Part of my DIY experience is about just testing things out. My music could always use extra promotion and after seeing some sales stats from my old album, I started thinking.
My album sales were down but my singles sales went up. Instead of finding this discouraging and abandoning the Do It Yourself effort I decided to do some more writing. How can I promote my individual tracks and create better sales and more time spent on the site.
I came across this free WordPress Plugin called WP Post Footer. This plugin allows you to make different post footers that follow your article. I wanted to use this for custom messages for different articles on my blog, and increase time of visits and create a better call to action.
I am working on multiple web projects and have been studying Search Engine Optimization since 2004 when I worked for a Content Creation company, focused on creating free, organic traffic from search engines.
Marketing music is a different beast, however, certain concepts in internet promotion are dead on with what we as musicians need to focus on.
How can we increase music purchases? How can we have visitors spend more time on our blog? How can we increase our chances of getting articles shared virally on Twitter and Facebook?
The classic marketing example includes interlinking relevant articles to your posts. If I had a book about Building a Studio, I would write on my blog about the different steps such as soundproofing or building a mic booth and so on.
A home musician is now searching for tips or books on building a studio. He/She discovers your article about “Building a Mic Booth” and finds the content very helpful.
At the end of that article you include a post footer to “sound proofing and bringing out the best of your mic”. You are introducing a relevant user to exploring more of your blog, helping them and potentially selling them on your book.
The best part of this is you are encouraging potential fans to explore more of your music. If someone directs me to just their album, I might be hesitant to just sit there and listen to the whole thing. By introducing your style in affordable packages such as presenting free singles or $1 singles, fans might be more inclined to find something they like.
Post #1 is our first example. I have a track that was produced with some grimey hip hop drums and soul breaks. What I will do now is add a post footer to the end of this post directing visitors to a similar track from my old catalogue. I am promoting a new song and letting them know where they can find a similar song from my archives. Increase relevance.
Post #2 takes on an instrumental post. I am a Hip Hop head that loves to write rhymes and produce music. I wanted to write a post about a recent instrumental I made. If they like it, I provided a post footer to where they can find an older instrumental album we made on Bandcamp that is free.
Selling doesn’t always have to be the point. Give them something free and create a starting point for a relationship.
Post #3 is my beats per minute experiment. Slow tracks, fast tracks, similar beats per minute, lounge or dance themes. Pair up similar sounding tracks and lead the way to introducing them to other singles, highlighting your versatility and your catalogue.
I love the fact that now your album has multiple advertisements introducing people to your project’s concept. The additional tagging for you singles will be very good for the search engines.
From an internet marketing view I love the idea of getting readers to follow more content on my site because it related to the current topic they were reading about.
From a musical standpoint I love it because it acts like Pandora in a sense of providing similar sounding music, except its from your band or collective.
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