Marketing Your Music Blog With Just 3 Tools

Marketing Your Music Blog With Just 3 Tools

Clambr's Richard Marriott got "50 Experts" to weigh in on "How to Promote Your Blog with Just 3 Tools." It's a big page that's now at 53 professional web marketers, SEOs and marketing bloggers. But I think their choices of blog marketing tools and their rationales for using them, which also reveals some of their approaches to blog marketing, offer useful insights for musicians, music businesspeople, music writers and music marketers who are creating content, building brands and spreading the word through blogging.
"50 Experts Reveal How to Promote Your Blog with Just 3 Tools" comes at a good time for me as I begin a process of getting organized for the New Year. I'm investigating new and old social media marketing tools for various projects and will be sharing what I learn here at Hypebot in 2014.
The blog marketing post covers a lot of ground but little of it is specific to music marketing. So here are some key tool groups and observations that I think are especially relevant for marketing music-related blogs with some notes about future coverage at Hypebot.
Email Marketing & Newsletters

Email marketing was considered a key approach with AWeber topping the tools list. That makes me want to take a second look cause AWeber seems more generally on the decline compared to MailChimp which came in a distant second to AWeber in this group. MailChimp's free tier gets multiple mentions for those on tight budgets.
I'm getting ready to reinvestiate FeedBlitz for both email and RSS management. RSS tools did not make it on the list which makes sense. RSS feeds are now a basic feature more than a core tool.
I will also be checking out self-hosted Wordpress email plugins for email marketing and newsletters though that will likely include plugins for hosted email services like MailChimp or FeedBlitz.
Social Media Networks

Twitter topped the social media network mentions with Facebook lagging behind and Google+ barely appearing. Twitter definitely makes sense, especially for content and blog marketing, given its broad reach and focus on short messages with links that can lead directly back to one's own blog.
Given that social proof is becoming a more important part of SEO, all of these networks are relevant in that realm as well, especially Google+.
We'll continue covering the big players and also following the emerging world of messaging as it grows in importance.
Social Media Management

Tools for managing one's social media presence were cited more than any particular social network, which makes a lot of sense, especially for professionals who are often managing multiple accounts.
HootSuite topped the list of social media management tools and it certainly seems to be a fave among music marketers as well. They've done a good job of keeping up with a wide range of networks as well as offering 3rd party apps with reach beyond Twitter, Facebook and Google+ into music-relevant networks like SoundCloud, YouTube and Instagram.
Buffer came in second.
I'm hoping to take a closer look at tools like HootSuite that integrate various services by either connecting with a lot of sites or by bringing all the features in-house. But, like a handful of the 50 Experts, I've focused more on doing things like tweeting by hand since I don't manage accounts for clients and am exploring low volume approaches.
Analytics

Understanding what's happening and how your actions are affecting what happens is an important part of blog marketing so it's not surprising that analytics tools made some lists. Google Analytics, which may be downplaying keywords but still offers more a rich suite of tools than a single tool, was the main one discussed.
Topsy for Twitter was mentioned in passing. Of course, many other tools such as HootSuite offer analytics related to one's social media marketing efforts.
I'm looking for other analytics tools for blogs and websites but it's hard to beat what Google offers for free. If you have any suggestions, please do share.
Link Building

Getting people to link to you is an important part of SEO as well as direct traffic. I've always taken the organic "let them link to you because you have great content" approach.
If you're interested in more overt link building as well as building relationships with other bloggers, these pros recommend such tools and networks as BuzzStream, Blog Engage and Triberr.
Miscellaneous Blog Marketing Tools

iTunes received multiple mentions by podcasters.
Wistia was singled out for self-hosted video.
Wordpress appears low on the list but both Wordpress.org (self-hosted) and related plugins get mentioned repeatedly by many of the respondents. Much of this can be attributed to the flexible nature and generally low cost of self-hosted Wordpress. It's also a reminder that blog marketing begins with a great blogging platform.
I'm slowly getting up to speed on Wordpress and will be getting more detailed in 2014.
Be sure to let us know if you're finding specific web and mobile tools of use for both blog and music marketing.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is building a writing hub at Flux Research. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.



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Clyde Smith on 12/04/2013 in D.I.Y., Marketing, Music Tech, Social Media | Permalink

Musicians: Marketing Is Part Of Everything You Do

As part of our 9th Anniversary, we asked our regular contributors to share their favorite Hypebot posts. This one comes from Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith.
For many people the term "marketing" conjures up images of cheezy advertising or pushy sales people or wack gimmicks to catch the attention of the press. So if you're a musician that equates marketing with those things, it's understandable that the idea that you need to market yourself and your music makes you really uncomfortable. But if you understand that marketing is part of everything you do, you can then begin to spread the word in a productive positive manner.
Musicians who only see marketing as an annoying, interruptive process of shouting at people aren't going to see it as something they want to do. And if they see marketing as something pushy and rude, then when they embrace marketing as a way to spread the word about their music, they go into full-on spam mode and alienate everyone around them.
Even many business people look at marketing as a necessary evil, something that's somewhat beneath the creativity of the true entrepreneur. For example, noted venture capitalist Fred Wilson once wrote a blog post telling startups to avoid marketing as a component of their business plans. Instead he advocated that they do a lot of other things that ultimately sounded like a list of marketing tips.
Fred Wilson proposed that instead of marketing, one should spread the word through such things as:

social media
word of mouth in a specific community
live events
having a good story, bypassing publicists and taking it straight to the press
search engine optimization
Of course, these are all forms of marketing and these are all things that any good music marketer will suggest you do as part of your ongoing activities. Because marketing is about spreading the word about what you're doing. At its best, marketing is spreading the word by speaking to other humans in a human voice.
Good social media marketing is what The Cluetrain Manifesto describes as having conversations in a networked market:

"Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice."
"Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman."
When one starts to understand marketing in these terms, as spreading the word and as having human conversations, one can begin to understand how marketing is part of everything a musician does.
But it's also important to understand branding as a component of marketing.

Some people think of brands as logos or as corporate identities but a brand is essentially the image or thought that immediately comes to mind when people think of you. So your brand can be thought of as your personal and professional identity in the minds of people other than you.
If marketing is what happens when you are showing who you are to the world and are spreading the word about what you do, then marketing is part of everything you do, at least, when it involves other humans.
Marketing is what happens when:

You choose a name for your band that communicates what your music or larger aesthetic is about.
Marketing is what happens when:

You pick an image for your cd cover or flyer that creates a first impression.
Marketing is what happens when:

You tell people you have a show coming up, whether you're pushy or polite.
Marketing is what happens when:

You post fliers around the neighborhood and share the space with other events or plaster over those fliers like a total jerk.
Marketing is what happens when:

You publicize your new single by sending out emails to a list of people who've signed up or to a bunch of people who never gave you permission and may not give a damn.
Marketing is what happens when:

You get drunk at your show and say crazy things on the mic that alienate people.
Marketing is what happens when:

You get drunk after the show and start hitting on women (or men) inappropriately.
Marketing is what happens when:

You get drunk, show you can handle your liquor and maybe even buy the house a round.
Marketing is what happens whenever you interact with people because, as a performer, you're a public figure and you're always on stage. That can be a difficult thing to handle but, if you're trying to build a career in music, it's something you have to face.
So wo/man up and realize that marketing is everything you do from what you name your band to how you present yourself in public to how you spread the word about your music.
More:

Business Planning: Marketing Tips from Fred Wilson, A VC
The Cluetrain Manifesto
10 Insights From Andrew Dubber's "The 360 Deal" - Connecting With People Is Part Of The Business
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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The balance of influence has shifted

The Balance Of Influence Has Shifted

By Brian Thompson of Thorny Bleeder.

i sent a tweet this morning, questioning the ethics of what a popular band was doing. judgement reserved, i was simply asking what people's perceptions might be.

twenty minutes later, not only did my phone ring from their record label's office in Toronto, but their manager also sent a personal email explaining the situation further.

one guy sitting at his kitchen table, with a twitter account and an audience, can be seen as dangerous to some... or powerful to others.

the balance of influence has shifted, never to be regained by those who so desperately once clung to old corporate media

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