I knew I needed a mailing list for my music promotion. Every music blogger out there will tell you “YOU NEED A MAILING LIST”. Once I found my mailing list solution, I knew it was time to strategize and plan.

While I agreed it was important when I first started, I didn’t know too much about what I could really accomplish with Aweber. It’s not just about collecting an email and shooting out a newsletter.

I read some articles and became convinced that my mailing list promotion needed attention and not treated as just another tool.

Here is a collection of awesome articles to get your mind thinking on different ways to approach your mailing list promotion.

Email Marketing Insight

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger: How I Use Email Newsletter To Drive Traffic and Make Money

1. interesting example of an email cycle
2. customizing your welcome email
3. creating themed updates for promoting your artform
4. adding promotions throughout a sequence of emails

Michelle Bowles from Top Rank Blog: 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010.

1. creating viral campaigns
2. monitoring open rates and click rates
3. engaging new subscribers

Sonia Simone from Copyblogger: Why Email Marketing is Dead (And How to Bring It Back to Life)

1. focusing on what your fan wants or needs
2. email is “a more intimate medium than RSS”

Invest In Your Music

Invest time into your list. Build your list over time and finally market your music to people who are actually interested in what you do. They did sign up, didn’t they?

More and more people are joining the blogging community and creating their own websites expressing their passions. It is very common to find a reader that leaves a comment who also has a blog. Why is this important for musicians?

I recently did a guest post and noticed some great opportunities.

Social networking makes it very important to acknowledge and help those that help you. Maybe that is not an approach that every musician wants to take, but from a small operation standpoint, I love the Idea.

While reading Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere 2009” I wanted to observe some blogging growth trends.

But as the 2009 State of the Blogosphere survey demonstrates, the growth of the blogosphere’s influence on subjects ranging from business to politics to the way information travels through communities continues to flourish. In a year when revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, bloggers are blogging more than ever, and the State of the Blogosphere is strong.- Jennifer McLean

The Blogging Fan provides an interesting aspect. I’m thinking about engaging with readers on my band site that also have blogs. If this aspect flourishes in internet marketing, why not music marketing?

This is not to neglect other fans, it is to explore who your fans are. How can you help each other? This is not a promotion that is done at random just to increase traffic, its to build relationships.

I see backlash on Twitter from fans disliking artists for their lack of engagement, or still pretending you are bigger than life and are too busy for your fans. I couldn’t agree with the fans more. I’ve even contacted artists with a similar fanbase as mine and was shocked to see how they viewed themselves as rockstars, when their follower size and website look proved otherwise.

What did I learn?

Reward those that show interest in you.

What Blogging Has Taught Me About Online Street Teams

I have always stressed how important gaining visitors is to your site, and even though sales can be sluggish, don’t give up your efforts to improve. One thing I think people overlook is how important of an asset your visitors are. Traffic is a good thing, the more the better. How can you make it work for you?

I was offered to do guest blog for a larger site and I was happy for the opportunity to be featured on a blog with such high visibility, seeing traffic trickle in and introducing a new form of visitors to my project.

In return, I wrote a review about the author and introduced my readers to his site and my article. I reciprocated because I wanted to, not because I had to. I appreciated the acknowledgement. I was more willing to promote his site in the future. I already enjoyed visiting the site, now I found myself talking about the site to others.

Create that feeling for your blogging fans. It doesn’t have to be a guest post. It’s about relationships and learning from one another.

The Blogging Fan Initiative

When your blog starts expanding, your fans start showing up in your comment section. Now it’s time to get to know some of your fans. Let them know you see them, and appreciate their time.

Let them share as your traffic rises. Traffic is what you can return to your fans. Bloggers love more eyeballs staring at their content.

The project is in the hands of the musician. How can you show love for your blogging fans?

1. “Fan of the Week”: find a fan that has a provided some good input to your music or has been a loyal reader. Highlight them in a post and introduce your listeners to them. Highlight who they are, what they do (their website) and where fans can learn more about them. Create a sense of community. Introduce fans to other fans.
2. Visit a Fan’s blog and participate: return the love if you actually enjoy their subject and comment on their blog. It doesn’t have to be music related, it just has to be genuine. Don’t fake it just to promote, genuinely get to know people. Build relationships.
3. Twitter Promotion: introduce your followers to your new friends and Retweet an article they wrote or a website they write for (only if you like it). Great way to show your love for new followers.
4. Social Bookmarking: If you like any aspect of their blog, Stumble or Digg an article. It takes less than a minute and helps their cause tremendously
5. Mention In Newsletter: some fans are producers, musicians or artists, they would probably love the promo

These are just some examples so get creative with some of your own techniques. You might find its easier than you think to build these bridges.

Blogging Fans Respect The Effort

For the independent band or musician, bloggers carry alot of weight. I even believe on a lower level, bloggers outweigh traditional press releases when established in the proper channels.

Don’t view it as a chance to get your music reviewed, view it as a way to increase your visibility with people who are more likely to return the favor in the future. It’s only selfish marketing when you don’t put in the effort to help others. Nobody owes you anything.

Practicing this allowed me to meet some generous souls out there that now I can call good friends. Without their help, I would not have the extra article Retweets, the new RSS subscribers, and the extra daily visitors that show increasing traffic. There is no right way to approach this, just get to it and get to know your fellow fans.

The goal of this initiative is not to find massive traffic, it’s to find relevant users and increase my content distribution. It is one thing to gauge your monthly visitors, but how active are you in resolving issues or continuing success in your online marketing campaign?

I was very pleased to see monthly stats rise, greater discussions and new social networks flourishing adding to my visibility. I got too comfortable in 2009 with just raw numbers, that my data analysis was lacking. You don’t have to be a scholar to make improvements: just show you care and improve.

Social Networking/Social Bookmarking/Search Engine

The title of this section describes the 3 facets of my marketing plan that I constantly try to improve. The stats below are provided by my favorite Wordpress plugin, Referrer Detector. This plugin allows me to see where my social and search engine traffic is coming from.

Referrer Detector is a Wordpress plugin that shows a greeting to users coming from various areas of the internet. For example, If someone found one of my articles on Digg and they click through to my site, the user finds a personalized message to vote up that article or become a friend on Digg.

Another example I see is if a user comes from finding me in search results in Google, I can customize the message to say “don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS”. Very helpful and provides a call to action to promote your efforts more.

The stats breakdown is very nice. I like to see the pie chart that comes out to gauge where all my efforts are going to. Break down the stats: daily/monthly/yearly/all time/ or specified dates.

Plan

I want to increase production and mainly my effectiveness. I feel like a fool because I was so focused on search engine marketing and the stats show it. I’m believing that the balance has to exist because social media networks are vital. Here are some stats for Hip Hop Distribution that I found interesting over this selected time period.

I’ve always felt strong about my search engine traffic. I’ve worked really hard doing research, and optimizing all my content, but even though the graph shows nice Google traffic, my Yahoo presence sucks. Analysis shows my efforts can still improve. Even a successful segment can be improved upon.

Stumbleupon and Digg provided nice referrals. Twitter showed improvement over last month and out did my Yahoo search engine referrals. How can I fix it?

Why not try using Yahoo Buzz to social bookmark some content and maybe it could gain a little momentum within that search engine. Will it work? Maybe. The proof lies in my test. Be creative with solutions, it’s always worth a shot if you are trying to improve your business.

Build your own stats and fix accordingly. The main thing here is what proof do YOU have that your social media campaign is effective or lacking?

Homework

The stats can be taken from your control panel if you are not using this plugin. Ask yourself these questions:

1. How many Social Bookmarking/Social Networking sites are you using?
2. Where is your content flourishing?
3. Where are you going to improve?

Don’t sit back and let your stats plateau, keep them rising. Analyze and think of ways to introduce your content into different channels. I am currently breaking down each social network and implementing some tasks to create engaging conversations, adding more followers, and spending time where it is most promising. The one troublesome fact of this analysis for me is my Facebook presence needs severe improvement. Live, Test and Learn.

Set a timetable where you want to monitor your activity. Blind promotion is over with in 2010. Stay active, your content distribution relies on it.

Feel free to Tweet and Stumble this article if you enjoy it.

Design is a very important factor for musicians. I was looking for a theme for some other projects and stumbled across Themeforest. Themeforest allows independent web designers to upload their themes for sale for multiple content management systems. I am running my blogs on Wordpress, but you can find templates for Joomla, Drupal, Email templates and PSD templates. The prices are just right, ranging from $5 to $40.

Affordable Options

The reason I like Themeforest is I bought a theme for $25 and it had so many options, with a sweet modern design. If you are a Wordpress musician, you will love the options features on many of the themes.

1. Admin Options: Easier customization features within Wordpress Dashboard, versus dropping code into your templates.
2. Multiple Page Layouts: Important for me as an artist because it allows me to find a different page layout for my albums, home page, and blog area.
3. Installation: Step by step instructions for certain customization features
4. Save On Web Design Costs: Now that you have found a theme structure you like, you can still get expert help from a web designer. Having a theme idea already makes the job easier for a web designer and will save you money from starting a design project from scratch.
5. Customer Comments: check out the comments from people who have purchased the theme. You get to find out about how helpful the designer is with answering questions or any problems with their product.
6. Affiliate Program: If you like their service you can promote them on your blog or to fellow musicians you work with. Great way to get your money back and create a passive revenue stream. Here is my affiliate link.

Just another option if you are tired of looking at endless “Top 100 Free Wordpress Themes” articles found everywhere with the same recycled themes.

To wrap up this week I wanted to direct you to a guest post I wrote for David Risley. The topic is directed at every musician looking for a way to organize, plan and brainstorm through Mind Mapping.

The concept of this article was to explain how I use Mind Mapping to organize my projects, with a specific relevance to musicians. I find myself caught up all the time with balancing music and blogging schedules. Don’t let good ideas die due to no organization.

Mind Mapping has been my savior to start off this year. I was able to create a schedule I could handle balancing all my projects and I found myself having more free time to work on things I enjoy.

I would also like to introduce you to David Risley. David is a Pro Blogger and Internet Entrepreneur whose blog is such and resource for all writers. From blogging to social media topics, you get a clear cut understanding of concepts built out to help your online visibility. Add him to your Google Reader and get free tips via RSS, he has helped me tremendously.

Here is a link to the article: Mind Mapping: Turning Content Into Ideas

Have a great weekend and lets get some ideas rolling for next week.