Staring at my old Eric B and Rakim cassette next to a CD and flash drive made me think of how prepared am I for the next fundamental changes that might occur to my music operation once I get settled. As independent musicians, we need to create, maintain, critique and improve our methods for online promotion, or get left in the trash. The main thing I like about music marketing is that you can customize a marketing plan according to your needs. Pick the brains of fellow musicans and marketing experts and create a strong plan that can survive.

Agree to disagree. Prove your marketing strategies with numbers, build upon small success and do what works for your wallet as well. I selected some articles I found very informative that cover topics very important to every evolving music operation: Search engine optimization, album release planning, focusing on small or large fan bases, and embracing imagination with releasing your music.

Audible Hype

Justin Boland sparks the importance of planning when it comes to your album release and also embeds the importance of knowing your genre’s demographics and how to use it to your advantage.

• The Template: Planning Your First Album
• Hip Hop 2009: 5 Big Open Questions

Seth Godin

Seth Godin breaks down the music industry and the fundamental shifts which created opportunities and threats. Social media and interaction is at the heart and soul of creating that “tribe”.

• The Live Music Talk

Music Think Tank

Music Think Tank gets musicians in gear with focus on work ethic and building a solid fan base from the ground up. Independent success is closer than you think.

• What happened? A rant about the work ethic of many musicians
• In Defense Of 1,000 True Fans – Part I – The Mountain Goats

Gen Y Rockstars

Greg Rollet delivers some insight on affiliate marketing for musicians. Creating extra revenue streams for your music is necessary, and goes a long way in offsetting costs. You don’t have to be chessy with sales to make a little change.

• Major League Affiliate Music Marketing

Flatacre

Peter Holmes discusses branding from the ground up for success. Too many musicians rely on gimmicks leading to short lived fame.

• Want to learn about music marketing? Don’t listen to major record companies.

Plugola Inc

Erik Peterson explains the importance of search engine optimization and music blogging. Small steps lead to major improvements in search engine rankings and traffic. When search engine spiders crawl your site, make sure they know what your website is about

• SEO Basics for Musicians

Digipendent

Great article that discusses why we should encourage fans to share our music through social media. Use the tools if we have them.

• 3 Methods to Encourage Music Sharing

Search volume in my research is very important. While I focus on my optimization for search engines, am I really covering all the ground I could?

When I think of search queries I automatically think about Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The one thing that strikes me is how people are using social media sites such as Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook for searches.

I came across a press release by comScore that displays some interesting search volume stats. To read more from the actual press release follow this link: comScore Releases August 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

The numbers don’t lie and those sites are all in the Top 20 for search volume. Youtube actually ranked 2nd after Google which definitely makes me want to add more videos about my band, and provide content and tags that optimize my chances of being seen. Create an entry point for your website.

Here is a summary of stats that were presented as an analysis of the U.S marketplace from July to August 2009.

1. Google sites own the search market with 13 billion search queries
2. Youtube is the 2nd most popular search engine after Google and Google sites with 3.5 billion searches
3. Yahoo sites are next with 2.8 billion queries
4. Microsoft makes up for 1.3 billion searches, 6% gain from July
5. Craigslist followed with 682 million searches
6. Facebook saw the biggest percentage in change with a 20% increase in search volume leading to 324 million searches
7. Withing the top 20 sites in the US, there is Youtube, Myspace, Facebook
8. Social Media sites become search engine portals for users

With Facebook also seeing that 20% jump, which was the largest jump in search queries percent change for that month, I think its time to put aside some of my distaste for Facebook as a music marketing tool. A band page is a must. If someone is mainly using just Facebook for searches, will they be able to find you?

Maybe you may use some of these sites as landing pages or just display your RSS feed to create entry points. The key is maximizing your visibility where people are searching.

Part of our mission as Do It Yourself marketing musicians involves making educated guesses for planning our next moves. Find stats, analyze them and make moves according to what you conclude.

This is where the importance of keyword research lies. We know where a majority of our search volume for the U.S is located and who is hot or what social network we need to keep on our radar.

I want to place my content in front of a growing audience instead of a dying one. I want to make sure I can do my best to optimize my visibility online. I want to optimize my distribution channels and bridge that gap between my website and social network profiles.

These stats are very promising because they show the importance of social media sites, being used for more than their initial mission. Optimizing for search engines is only part of the attack.

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.

Every blogger wants to improve their monthly unique visitors and see more traffic to their site. As a musician, unique visitors are potential customers and possibly future loyal fans. StumbleUpon has added an extra dimension to the musicians’ marketing plan. Its fun, easy, and a great way to promote your content while surfing the web.

StumbleUpon is a free tool that discovers websites based on your interests. You give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating to pages you like and it delivers sites that it thinks you might like according to your history.

Every time you click the Stumble button, the engine delivers web pages, videos, blogs and photos related to what you like, all personalized for you. You can narrow down your preferred sites with over 500 interests to choose from. All of your rated sites are saved for you so you can revisit them. Once you set up a profile, the process is simple, download the toolbar and begin Stumbling.

The cool part is you can find informative sites that are based around your interests. There are alot of hidden gems that don’t have high page ranks or aren’t keyword optimized but are very relevant. Many of the current sites I follow were stumbled upon.

If you are promoting your content, then give your site a thumbs up and make sure it is tagged correctly. By doing this you will enter your content amongst the millions and millions of webpages in their database.

This will give you the opportunity of having other people review your site and when that occurs you get nice traffic. The more quality the content in relation to the topic, the better the results.

A key feature that I like is when you do a Google search. If you have the StumbleUpon toolbar, the search results will show a little icon next to the results. This icon lets you see sites that others have stumbled.

Its a great feature that makes your site stand out in results if it is submitted. The profile is also a great way to get an extra inbound link for your site and find friends that share similar interests.

StumbleUpon has provided a steady flow of traffic to my site and by providing some free music or promotions, I have been able to network with fellow bloggers, musicians and friends while watching my unique visitors on the rise.

Definitely add StumbleUpon to your social networking attack. Feel free to Stumble this article if you like it and check out my profile. Marketing can also be fun!

Aderra Inc. has created a genius product for musicians to use as a way to generate more revenue after a live show. I came across their press release and found the Live Music USB Flash Drive Wristband. Aderra specializes in the recording of live events and transferring that audio to a USB wristband that is made available immediately for sale after the event. Great slogan: “Sell your event twice!”

They gained publicity when the Midem 2009 world music conference announced they were going to discontinue CD distribution of their British content to USB Flash drives. The storage drives allow for various forms of content, multimedia and files to be added for consumers and at the very least, reuse the storage device.

Their market is big and they cover live music events, conferences, live sporting events, government & public assembly. According to the founder of Aderra, Ed Donnelly, “Live in a Flash™ USB flash drive system which is quickly becoming a key component in the multiplatform revenue streams currently available to artists, labels event organisers and promoters right across Europe.”

The change from CD to USB flash drives provides a great insight to its importance of how content we receive is perceived when its packaged differently.

The press release stressed an important point for all musicians seeking better revenue streams: “What Aderra does is create something that is personal to the fan either as a memory of a fantastic night via the live recording and or by bringing together the music and merchandise all into one unique product.” Distribution is more than just CD’s and mp3’s.

Here is a link to the Aderra press release.