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Today’s artists have a wide range of possibilities to promote themselves, especially online. But
that means you must compete with other groups to gain an online presence. There are four
key steps in online marketing to gain a successful start with promoting your music on the
internet.
Submit to Directories
1.
The first step is to submit. Submit to directories, online
radios, and online magazines –
anywhere that plays or features music. The more places that play your track, the more
people will hear and recognize your music. Thousands of people listen to free online radios
daily and most of these stations allow artists to submit their music to them. Similarly,
directories permit you to add your website with a brief description, which is then added to
the directory site. An even better idea is to make a friend submit your site or music for you
so you are not always pushing your own music.
You must be careful when submitting to sites, however, because search
directories like Google will downgrade you if your incoming links look
unnatural. This means that when someone performs a search for your site, it
will not show up in the top search results because the search engine is
punishing you. Try submitting your site or music to a couple sites weekly with
various anchor texts. For example, the words “an awesome rock blog” are the
anchor text to the link www.motorcityrocks.com. Also, do not always submit
your site with a link pointing to your homepage. Sometimes submit your site
with a link to the secondary page of your website to make the links seem more
natural.
Give Away Music
Secondly, offer your music at no cost. With the plethora
of options available to users to download free MP3s, strictly
offering your music for purchase hurts your online status.
When a listener gets your MP3 for free, he or she has a greater
possibility of returning to your site to hear more music
by you if they liked what they heard. Only after listening
and liking your music will they purchase your album. You
have to be sure not to give away too much music, though,
because the listener will have no reason to purchase your
album if they can find everything for free.
Adding a podcast or MP3 to your sites also allows users to
hear your music without paying anything for it. The hardest
part in adding music to the site, however, is the recording,
so start by focusing on a quality recording of your music.
To add music to the site:
a. Find a computer with audio input capability and an easy
to use audio encoding application. This is easy if your music
is on CD, just rip it with iTunes or a similar application.
If it is in some other analog or digital (mini-disc) format,
it gets a little harder, but applications are freely out
there.
b. Then with MP3 file in hand, you can upload the file to
your web site and link like you would link a web page or
other media/image file.
c. From there, there are more complicated ways of doing it
so it is more
"presentable" with a nice embedded player, etc.
Make Business Friends
The third step is to build professional
online relationships to boost your online presence. You know
a lot about music, so comment on it. Look up blogs related
to rock music and add meaningful comments to help others
reading the blogs. Most of the time the comment box asks
for your URL, which is a great way to promote your own website
or blog while helping others by posting comments.
Blogger ethics state if one blogger comments or links to
another’s site, the other blogger will
comment or link back. This is a great way to build an online relationship and promote one
another’s music. An additional option, besides just commenting on their blogs, is to help
them out somehow. When you find online radio stations to submit your music to, compile a
list and send the list to them. They will in return promote your music to thank you for your
help.
Besides commenting on blogs, creating a blog can prove very beneficial in online rock music
marketing as well.
Utilize Social Networks
Connect yourself to tons of different social networking
sites. YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Google Video allow you to
post different videos onto the site at no cost, like the
OKGo video that was fairly inexpensive and still receives
views daily. Post all your music videos and add links to
your website to these videos.
MyBlogLog allows users to share different sites and build
a community based on various interests. You can also add
your site to your profile and view who else has your site
as their favorite. Although just over a year old, MyBlogLog
is quickly gaining popularity, which presents a great way
establish yourself early in the community. Similarly, Ning
allows you to create a social network for any topic. Joining
and commenting on various rock music networks and creating
your own network for group provides the best methods to get
the most out of Ning.
Finally, joining the additional social network sites like
LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace are all necessary in promoting
you or your band. Finding friends and friends of friends
can boost you music and be helpful in additional ways. Network
as often as possible both online and offline.
These three simple steps provide a great way to start promoting
your music online. Remember to submit, give away, and comment.
Online marketing is a continuous process you must constantly
work on, but it pays off in the end.
By Lance Trebesch
lance@ticketprinting.com
www.TicketPrinting.com |
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