July 20, 2009 Are you content with your content?
Are you content with your content?
Your website, your Facebook page, your music sample sites and anywhere else fans can find you should have all your key marketing and promotional content, but when does it get old and is it time to update? Remember, while you are chasing after the new fans, it is important to maintain the established ones as well. You have to think about what is going to draw someone to your website and why they are going to stay interested in going back to visit again and again. Unfortunately, way too many artists have very sharp websites that are only updated with gigs or with updates that are quick, pointless blurbs that are not all newsworthy.
You have to separate from the pack.
There are millions of bands with millions of websites, Facebook pages, Myspace pages, etc. Besides the music, what is going to draw them back? You can’t put up a new song everyday. I know some people that do and in the end it has a tendency to burn a fan out instead of grabbing the attention you want to achieve.
It comes down to mixing it up and using all available media. Spark the interest of the fan who might visit your page everyday and the weekly visitor who wants to see a whole bunch of new stuff all at once.
First, spread the love
First off, as you have updates or items to add to your sites, don’t be like all those other bands that throw it all up at once. That’s called “over-saturation.” It blasts out a whole bunch of new things and then nothing. Think long term. If you have five different things you can put up, such as a new picture, a video, an article about a song, etc, use a full week to provide all of that information.
Gain the reputation of always presenting new content as often as possible. Spread it out. Update more often over a longer period of time. Just because you recorded a new EP or album doesn’t mean you have to post the whole thing that day. Tease your fans. Lure them back to your site by giving them a reason to visit.
Choose your media.
Here is a list of ten different things you can update. Think of it as two weeks worth of updates, five days a week.
1) Music
Don’t just put up a whole bunch of new songs. Present a different flow. Set up samples of your songs. Maybe one new sample a week or perhaps a version of the song from preproduction to the final recording. Maybe you have a live sample next to the recorded sample to showcase what your album sounds like and how you sound live. Even if you get the album done, don’t put the samples all up at once. If you are taking the time and scheduling the release right (hint hint), it is going to be at least a couple months before you have your release party, your press release and the promotional items in place. You can use the time between the completion of the recording and the release to put out little teasers of your upcoming album.
2) Video/Music
Post a short video. Samples are good. People have short attention spans and are more likely to view short videos than longer ones. This can be a video of you playing in the studio, performing live, rehearsing, etc. Give people a little taste and fill it with music.
3) Video/Non-Music
Non-music video shorts can be a great update as well. Interviews with the artist or the band. Videos of the load in, load out, something a little different with a touch of your own personality. The video shorts of the usual band pulling in to a town and laughing at a strange town are really overdone. Pick something that is yours.
4) Blog
Blog once a week. Maybe if you’re a band, each member can take a different week. Something talking about where they came from, something personal perhaps or something with the opinions of the artist or the member. Write about your favorite musicians, favorite songs, favorite anything, really. These can draw people in, while at the same time getting more and more content about your band, the band name and the band links out on the web.
5) Band/Music Article
This would be a blog post that would be more about the band or the band’s music. Maybe on a slow week, write about the lyrics to a song or the reason behind it. Remember, you know the story but a lot of others don’t. Use that fact to share and update your fans.
6) Pictures
um, duh!!! Add pictures and, of course, put full captions on the pictures. If you put up a number of pics, make sure you have more the following week. If you are shy on pictures then put them up in smaller sets.
7) Merchandise
You can feature a merchandise item you have, such as a hat, a tee shirt, a coffee mug or anything that is selling less than other items. Make up a story about it, give it a special sale price. Do something to draw them in to that item for that day.
8) Contests
Maybe a monthly contest or something to draw people into participating on your site. Again, you are trying to pull these people in and make them return, so pull out all the stops.
9) Review
Put up a review once a week about the band. Some good review coming from somewhere credible and not just a CD Baby review or a myspace review. This is also the hint toward working each week on getting your music, promotionals and information out to at least three reviewers, newspapers, websites or whatever else to build up your reviews.
10) A reference or referral
One update can be linking to another band or a band’s song or video. This can help with cross marketing while showing you in a very good light with other artists. Talk about an artist you like, you opened for, who might have opened for you and someone you want people to check out. Often times they will repay the favor. Just a couple ideas to play with and a couple ways to continually update and keeping it interesting while drawing people back time and time again.
Optimize to the Prime
Make sure to mark every picture, every blog post, every video, every article and what ever else with strong titles. Use key words, full descriptions and add as much information as you can to every update in order to optimize your presence across the web. After time, these daily updates will optimize and make you more accessible. So make sure to have the name of your band, the names of the people in the photo and the information you want to have so you can be as findable as possible.
Store up for winter
You don’t need to do these things every week. If you are on a writing spree you can store up different updates for many weeks and just post them over a longer period of time. When I am working in the studio, I always write my blogs in advance so I can concentrate on the recording and then post them up easily and quickly. You can do the same with editing down four or five videos, five or six blogs or preparing the updates well in advance. This way during busier times or when you are on the road and have a little less time to do certain things, you have a back up.
Conclusion.
It’s simple: the more content you have, the more you are updating and the more of your media that is being optimized and put out across the web, the more you will be seen, heard, found and recognized. You will keep the interest up of both the old and new fans by constantly giving them more content to consistently come back and view. Switch it up, make it interesting and give yourself the opportunity to build a stronger foundation out of your existing fan base. Every new update will help get your name, music, videos, blogs and whatever else out to new fans and pull them in as well.
Loren Weisman is an accomplished music producer and drummer based in Seattle, Washington. Having worked on over three hundred albums, Loren has also worked on numerous television, film, video game and radio productions, from New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Seattle. Loren is also the founder of Brain Grenade Entertainment LLC.
Reader Comments (4)
Very good advice - the key here is spreading out your content over time. Of course, none of us can help when we do and don't feel creative, so sometimes the content comes in bursts. Feel free to schedule those things for updates later in the week. Sometimes I'll go for days without an idea for a blog post, then I get 10 ideas in one day. When you have the inspiration, run with it. When you disseminate, spread things out - or as you said, 'tease' the audience. Much better to follow-through and be consistent than a cycle of overwhelm, disappear.
Just posed the question on Twitter this morning....does anyone really want another blog to read? Got .10% return on the question which is yes, if it's about the music biz.
Scout66.com is the middleman in helping touring artists and working class musicians build brand loyalty with their audiences. The hook is the ticket buying public reviews LIVE performance...which in today's market is the driver of the industry overall.
This brief article helped me decide, that yes, a weekly blog post is worth the effort. Thanks for helping me make that decision, as man, there is an awful lot of stuff to read these days. 25 years experience inside the industry should help bridge the gap!
Janet Hansen
Scout66.com
Lean on #10 even more -- you can get more content, more easily, by promoting other artists more often than 10% of the time.
You also get a lot more synergy and connections by giving another quality artist a shout-out than you could by posting re-purposed content.
I'd also add a really, really important #11:
REMOVE CONTENT REGULARLY.
Go through your online presence, cull the weak material and re-think how potential new fans will be taking it all in. Controlling their experience involves knowing what to take down and hide, just as much as knowing what to add, post, upload, etc.
Nice job of listing the options. Online publishing, which is what you are talking about, is really interesting. Put up too little, and people don't come back on a regular basis. Put up too much and people get overwhelmed.
Also intriguing is the fact that Facebook personal sites seem to engage people more than Facebook fan sites. The fan sites never seem to be worth checking out on a regular basis. You join as a fan and then most likely never go back.