It’s time to grade the effectiveness of my marketing efforts over the last month. The key for me has been trying to weed out the weak parts of my music marketing plan and sub in new and possibly more effective methods. Discuss what is working and what doesn’t. Areas I want to evaluate are:

1. Time Management Through Planning
2. Social Networking
3. Writing/Content Efforts
4. Having Others Promote My Music

Time Management Through Planning

Time management has been a big issue for me. The main thing is keeping a consistent plan of attack. My effort was there in terms of my marketing. I was using social networks to promote, writing on my band blog and participating in discussions around the web. The main problem was keeping track of what I had to do in the future and also remembering what I did.

I needed to schedule better, to spend more of my time on what is working and I also need to analyze what I did on specific days and use this information to my advantage.

Solution: Google Calendar. I will use a calendar program to address these issues:

1. Plan Out Days for Writing Content
2. Plan Out Days for Commenting on Other Blogs
3. Schedule Times To Work On Linking Strategy
4. Scheduling Studio Time to Work on Music
5. Spread My Time, Lessen My Daily Workload

Social Networking

Which Social Networks am I using? Twitter has been great as a social network but I need to see which other ones are effective as well. First thing I want to do is make sure I update all my current profiles to reflect my current mission. Make sure all my information is consistent with what I am currently promoting.

The main thing I want to do is:

1. Schedule Hours to work on Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook
2. Start using Friendfeed more to create Discussions around My Blog
3. Add New Social Networks and Gradually Integrate Them
4. Use Each Social Network for Conversation not Promotion

Writing or Content Production

I want to keep a consistent writing formula for my blogs. Your planning and then writing are critical to your monthly visitors. Step 1 with getting a calendar setup is going to be key here.

Brainstorm on article topics and set up a schedule over the next couple of weeks when you want to post them. One good tip I read online I found at ProBlogger. Generate article ideas off of your last couple of posts. Most readers want you to expand on your recent articles into more areas. Take your last article and think of a couple of other article topics related to it.

If you don’t have a lot of articles, then use your main categories and think of a couple of article topics to fill in your categories. Build an information resource around your writing and music.

Having Others Promote My Music

Are you prepared to have others promote your music? This is an important question. I’ve had people ask me, “I’d love to help promote your music, how could I help?” Looking back at it, I should have had definitive answers on how to help promote my music. For instance here are some things you could ask the willing friends and fans to do:

1. “Sign up for my mailing list and recommend a song to a friend, We’d really appreciate it!”
2. “Are you on Twitter? You could tweet some articles from my site to your friends”
3. “If you use social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, You could bookmark and share some posts with your fans”
4. “Since we both have music blogs, let’s discuss writing some articles on our blogs promoting both of our sites”

This is just an example of creating a list of specific tasks that can increase your online visibility and build your marketing team. You can ask certain friends to complete one task while having other friends complete another task. This is important so you don’t wear out your welcome when friends are willing to help. Little by little, you can have a small group of friends turn into a powerful marketing attack. Be prepared to have others promote your music.

While spending some time on Myspace this past week, I took a look at what other artists are doing nowadays with their band pages. I wanted to take the time to customize my Myspace music page with more current tools other artists are finding helpful. I came across Soulja Boy’s Myspace page and saw he was using this chat application called Chatango.

I am not a fan of Soulja Boy, however, his use of social networking and reaching out to fans is commendable.

Chatango allows you to add a real time chatroom to your Myspace page. The chat shows the number of people on your page in real time. There is no download required, and the chatroom is ad free which is awesome. Once you customize it with your color scheme, a code is generated and just drop it in a section of your profile.

The reason I like the thought of the chatroom is due to the recent success of Twitter. The reason I enjoy Twitter is because of its real time response from followers, quickly being able to chat with your new friends. If you are going to use Myspace to promote, this chat room can help personalize your messages to your new users.

Secondly, what Soulja Boy did a good job at was placing the chatroom next to a list of his other profiles for Twitter, Youtube, and Bebo. If people are going to be chatting, its great to give them some important visuals. I am going to try this approach and place our latest album next to the chatroom or a mailing list sign up form.

Take advantage of followers visiting your page. Chatango is a great start: you are creating a reason for people to stay on your page and chat with others about your music while at the same time creating a call to action for your other profiles and projects.

Sometimes the simplicity of web tools is refreshing and brings back the main focus on Your Message.

Bandcamp provides you with a free home for your music and gives you all the tools to promote it in this Web 2.0 world. Their approach to promoting music on the internet has made me question how good our band’s approach is on various topics such as: search engine optimized track pages, quick streaming and downloading of music, clean album layouts, and stat tracking for music plays.

Upload your music, cover art, and custom header graphic to your page, which is clean and ad free, unlike Myspace. Your discography is displayed while fans can stream your music and read your track description, lyrics, and links to your other websites or band blog. Check out their video below.

Say you want to learn more about a particular track, you click on it and it goes to the track page, where your can describe your individual song more in detail. Then you can download the song in various formats and charge your own price. When the music is downloaded it is tagged correctly with artist name, song name and song art. Their example shows an artist giving away a free 128k mp3 version of a song and letting fans name their own price for a higher quality version such as AAC or FLAC. This is great because I always hear DJ’s complaining about low quality mp3’s and not using them in their sets. Give consumers options.

The stats look awesome, and the buzz section shows all the places on the web where your code is embedded and how many plays per track. Great way to join in conversations about your music. Connect with fans, acknowledge their effort.

The feature I enjoy the most is the ability to promote your music with their “Share” option. Choose where you want to share your music on sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Wordpress, and Twitter. Within a click you will be provided with a link or code to promote your music on various sites.

Even if you have distribution, I think Bandcamp can be a useful tool. Promote free songs, EP’s or mixtapes. Each track gets it own URL making it great for search engine optimization. Your music is your content and the more music you make and describe thoroughly, the better your fans can find you when doing searches on Google or Yahoo for instance.

My only question is how long before this service is no longer free. They offer great utilities for indie musicians which makes me wonder how long it will remain free. Their site says they are “experimenting” with revenue models and might charge in the future by taking a cut of download and merchandise revenue from artists selling over a certain amount per month. Until they decide, the service is free and I plan to try it as an outlet for future promos.

As I used Myspace recently, I came across Myspace music profile pages that had cleaner looking designs. I used sites before like Strikefile where you basically customize every section of your profile, and change things such as table border and color scheme. This time around I wanted a clean layout where the customization was minimal and the look stands out.

DesignMyspace has 25 free layouts for your Myspace page. The difference with this site than many of the others is they have several layouts with clean, defined headers that could aid any musician in describing their music.

There are instructions for those new to Myspace. The rules stay the same, Copy and Paste their code into your Bio Section and you are ready to go. From there, just replace their text with your text in the appropriate sections found in your code.

The main reason I liked this was because I wanted to promote our band blog and other websites, along with other networks such as Twitter in the header. The layouts load quick, look great and allow for a better way to spread your marketing message.

As I meet more and more people that have iPhones, the overwhelming majority are in love with Pandora. Indie musicians should take advantage of new web services allowing fans to stream your music.

Pandora is a internet radio service that allows users to find artists in their database and stream music at will on their computers. The service then suggests other artists you may like. Through a free app, Pandora has added another dimension to music listening on the iPhone.

I wanted my album to be featured on Pandora and felt this would have a huge impact on album sales. Let fans hear some music and potentially buy songs.

Read the Submission page requirements here for what they are looking for from indie music submissions.

All through free apps, the incentive is good for indie music to get a new following. Pandora has also expanded and now comes to Windows Mobile. Having your music in this arena will allow you to reach a wider mobile audience.