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

Your Signature is a Great Web 2.0 Promotion Tool

In my last post here I was reviewing a musician’s blog and talking about how using a signature or a footer can be a really effective way of prompting people to take further action on visiting your blog, and of course email, forums, and other online communications.

Blogs and other forms of social media are driven by users generating content and drawing other users who find it and put value in it toward that content. This is called “pull” marketing and it mainly applies to the internets ability to draw other people toward you who are interested in what you have to say and perhaps, what you have to sell also - as long as they know that much!

But executing sophisticated online promotion is not treating people as if they’re stupid and trying to hard sell them on some product or service - it’s giving them a story, giving them a taste and putting something out there for them, then leveraging the attention created by your free content to be able to make them aware of the next proposition - the next event in the chain which leads to you as the artist getting paid.

This is why using a signature that you attach to your blogs, forum posts, messages, emails, comments etc. wherever appropriate can be an effective way of introducing your proposition to an audience without being seen to be using blunt traditional hard sell marketing.

I can blog about what ever I please, but that’s not going to stop me slipping in the fact that I do the cheapest DVD duplication in Auckland and New Zealand.

Of course you know I do heaps of stuff other than dvd duplication but you see I’m really focusing in on the dvd printing and dvd duplication because that’s where I create the most value, and the value is passed on to my clients in savings and to me in increased profitability.

Similarly, you might decide to follow my advice and just focus strongly on building up your email contact list as the first step of your online promotion efforts. So rather than being all like “We’re a band from blah blah and we make music that sounds like blah blah blah . . .”

You go straight for the throat all

DON’T MISS OUT! EXCLUSIVE FREE MP3 GIVEAWAY LIMITED TIME LIMITED EDITION – ENTER YOUR EMAIL NOW TO RECEIVE YOUR FREE GIFT!

DISCOVER NOW WHY THEY CALL THIS MAN MADAGASCAR’S MOST EXPLOSIVE NEW NOSE FLUTE TALENT. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS SONG AS AN OFFERING IN SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO SUPPORT THE ENDANGERED MADAGASCAN POLAR BEAR

Or something like that.

Maybe you'd be a little more subtle but the point is you they're not going to know about this whole free mp3 when you join the mailing list thing if you don't take ample opportunity to mention it.

So I stopped including my footer/signature/"link family" ad thing at the beginning and end of each blog – mainly for my own sanity because I was actually trying to tone down my marketing to take the opportunity to improve the efficiency of my operation here at kurb – the result of that of course being a new artist community I am launching soon at

http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/

Also don’t forget this blog is also getting settled into it’s new home at

http://www.musicmarketingblog.info/



Now I'd like to point out that a really professional footer ad or signature thing would probably have a little graphic going on, the links are the most important as always, but ultimately I'd like to be using a lot more panels and banners that give off a snazzy visual vibe.

Okay so lets look at what I WAS working with:

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



Oh no no.

Okay there's quite a bit wrong with that. First, obviously it's way too long, it just drags!!! And it's mainly too long because it's stuffed with stupidly useless anchor text especially this:

blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

stupid. Pick a few keywords - sensible keywords - and stick with them!

As a musician that’s going to be your genre affiliations, your region, any appropriate subcultural or genre based reference points and maybe a handful of key acts that represent the concept of your sound. Narrow at down to the most important niche terms, defining your target, defining your niche.

And this is on the terms of your audience! Do you know anyone other than me who talks about free mp3's as “digital content” in everyday conversation? No. So say "free mp3's".

And all those links are just too much. Sure have links but remember its always about attempting to create value so provide links that create value – provide links to the good stuff, not just everything that could possibly matter.

Let’s have another go

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

Okay now that's better.

Blog review: Discussing an artist's blog.

Okay while we’re bloggasminginging lets start catching up with some of those posts I promised last week.


First we’ve got our very first Kurb blog review!!! I was doing some posters for Tono’s tour and went by his site blog at

http://www.tono.co.nz

I actually got a good vibe off his blog it took me a couple of hours to realise it was definitely worth posting about the examples of what he’s doing right.

Great design – he’s got a wordpress blog and he’s using it as his whole site as I described in a past post, because that’s how awesome wordpress platforms are.

Also looks really professional, looks like he takes himself seriously as an artist and to me that says the music is likely to be of a standard also.

When you’re used to seeing a lot of blogs like I have – its like myspace – you get real sick real fast of seeing the same old busy cluttered blog designs, and if you’re trying to implement a marketing strategy where getting traffic through the blog is part of a chain of events that will lead to leads and sales then you got to have clear focus on desired reader outcomes such as

SIGN UP FOR OUT MAILING LIST AND DOWNLOAD AN EXCLUSIVE FREE MP3!!!!


Tono’s using a classic blogger technique of making “flagship content” readily available - via a little dashboard that lights up in orange when you mouse over. That means it doesn’t matter how people end up on his site it’s easy to get to that page where you can find out all the basic information, extra content and back story about what this blog is and is all about without getting frustrated, bewildered and heading off because the ramblings have no context.

This is the thing I particularly find with blogs is that you never know how or why someone will find you and what page they will land on.

That’s why when I talked about bloggasming and wild unhinged blogging in my last post, well, that’s okay when you’re starting out because weird crazy posts are going to bring in visitors who are searching for weird crazy things if you know what I mean.

And I also talked about bad blogging habits like going off on a tangent which is quite ironic.

Back to Tono’s blog.

Tono’s blog also has a great voice, great narrative and storytelling – There’s a narrative, there’s stories coming through in Tono’s blogs. As a marketer we get drilled about stories. What are stories? Stories connect us to the person telling them.

There’s great examples, Tono reports on his tour describing venues, support acts etc. but he also reports on incidental events such as his journeys from place to place as he goes. There’s also associated content and themes which is something I encourage all my clients to do – connecting with themes outside of music. Tono’s got a number of reoccurring themes in his blog including some overt discussions on green politics.

You see it’s not about being safe and broad any more. You’re not going to sell a million records. You want to be connecting with that proportion of the population who are going to respond positively to your message on a number of levels. Where choice is so prevalent, you’ve got to go for a deeper connection with people than just having cool songs.

But now there’s one big issue I have with Tono’s blog and this is the kind of second tier optimisation that you start to recognise once you’ve got the basics right.

You see Tono has got the basics right and his blog looks lovely and it’s behaving as a proper blog should. But lets go back to the outcomes that I touched on before.

What are we trying to achieve here? Basically we’re trying to sink our hooks in by making a memorable impression and hopefully leaving the visitor with as much to take away as possible.


So there is a very high chance that the high proportion of casual visitors to Tono’s site are going to put 2 and 2 together like I did and realise Tono is a musician.

Instantly it begs the question. What does Tono’s music sound like? We need to hear this music immediately before we lose interest in a split second and decide to do something else.

Tono’s got a player there, but I just don’t think that’s enough! People got to know that they must check out this music!

It’s the most important thing

It reminds me of one other really important thing I really want to mention. Remember when I used to put my “link family” in every blog post? Most top bloggers – in fact most bloggers worth their salt full stop – will have some kind of signature or panel or banner or SOMETHING in each post that gemerally advertises the bloggers own products or services.

The big money bloggers will often have a free thing they are giving away, most usually an ebook, if you sign up to their email list. Sound familiar?

That little signature/footer thingee is a prime example of an area where you will be endlessly tweaking, just coming back every few weeks and saying . . .

In fact lets do a new one for me right now. Coming up next post.

What’s a Bloggasm? On blogging, creative thinking and marketing

Are you having another bloggasm, Matt?



Yes, that’s right.



Maybe it’s trouble adjusting to shifting the blog to: http://www.musicmarketingblog.info



But I will continue to post on both blogs for now.




Well what IS a bloggasm, anyway? Well it’s really a word I thought of, then I figured it could have a meaning. I guess a bloggasm is when you just start blogging uncontrollably.







Really? Can this be healthy?





Well in marketing as well as the performing arts we are most successful when we engage the audience, when we look for ways to make things more enjoyable and useful for those who choose to participate.

This is particularly true of blogging.



People who are the most successful at leveraging their blogs for marketing and revenue have adeptly attuned their blogs to their audiences to maximise income and exposure, but these are professional bloggers who have been building their blogs for sometimes as long as five years or more.

The tone of this blog recently has been very much about learning from top bloggers, top internet marketers and people who already make lots of money online about what they can teach musicians and other similarly creative artists about creating the kind of value online that leads to a full time income.

But the point I’m making by having a little bloggasm over here is that at for me, personally, my blog is not JUST about creating a voice for my brand, it’s not just about marketing.



Last week I was blogging quite vigourously, and getting some really great ideas going! But I also had a record week for visitors. I didn’t quite break the 1000 mark, but I did earn a sum total of $US5.06 from advertising on my blogs on one of the days over the last week, which was another record.



So for the first time I started to anticipate that my blog would begin to play a larger part in sales and marketing as it grew, and that where I the past I used my website and my myspace to generate most of my business, very soon it would be my blog bringing me the business where myspace has fallen off.



So I guess what I’m saying is that if like me, you’re committed to growing your income from the digital music business, when that happens it’s not going to be cool for to just post whatever you like, say whatever you like, or just start bloggasming out and doing multiple posts that lurch from subject to subject, and talking way too much about your own little crusades that your readers really couldn’t give a rat’s arse about. Like I do.



I probably won’t be able to post about rat’s arse’s or tag those posts under the subject: “rats arse” either.



So what can I say, but blog irresponsibly while your blog is young and you have the chance! haha

No, I mean find your voice. Find the voice in your writing that wants to blog every day.

Don’t be afraid to have ideas! Don’t be afraid to use your blog to ask questions to which you don’t know the answer, to seek opinions and to create an open ended discussion, don’t be afraid to have passion!

This is what is making blogging much more than just people writing a diary on the computer that everyone can see.





I figured it’s better that I experiment now, keep writing, keep ranting, keep the passion running high doing it the way I want while most crucially continuing to build up the amount of content on my blog. That way I can keep moving forward with innovative ideas, and draw people who are interested in those ideas toward me and the conversations happening here and basically bloggasm all I like.



Because when I do start to get thousands of weekly visitors and having a bloggasm and just blogging about whatever I feel like blogging about and being sloppy about it . . . will not keep growing my long term success.

Deep Blog Surgery for musicians: Blogging support with wordpress content management

Recently I’ve been deeply involved preparing - before I launch the new music marketing forum - to relaunch this blog and all my clients blogs on a self hosted wordpress platform.

PLEASE NOTE: I haven’t decided yet where this blog – the wordpress one that is, the myspace is staying put - is going to once it strikes out on it’s own, but I will certainly announce it!


I have

http://www.musicmarketingblog.info for key word search

and

http://www.kurbpromotions.com for branding

ready on standby. But don’t worry this blog won’t be leaping ship without letting people know. I will still post here for awhile yet just to let people know I’ve moved.

As I said, wordpress is clearly beginning to pull ahead of the pack in terms of blogging platforms which is most evident in the amount of support and applications for customisable features available from independent developers online.

Top internet guys are always talking about new stuff thats becoming available for wordpress.

But there was an evil twist! Follow this closely.

There are blogging sites which include free blogging platforms, such as blogger, livejournal, typepad and squarespace being some of the more popular ones and then blogging platforms which are also known as a CMS or a “content management systems” within themselves, seperate from the website.

A content management system is an application that allows you to update your website or blog without needing a web designer or a web design application to do it all for you.

Some popular CMS are Drupal and um ahhh . . . well let me just say Wordpress is now becoming clearly a very popular CMS. So much so that a lot of people use Wordpress for their whole websites because it’s so easy to use and you don’t need a web designer to do really cool stuff because as I said, there so many independent developers creating new free designs that look really professional and heaps of really cool apps or “plug ins” as they call them so you can add heaps of crazy customised functionality to your blog.

But what about the evil twist? I’m getting to that!!!

You see wordpress.com is a free blogging platform based on the wordpress.org CMS but severely limited in it’s functions and basically these functions were the whole reason we signed up for wordpress – namely really snazzy professional looking designs, supersmart intuitive ad delivery platforms, and super search optimizing plug ins that soup up your search rankability.

oh and did I mention that wordpress creams the competition when it comes to Google? Wordpress has a way of doing its thing that Google seems to like a whole lot better than even Google’s own blog platform, blogger.com and on top of that, you can download and install all these plug ins that automatically optimize your search engine authority automatically!

The one thing that can be said for blogger.com is that because it IS owned by the world’s biggest advertising agency it only takes a couple of clicks to be making a buck here and there in ad money. Good luck getting enough people to see them to get paid however, and the advertising plug ins available for wordpress are sweet. Who wants boring old google ads when you could be selling some crazy shit!

Like weird hats! And lizard food! And Green tea!!!!

I’m just saying this because lets face it. If your demographic is angry, cynical young men for example, are they going to impressed that you have “work from home” ads served by google all over your site without a hint of irony?

But I mean look around you at this wordpress blog. It’s looks like a 90’s corporate disaster. There must be at least one person who’s seen this blog and been reminded of a scene out of Robocop and just left because it looks ratty and unprofessional.

But this was the only one of 12 wordpress.com themes themes that allowed me to have a sweet little spot on the upper right there which is always that pic of me in my corporate pose and of course all the links to where you can get stuff that involves you giving me money, so basically the upper right is just one big ad for me.

Also not a good look is that I don’t have my own domain - as I said still deciding between

http://musicmarketingblog.info and http://kurbpromotions.com

Go for the keywords or the branding? Hard choice. Do I want more people to find me, or do I want more people to remember who I am?

BUT you see if you take the wordpress.org CMS platform and install it on your own host server only THEN are you allowed to play with all the cool toys, the design themes, ads, apps and plug ins.

Personally I say branding matters once your big. Worry about reputation once you’re big enough to have one.

But that’s when everything turns dark. You see the CMS is designed to protect you, the user, from the nightmare that is technical aspects of internet implementation.

It’s another one of those things, just like podcasts, that sound so harmless until you actually try and set one up and you want to kill your computer.

This is something I’ve always wanted to develop – because for people who know this stuff, setting up a podcast or installing a wordpress platform on a server is no biggie.

But expact an average musician to just do this stuff is inhumane and likely to lead to night upon night of fruitless struggle. I’m also really looking forward to bringing a staff person on board who can service my whole operation in this way, so artists can just be like:

”Hey we made an mp3 out of a live recording of our gig last Friday can we get it as a podcast up on itunes?”

And it’s sorted. For my own blog family and my current client base who have been very patient waiting for the new system to come in, I am actually using my highly qualified friends from http://www.giantrobot.co.nz to take care of this first round of wordpress installations which is not going to be cheap but it sure beats being bogged down in the technically incomprehensible world of the back end. Also premium clients are going to have access to high end blog and website hosting and administration - I have my own server now so you wont be getting a slow response because you didn't know you were sharing a server with mr. popular or mr. porn 24 hours across the way who shares your bandwidth outage.

When the new forum is launched soon the first support person will be a dedicated automations person to assist in automated social campaigns – mainly covering myspace and youtube.

Because automation isn’t something that songwriters and strategists should concern themselves with, it just needs to be done.

The second person who I hope will be on board before the official launch in august is a full time graphic and web design support person, it will be my hope that that support person will be available in the forums four hours a day to respond to such requests as:

- we need a poster for our gig coming up

- we need a gallery for our website so we can archive our photos by date and event

- we need our myspace to look flash. We want a contact box with our band logo in it and a flashing banner saying we’ve got a new song up for download. It’s a song about a monkey so there has to be a monkey on the banner.

- we made an mp3 out of a live recording of our gig last Friday can we get it as a podcast up on itunes?

- we need a new wordpress blog. We’ve chosen a theme, can you install it for us

Commenting on blogs as a promotin strategy

One thing not touched on here is commenting as a search engine strategy - remember when you comment on a blog there's a little place where you can put your URL (website/blog address) and this CAN add to improved "google juice" BUT many blogs have what is called a "no follow" implemented so you cant gank google juice off them just be leaving

"great post!"

comments.






COMMENTING ON BLOGS AS A PROMOTION STRATEGY


Commenting on blogs is often an effective strategy for promotion. It can boost your credibility, bring in more sales, and increase your revenue. A well-placed, well-written comment gets readers interested in you, and they’ll follow you back to your blog, website or profile page to find out more about you.





Blog commenting attracts attention. And attention is good.





Your commenting helps convey that you’re real, with ideas, thoughts, and personality. That’s appealing, because it creates relationships with other people. And that’s what business is about these days: relationships, not just dollars and cents.





Each person that sees your comment is a potential customer. The more people that become familiar with you and your business, the more likely they are to take that next step and buy from you.






The best blog commenting strategy starts with – you got it – research. You need to target specific blogs that offer the best return on your time investment.





Choose blogs that target the same people that you’re targeting or that have an audience that needs what you offer. For example, if you sell personalized cat collars, find blogs for cat-lover communities. If you offer virtual assistance services, find blogs for online entrepreneurs.





Tapping the Activity Potential

Make sure that the blogs you target have good-sized readerships – but not huge ones. Many comments on a post may seem attractive, but the reality is that your comment becomes lost in the sea of other people. Likewise, blogs that have very few comments may not attract enough attention to be worth your time.





An established blog with good participation can be just the right size. Something in the middle between no readers and too many readers – say, a volume of 10 to 20 comments - can be just the right size of blog to target.





Time Is On Your Side

Many people think that blog commenting takes a phenomenal amount of time to be effective. It can take time, yes, especially if you’re not a fast reader or writer. If that’s the case, focus on two to three very targeted blogs and invest a half hour a day at the most in your strategy. Or less. Or more.





Your efforts directly determine your returns. Do more and you’ll get more attention and clients. Do less and you’ll be forgotten quickly. On the Internet, out of sight is out of mind, and fast.





The Nitty Gritting of Commenting

Want some fast tips on effective blog commenting? Here you go:

* Never leave one-liner sentences that don’t add value. “Great post!” is a fast way to make sure people gloss over your comment.





* Keep your comments on the short side. Long novels tend to become boring and people skip past these monologues to the next comment.





* Sound positive. People like happiness and inspiring comments. Show your optimism each time you write.





* Be friendly. Address other commentators directly. Instigate conversation. Ask questions about their work or a comment they left.





* Disagree – politely and gently. Sometimes, taking the opposite stance with some friendly debate can be a good thing. Avoid disagreeing all the time, though.





* Don’t push a sale. Focus on building a reputation and a relationship. No one wants a sale shoved in his or her face.





* Don’t link drop. You have a field for your URL – use that instead of peppering comments with links.





* Use your name. Some people hide behind cute or witty nicknames or only use their business name to identify themselves. It’s a bad idea and detracts from your business credibility.





Already Have a Blog?

If you have a blog, and you’re ready to commit to its success, then it’s time to become part of the blog community.





Your goal is to establish a firm presence to be easily recognized by others. It doesn’t take long before people remember you and treat you as one of the gang. They may discuss directly and address you personally. You might even strike up a conversation or move on to emailing, which is a step closer to a sale.





It’s word-of-mouth marketing, the best kind.

blogging for musicians: search, revenue and relationships

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 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.


A lot of my readers and clients are tuning into what I’ve been saying about blogging - except I know I can get a bit rabid at times at run away with myself so I thought it was important to do a solid post outlining some more basic concepts here for musicians to think about approaching their blogs:

- what blogging represents for musicians in 2008

- benefits of your blog as it develops: from google juice, to revenue, to engaging your audience

- what to post about and good blog karma

- what about blogging on myspace / facebook?

After this weekend I have no doubt musicians can make money blogging! But that is just ONE part of the opportunities blogging represents for artists.

So as I've described, in the last 3 years Myspace normalized a lot of behaviour, especially amongst younger people, that was previously perhaps considered geeky or isolated to techies such as actively socializing, bookmarking, blogging and discovering music online.

But users are leaving myspace and they’ve matured in their social behaviour online. Artists are also maturing with their promotion, looking to engage audiences, build relationships and create value in new ways, and this is why the return in popularity of blogging over the last 6 months or so has resonated with artists. Lets go over the reasons:

Blogging for musicians in 2008 represents:

First it represents independence from myspace, facebook etc. in creating your own platform in which to present content, be found and interact with fans, and control the way revenue is created from those interactions.

These other points I think will have value if I make them chronologically in order of development.:

STAGE 1: SEARCH ACCESS AND GOOGLE GOODNESS (SEO)

When I first set up a blog for an artist I am aware only a handful of people will read it in the first few months but you just gotta get in there and get those 50 first posts out. 300 words. You’re creating text content that represents accumulative search authority.

Most fortunately, I have managed to maintain my wordpress blog’s page rank at a respectable 4 out of a possible 10. And the value of having a page that is highly ranked for authority – I PASS ON that authority to every site I link to through my blog. That’s why I regularly link back to my site and to my clients sites, to pass on the google goodies I’ve earned.

If you use the term “downbeat/chill out artist from Auckland New Zealand” A LOT in your blog . . . then your blog is going start ranking for those searches.

That’s why you find a lot of blogs like mine full of dumb SEO sentences like:

”If you’re interested in cd or dvd duplication and printing in Auckland New Zealand you should see budget cd and dvd duplication specialists kurb promotions in Auckland New Zealand for all your cd and dvd duplication and printing needs in Auckland, New Zealand.”

Google really likes blogs, (they own one of the biggest blogging platforms, blogger, where I’ve been making my $US1 a day or so with adsense.) because:

1: they’re tidy and organised as a platform which is part of bigger network of platforms. No dead links and the navigation of links is already set up to accommodate users as well as Googles “search spiders” which run around on your blog trying to work out if you're any good.

2: They’re updated regularly. Google definitely ranks older more established sites higher BUT also likes fresh content - not crusty old sites that haven’t been updated with new information, so making a weekly posting on your blog is a bare minimum.

3: All those words. Googles spiders read they don’t see. The only thing theyre interested in is the text on your site. Though video and audio present other exciting new opportunities online, when it comes to google and search optimization its about words!!!!

STAGE 2: GROWTH AND REVENUE:

After around your first 6 months or 50 posts, Google and the rest of the internet is going to start taking you a bit more seriously and it will be time for you to start taking your blog a little more seriously.

I’ve done 88 posts in almost 8 months.

You’ll be moving to the point where I’m at, where having 100 or more visitors to my Wordpress blog in a day isn’t surprising and I’m actually earning a few dollars a week from my Blogger blog through the easy instalment of Google’s adsense program.

By this stage you’ll recognise the need to be active constantly on your blog posting every few days to keep the momentum building. But just like anything that grows you’ll face new problems.

Recently I’ve had to accept my blog is getting too big for simply copying and pasting articles to my blog. Google loves content but can be very dubious about “duplicate content” so although other bloggers love it when you link back to them, when you copy and paste a whole article without any commentary or point of difference at all, it can make some bloggers a little disgruntled.

That means posting lame spider friendly SEO articles is probably out to, because your readers are not going to get value and thats the most important thing.

STAGE 3: RELATIONSHIPS AND ENGAGING YOUR AUDIENCEA lot of people say the best reason to start a blog is simply for visibitlity and networking but the final point of value to be found in blogging usually comes a couple of years in - building that relationship with your fans that they have access to you and you remain continuously visible to them, maintaining your engagement.



I firmly believe a well kept blog should prevent you from ever having to spend hours a day corresponding by email to your fans, which I don’t think serious artists have time for, unfortunately. The commitment to bloggin creates the compelling depth you need to develop your true fanbase, especially as you develop what they call your “voice”. The character of your writing in your blogs.

Your blog allows you to keep your fans engaged without having to actively maintain relationships, and as you go further down the path of ad supported and fan supported revenue ideas . . . when you have the attention of a trusting and loyal audience (an audience that you probably engaged when you offered them a free mp3 they enjoyed or they “stole”) making money in the 21st century is not going to be a great leap, trust me.

Again, look at the way I use my blog for a few cues. My blog is active and out there, and a major part of my marketing as well as communication and branding strategy. The message there is inviting - come to my blog, get this free, valuable information, learn about the work I do, BUT the emphasis is always lurking there on the desired outcome: come to my site where you can think more seriously about giving me your money.

MUAHAHAHAHA

Am I running round the street screaming “I’ll make you famous on mysapce and youtube for $50 a week!!!!”

Should you be running around screaming “Buy! Buy! Buy my album!!! It’s NEW!!!! Buy it! You have to! I don’t care who you are, I’m a musician and this is my new album and it’s new!!! Buy it!!!”

that’s not going to work is it? Slowly building a relationship and maintaining a relationship with fans is how you’re going to eventually quit your day job.

SO WHAT DO I BLOG ABOUT? BLOGGING KARMA . . .

Here’s the point of difference between me and you. I blog about a very specific and topical developments in a popular industry niche.

You blog about your music, your self and the things that are important to you that represent your music, and I can see theres a challenge there in keeping the content coming.

But if you’re not obsessed about creating art through your music or other mediums you may as well not be here. If you are obsessed, share it!!!

I’ve never been able to release my own solo project album of recordings because I was so deeply obsessive about it! How many songs? Which songs? A mixture of songs or just the upbeat ones or just the downbeat ones? What about the album art? WHat about the name???

Share your obsessions!!! Share that passion for what youre doing – let peole know! whatever problems you’re facing, other musicians and artists are facing them too, and as an artist, talking about problems and solutions and reflecting on them for the benefit of others is ultimately what youre about!

Got other interests, political or religious views that are part of who you are as an artist? Interested in other artistic or technical endeavours? Don’t take the safe, palid, non offensive route! Fans are engaged by artists who are not afraid to speak their minds and become three dimensional characters, with personal brands that represent clearly defined ideals.

Now building Blog karma is a great way to start out if youre stuck for posts. Don't feel interesting? then blog about something related that is!
Remember you want to blog about things relevant to your artistic image to build the keyword and search optimisation of your content. If you’re a rock band from Melbourne . . . blog about other rock bands from Melbourne!!! Eventually theyre going to find out you blogged about them and they’ll feel special, strengthening your network.

Look it happened to me just yesterday

http://www.nerdy-frames.org/2008/04/dj-romantech.html

Your fans and readers will get increased value out of finding out about new underground artists and you could become an authoritive source! Sure, you want to get in the media, but whats better than being in the media? BEING the media!!!!

Next year, I want to be working with artist who have built loyal readership fanbases on their blog and are able to partner with high quality product and service providers that equate to killer affiliate earning opportunities!!!

WHAT ABOUT BLOGGING ON MYSPACE AND FACEBOOK????

Well lets just get facebook and reverbnation and squidoo a couple of other important sites out of the way because web 2.0 means its relatively easy just to hook your RSS feed from your wordpress or blogger blog up to display on your facebook or reverbnation whenever you post.

For my clients I will be developing more concise content management techniques based on RSS feeds – as it is I will be cutting and pasting this to 8 different blogs/myspaces and that’ll take me half an hour alone, not to mention the forums.

But this is a good question asked by a couple of my clients to highlight some elements of what blogging is all about.

From a search perspective, it does add value to search engine optimization but not that much. You should already have quality links back to your site from your myspace profile page giving you “google juice” or search authority from myspace, and having such links from other authoritive sites such as top blog sites (wordpress, blogger) increases that authority.

My experience with wordpress though sometimes frustrating to use because they don’t make it easy for you to just throw in videos, ad platforms etc. like the Google owned Blogger, is that wordpress has created a lot of authority and random traffic for me, and that is why I recommend it. I get more traffic to my blog than to my site these days.

While you can publish your pieces on a myspace blog, the features are a lot more limited. Most popular blogging platforms offer built in navigation that also improves search authority by immediately linking all the content in the blog. The myspace blog is really just a satellite attached to your profile

And it will be a very cold day in hell before myspace writes any checks for an artists share of the advertising revenue they create from the artists content on myspace.

HOWEVER – it is not yet determined how much traffic myspace blogs bring in from within myspace through searches etc.

BUT in terms of building relationship and engaing your audience ALONE, you should be getting into the habit of addressing your fanbase regularly.

You’re not one of those artist who just users a friend adder and a plays increaser to look good are you? Or are you actually interested in building relationships with your fanbase?

To me the most important reason to just do a simple cut and paste to your myspace blog AND your myspace bulletin, is that you’re still using myspace to create the opportunity to have someone on your friends list come closer to being a true fan by moving the interaction forward.

You don’t just become another band on somebodies friends list, another 2-dimensional somebody just using the internet to get their 15 minutes.

OKAY LETS FINISH UP!!!

MUSICIANS BLOGGING CHECKLIST

Tags – don’t forget your tags! Both internal search and google loves them so using keyword “tags” on blogging platforms such as wordpress and blogger is fundamental to getting that initial traffic going.

Links – Link back to your site, your myspace, any other blog that talks about you, anything thats interesting or relevant to your readers! - the link button in the writing panel makes it easy, but I also suggest creating a signature which you cut and paste into every blog like I have below - which could be your “link family” linking back to your site, your cd baby, your youtube, myspace etc.

Search and Comment on other blogs – comment on other relevant blogs – make sure you contribute something to the discussion, just DON’T forget to fill in your website

Post Titles - use title that engage users and searchers. if I called this post "about blogging and stuff" do you think that will target my desired audience or pull in curious traffic?

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 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.

NZ MUSIC MONTH SPECIAL FOR NZers - 3 MONTHS BARE BASICS DIGITAL SERVICES NZ$400

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Ad supported music revenue rampage: Amazon associates etc.

Interested in making money off your music or other digital content? 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 WAS waiting to post about a bunch of stuff thats going on including youtube promotion and stuff but coming off the back of my big time $10 Adsense earnings this month as a blogger I've just embarked on an ad supported revenue rampage. I'm sure me being proud as punch of my $10 raised a few sniggers of indifference but now I've got my foot in the door I'm going for the jugular!

I earnt this money doing nothing other than what I'd do otherwise. Write on my blog. I'm wading into this big time to help musicians and other content creators get paid for what they do.

It's a brave new world.

Monetizing free content people. That's the name of the game. No money changes hands between you and your fan base theres no hard sell because theres no sale! Attention is the value that artists and creators offer advertisers.

So my first effort in ramping up my ad supported revenue earnings as well as knowledge and experience was taking the next step - into affiliate marketing, and signing up as an Amazon associate, so I can run their ads on my sites and blogs, and if any one clicks through the ad and amazon makes a sale I get 10% as commission!

you can check out my ad units here:

http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com/

http://www.kurb.co.nz/

Now this code is 3rd party javascript which a lot of sites like myspace won't allow, not only because its easy to slip in something nasty but also the last thing myspace wants is YOU making advertising revenue of their site, because their site is designed for them to make revenue off you!!!!

And so similarly now AGAIN we're having a problem on wordpress!!!! Blogger is an immensely popular, useful and basic platform which allows pretty straightforward integration of this advertising stuff but all the action is on wordpress!

What's to be done? What I've done for myself and most of my clients is signed up for a free wordpress blog, when what I really need to do now is learn the free wordpress software platform and the technicalities of maintaining wordpress blogs myself because by using the software platform instead of the free online platform it allows you acces to a endless host of awesome free designs and plug in applications - just like facebook - yknow - that will allow you to add all kinds of functions to your wordpress and all importantly java boxes for us to ram full of ads!!!! arhahaha

Okay so back to these ad units.

Google serve thier ads based on relevancy to the content on your page and the demographics of the person viewing the ads it's all very clever, I guess it's why they're the biggest generators of ad revenue in the world - theyre very good at it, and of course they have all the data.

We have to recognise the expanding role that such data will play in connecting users and consumers with content and products. Yes big brother is watching. But he's really only interested in selling you something.

So like Google, Amazon offers a whole range of ad unit options and I chose the "Omakase" unit because it runs on the same premise of responding to the content and the user in selecting which products to display, and also like Google, you have to cross a $100 threshold before you get your first cheque, so if you're starting from scratch thats a good 6 months away as they only pay directly on $10 threshold to US based partners.

This was the point I started rampaging and adding google adsense and amazon associates to every blog and decided with the Kurb site doing so well as a result of my SEO work, it was time to tool that up too.

You see it's important to build and mainatain your relationship with your "true fans" over time but for every true fan - especially if I do my job well - theres going to 10 or maybe a lot more people who are only passing through or who are casual fans, who are not there to make any kind of investment in what you're doing, and if while they're checking you out there's an opportunity to make 20c, I'd suggest thats opportunity, because its only a matter of perserverance over time before thats happening 100 times a day.

That way the work I do, and other promotion spends you employ to promote your website - such as adwords for example which has become a marketing staple here at kurb - not only builds your exposure and brand, not only gives you the opportunity to connect with those few rare fans who will support you directly by purchasing your music and other related products and services, but allows you to recoup from less accurately targeted traffic who click away through ads.

Now Google is what I'll be using on my website because theyre excellent at connecting your traffic with little ads just for them, but for Amazon, and Ebay which also has a similar program which I will be checking out - to make you money its about connecting your audience with stuff theyre actually likely to want to fork out for and in the future I think smart bands working with smart people (like me! haha) are going to be able to put together offers featuring the kind of products (I mean just imagine anything on ebay) that the kind of people who love your music are just going to be snapping up!!!!



Andrew Dubber from new music strategies has just gone and opened his own online music store - why wouldn't it be an excellent idea for you to sell other music from your site and recieve a commission? THEN what you're actually doing is creating value as an OPINION LEADER!!!!

This is basically ad supported revenue madness!!!! Let's crank that content people, lets get thos platforms rockin' and lets monetize!!!

Now that we're stepping up the ad supported revenue onslaught delvinging into the affiliate game, you gotta realise theres still much more to come! Learning about CPM and CPA adds, lets not forget about paid leads like myfuncards that I discussed earlier that could be used to seriously leverage a committed fanbase into a decent earn.

I still don't know what a chitika minimall is nor have I checked out clickbank but once you can show decent data for the traffic on your site (100+ unique visitors per day) even more options become available from using more specialised and high reward programmes like and even selling advertising space on your site or blog to a locla business or auctioning it online!!!

Okay. I'm excited. I'm not saying cover your sites and blogs in huge ugly ads so they look cheap and nasty. I'm not saying ad supported revenue will create a windfall.

But for musicians who are willing to persevere with creating regular consistent content it might just be a lot more rewarding and a lot less painless than pushing those little plastic discs or hauling your show around every watering hole that will take you.


AD SUPPORTED MUSIC REVENUE IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW!!!

For more, check out Marc Cohen's Ad supported music central:

The Ad-Supported Music Central blog provides news, analysis and opinion about the market for free, listener selected, recorded music that is supported by advertisers. The blog is written by Marc Cohen, founder of Lirix, Inc., www.lirix.net, the developer of on-device dynamic ad insertion and a pioneer in the field of advertising supported music.

He JUST blogs about ad supported music. His bag is more about integrating and including advertising into the download of digital products such as mp3's but i'm telling you, it just shows the scope of this new paradigm!!!




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.

All the best with your project, from KurbFor direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromoDIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE MANAGEMENT STARTS @ $NZ250

Nahaha blogz on teh interwebz: oh oh kurb 50/50 is coming

> Alright!

Nothing like a new proposition to get me excited!!!

I will probably be using the plasticast to launchpad kurb 50/50,

AND I’m working on a script for my first “VIRAL” video.

but mean times . . .

I got 8 RSS subscribers to my blog on the first day!!!! 1000 true fans people, I’m .8% of the way there!!!

And I’ve had 157 hits on my myspace blog alone today. Thats like . . . I’ve made Fox News Corp. $3 just off my blog already today.

KURB PROMOTIONS IS NOW ON RSS!!!

Press the button . . . Get Kurb blog posts direct!!!!

..Subscribe in a reader....

RSS is “really simple syndication”

what does that mean? It means your favourite websites come to you.

Blogging and RSS go hand in hand. These are the habits of web 2.0. You don’t need to look for information when trusted sources have been given permission to bring it to you.

So when you click the button to get the kurb RSS feed from my blog, you can either add it to your existing reader if you know what you’re doing, or you can take this opportunity to update yourself on some really awesome technology, just like when you got your first email account!!!

FROM NOW, THIS IS A MAJOR TECHNIQUE FOR MAINTAINING YOUR CORE FANBASE THROUGH YOUR BLOG.

HERE’S A COMMENT I MADE RECENTLY WARMING UP FOR KURB 50/50:

part of the new model though I think is breaking an artist over the period of 2-3 years to establishing digital revenue from a strong brand/asset value.

I’m just trying to develop some new kind of contract - charging monthly fees protects and rewards my effort, but at the same time - closes off so many opportunities to work with artists who cant buy into a proposition where they have to pay me a monthly retainer and wait and hope for the future to arrive.

My experience is mainly of artists running out of steam and resources after a few months, and also dealing with established labels who’s experience is 6 weeks of hype and then you drop the album.

That doesn’t work any more. Content is going to hit, dip and then parabola back up the tail with solid web 2.0 promotion.

Really it does require a lot of faith. But at the same time I’m not too keen on long term contracts, or being in a position of having to force an artist to maintain their commitment.

So it’s really about creating a new, dynamic proposition.

50/50 WILL BE AVAILABLE STRICTLY TO AUCKLAND // NORTH OF THE NORHT ISLAND BASED ARTISTS INITIALLY

Standby announcements should start rolling next week.

WEB USE IN NEW ZEALAND: BROAD BAND

I was blown away!!!! SURE 82% of New Zealanders USE the net which is the second highest in the world after Iceland (which definitely a “creative economy”) BUT . . .

Only 20% have a broadband connection

and 15% have Dial up.

Obviously one broadband wifi connection can serve a whole household.

But still!!!

What does this mean for musicians??? Exactly what I’ve been saying. Nothing much maybe happening NOW but the HEADROOM on this thing is MASSIVE.

I’m excited again. In 2 years I see myself working with bands and creative content providers and everyone making money.

You’ll be happy because you don’t have to jump through a hundred hoops just to earn a buck from your work. You just make stuff and get paid. I’ll be happy because I’ll be making lots of money.

The number of broadband subscribers has overtaken dial-up subscribers for the first time, a Statistics NZ survey shows.

InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson said it was obvious people wanted faster Internet but the broadband offerings in New Zealand were deficient.

“Many of the broadband offerings we have today are still not up to scratch and New Zealand has a long way to go to claim real broadband.”

SNZ’s six-monthly ISP Survey for September 2007, released last week, shows broadband subscribers increased by 14.4 per cent and dial-up subscribers fell by 8.6 per cent.

“Dial-up is no longer adequate for accessing some of the most useful content and services on the Internet - it just isn’t fast enough,” said Davidson.

Broadband subscribers continued to increase – up 14.4 percent in the six months to September 2007, to reach 829,300. However, this growth rate has slowed from an increase of 28.6 percent in September 2006 and 18.5 percent in March 2007.

Subscribers with dial-up connection fell 8.6 percent from March 2007, down to 675,800.

The number of broadband subscribers grew from 9 per 100 inhabitants to 19.6 per 100 inhabitants in the two years ended September 2007, while the number of dial-up subscribers per 100 inhabitants fell from 21.2 to 15.9.

kurb music promo: bonus level power up blogging

Okay storming on with my blogs, coming round the bend . . .

Blogs I’m working on now coming up are going to be dealing with what I’ve been up to with a little bit of down time looking at:

Squidoo

RSS
ilike / garage band

Reverb nation
last.fm
cool blogs

The internet (obviously)
and the possibility of kurb offering contracts as a label

Things are a little bit hairy but I’ve been aware Ive needed to do this kind of “visibility” or “accessability” maintenance for awhile.

And for another thing I’m going to have to sort my posts out – if I’m going to be serious about using my blog to build a bigger audience, I’m going to have to get a proper design and no more unfinished sentences. No more hairy bits of code bursting out the seams. No more rambling posts lurching all over the place.

BUT LETS TALK ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

ALL THAT CONTENT.

IN 6 MONTHS TIME VERY FEW PEOPLE WILL READ THESE ARTICLES BUT ALL THOSE KEYWORDS ARE JUST SITTING THERE, LURKING, WHISPERING IN GOOGLE’S EARS . . .

“Kurb . . . Kurb . . . Kuuuuuuurrrbbbbbb”

thats why I use the words "promotion" and "music" and "online" so often because when you ask google for "online music promotion" in New zealand, guess who you're going to get? So thats why you need to use words people want like "hip hop" "hardcore" "reggae" "indie" lots and lots!!!! On your page in your blogs. Don't refer to your self as "The Somebodies".

Always say "New Zealand indie band the somebodies" so when somebody types in "New Zeland Indie" into google . . .

people, I am smashing it on google right now. For massively competitive terms like "online promotion" and "internet marketing" in NZ I'm leaving some of the SEO experts in the dust!

LETS GET ON WITH IT!

KURB PROMOTIONS IS NOW ON RSS!!!

Press the button . . . Get Kurb blog posts direct!!!!

Subscribe in a reader

RSS is “really simple syndication”

what does that mean? It means your favourite websites come to you.

It’s amazing. Ever since I got put onto the thing by Dubber at new music strategies, I almost agree with him it is the best thing since email.

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2007/05/02/thing-15-rss/

Blogging and RSS go hand in hand. These are the habits of web 2.0. You don’t need to look for information when trusted sources have been given permission to bring it to you.

So when you click the button to get the kurb RSS feed from my blog, you can either add it to your existing reader if you know what you’re doing, or you can take this opportunity to update yourself on some really awesome technology, just like when you got your first email account!!!

I’d sign up for the google reader, I use it and its recommended, might have something to do with google’s ubiquity, I dunno. A google home page is also cool, I love my Igoogle, but for now a reader is probably all you need.

once your reader set up, all you have to do is enter your favourite websites and the reader will automatically feed them into the system so you’re alerted everytime theres something new on that site.

FROM NOW, THIS IS A MAJOR TECHNIQUE FOR MAINTAINING YOUR CORE FANBASE THROUGH YOUR BLOG.

NEWSFLASH:

I’m going to be talking about heaps of sites I’m using now!

Nothings ever going to be as big as Myspace was. But you gotta stay on the ball!!!

Squidoo

RSS
ilike / garage band

Reverb nation
last.fm

But the most important thing I wanted to say now is that is one old site you should know about

http://www.mp3.com.au

The Australian mp3 site, is providing really heavy google goodness!!! My page on mp3.com.au is a Page Rank 5!!!! That’s the highest ranking page in my whole network!!!! It usually takes a fair amount of work over years to get to PR5. Make sure you get on http://www.mp3.com.au/ and load that sucker up with all your links!!!

More blogs coming sooon!!!!!

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

Kurb - Auckland and NZ's best value CD and DVD duplication - no set up costs, free delivery.

Check out our digital coaching - online promotion and income generating packages for artists

How I approach a new client at Kurb (Dec 07)
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_promotions.htm
Info on digital Video marketing - and production services available in Auckland
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_online.htm
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