Content IS Promotion: Internet Music Marketing presentation

Hey thanks to Jason @ Depot Artspace and all those who came along to hear my very first presentation on digital music marketing and stuff.

As it turns out I get more than a biscuit. But the important thing for me was really some points I can make – as I often do – that are relevant to artists and one of the most important things I’ve been talking about recently but had to quickly skim because my talk was damn near 2 hours! Definitely room for improvement there. But I did feel good that even though I went on way too long and had to skim some of most important stuff about engaging fans and monetizing fan relationships, most people stuck around even though I went on and on.

The fact is, that online music promotion is complicated. You can catch up with some of those posts in my 7 part series here:

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and promotion

And part 2 is here: Are you ready? Content you need for your digital online promotion campaign

And part 3: Google and the importance of words on the web: more “who’s going to write our blog copy” now then “who’s going to direct our video”

Part 4:  Getting your head around using social media and web 2.0 to promote your music

Part 5: Setting up a music artists website

 Part 6: Music Artist Website promotion: Marketing and Sales

Part 7: Music Artist Website Promotion: Engaging, EMail and Monetizing

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

 

 

So in a lot of ways for me this presentation was a bit like a gig – and though I don’t see myself packing out stadiums at $50 a head for presentation talks on online music marketing - like most gigs when you’re starting out, it was an opportunity to get experience engaging deeply and in person with an audience.

I knew it was an opportunity to develop my presentation skills. Now there’s a reason that this applies and that’s not just about developing my skills as a performer.

It’s about the growing power of audio and video to provide a platform to really connect with a large, focused digital audience.

That means although there was an opportunity to improve my performance – which is really important for musicians, more so than for marketers – it was the knowledge that there would be a lot of power in digitally distributing this performance.

I knew there would be audio taken at the event and that I would be able to get into doing some videos based on the presentation content aftwerwards, and syndicate those videos (if theyre decent!) out over multiple online channels thus multiplying the effectiveness of my efforts.

Also it raises some points about how you engage.

There was some mention that I didn’t really use my talk as a platform for Kurb. I’m not one to shy away from a marketing opportunity, but this was about creating positive engagement.

I could have talked up myself and what I do, but there really is no substitute for value. If people who engage with your material walk away thinking “Wow, that was really good!” Then most of the work is done.

And that’s what it’s about. By just focusing on being as good as I could be and giving value to the audience . . . they know who I am, they know what I do, so will those who hear the podcast and watch the videos. The rest will just follow.

A lot of top bloggers can come across as quite sanctimonious and holier-than-thou when they talk about engaging audiences using new media. It’s all very well for them to talk about high quality, high value when they’re doing 5 figures a week and you’re still working your crappy job.

But I made a fresh assertion during this presentation when I said that “content IS promotion” during this talk, because every piece of high quality content is an opportunity to engage with your audience and advance the relationship.

When I think about all the work I’ll be doing on my videos over the next few days, and waiting on the audio stuff from Jason, I know it’s hardly going to convert directly into big profits and opportunities. (well, it might)

But I do know that it’s going to create opportunities to engage my existing audience as well as drawing in new people from around the world who are interested in the way I do business with and for musicians. If more people are going to get more value from this content then it’s going to foster relationships that lead to profitable interactions.

I emphasised this in different ways in my talk, but I know, especially when I get a frantic email or call from a musician that though many people do connect with my blog, my bulletins etc. and that’s been great, video and audio content gives you so much scope for real engagement and real connection.

This is how I’m talking about engaging fans.

It is the 80’s again – without video you could be losing your edge in your ability to connect with people about what you’re doing.

I kept on thinking about radioheads New years webcast which I checked out in regards to these videos I’ll be working on.

I’ll admit I do tend to avoid listening to a lot of music and watching a lot of music video simply because I am very easily influenced. But given the massive buzz around Radiohead, I couldn’t help it!

And watching their webcast we could see the way that Radiohead make their music, as they performed it in their own rehersal/recording space, we could see them performing with passion, we could see that their drummer does look kinda weird, like drummers do, but he’s definitely into it. On the stroke of midnight they stood around in the pitch black freezing cold in a field outside the studio and did an acoustic version of one of their songs.

Their was some weird kinda arty stuff and short poems between each song.

So long story short, I was engaged. They got me, and here I am, responding positively to the free secondary content from radiohead I engaged with.

Radiohead perhaps had some deal for the webcasting of the video but really, there wasn’t big money in this webcast for them. It wasn’t about sales and marketing, it was about engaging fans with content, and letting the rest take care of itself.

I think for those who purchased “In rainbows” it would feel like a bonus, but the flip of that was that for those who didn’t purchase “In Rainbows” it was a step forward in building that relationship through engagement with content to a point where that could certainly happen under the right circumstances.

For those who did purchase John Reese’s “Traffic Secrets” they probably felt they already had received much value in the free videos they watched, paying for the full program was just a follow through.

I’m going to be putting up notes from my talk on my blog soon – both from my hand out and from my own extended notes . . .

Because we all know – more content – more words – more love from google – more opportunites to engage with content and foster relationships and interactions that lead to monetization.

Just like John Reese says: “Own more of the net!”

And Matt Turner says: “Content IS Promotion”

 

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

kurbpromo@gmail.com

http://www.kurb.co.nz

http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo

http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo

http://www.twitter.com/mattnz

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

John Reese’s Traffic Secrets: A music industry perspective on internet marketing

“Finally.

The time has come.

4+ years in the making.

A small fortune spent.

Thousands of tests conducted.

A valuable system made even better.

“Traffic Secrets 2.0″ gets officially released
today at Noon EST!

If you’re serious about making money
online and growing an online business
then this is the course for you.

And I’ll stake my reputation on this… this may
very well be one of the last traffic-generation
courses you’ll ever need to buy.”

 

 

 

So today is the launch of John Reese’s “Traffic Secrets 2” and it is a big event in internet marketing.

This should be a great post because not only can we learn from John Reese in regards to applying online promotion ideas from his amazing free video material . . .

. . . but we can reflect on how John was able to create such a huge buzz for his product in an already overhyped and oversaturated market.

I understand the reason a lot of musicians come to me is because they understand the importance of promoting themselves and engaging fans online, but they’re not really interested in learning and practicing “IM” or internet marketing themselves, they wanna do their music.

Which is cool, that gives me a job to do, especially as there seems to be so very few music industry people interested in IM.

Which seems pretty strange to me, I mean call me crazy but if you were say in the recording industry and you kinda figured your whole industry was shifting to a digital, web enabled environment and you were wondering how to make money . . .

 

You’d probably start by looking at people who were already making money in a digital web enabled environment.

And I don’t mean like bill gates. I mean like garden variety twenty something geeks with a handful of computer skills (who me? haha), who to which the idea of not having to leave their bedroom to make money appeals.

You see no one who is involved in IM is interested in the music business because these kids are just trying to make quick bucks and there are no quick bucks in music.

Quick bucks are in diets and porn and peddling get rich schemes, and don’t forget the cornerstone of IM, the ebook. And when people are focused on one thing such as making fast, easy money selling whatever they can online, they begin to get very good at it. And a whole economic ecosystem has sprung up to support those who either work full time as a professional or part time or as a hobby earning extra cash as an internet marketer, and the industry has become ever more streamlined.

And it’s true that a lot more people are interested in miraculous weight loss cures than they are your music, but given that people make so much money out of weight loss online and anything else you can think of probably with a lot less resources then you have - while you’re still thinking about how to quit your day job - kinda suggests there’s some things we can learn.

And so that’s what I’ve been doing. Watching and learning from the ways that marketing is carried out on the web for RESULTS.

As in money results.

And I don’t mean results for Bill gates or Radiohead or anyone who doesn’t need my help.

 

I mean for you, at the arse end of the music industry, in a sinking ship with the rest of us, working out how to turn a crust.

 

So you can focus on your music, and I will focus on getting you to the best place online to get paid for it.

Lets get back to John Reese’s traffic secrets. I think the thing about Traffic Secrets is that it’s done a radiohead. Or is it a led zep reunion? The point is, within the internet marketing and blogging world people are hyped up about his product.

People that are masters of hype are hyped. Why?

Well the whole point of this post was to highlight his Free videos.

He has 3 free videos totalling almost an hour of free material where he discusses several in depth online promotion strategies and techniques.

You should watch them because theyre great, they’ll teach you a lot . . .

But - If you want direct access to these free videos then you have to jump into our new artist community.

http://newmusicmarketing.com

 

It’s free to join, (currently the whole site is free but there’s not much happening just yet, early days – by August should be a different story)

So back to this massive launch campaign. The first thing I noticed when I heard about this was that a lot of top IM people were blogging about the free videos from their friend John.

 

What if you had a dozen top bands all telling their fans you had a new album coming out?

 

But it wasn’t just talking about the videos it was what they were saying. Needless to say the free videos were packed with info and insight, they were distinctly authentic and valuable in content. In fact its only in the last half of the last video he even starts talking about the product itself.

 

But it wasn’t just the content. These bloggers and IM gurus couldn’t stop talking about the quality of the presentation, as although video has been growing in IM for the last 18 months, the general consensus was that he had risen the bar in promotional videos for internet products with the standard of his presentation.

And this is what many of the marketers touched on: They were personally excited about the product.

What they had seen and been given free was of such high standard they couldn’t help but be connected with the product and feel confident about purchasing it.

And this is the world we’re now living in. In order to stand out, you have to demonstrate superior value in a way that is accessible before you even create the opportunity to realise significant revenue.

Interesting aside:

I saw an ad emblazoned “John Reese is a scammer and owes me $30,000” I clicked through to a sale page for . . .

 

Traffic secrets . . .

I guess that’s one way of advertising. I don’t see myself running a “Matt Turner is a scammer and Kurb ripped me off” campaign . . .

Online Music Promotion Management: When Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Setting up the new artist community at http://newmusicmarketing.com and my new blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info has been slow going as - I’m sure you’re aware, my expertise is in marketing and promotion, I have passable web and graphic design skills, but not so much when it comes to administration and the back end.

The technicalities of building a solid platform for digital promotion and revenue is something I’ve spoken about before, because the harder it is for me, the harder it must certainly be for artists to do stuff like create and host a site, install and administer a blog platform, create a podcast and all the rest.

And it shouldn’t be that way, because artists need this stuff, and they need it to be easy! It’s hard enough worrying about the creative side and the marketing stuff on top of technical details!

In fact it really gets me hopping mad because this technical stuff must be air tight or very very bad things happen, and it happens to the best.

When radiohead released “In Rainbows” online. Media frenzy, 3 million hits on their website in one day. Went down like the Hindenburg because they weren't ready for the traffic.

What about poor old Dubber from New Music Strategies. Didn’t pay his hosting bill on time so they shut him down and took his domain name hostage for about a week or so. http://newmusicstrategies.com. 2000+ subscribed readers and just given short shift, never mind the please and thank you's!

SO - you’ve got to make sure the technicalities of running your website and blog and the platforms artists are using to carry out effective online communication and revenue generation are rock solid. That’s what I’m doing right now with a whole bunch of blogs, websites I’m responsible for and of course the new artist community as well and boy it hasn’t been easy!

Do you know what a host is? A server, A domain? That’s good. Bandwidth allocation, server speeds, security and backup . . . what about frickin DNS, MySQL databases and PHP code. Huh? Any takers? That’s what I thought.

It’s scary business. Now picture yourself in 2010.

You sell digital and physical products from your website

You sell advertising and lucrative relevant niche related affiliate offers from your website

Your fans interact with you and one another through the website

Music industry people with opportunities will be accessing your content and communicating with you through your website

You may even be doing futuristic stuff – automated gig booking, and smart data systems for gathering and distributing information for and about gigs and fans.

Fans may be interacting with your digital products to create their own customisable cd tracklists, cover art, merchandise, etc.

So if your website starts to become directly or indirectly your main source of contact that leads to revenue generating activities – like mine or radioheads is - it’s more than an eeny weeny problem if well . . . there’s any kind of problem that cuts off the cash – like if the website goes kaput, gets hacked, or you just haven't got the service in place to meet the technical needs of doing a decent amount of business on the net – the site doesn’t load quickly, audio and video content is choppy and worst of all, there’s problems using the retail interface when consumers purchase digital products.

Any website that asks you for your credit card or your paypal or whatever and then starts doing weird stuff and not loading up properly is not going to put your average fan at ease.

Remember, marketing is about solving other people’s problems, so I accept that’s what I have to do with the new artist community coming soon to

http://newmusicmarketing.com



create a easy hassle free service for artists who shouldn’t need to worry about having a website and a blog and whatever else they should need –so I’m looking forward to a time very soon when we’re going to have a person on board who’s just going to have it taken care of so our artists never have any problems no matter how many people are coming through their sites and blogs, or whatever they want to try.

That would be a great relief as I wait for progress on these current projects!!!



Understanding the role of technology is part of the uncertainty of the digital environment – knowing what has to be done, getting a fair deal – the difference between getting expert help when you need it and being overcharged.

But realistically, a professional artist just cant concern themselves with these details unless they have the appropriate contacts, they need a resource such as the http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ artist community so they have an easily affordable service that is staged to cover all the support required online at each level of their professional career – Administration, Presentation as well as Marketing and promotion.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

kurbpromo@gmail.com

online band / music / artist marketing and promotion diary April 08

Kurb provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster services.


I guess less time sitting around scratching my head means more time to talk about practical, hands on online promotion strategies rather than selling the idea.

But the first thing I most stoked to announce is that I am earning almost $10 a month from blogging now, unfortunately you have to earn $100 before you get paid so could be waiting awhile.

But I am stoked because it proves that ad supported revenue – which as it turns out I happen to be a firm advocate of – does have potential because I know that what I have done now is only a fraction of what is possible because ad supported revenue will scale vertically as well as horizontally

Meaning: Not only will individual income streams grow, but further income platforms related to content provided will be possible. A dozen platforms combining to create 30c a day now can be scaled long term to 100 platforms combining to create hundreds of dollars a day.

Why am I obsessed with ad supported revenue?

Not only because it is a “make money while you sleep” strategy as praised by Derek sivers recently . . .

But because it’s future proof. Whatever happens to the recorded/digital music industry in the next 5-10 years, ad supported strategies worked by the individual content generator will be able to be worked outside the infrastructure of the industry.

You don’t need to be signed to a label or any other aggregator, with ad supported revenue being developed on your site and your blog its not Myspace or Apple or anybody else calling the shots.



So with the influx of clients I haven’t quite got to the point of informing anyone they will have to join a waiting list BUT I am being picky – I’m going to be more inclined to want to work with Auckland artists, New Zealand artists, more committed artists, more experienced artists and artists prepared to commit to working with me for at least 3 months.

I’m more interested in results now than turnover.

Most of the clients have their myspace pages being promoted with targeted campaigns, and we have established 2 supplementary blogs for each artist to start building content there that will bring in search authority and traffic.

Whereas I will use sites such as Craigslist.com and Squidoo.com for SEO authority, Reverbnation.com on the other hand has tools and a vibe about it which I see as being practically useful, with revenue sharing in place.



Squidoo also has revenue sharing platforms, but the thing about social and web 2.0 marketing is you must use the double movement. Not only are you building backlinks to create search authority but you’re using content to emphasise your unique selling point.

This is where I usually get to on myspace: We’re carrying out the promotion systematically but to create a real point of engagement we need to create a concept around a unique selling point or proposition.

Will it be a free download, will it be a competition, what is the motivation for the fan to interact or sign up for the mailing list, etc.?

I have also established .info domain names for each client as we expand their online presence. I discovered a domain name forwarding to your myspace will bring your myspace up in a localised search, and a myspace page is going to blow the arse off most NZ served pages in terms of authority.

But another reason for the .info thing is the real issues I have with web designers!!! Whether my clients come to me with a website built and functioning or not, the task im attempting to carry out is to tweak the site, or the myspace page etc. slowly over time to bring visitors to the site/page and then compelling them to take actions that are ultimately leading to financial gain by the artist.

If it’s a nightmare to make these tweaks you will never bring your site to the point I have got to with http://www.kurb.co.nz where every day the beast is slowly evolving, bringing visitors closer to exactly where I want them, and closer to creating more reward from less effort on my part.

That’s where I came up with the idea of Kurb Music – not a label, but a platform where I can freely develop search, social and revenue functions for my client base as a whole without the obstruction and complications of addressing individual clients

I’ll be looking at the way unique selling points and propositions deployed in targeted marketing campaigns can help promote the content on this platform, and how this platform can be expanded.

Right now it’s a way to contribute value to my clients as well as working towards a personal goal – a bottom up approach to implementing my business plan for the choice as NZ music portal

Yes, Kurb Music is another one of those “Matt Ideas” like kurb 50/50 or plasticast. The point is not whether the project functions practically, it is that an innovative concept has a complete model and is ready to be developed and tested under the right circumstances.



On my site, search returns continue to surge, all that SEO work is paying off and google searches are accounting for 75% of my traffic.All that really means is all the traffic I’ve lost from myspace over the last 6 months is probably now being made up for.


The issue im trying to face right now is the seinfeld issue. Either you see watch Seinfeld on TV for free or you fly to Vegas and catch him at US$200 a ticket.

Seinfeld has no mid range option.

With me either you read my blog for free or you pay me US$200 a month to help you. Kurb Music is something I’m trying to develop as a mid range promotions product of $10-20 p/week value.

What Trent Reznor did by offering so many different variables and products on his last release was create value at so many different levels for his fanbase.

By creating everything from a blog with a few google ads to DVD’s packed with multimedia content, that’s what Kurb is trying to do for artists.

Here’s an interesting link covering all the social music services.

http://www.social-music.info/

You know how I feel, DON’T waste your time signing up for every music service under the sun.

HOWEVER there is definitely a thread running through the internet marketing community right now that suggests that we shouldn’t be afraid of a little hard work.

Web 2.0 is different. It’s a vast network without the dead ends of Web 1.0, it doesn’t matter where you start as long as make a start!

Also my habit of focusing on my blogging only one day a week has produced some weird results - I’ve seen something similar before having 500+ visitors to my myspace blog alone in the course of a day or two after a series of posts.

Frustratingly, because its myspace and theres no detailed stats, I have no idea where these people are coming from or how they found my blog!!!! I only have 30 odd subscribers so . . . and it’s not like it generated a whole lot of leads – 500 visitors to the kurb home site would definitely turn out several leads.

Kurb is a media promotions company providing a regular blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

Kurb also provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster services.

Our physical media services come with free graphic set up and support, free delivery, and free promotions advice and support for musicians.

http://www.kurb.co.nz/
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo -
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/kurb

All the best with your project, from Kurb
For direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromo


DIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE MANAGEMENT STARTS @ $NZ250 P/MONTH P/ACT

music promotion and spam: A reformed Black Hat

Http://www.nickycakes.com

Nicky Cakes aka partner ZU9whatever is an internet marketer and blogs on internet marketing under the bi-line "confessions of a reformed* black hat"

I know most of you just want to write your songs and earn a living. I wanna earn a living too promoting the songs you write, what those songs and what you represent, and creating value out of that that results in income. but one of the most inefficient parts of the work I do is explaining my work and the sorts of skills I have that make me in such demand right now to the people who pay me - people who just wanna make songs and make a buck from it.

My work involves learning about how internet marketing is carried out and looking at where that intersects with marketing music online in an appropriate way. Which is pretty unique because I'm doing pretty well with it.

I say "appropriate" because to me whether something is right or wrong or black hat or white hat spam or not is not the issue in marketing and promotion. I feel that if internet marketing messages and techniques are not useful to those who recieve them, because they are untargeted, unoriginal, and disruptive, then they are spam and damaging to your brand whether you used software, bots, scripts or automated techniques or not.

To me it's not spam that's wrong or the methodology of communication but all communication that isn't thought out with the interests of those recieving the message in mind.

Thats why the richest internet marketers are not software developers or code gurus. Unique ideas and innovation still drive music marketing and promotion as it always has.

THIS FROM Nicky Cakes:

Nickycakes gets asked this question quite often. “What is a Reformed Blackhat?” Most people assume that it has something to do with spam or making cloaked pages to fool the search engines. Wrong, WRONG. First, take a look at what “blackhat” really means.

For years, the terms “Black Hat” and “White Hat” have been used to describe hackers, people who break into computer systems, etc. A Black Hat hacker is someone who breaks into systems with malicious intent. Personal gain, causing a general ruckus, or making a name for themselves are a few of the motivating factors. White Hat hackers, on the other hand, is someone who breaks into systems to help. These people are generally the ones who notify the vendors of problems in their systems, help write patches, etc.

Anyway, along came SEO. Like hacking, there were 2 sides of the SEO coin. There were webmasters who got their search engine rankings naturally by writing “good content” or developing relationships with other webmasters for backlinks, etc. Then there were people on the cutting edge who came up with creative ways to rank higher in search engines with less work. Sometimes these practices are thought of as “spammy” but generally none are illegal unless computer systems are being broken into, or can-spam laws are being violated.

So the terms “White Hat SEO” and “Black Hat SEO” were born. Neither have much real meaning, but both are thrown around quite liberally. It’s kind of silly, really. The self proclaimed “White Hat SEO” will try to build inbound links to his website by manually visiting related blogs and making comments on them with his website’s url in the comment. Someone more clever than him will write a program to automatically post comments on all related blogs with the push of one button, and the “White Hat” screams “BLACKHAT!”.

That’s really what Blackhat SEO boils down to. It’s just a term thrown around a lot by idiots who are continually 1-up’d by people more clever than they are. It’s pretty much meaningless.

Ok so that’s the end of that tangent. What does Nickycakes mean by “Reformed Blackhat?” Well, many years ago the Cakes could have been labeled as the type of blackhat first mentioned in this post. Since then many things have changed and now he’s devoting that energy to something more productive: making money on teh intraweb. Hence Reformed Blackhat.

Keep it real.





Kurb is a media promotions company providing a regular blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and artists creating revenue from new media online. .. ..

Kurb also provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally And the best value fast turnover physical media services in ....New Zealand.... including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster printing services. Our physical media services come with free graphic set up and support, free delivery, and free promotions advice and support for musicians.

http://www. kurb. co. nzhttp://www. myspace. com/kurbpromohttp://www. youtube. com/user/kurbpromo -http://kurbpromotion. wordpress. comhttp://kurbpromotion. blogspot. comhttp://www. squidoo. com/kurb

CD / DVD DUPLICATIONPRINTING NEW ZEALAND

POSTERS POSTERINGPRINTING AUCKLAND


Element - New Zealand Hip HopKanarek - psychedelic ambient beatnik popNow You Die - Melbourne Metal Punk! Golpe Con Classe - Latin Hip Hop SpainKoshowko - Polish Electropop in MelbourneRoger Greenaway - New Zeland singer/songwriterAzumuth - New Zealand epic modern rockbased in Melbourne, AustraliaDJ TKD - Te Puke's finest - New Zealand DJ and turntablistAl Walser - Pop/ R&B Prince - Liechtenstien / HollywoodRomantech - Liquid Drum'n Bass Auckland New ZealandGanga - Downbeat CHill out Lounge Dub - Denmark

learning search engine optimisation for your website

Here’s a pretty long but still real simple and useful article on search engine optimisation.



The thing about SEO work is it doesn’t happen straight away it often takes MONTHS to see the tiniest changes.

But this is the thing about music promotion. We all know the music industry is heading online. And I can tell you that for the foreseeable future that searches drive online information and basically as boring and un rock’n roll as this stuff is, it’s SO VITAL in the long term!!!

Luckily for musicians search engine optimisation is just one of many skills I make available on our digital coaching packages for artists as well as small business – check it out more here:

http://kurbartistmanagement.info
Remember on our digital coaching and online promotion packages we take care of all of this stuff it’s all inclusive!!!

Kurb SEO search engine optimisation search marketing adwords auckland new zealand

Kurb small business marketing and online promotion auckland new zealand

Kurb online marketing and web 2.0 promotion auckland new zealand

Let’s face it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated subject—and not only is it complicated, but the professionals don’t even agree about what works best.

On the other hand, it’s become pretty obvious that SEO is no longer something businesses can ignore. Especially small businesses.

Where does SEO fit in with small businesses, home businesses, and freelancers? How can a small business owner make sense of the many parts? Is SEO practical or effective for small business?

These are all questions I’ve been asked repeatedly by clients, and I’m pretty sure they are questions that are on the minds of many business owners out there. With that as my motive, I’ve created this article to explain everything a business owner should (and shouldn’t) know about SEO.

What is SEO and Why You Should Care

Search Engine Optimization is about getting more traffic by improving your rank in organic search. By organic search, I mean free search. So at it’s root, SEO is about getting free long-term exposure for your business.

Now there is an important distinction to make regarding types of SEO. There are generally considered two types of SEO, white-hat and black-hat, and they vary based on their primary goal. White-hat SEO is about making your site easy for Google to read, creating valuable content with relevant keywords, and building links in an honest fashion (more on these later). Black-hat SEO is pretty much about tricking Google into ranking higher, and doing anything dishonest to influence your search positions. There are several blurry areas, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to stay firmly within white-hat territory.

Now that we have that finished, let’s move on to the interesting parts.

Why you should care about SEO

The internet is only growing, and people are spending more and more time immersed in its digital waters. At the very center of this trend are search engines—they are the primary way of finding or being found on the internet. SEO is about getting you ranked well and helping you profit from search engines.

• SEO brings traffic. As in, people looking at your business.


• SEO increases visibility, so your business can be found.


• If you set yourself up correctly you can benefit for years.


• SEO helps manage your company’s reputation online.


• SEO is a necessary step to marketing your business online.

If you want to expand your business onto the internet, there really isn’t another choice but to understand and implement good SEO practices. Without them, chances are you won’t get very far online.

Code, URLs, and Crawlability

The first step in optimizing your site for search engines lies with making the code and URLs of your website “crawlable”. Just as a quick warning, these are things you should know about, but you should probably have your web guru implement them.

The code

Basically, in order for you to rank and get traffic from Google or other search engines, they have to be able to read your website. The key point is that search engines can only read text. This means all of your images should have a textual description, you should have a lot of textual content, and you shouldn’t have an entirely flash or javascript website.

The URLs

Once search engines can read your website, they index (save and file) each page based on the unique URL (the address you type into the bar). This is important because some websites don’t have a unique URL for each page, which leads to the content getting all mixed up in the search engines. If your website does this, chances are you won’t rank well in Google or any other engines. Take a look at the picture below for examples of good and bad URLs.

Not only are unique URLs important, but having keywords in the URL is also important. Search engines count URL and Title Bar keywords heavily, and if you aren’t using them then you’re missing out on a vital piece of SEO.

Semantics

This is something that we’ll look at more in the content section, but it needs to be at least brought up with regard to code. A properly optimized website will use semantic code to market headings, paragraphs, lists, etc… This means that each part of your content is given a relative importance. Google uses this prioritization to figure out which keywords are important, so you should ask your webmaster to make sure your website is coded properly to use these standards.

Content and Keywords

The content and keywords of your website are both things you probably have control over (you might even be able to edit them yourself), and are both parts of SEO that you can implement yourself.

Content

Content includes any text, images, audio, or video that you put on your website. For this article we’ll focus on text, since it is the primary way Google understands your website. The others need to be described with text in order for Google to register them.

Here’s the simple overview of content and SEO:

1. Content is good


2. More content is better


3. Lots of content is the best

Content is what search engines rank. If you have a lot of content, you will have more pages that can rank, and more ways to get traffic. So the more content you have, the better.

But it’s not quite that simple, content quality is very important. A high quality article will get a lot of traffic from social media and will get more links, which is a big factor in SEO (see the next big section). Also good content will be relevant to your website and have relative keywords in it. So don’t just throw up a crappy page and expect it to rank well—your content needs to be well thought out and provide some good value.

Keywords

When Google reads your content, it distills everything into a list of keywords. It is those keywords and phrases that control what searches your website will show up for, so they are of crucial importance.

There are three important things to consider when looking for keywords. Is the keyword relevant to my business? How often is the keyword searched for? How competitive is the keyword?

Keyword Relevance You want to find keywords that have to do with your business so that they will bring in traffic that is valuable to you. A good way to come up with relevant keywords is to just brainstorm and come up with a list of words and phrases your target customer might use to find your website.

Keyword Popularity You need to find keywords and phrases that are being searched for regularly, or else you might rank #1 and get no traffic.

Keyword Difficulty Once you have a nice list of popular and relevant keyword phrases, it’s time to cross out most of them. Many keyword phrases, and most individual words, are extremely competitive and very difficult to rank for. When you’re just starting out, it’s best to go for the easy ones first.

Content Structure

It’s important to structure your content in a way that is semantically correct. This means using the right heading style for each heading, and using them in order of importance. A properly structured page will look like an outline with big headlines, little headlines, and paragraphs. This semantic structure helps accessibility, helps people scan your pages, and help search engines rank you properly. Here’s an example of good and bad page structure:

Popularity, Links, and PageRank

Once you’ve dealt with code, content, and keywords, the rest of SEO is kind of like a big popularity contest based on who links to you. Each website that links to you is saying “hey, this site is cool” so your ranking goes up a little. But it goes a step further than that.

Do you remember what happened in high-school when one of the cool kids said something was cool? That something all of a sudden became much more popular than if a normal kid had said it was cool. Google works in much the same way—links from authority sites count much more than links from a new website. The end result of all of this is something Google calls PageRank, similar to link popularity in other search engines, all of which is basically a measure of how important your website is online.

More Links, Higher PageRank, Better Rankings

In order to give your site more weight, and get ranked higher, you need to build links from other websites—especially authority sites (sites with high trust and high PageRank). There are many different ways to get links to your site, some are good, and some are bad.

Some good ways to get links include quality directory listings, blog comments, writing articles, guest posts on blogs, and social media.

Get Trustworthy and Natural Links

Probably because of the number of people competing for search rankings, it has become reasonably common for businesses to try cheating the system. Most of this cheating involves the process of automatic link building, and most of the time it works terribly.

In order to defeat the cheaters, Google has made trust a key element of ranking well. This trust is not built upon the number of links you have, but on the type and quality of each link, and the overall appearance of all of your links (your link profile). Because of this trust system, it’s very important for you to get links naturally and really aim for quality links.

Link Quality

Getting a quality link has several parts to it:

Originating Page The page that the link comes from needs to be a quality page, with relevant content, and not too many other links. If the page is a “links page” and has little text and mostly other links, it probably isn’t a great source. Also important is finding a page that has a relatively high PageRank itself.

Anchor Text Anchor text is the text that actually links to your website. Good anchor text will have relevant keywords in it. Bad anchor text will be irrelevant or just a URL.

No-Follow This point needs to be here for accuracy, but it definitely complicates the matter and is something that you should probably ignore if you’re new to this. Basically, a link can be formatted such that it won’t transfer any benefits to your site. These links are called “No-Follow” links, and shouldn’t necessarily be avoided (they can still send traffic) but they won’t help your search engine rankings.

Basically, you’re looking for other up-standing citizens of the internet who will link to your content because it provides value. If you try to pay for links, or get free links with no editorial control (anyone can get in), chances are you’ll end up with low quality links.

Getting Links With Content

One of the best ways to generate links is by creating outstanding content and publishing it on your website—you want to create the type of article that is so in-depth, or of such high quality, that other people can’t help but link to it. This type of content is often called linkbait because it is designed to get links. Some people find that a term a bit spammy, but either way the fact remains that you can get good links by creating really valuable content.

Should You Pay For This Stuff?

Whether or not you should pay for SEO services depends on your situation and your marketing goals. If you want to build a popular website that generates a significant number of leads, it’s probably going to be necessary to get some SEO help. On the other hand, if you only have a business card website that helps you sell in person, and don’t really want to sell or market online, then it might not be worth the time or expense to go after search traffic.

Consider whether or not you’ll be able to get a return on your SEO investment. If you send more people there, will your earnings go up?

If your website can’t generate leads, or sell your product, or make money, then you might want to think about that in more detail before investing in SEO.

When thinking about investing in SEO, it’s a good idea to see what resources you can afford to spend. You may be in a position where you want to pay someone to do all of the work for you, or you might be in a situation where it’s better to spend the time and do it yourself.

Whatever your situation, I always recommend hiring a professional to deal with things like code and website structure. It’s very rarely worth it to learn highly technical parts, especially considering they change frequently in SEO. The content and link building are things you can do on your own if you have the time and energy.

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Kurb online marketing and web 2.0 promotion auckland new zealand

What I’m doing: Gee Matt, if you’re so good at marketing . . . why not become a pirate?

A lot of people want to hear about my success stories with bands before they’ll try out what I do for bands and musicians.



I’m only in my 20’s. I started this business over 3 years ago doing posters and I stopped being broke about a year ago when I started focusing on myspace and internet stuff. That is why I would often talk in my blogs late last year about how the techniques I’ve used to do well for myself are the same techniques I am using to help musicians, and really using kurb itself as the main subject of my examples.



I guess the thing is there aren’t that many people who are having success with bands right now, even the biggest music businesses in the world are losing value dramatically. If your business is music, you’ve got to accept that in 2008 you’re facing a challenge.



If you use kurb online marketing or digital coaching for musicians thinking you’ll make your money back – this is not going to happen in a matter of months, nor can you sit back and think for $50 a week I can wave a magic wand and make you famous.



If you want to be successful in music online as I have been in business online you’re going to have to be writing blogs, developing your site, making videos, developing new campaign propositions – I've been doing this stuff every week now!



Internet marketing is just like internet dating. Don’t expect to fall in love in the first 3 months. Unfortunately, that’s when most people give up because it didn't work straight away.



But the question remains. If I’m so good at marketing bands why haven’t made anyone famous?



Well I am happy to announce that my passive weekly income from online music and royalties is around $40 p/week. This is on material that is mostly over 2 years old. Not much, but a passive income is still something.



Most musicians don’t realise the hard slog it now takes just to get to this point.



That is why I am most certainly developing my own projects to take advantage of my own wisdom and experience.


The top internet marketers who I learn all my tricks from all say . . . the richest internet marketers OWN THIER OWN PRODUCT. As a musician you'll know: creating your own product comes with it's own problems.



But specifically, in making my own product, or service - or brand - as the case may be, I am going back to my part time job I had in uni, dressing up as a pirate and turning up to kids birthdays.



I am not passionate about being a childrens entertainer. But nor am I passionate about how little money I had when I was a full time club promoter 3-4 years ago.



But now I realise I have the marketing skills, I expect to not only be booked out doing 4 parties each weekend within 6 months at $200 a pop but also in a year from now, creating revenue from ad supported pirate content as well retailing cd and dvd content as well as affiliate revenue from referrals on pirate merchandise . . .



See when I’m talking about advertising revenue from your site im not just talking about 10c a pay-per-click from google or 2c an impression for banner space but once we start talking about affiliate stuff . . . internet affiliates pick up commissions of 10-50% on most items which means if someone follows a link directly from my site and pays for a $200 product I’m going to see a good $50 at least of that in my pocket. And that’s where you start making decent money – when you pick advertising companies who supply the affiliate ads for your site that are great at picking products that your visitors buy.

So yeah, I’m going to become a pirate on the weekends because I’ve done it before and most importantly – I know how to market content on the web and by next year if I put plenty in I should earning a grand every weekend!




Well that’s my plan for the next 18 months and that’s putting my money where my mouth is!



Ahoy, me hearties!



Kurb is all about helping musicians use the internet to create revenue both through sale of traditional products and service and the new possibilities of web 2.0.

So watch this space for more analysis on how Captain Matty's adventure is going to monetize online!!!!

http://www.piratesofauckland.info

Marketing 2.0 for Web 2.0 - how can your business benefit?

ew I'm business blogging - shoot me now. How sickening.

You can be rest assured that the devil drives an extremely hard bargain. Apparently it’s a buyers market.

Don't worry I've got 2 more music blogs coming up on content and what to do now no one wants to buy CD's.

Of course the same principals apply if your small business is in music and you will obviously observe I'm generating content to distribute - not only to strengthen my search network but to create awareness of the work I'm doing by providing free expertise.

My expertise is obviously in online marketing and I'm not too shabby flinging a few words together. But I'm sure you're good at something you can write or make videos about to - and don't worry this article took me 4 hours to write.

Marketing 2.0 for Web 2.0 – how can your business benefit?

The Internet is the most powerful and far reaching marketing tool available to small businesses and increasingly word of mouth is now word of blog, email or IM and thats what web 2.0 is - when we stop hearing the messages sent by those who can afford to send them and we just learn from the messages we share from the access the internet now provides to one another.

According to Tim O’Reilly who coined the phrase “Web 2.0” in 2004:

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Web 2.0 presents opportunities to use the internet in new and interactive ways to deliver an unprecedented amount of information and choice to unprecedented audience numbers.

Unlike declining traditional media the internet offers users control over access and it gives consumers choice. Web 2.0 represents a major blow for traditional advertising methods because Web 2.0 is about the online experience the user has customised – and no one wants ads! Marketing is to survive only as part of a media experience that is embraced, not an unwelcome interruption to be filtered out.

Social Networking:

Social networking – the explosion of sites like Myspace, Bebo, and Facebook – has transformed the online social environment into a place where branding happens naturally. Myspace, the big daddy of social networking sites, created an online environment where brands as well as bands, characters and ideas could be accounted for with online identities.

You only have to go to the stats to see the wild popularity of these sites in New Zealand and around the world. Even I choked when the Herald quoted 800,000 kiwis use http://www.bebo.com/. It comes behind only Google and Trademe for volume of usage in NZ.

By creating a presence for your business on social networks you are able to present content and interact with other users participating in a massive global network either as an individual representing or creating awareness (this will be required on facebook and bebo which are not so friendly to commercial brands), a brand profile of your business, or even a key product! Or all three! There’s no rule against having multiple accounts.

SEO and web 2.0 - when content "goes viral"

It is still the truth that most of your website traffic will come from search engines and in New Zealand that is overwhelmingly accounted for by the Google search engine. To put what is often reported to be a complex and competitive study into simple terms, search engine optimisation (SEO) is based around keywords matched to your content, and the ranking of its relevancy in the search by the amount of links to it and the quality of those links.

Search engines can be influenced in two ways – by both the quality and quantity of written content you make available and the quantity and quality of backlinks created to your site from other sites. Distributing and sharing as much content furnished with links back to your site as you can make available is the most effective way to dramatically increase your search rank, send your brand around the world and bring traffic to your website.

All I will say is that websites that follow the web 2.0 format, which are some of the highest ranked in the world – myspace, youtube, blogger – the last two of which of course are owned by google, are ranked in a different way by google, and using these sites in different ways to make people aware and provide links to your website can have dramatic results.

But when your marketing message has assumed the appearance of a media experience – whether a blog, a podcast or a short video demonstration - that you have made available through your various online social network to share and enjoy as “infotainment” it’s no longer advertising! And when people are motivated to share the information you have provided they are not only building your search ranking but sharing your marketing message that your personal brand represents knowledge and experience of the products and services you provide.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is the hottest thing in internet promotion right now and youtube is popular with an older demographic where social networking hasn’t spread. Unlike everything else I’ve talked about – videos in themselves will not increase your search rank on google! But the message out there is if you can do it, prove it - film it! People want to see for themselves and now you can show them!

Video content provides important information, breaking down the anonymity that effects a potential customer or clients decision to purchase through an online connection based on trust. Video is also the most potentially effective opportunity to offer deeper understanding through presentation and demonstration.

many more people will connect with your marketing messages as a visual image and when it comes to media – the types of small businesses that could never dream of affording to market by broadcasting video can now provide it cheaply in a way that makes it accessible to targeted users long after it is first made available.

One of the most successful viral campaigns focused on a series of short clips experimenting with blending different unusual objects in a brand presentation for a blender called "will it blend?"– one of these quirky clips featuring an iphone received over 3 million views on youtube.

XML, RSS, P2P, Aggregation

Web 2.0 continues to present newer and better solutions for distributing and accessing information but unlike social networking and video marketing these concepts of syndicating content feeds and providing ever more options for choice and access are ideas which time is yet to come.

But it remains that web 2.0 marketing is about “pull” and not “push”. Using social networking, and sharing blogs and videos, generating content that appeals to users whether it be through information, experience, demonstration, experiments or simply just the quirky, entertaining or humourous is a chance to build awareness of your business while connecting with people in a way they will appreciate and remember.

People are far more likely to "go with what they know" so establishing social profiles and participating in online communities, providing content that people will use and value, in a way that supports higher ranking in searches for your site is the best way for generating leads and contacts in the new online environment.

Cheers for the connection with Kurb. Supporting musicians with successful strategies on a budget. Kurb in NZ’s leader in online promotion strategies for artists and creative projects plus we offer the cheapest CD/DVD reproduction and cheap posters available.

Come by our page, theres plenty to pick up about new developments in the music industry in our blogs and theres a whole lot of free info and articles at our self promotions hub. Get some scope checking out our overview of online promotion strategies and if you’re interested our artist packages or brand new campaign packages including CD’s, o All the best with your music, from Kurb For direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromo ..................... Kurb Myspace