In today’s fast-moving, digital society keeping completely on top of your online presence is absolutely vital to your success. This series of posts discusses how you can do just that and provides tips and advice on all aspects of your online image management, whether you’re in a band or a business.
In the previous post I discussed the best way to use social networks to begin the promotion of your band or business. In this post I’ll be discussing four sites/services that can be used to grow your support and visitors on these sites. The first half of the post is based on discussing the best ways to use Twitter and Youtube to promote pretty much anything whereas the second half is more focussed on musicians and artists. Professionals and businessmen don’t despair! Part 4 of the series will focus solely on professional networking which I hope you will find very useful.
Twitter is so hot right now (cough, Zoolander, cough). The reason that Twitter is so hot right now is that people keep saying things like “Oh yeah Twitter, that’s so hot right now.” And they’re right.
So how exactly should you use Twitter in your promotion? Well the key lies in the very terminology embedded in Twitter itself. When you sign up and select to read another user’s tweets you elect to “follow” that person. That’s important, you are following them; not professing your love for them daily, not promising to attend every gig they ever perform and not choosing to be bombarded by endless links, spam and messages commanding you to buy their latest products.
Keep this in mind when you use Twitter to build your promotion. People on the site aren’t too bothered about your profile layout, bio information or even your picture (though make sure it’s a good one anyway) all they want is to hear interesting and insightful things from those they are following that they wouldn’t hear anywhere else. Of course you need to include links to your new sites, products, blogs, social networking profiles and other things but the key is not to do it too often. As a rough rule of thumb aim for one ‘promotion-based tweet’ (such as “Our new EP is out right now, come and grab a copy at www.buyloadsamusic.com/thesweetchemists”) for every three or four ‘personal tweets’ (such as “A pigeon just flew into the office window. He was unharmed but Brian’s desk has to be treated for a hysterical coffee spill. Baby.”).
Use Twitter to build visitors and views to pretty much anything. Don’t be shy about following others or engaging in discussions. If you put ‘@’ before a certain word in a tweet then it will show up on a discussion about that word. If you put it before another user’s name then they will be informed of the tweet also. Twitter is a simple yet very powerful site and if used well can add dramatically to your online promotion. Next we consider a similarly simple site, the video-sharing site Youtube.
If you’ve never watched a video on Youtube then I’m rather shocked that you’re reading this blog post! You can’t get away from Youtube on the web today; just like Twitter what we have here is a simple site with a simple, enjoyable concept made amazing through sheer popularity.
You need to harness the power of Youtube effectively in order to tap into the vast number of visitors and members that the site has. If you are an artist then this is relatively easy, make music videos, live show films or videos of your band in the studio and upload them. If you have a business then you will need to be a little more creative.
Don’t make advertising style videos; people don’t go on Youtube to watch adverts. Make something a little different, something funny, moving or entertaining. Maybe you could use an animator to knock something up for you or maybe put together a photo slideshow. It really is up to you. The important thing on Youtube is translating video views to visitors.
There are several ways that you can turn a video viewer into a click through to another site. There is a small box at the top right of each video that can contain a link and a user profile elsewhere on the site. In addition you can put links in comments so get a few people (such as your band members or work colleagues) to put a few seed comments in there before you swoop in with a link. Another option is to include URLs in the video proper. Whatever you do you need to be on Youtube, if only to link to or embed your videos on other sites.
The next two sites are mainly focussed on promoting bands and artists but the information may be found useful by other people working in the music industry.
On the surface this website is simply a music-related social network (which should be enough reason to sign-up alone) but it is in fact far more than that. iLike lets users sign-up and share, recommend, listen to and buy tracks and albums. Playlists are created and developed based on users likes and recommendations and links to other sites such as MySpace profiles may be included on the artist’s profile (click here for an example profile).
The whole site is constantly updated with every single users suggestions and favourites information added together to make a very responsive and user-friendly music-sharing platform. There is even more to it than this though!
A number of innovative applications can be utilised to spread the word. The best of these include a customisable music player that can be used to incorporate your music all around the Internet and a facebook application that will add an iLike tab to your profile. You can use this application to recommend your music to friends who will then also become your fan on iLike and grow your overall popularity and exposure. I recommend getting involved with iLike early on in your online promotion development, I don’t think you’ll regret doing so!
This website is potentially the best of all mentioned so far. On ReverbNation there are so many features and options available that it can be used as the master hub of all your online social network promotion and beyond!
Another music based social network on the surface ReverbNation’s best feature is the ability to create drag and drop widgets that can be created once and then uploaded all over the web. The widgets can include a music player, photos, videos, gig details and a sign up sheet to your mailing list (more on this in the next post in the series) and you can customise the look of them also.
These widgets may be placed on social network profile pages (there is also a facebook profile tab function that can be added called My Band, click for an example http://cache.reverbnation.com/images/facebook/screenshot-myband.png) or anywhere else you have access to on the Internet and can be managed and updated all from one place.
These widgets also have the option to cross-promote other artists that you have recommended on the site. A small link to those artists will appear on your widget and will rotate randomly. If you have friends or contacts in other bands (especially if they are in similar musical genres) then the potential to get hundreds more people viewing your widget by doing this is incredible!
Well that’s all for the post on spreading the word, the four sites mentioned have the capacity to bring thousands of people to your other social networking profiles, depending on your activity of course! In the next instalment of this series I will take you through what needs to be considered when building an email list, possibly the most crucial part of an online promotion campaign for many!
All the best!
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