The Perfect Online Marketing Strategy For Music ArtistsOne constant in today’s world is that things never stay the same. There’s always some shiny new technological tool right around the corner. First it was MySpace, then Facebook, and now Twitter.
It used to be fashionable to name-drop your MySpace address just four years ago. Not anymore. Now the world’s aTwitter. I can guarantee that Twitter won’t be hot forever.
So the $64,000 question is this: How do you decide what’s important to music marketing in a world where technology changes at the speed of light?
Too many people misuse all of these new tools or jump around from social media site to social media site in frustration, all because they focus on tactics more than strategy. Social media can be a huge waste of time for music artists who don’t understand how the tools fit into a larger marketing strategy. Why are you on Twitter? What do you ultimately want to accomplish with it? You need to be able to answer these questions with laser precision. And most importantly, you need to be honest with yourself.
Social media can be devastatingly effective for people who take a long term approach to music marketing. It works for people who have a good grasp of how blogs, websites, social media applications and wikis fit into the bigger marketing picture.
At the end of the day, the most important question you can ask yourself is “What do I want to accomplish as a music artist?” Below is a chart which outlines what your online strategy should look like. I urge you to print this out, study it and commit it to memory. By the way, I didn’t develop this chart. It was developed by Tom Williams at the Hit Singularity Blog. I thought it was so good that I had to share it here.
Notice that your website is at the center of it all. If there’s one lesson you should take away from this chart, it’s this: No matter what shiny new technologies arise, a website will always be the strategic core for any 21st century organization, band, record label, corporation etc. And micro-blogging will never replace blogging. Blogs seem to be out of fashion, but sites like Twitter have actually made them more important. In fact, social media has made both blogs and websites more important than ever to an organization.
Why? Because no matter how technologically complex the world gets, at the end of the day, doing business successfully in the music industry(and most industries) still comes down to getting found by people and having content that distinguishes you from the next guy. Micro-blogging doesn’t provide enough context to allow people to make informed decisions about you. Blogs and websites do, but they’re both enhanced tremendously by micro-blogging. They all complement each other tremendously. Never think that you have to choose one or the other. You need them all.
Offices, tables, chairs, offline marketing and telephones have been supplanted by websites, content, search engine optimization and digital communication.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Great post which simplifies the inrcreasingly complicated nature of web strategy for bands & other musicians. A website is indeed the one-constant amongst what seems ever-expanding distribution routes
December 3rd, 2009 at 7:41 am
hey just passed by consedince while looking for a song in some blogs
anyway nice blog gotta check it out hope you accept me as a follower and a friend blogger. thanks ^^
December 4th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I don’t know, maybe I’m just showing my age, but does anyone else see twitter kind of like the old Burma Shave signs? Does anyone but me even remember the old Burma Shave signs? As you drove along the high way there were something like 5 signs, each of the first 4 with a line of a cute poem and the last just said “Burma Shave.” Seems to me if we look at Twitter this way, it makes a little more sense.
Or maybe I’m just a crazy old man!
December 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I often tell people that I speak with that Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter are great tools, if viewed as tools. That’s all they are and places to connect with your fans, great places to meet and socialize. Few websites are enabled with these capabilities. But at the close of the day, when you are done relating to your fans, you must have some place to call home. This is your website.
Offline, this is like comparing social media sites to the bars, etc., where you can hook up; your website is your home. While it’s nice to know that I might connect with you at these social media sites, its important–to me, at least–to know where you live.
December 4th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
The bar analogy is a great one, David. No mater what it is you do, you need a place you can call home.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Interesting post, nice chart by Tom Williams and great bar analogy
I also think that’s crucial to focus on your own website and that the social network platforms are the places where you can reach an audience. From there you must guide them to your own online ‘real estate’. In my opinion, the future will bring more integration of the big social networks into specific community sites which concentrate on particular interests or topics.
To elaborate on the bar metaphor: Facebook or Twitter are like hip bars where everybody is hanging out nowadays, just because … everybody is there. But the hip factor of bars doesn’t always last for long. On the other hand we network in the basket ball club, or the chess club, or as fans of a band, because that’s a mutual interest we share for quite a long time. I think we should work on online versions of the basket ball clubs, communities which are interest-centered but linked with the big platforms (Facebook etc.). At this moment social networking is largely interest-neutral and platform-dependent.
Enough philosophical theory! As a musician I was confronted with the problem of managing all my profiles (a couple of them are mentioned in the chart) and I started an online dashboard tool for that. We are still working on it, but you can keep up to date if you subscribe to the blog or follow us on Twitter: @mmmotioncom