Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 3: Facebook Ads

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Facebook: we love it and hate it. Facebook brings up so many opinions, but there is no question that it plays a big role in our lives both personally in business.

In Episode 3, I have decided to take a slightly different tack than the first two podcasts. I’m going a bit longer (11 minutes) and I’m going to discuss a hot marketing issue that also came up last night on the #ggchat Twitter chat (run by Madalyn Sklar every Thursday).

Many bands have experienced a drop in interaction on their Facebook pages in recent months since the changes Facebook made to its algorithms for how posts are displayed in fans’ news feeds. Basically, the days of free advertising are over. There has also been a lot of discussion about whether bands should be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms.

In this episode, I summarize the key points in a recent (December 2013) article by Larry Kim on MarketingProfs called Twitter vs. Facebook Ad Showdown: Which Offers the Best Social Media Ad Platform. At the end of the podcast, I also give my analysis and recommendations in practical terms for artists and bands.

Let me know your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media advertising. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

 

 

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Music, Social Media, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 1: Creating For Yourself Or For The Market

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Most every morning I walk my dog. That’s where I do a lot of my thinking about my own music and social media, about music marketing and about what’s happening with music and technology in general. I thought you all might want to come along and hear what was on my mind this Friday morning.

I was having a conversation last night with Michael Brandvold about my own content strategy on YouTube. The conversation was inspired in part by a great post by Lucy E. Blair published yesterday on Digital Music News entitled “STOP Making Viral Videos, START Making a YouTube #Content Strategy”.

Michael and I got to talking about the difficulty of committing to creating any kind of social media content consistently. If you’re going to commit to producing content for social media, he argued, you better enjoy creating it, or you won’t do it regularly. But the most important thing is that you create something and get it out there regularly. I argued that knowing what type of content your fans want from you is also important, and you ought to have a content strategy and understand your market before you start creating content.

Who cares if I create a music marketing podcast every Friday (for example), but no one is interested in hearing it?

[Tweet “Success is born at the intersection of creativity, execution and demand.”]

So here are my 6 minutes (I thought I would keep it mercifully brief) on the conflicts between creating social media content and art for art’s sake – and creating for commercial consumption.

I’d love to hear your experience and your opinion on this issue in the comments section below. I’d also love your feedback on this format!

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

10 Simple Ways To Promote Your Music

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[The following is a guest post by my friends at Ditto Music. That’s why the spelling is British 🙂 Ditto Music is an online music record label services and digital distribution company servicing over 50,000 artists across the world. Services include chart eligibility, royalty collection and online promotion. I have guest posted on their site.

This post is particularly relevant for me this week. Being a DIY musician, I have done each of the things suggested below myself to promote either my current band, Solveig & Stevie, or my former band, Shades of Red. So I can personally attest to the fact that they are all important. I think #6 below is something that many bands and singer-songwriters wrestle with, myself included. I’d love to hear your feedback on this.

Stevie and I are planning a professional photo shoot and a band website redesign this month, and I’m pretty excited for that. You’ll probably see a blog post or two from me about those experiences. Meanwhile, here are some great music marketing tips from Ditto Music.]

If you are embarking on a career in music, having talent and determination will only get you so far. In order to reach the heights of international stardom, you will also need to promote your music if you decide to go down the road of independent publishing. The internet and the wide range of digital outlets available will provide you with many opportunities to spread the reach of your music. By adopting these 10 simple strategies, you can maximise your chances of reaching the top of the charts.

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

Three Steps To Content Marketing For Musicians

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You may have heard that content marketing is (or should be) the center of 21st century marketing for any business, large or small. But what does this mean in practical terms for a DIY musician?

The basic idea is that by creating original, useful and entertaining information and then using social media to share it far and wide, you attract potential fans who would not otherwise have been aware of your music. Plus, it costs you little or nothing to create the content and do the promotion, right? Free marketing! Well, not exactly free. It costs time and energy, and maybe even a little cash. Without some thought up front, content marketing can also quickly become overwhelming even for the most savvy. But don’t give up just yet. You can do this.

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Marketing, Music

Female Guitarist Alice Stuart Shows Us How It’s Done At 71

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She was featured in Guitar Player magazine in 1974. Rolling Stone did three stories about her in the 1970s.

 “There would be no Bonnie Raitt without Alice Stuart.” – Dick Waterman

If you want to know how to be successful long term in the music business – and how to continue to be successful in the 21st century new online, Do-It-Yourself model – you would do well to study the example of Seattle musician Alice Stuart.

She may not be a household name, but Stuart is a pioneer with a loyal fan base who has had remarkable lifetime success and longevity in a tough industry.

Alice Stuart 1973A Trailblazer For Women in Rock

Alice Stuart blazed the trail for women in rock and roll as one of the only females in the country to write her own music, front a male band, and play lead guitar on national and international circuits.

Stuart has played with many greats, including Jerry Garcia, John Prine, Albert King, Richard Greene, Elvin Bishop, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Phil Ochs, Mississpi John Hurt, Frank Zappa, The Chambers Brothers, Tower of Power & Commander Cody.

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Marketing, Social Media

Marketing Chap: The Batman of Blogging

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There are some important things to know about Mark Etingchap (that’s Marketing Chap, to you):

Oh, yes, and, the most important thing of all:

  • Mark Etingchap is not a real person. 
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Conferences, Music

Lessons From Hit Songwriters Of Every Genre And Race

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The issues faced by DIY (Do It Yourself), DTF (Direct-To-Fan), AKA indie musicians cut across both musical genre and race. Many of the sources of information for musicians today seem to come in silos delineated by genre: hip hop artists read hip hop books and blogs, and get advice primarily from hip hop industry people; jazz, rock, metal, pop and folk artists do the same. Yet we all face many of the same issues, and these sources of information repeat much of the same advice to those who want to make a career in music. When we all share our experiences, though, we see how universal it is to be a musician, no matter what type of music we make, what cultural background we are from, or what age we are.

I was reminded of this when I attended the Pacific Northwest Recording Academy’s (Grammy organization) inaugural Songwriter’s Summit this weekend at Seattle’s EMP (Experience Music Project). There were people of every age and color at the Summit, but the concerns and frustrations voiced by the attendees were nearly identical:

  • How do I make a living in this crazy business that I love, but which changes under my feet every year, every week, every day?
  • Where is the real money to be made in writing and recording music?
  • How do I write a hit song? Then, how do I write another hit song?
  • How do I rise above the noise in the music industry and get my music heard?
  • How do I register and copyright my music so I can get paid?
  • How does the byzantine world of music licensing work?
  • Is the music business still all about relationships and who you know, or is the internet the great equalizer?
  • What is a mechanical license, what does a publisher do, who is SoundExchange and why should I care?
  • (and why does Rhapsody hold 30%  of their licensing revenue from streaming plays because they cannot figure out who to pay? This amazing statistic courtesy of Jon Maples, Vice President of Rhapsody Product Management)
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Marketing, Social Media

Agile Marketing For DIY Musicians

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Agile-processAgile Marketing is a term that takes its inspiration from Agile Development, a methodology “defined” in 2001 by a group of programmers in order to apply a set of alternative (and hopefully more productive) values to traditional software development. Many software development projects large and small had, by this time, become unwieldy and nightmarish processes (see the concept of Edward Yourdon’s “Death March” software project management) when Agile Development became the new trend, and eventually, the new norm in software development.

Of course, it didn’t take long before product managers and other marketing types realized that the same concepts which were helping their brethren across the cubicle pods over in developer-land could also be applied to the world of marketing.  As a former software marketer, the idea of Agile Marketing fascinates me, as does the idea of applying it to the world of indie music marketing. This article outlines how Agile Marketing values can be used by indie musicians to guide and prioritize their online and social media marketing activities.

For many indie musicians, business people and marketers, the idea of the Death March resonates today. We struggle with finding time for both artistic creativity and promotion, we sift through unending and various advice on how to promote our music best on our websites and via social media, and we suffer insomnia as we attempt to master our social media content creation process – should we blog? YouTube? Vine? Pay for ads on Facebook or promoted posts?

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Marketing, Music, Social Media

7 Hootsuite Tips For Musicians

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Seeing that many musicians and music marketing industry people use Twitter to discuss and promote music, I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of one of the most commonly used tools for managing social media accounts with an eye to what features musicians might find most useful.

Hootsuite is one of several free social media dashboard applications, like Buffer or Tweetdeck, that can help you manage Twitter and other social media channels, all in one place. Hootsuite interfaces with most social media platforms, like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress, Tumblr, Instagram and many more – although not Pinterest, as of this writing.

Note: For more information on Buffer, see this blog post by my friend Chris “Seth” Jackson, at HowToRunABand, Twitter for Musicians, Day 13: Extreme Power Tools to Become a Twitter Ninja. For a Hootsuite vs. Tweetdeck throwdown, see this article by Make It In Music, Top Twitter Tips For Musicians.

I find Hootsuite to be most helpful for me in managing Twitter, and less so for managing my Facebook or LinkedIn posts. For those bands with a public Facebook fan page to track and analyze, it would probably be much more useful. I also haven’t hooked my Instagram or website Google Analytics up to Hootsuite yet, but I’m planning to. It’ll be nice to see them all in one place.

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Music

YouNow 101: Using Online Performance To Add Fans

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SonyaJevetteWithGuitarThis is the second post in a series exploring the various options for musicians to stream live performances online, including StageIt, Ustream, LiveStream, Google+ Hangouts On Air, Skype, YouNow, Broadcast for Friends for Facebook, and Second Life Music. I covered StageIt in a prior blog post, StageIt 101: Creating An Intimate Experience, where I featured Vancouver vocalist and songwriter, Jody Quine. My goal is to not only give you the basic service overview, but also let you hear from an indie musician who actually uses the service regularly. For this post, I interview Texas singer-songwriter Sonya Jevette.

YouNow is a website that acts a bit like a collection of open mic lounges where performers queue up to perform online. There are no pre-set show times like with StageIt, YouNow is more like a public stage, where viewers watch and interact with a stream (no pun intended) of performers as they broadcast fairly short (generally 10 minutes or less) sets from their living rooms or bedrooms. Some performers perform repeatedly over the day, or queue up to re-broadcast their prior recorded shows.

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