrisadam7]

the Internet is an incredible promotional tool for independent musicians. You can get radio play, grow a fan base, create a distribution channel, manufacture and sell CDs and music downloads all online. You can use the Internet to create an amazing amount of exposure for your music. Wouldn't it be great if literally thousands of people heard your music every single day? What if you could use your web site to sell 50, 100 or even 200 CDs every month? Not to mention all the digital downloads of your music you can sell via iTunes, Amazon.mp3, Rhapsody, Yahoo and dozens of other online retailers. Guess what? It doesn't take a brain-surgeon to make it happen, but it does take a lot of hard work – and you need to know what you're doing.

[justsoulin]

ref Salesforce - there is now a free trial. Their marketing principles require you to sign up before you can even see a demo. That means spam mail. Not good.