We recently ran a #kiltfeed on our thoughts about music marketing…
Now I’m not talking here the marketing as practiced by the big guys that’s failing as fast as all other “Old Media” is, no, to be more specific – I’m talking about what up and coming bands can do to easily (and very affordably, always a factor with smaller artists, just as with small business!) take control to a large extent of their own Internet marketing efforts.
Firstly: MYSPACE. Seriously? Okay, that was a bit harsh I know, but heck, here’s how we see it – if MySpace really was a top notch tool, there would be hundreds of “MySpace experts” out there, but there aren’t. MySpace was the next big thing a couple of years ago, and unfortunately has been largely bailed on by anyone except anGsT RiDdin TeenZ dat spell FUNNy and TYPE LIKE DAT!
Of course they have a pretty good mp3 player (cough cough!) that you can put on your page, and best of all its free – and as a machine to act as a wall for your fans and capture fan information, it has its uses. But its power is nothing compared to a nicely designed, easy to self manage WordPress driven website. And here’s why:
1: Tour information, on an easy to find page, instead of scrolling through a massive 1 page list of “Stuff” where the information could be anywhere. I can guarantee a large percentage of your visitors to an average MySpace page will leave pretty fast because of the complete lack of structure. Oh, and maybe you could go as far as adding a Google Calendar with your gigs on it. Why? Well, because for one thing – now when you add events to G-cal, you can add map locations of the venues etc to your “gig guide” Imagine that – with a few minutes work, you’ve not only made it easy for people to find out when you’re playing, but you can have them find out if the venue is within their striking distance right from your site. WOW – Easy huh?
2: Mp3 players – WordPress can easily replicate the MySpace player, and can go beyond that. Imagine making tracks available through your News page (remember, don’t call it a blog) Yes, WP can easily drop a single track player right into your posts. And even better still, embedding video is even easier than ever with the most current release of WordPress – just copy the link from your dedicated YOUTUBE channel (Again, very easy to set up with just a Gmail account.), and paste it right into your posting – viola, behind the scenes videos, tour diaries, live clips, studio sessions, all the sort of rich content people have come to expect from a top notch website.
3: Facebook and Twitter sitting right on your site! In a matter of clicks, you can have your facebook fan page (See our post of what you can do with Facebook pages why don’t you!) and even better, your most recent tweets right there on the page. Your fans don’t even need to go to Twitter to find you any more, just read what you have to say and if they like it, which of course they will, because you’re tweeting good stuff and not just blindly retweeting links all day, they’ll follow you. Heck, perhaps you’d even consider running a cross blog/Twitter competition to gain more visits to your site, leading to more Tweets about your band! (Just like the one we’re running right now!) Find a good prize, anything from a few free CDs to backstage passes, ask people to comment on a specific blog post, and then retweet a tagline you create, using a Twitter #hashtag, bingo – large amounts of traffic and pretty decent “Conversion rates” – or in band speak, fans!
4: If you’ve ever used a word processor, you can use WordPress – no more hiring a “webmaster” to handle all the site updates. After a 1 time outlay, which can be as little or as much as you like really, the site is yours. Imagine: you’ve got cool photos and a great MP3 from the show – now instead of emailing them back to “home base” and your web dude, you instantly update the site for your fans to read about by the time you get home!
Also – the benefits of the following strategy, which seems a lot of work, but once it’s set up is really easy, are huge for your search rankings. Why limit yourself to just being found by a MySpace search result – or the same result in Google – here’s a basic “Search engine juice” strategy we like to use whenever possible:
- WordPress driven site with its built in search juice!
- Site Images hosted on Flickr (1 simple WP plugin can pull them all into your site)
- Videos hosted on Youtube (Or Vimeo, or suchlike.)
- Tweetable posting every new blog post to your Twitter stream
What does using the above elements all together get you? - Increased search visibility for no extra work!
I have more thoughts about this, and they’ll follow in a future post. Perhaps you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed to keep in touch with new posts. (Which reminds me – another joy of WordPress – RSS is set up right out of the box, you can post “breaking news” and tour dates etc and people can get that information right in their inbox, no need for newsletters that can or can’t work (The Jury’s still out on that one folks.)
In the meantime, I reckon this post has given enough fuel to get you thinking that maybe, just maybe, taking more control over your content, and therefore your EASY online marketing profile is worth investigating. For more information or to just chat about it, feel free to drop either of us an email and we’ll get back to you. Obviously we’d love to work with you to make this happen, but even if you choose to do it yourself, we’re always open and up for helping out with some relevant advice.
Oh yeah, but don’t just take our word for how good WordPress is for musicians and D J’s – take a look at these cool sites from some people that we think are really rocking WordPress for their band or personal brand right now:
DJ’s
Freddie Joachim – clean, simple, stylish – just like mans mixes!
Gilles Peterson – worldwide crate digger, DJ, radio presenter and more (Why does this site work – see our review of it!) – And making great use of our current favorite theme: THESIS.
Bands:
The Mighty ‘Nach! – Bloody good music, nice easy to use website – oh and they’re Scottish too!
The Swell Season – Check out that mp3 player in the sidebar, a lot cleaner and nicer looking than that big clunky MySpace one and just as easily recognized!
Sigur Ros – If Iceland’s #1 band can use WordPress to manage their online reputation, then you probably should take a leaf out of their book.
Bloggers:
Love Shack Baby (Cos she’s got great taste in music, comes from Chicago and uses one of my favorite WP themes – Atahualpa)
Slowcoustic – Canadian blogger, with great tastes in all things slow and acoustic
Aurgasm – Its got it all, great world music, electronica, folk, top notch writing and unbelievable aurgasmically sexy WordPress styling. (Check out those color bars to help identify genres quickly – genius!)
Agree? Disagree? Want more? Just leave us a comment or two and join the debate!
