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The Plan
Unlike a lot of music marketing tactics you hear about, this
stuff is going to work fast and should be used as part of
a healthy balanced music promotions diet.
Before we get started with this I just want to let you know that to get the
most impact, and the most instant fans we want to send these new people over
to a page that has one purpose in life…
To put them on your mailing list
I call this the “ethical bribe page” because I heard somebody clever
say it, and I want to sound as cool as them!
It’s an “ethical bribe” because this page offers them something
cool in exchange for them joining your mailing list. The page should be very
simple and not have a bunch of links on it. Either they join your list or they
don’t.
If you just send them to your blog homepage, then you might get maybe 1.8%
of the people signing up for your mailing list. But if you send them to a simple
page with one goal, then you might get 30% of those people if you are lucky.
That is very important because this post is about getting “instant fans”
not just people coming to your website and then forgetting about you.
Test it out and see how you get on.
So now you are ready for action, let’s
get some fans…
Forums
Forums are a great place to find really targeted fans who will be interested
in your music. You can also put a link back to your “ethical bribe”
page in your forum signature. As long as you add to the community rather than
posting a bunch of self promotional crap people will be interested to click
through to your site and download your stuff.
The rules…
Don’t spend more than half an hour per day on the forums. (It’s
easy to waste time on there.)
Find forums that are highly targeted to what you do, for instance East Coast
Hip Hop, New Wave Punk, Ska Core; I think you get the idea. You should not just
find a general “Music” forum. This will help you get the the best
results.
Find cool content on Youtube, Digg, Flickr and Twitter that your forum friends
will like and start the odd topic on the forum to discuss the content.
Post thoughtful replies to hot topics and quote others.
Don’t forget to fill in your forum profile with a picture and a signature
link back to your own website.
DON’T SPAM!
You can find a great forum search engine here: http://boardreader.com/
Blog Commenting
i'm eighteen, eighteen with a bullet
Creative Commons License credit: paris_corrupted
This is quite similar to forum posting, but what you want to do for this one
is find 5 or 10 of the top blogs in your music genre, and then each time they
make a post you should read it and then make a thoughtful and valuable comment
that adds to the blog post nicely.
Please don’t try and spam a bunch of blogs, because it does nothing for
your career and your comments will get deleted nearly 99% of the time.
Tips…
Most blogs will let you add a link back to your site in the comments area.
You should make sure that you use the same name across the board, because you
want to start branding yourself and making fans think “I’ve seen
you around”.
The better the comment, the more people will click through to your website and
see what is going on.
Sign up and create a global avatar. As I said before, the more your fans see
you out there on the blogosphere the more interested they will be to click through
to download your stuff.
Another great thing about blog commenting is that you can start to build a relationship
with music bloggers, so that when you have a new song coming out they will be
more likely to review it.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking sites get a bit of a bad reputation because a lot of spammers
target them to try and take advantage of their good ranking in google.
What I personally mean by social bookmarking is that you pick a site that has
a lot of traffic and then post daily links to the best news and content in your
music scene.
You can find the most popular social sites here, use whichever one you feel
comfortable with.
The point is that if you find great content in your music scene and post it
regularly to these social sites you will start to be seen as an authority on
the topic and you will make a bunch of friends who will be interested to learn
more about what you do.
You can also link to your own blog posts once in a while but you should post
at a 5-1 ratio. This basically means that you will post five great things from
other people, and then one of your own.
It’s Good karma people!
Instant fans can come when your own post goes viral with re-tweets or when
you get a lot of action on Stumble Upon and Digg.
To give your article the best chance of being picked up on these social sites
you can track the biggest topics on the Internet with Google Trends. Then it’s
your job to find an interesting or even controversial take on it that people
will want to share.
This “buzz traffic” will not be as targeted as with forums and
blogs. But to give you the best chance of attracting like-minded people you
should write about entertainment news rather than the really heavy and depressing
stories. Unless of course you make political music.
The steps…
Choose which social bookmarking sites you are going to use. I like Twitter,
Facebook, Stumble Upon, Digg, Redit.
Fill out your profile with more information about your music, and a link back
to your website.
Follow the steps in my post the other day to set up Google Reader.
Use google reader to find the very best content you can that will impress your
fans.
Make four or five posts a day.
It’s a pretty effective tactic.
Ezine Articles
This is not strictly an “instant fan” tactic because Ezine will
take a couple of days to approve your article but I include it here because
if you choose the right topics, you will get a bump of new fans plus a trickle
of people for years to come.
The great thing about Ezine compared to the millions of other sites you could
post your content on is that your have a much better chance that a good piece
of writing will get spread all over the web.
It’s a big time saver.
The steps…
Use Google reader to monitor what new music is coming out in your industry.
Write a killer 500 word article on a hot topic.
Go over to Ezine and sign up for an account and then post your article.
Include two links back to your website in the resource box. (See video below.)
Make a posting schedule and stick to it. Most people can do one article every
couple of days.
You can use the code below to make your Ezine links:
<a href=”http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com”>YOUR NAME</a>
What’s working for you?
So there you have our four free methods of getting new fans
but this is only a very tiny snippet of all the things that
you can do to bring new people into your musical family. Let
us know what is working for you right now.
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