April 30, 2009 Forget MySpace: How To Build The Ultimate Website To Interact With Your Fans
Being a musician these days can be wonderful as well as a daunting - there are so many opportunities out there (especially on the web) to distribute your music, it can be very easy to forget what the ultimate goal is - to acquire new fans!
That being said, many musicians are not very business or tech savvy and can get lost in all the networks and tools everyone is raging about. Should I concentrate on MySpace? WTF is Twitter? How can I get on iTunes?
While all of those tools are wonderful opportunities for musicians to connect with their potential audience, they are just tools, and not a means to building something that’s long term; you need to use them, but your ultimate goal should be to use those tools to get new fans to come to YOUR own website.
Why is your site so important? Isn’t it just the same as a MySpace page?
The answer my friends is a big NO.
Can you sell Mp3’s direct from your MySpace page, without using a 3rd party service?
Do you own that “friends” list from MySpace? Do you have access to their emails?
No, and no. You don’t have any control over anything.
And control over these things is one of the most powerful things you need to have if you want to take this music career thing to the next level. And I’m here to show you how to do it, all for the measly price of around zero dollars.
Now don’t get me wrong - setting this up requires some serious technical knowledge, so you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty and learn it the hard way. Also, of course you’re going to have to pay for web hosting, but I pray you already new that!
Here is a list of the 6 free things that you can use to set up the ultimate web presence and build your career with.
1. Wordpress CMS (Content Management System)
A website used to be built by writing a bunch of html from scratch as “static” pages. Anyone who’s serious about the web knows this is retarded nowadays. What you need is something easy to update, and that’s where the Wordpress CMS comes in.
It’s open source (re: free), and can be installed in about an hour after you read through some very nerd and techy things. Don’t be afraid - there’s plenty of documentation that will walk you through it, and once it’s installed, building your website content will be a breeze.
Wordpress is essentially a blogging platform, but it’s capabilities are almost endless and you can also build regular pages; update the blog regularly and use it to connect with your fans.
2. Theme Design
You’ll notice when you install Wordpress that is has a default theme and design, and is rather boring. The great thing about using Wordpress is the community of wonderful designers who create FREE themes that are easy to install, and can quickly take your design from boring to snazzy with a click of the mouse. For those who want to get really dirty, you can hack and alter your theme with custom graphics (all ya need to do is learn a little PHP and CSS) and you’ll have a new custom site in no time.
3. Search & Social Optimization
Think it can’t get any better then this? It does. In addition to the wonderful theme building community, there’s also hundreds of plugins that you can install to make your new Wordpress site do different things. Want to be sure your tags are properly optimized for search engines? Need to add social meida buttons? How about a contact form or a site map? No matter what capabilities you want your website to have, chances are there’s a free plugin out there that can help make it happen.
4. Download Store
Speaking of plugins, what if you wanted to sell your music directly from your website without using any other service or sharing any of the profits? Why does a visitor need to go somewhere else to perform a simple task like downloading a song? Now worries, once you install the Instinct E-Commerce plugin, not only can you sell t-shirts and other merch, you can also set up a digital download store. Automate it so people can buy your Mp3’s while you sleep!
5. Music Player & Email List Management
So now we’ve got a state-of-the-art webiste built with a cool design and digital download store. What else could help provide for the ultimate user experience? That’s where ReverbNation comes in. Use their awesome music players to give new visitors a chance to listen to your tunes before purchasing - or give a track or two away in exchange for their email address. Then use their Fan Reach service to manage your list (one of your most important assets). Everything is tracked - every listen, every download, every fan acquisition, so you can see how you’re doing, what’s working, etc.
6. Site Analytics
In addition to those ReverbNation stats, you’re also going to need a basic stats package for you to see how your website is doing. While you hosting provider should have some, you’ll want to compare it to your Google Analytics account, which is obviously free and easy to set-up. After installation, you can see where your traffic is coming from, what people are looking at, and how any marketing efforts are affecting interaction.
Trust me, if you build a website using all these free tools and software, you’ll have a machine working for you; it doesn’t stop there though! Connect the site to all those other tools you’ve been using (links to Facebook & MySpace, iTunes buttons, Flickr & YouTube widgets) and you’ll have a one-stop shop for everything you (and your fans) need! Now just start generating great blog content, networking with others on the web to get some press, and keep making good music, and you’ll be able to see your steady growth using real business analytics along the way!
About the author:
Eric Hebert is a self-proclaimed online media “mogul”, having over 5 years experience marketing on the web. While maintaining and serving business clients in areas such as search engine and social media marketing, content development, blogging, and other marketing and branding techniques, Eric has built a name for himself using these methods to help artists and musicians grasp the web and the potential it has to build their careers.
In early 2007 Eric launched Evolvor.com, a site dedicated to providing tips on how to use the web to market music in addition to exploring the rock music scene and the “evolution of music discovery” in the new digital music industry.
Reader Comments (37)
Great post and run through of the steps it takes to get a quick site out there! It always bugs me when a serious band only has a MySpace page and nothing else.
Using Reverb Nation outsources your website once again. You can keep it all in house by using the free music player from premium beat to stream music and using PHPList for email lists. PHPList is free.
Also, it pays to get a web host that provides those free packages for you as it will save you time when installing them. Many web hosts provide Word Press and PHP List, as well as other free softwares and scripts, so before signing on with a web host for your website, check with them that they do, this will save you time and technical headaches.
Great post guys
http://Twitter.com/DIY_Musicians
Reverb does way more than list PHP list and music player can - everything is integrated and trackable. Every song play, download, etc all ties into the analytics they provide, and this is free. They also have other free and premium services that are to DIE for, the street team, the widgets, etc.
I've always thought Blogger was far better as a platform:
1) The free version lets you create as many blogs as you want.
2) Just as easy to customize as WordPress -- and in fact, far easier since you don't get charged to edit html and css level code.
3) And it's no secret that Google tends to like what Google owns.
I agree on all the Reverb Nation points, though, they run a really superior system. Really, bands should just be converting from myspace to Reverb Nation, since most of the parts of this 6-part plan are to compensate for the limitations of wordpress. Analytics? Download store? Both part of the RN package to begin with.
I am a web developer that has worked for several small businesses in start up mode, which is exactly the way I think a band or individual artist needs to be functioning. I would first advise that a band never actually host anything. They should use fully managed publishing environments that give them freedom, flexibility, and most importantly zero maintenance (there are many out there but one usually has to pay a small fee for them).
Email is also still very important to bands and small businesses. I would encourage every band to use the free mail system google provides, that lets you use your own domain for email. They allow 100 addresses at no charge, and give more space than any one account can hope to use, plus you get a gmail interface all for free.
The second thing I would do on the email front, is get serious about your list and campaign management. If you want a system that will blow Reverb Nation list management out of the water for list management then I suggest using mailchimp. I have used this company while working at mimoco.com and find their product to be absolutely brilliant when it comes to email campaign deployment and monitoring.
I advise bands to build out their presence on twitter, facebook, and myspace rather than their own site. Use the band's site to push people to these already pervasive social networks. These tools offer ways to connect with fans that a band could never hope to achieve with a wordpress install.
Commerce, definately use a managed hosted solution. There is no way a band should be accountable for managing all this stuff. The last thing a band needs is to be an order fulfillment entity. There are lots of services that take care of the entire supply chain and I encourage bands to use these services as they will be far superior than doing it yourself. Can you imagine having to send a t-shirt to someone while you are on the road touring. That is a bad customer experience waiting to happen.
Blogger is great, but you don't own it. It's also kinda hard to customize it, I mean REALLY customize it. It's still blogger at the end of the day and it limit's what you can and cannot do.
I strongly disagree with you Johnny. Strongly.
Never host ANYTHING?
I feel if a band wants to be legit, they should have everything start at the website. The site is their hub to everything else on the web, and if it's set up right, can automatically update those places via RSS. You should publish a blog post and everything else should automatically update from there (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
As far as freedom and flexibility, Wordpress is pretty easy to use and set-up, and offers just that. It might take some maintenance, but so does everything in life.
I will say, they're are probably email/list management program that offer more, but just having everything in one central location using Reverb is convenient and gets the job done. With Wordpress and Reverb, everything can be updated and tracked and vice-versa. It's a oerfect marriage.
Yes, Reverb does provide you with download capabilities, but not a download STORE - one where you can sell zip files of entire albums with no middleman.
I think that CONTENT is what builds fans and that you should own and control every aspect of that content - and having a hosted site that you own is where that starts. You then use that to syndicate to other places like Twitter and Facebook, and draw them into your world.
And as far as T-Shirts, well, there's plenty of on-demand printing services that can make crappy t-shirts for you and fulfill your orders for you. But the product itself sucks. If you're getting enough orders while you're on tour, then you need to have someone doing that for you - you need to pay someone. That's just one of the trials of getting bigger and growing your business.
If you're non-technical, setting up hosting and WordPress yourself might be a little daunting. I'd start with WordPress.com and get started there. You can still use themes and some plugins. Once you get comfortable with that, then move on to hosting it yourself. Several hosting providers have one-click installs for WordPress now that makes it almost as easy as setting up on WordPress.com, but it's not quite as easy to maintain.
True, ReverbNation doesn't run the store -- but they will submit you to iTunes, Amazon, etc, for an annual fee. I actually just did that today with one of our artists. It'll be awhile before it actually gets indexed, but I'll do a detailed report on how it goes.
The core concept here, everyone agrees on. The precise configuration is a matter of personal experience and preference. As you acknowledge, there's plugins for everything, and everything in life takes maintenance. That's true no matter what precise string of free tools you're using.
Side note: I'd co-sign on mailchimp, they're very straightforward and powerful, and their free PDF about mailing lists is worthwhile reading whether you end up using them or not:
Mailchimp's Email Marketing guide
Great post Eric.
Wordpress can provide a great site if you have the skills to set it up and the time to do so.
Another option is to use a band-specific website builder. There are a few of them out there, with varying levels of features/price/customization. Ours, Bandzoogle.com, has all the tools mentioned above (download store, mailing list, analytics, etc).
I think that too often, bands get hung up on finding the best "free" option, but not taking into account the value of their time. Our goal is to make it easy so that bands can work on the important stuff -- their music.
Super useful info. My two cents is that I would go with squarespace, instead of Wordpress, and Bandcamp, instead of Reverbnation (or in additino to).
Squarespace charges, yes, but they give you a super powerful, super east way to build a very nice, very rich web site. They also provide an email widget.
Bandcamp is, well, hands down the simplest, most reliable, highest quality site for posting music I have ever seen.
Oh, and for distribution, I use Tunecore, which I really like.
Jeff
www.cerebellumblues.com (my squarespace-enabled site!)
Well, CMS is surely necessairy, but Wordpress is very limited compared to TYPO3 (also free). You can do a lot more with TYPO 3, including newsletter, posting news, and so on.
Anyone who says Wordpress is "very limited"doesn't know of it's capabilities - it's open and the code is free to be programmed (obviously with a certain extent of knowledge) to do pretty much WHATEVER you want to plug-in to the site. It's in your control. Many of the other FREE services may be easier to use, but you're not hosting on your own domain and are limited to what they are able to do, not the other way around.
I'm with Jeff. Wordpress, plus Bandcamp.
(Disclaimer: I'm on Bandcamp's board of advisors - but only because I freaking love it. Ethan's created a masterpiece. Also - I'm a long-time Wordpress fan.)
Great advice. I have put together a similar site using Drupal. Have a look www.kashamusic.co.uk and q's pop an email to the site feedback email
I think a lot of bands don't realize how it important it can be to have a site of their own. And I like WordPress. Have built several sites with it, and believe me, I'm no programmer. But I can usually figure out how to get it to do what I want.
Great post Eric, brilliant and to the point. Big big Wordpress fan here and a tip for none techy bands that want to get into it. Get a webhost that uses CPanel (there are 100s). CPanel includes a script auto installer called Fantastico which will install Wordpress (and dozens of other scripts) with a couple of clicks.
Wordpress actually gets fuller featured by the day almost (it seems!) and for a bit of free software its astonishingly versatile, expandable, powerful and professional.
Eric, great post. The important discussion here is a lot less about the specific tools anyone uses, and rather about the strategy that they employ to achieve their goals. Most of the tools mentioned can help an Artist IF they are used with the right strategy, and this is where Eric gets it really right.
Every aspiring Artist is both a small business and a brand. They need to pay attention to both in order to prepare themselves for success. Artists go through many stages in their careers, each of which may require a different strategy at that particular point in time. But the most important stage is the first stage of fan growth and brand establishment.
We have watched over 100,000 Artists set out on this journey, and begun to analyze what works and what doesn't. Admittedly, there is a lot of noise in the data, but there are a few things that stand out:
1. Artists that generate traffic to their own website do better on other important metrics than those that don't - all else equal. That is not to say there is causality here, but there is a correlation.
2. Artists with a higher ratio of 'mailing list fans' to social network 'friends' do better on important metrics than those with a lower ratio - all else equal. Social network 'friends' are important, but converting them to your mailing list seems to have a statistically significant impact.
3. Artists who offer exclusive content to potential fans in exchange for mailing list signup grow their list faster (600% on average) than those who don't.
There are other insights, but many point toward the same conclusion:
Even at this early stage, its important for an Artist to engage in brand-building as well as just awareness.
As a result, we always recommend that an Artist look at the social nets as good for both awareness (get your music heard) as well as lead generation (let fans engage more deeply if they want to). For this reason, its important that the Artist have a proprietary place for fans to go to learn more and engage with the brand, as well as a way for fans to raise their hand and join the mailing list (two of Eric's main points).
When Artists approach the social nets as ways to spread content, while giving fans the opportunity to access deeper brand engagements and join mailing lists, their probability for success seems to rise.
At ReverbNation, we use this data to develop new tools and enhance existing tools to deliver the maximum impact for Artists (that was the inevitable shameless pitch).
I use Wordpress for everything, but I absolutely DESPISE the Instinct E-Commerce plugin. I cannot highly discourage anyone from using it enough.
Fundamentally it works and its feature set is second to none, but it is the buggiest piece of software I have every installed on a web server. This would be ok if their support was good, but it is non-existent. They have a forum setup and occasionally someone answers questions to problems, but more often than not people post problems and never receive a reply. After I went through this with three separate issues, I finally tore down the store. I'm still looking for a good alternative. Trust me, you're better off without a cart than with one.
Problems I experienced:
1) Tried setting up downloads to be "Pay your own price". The feature set leads you to believe this is possible, and indeed you can set it up. So the user inputs the price as a donation, which I setup to have a minimum of Free. Of course it works, except when the user selects free. Their transaction processed, but the download link simply didn't appear like it did when the user paid. I posted extensive details for support, no reply. I saw others post the same question, no reply. Not sure if this was ever addressed. Still pleased with the software, I kept using it.
2)The lightbox/thickbox for images stopped working and started causing problems with the rest of my Wordpress installation. Reinstalled everything, not fixed. Posted for support, no answer. Saw others had posted the same problem previously, they received a few suggestions that didn't work.
3) The straw that broke the camel's back was the effect the software had on my site's performance. At some point, my site started taking forever to load. By forever, I mean 30 seconds plus. Now, I expect it to be a little slow because I have a lot of javascript running, but when disabling all of that, it didnt improve the performance much. When I disabled the shopping cart, my site sped right back up to normal. So back to the forums I go, no replies. Other users posted the same questions, the replies they received essentially had people saying the problem was the webhost's fault. Like, what?! I run a dozen wordpress installs that all run super fast, but I install this buggy software on one and it brings it to a crawl and the problem is the webhost?And they vehemently defended this point! Pfft, I had to uninstall it.
And go to their forums and look at how many problems are reported. I mean, I've never seen such a busy and active support forum with so many problems. My advise: STAY AWAY! It isn't worth all the work. Find another solution. And in fact, if anyone knows any good Wordpress solutions, let me know. I'm even willing to pay quite a bit for a good shopping cart that is easy to use, works well and integrates with wordpress.
you don't need to host wordpress yourself, get a hosting account with a company like bluehost.com that has Fantastico in its control panel and by going through Fantastico it will automatically set it up. There are tutuorials on the internet on how to get your WP blog going using Fantastico. Most internet marketers use wordpress super flexible and has tons of plug-ins. Blogger is easier to use, but WP is better. Also, make sure you get your own domain name that you purchase and not a blogspot.yourband.com site because you don't own it.
Instinct's WP ecommerce plugin is buggy, bloated and insecure. The dev team is also extremely unhelpful and offer little support.
I recommend the Shopp plugin:http://shopplugin.net/
I wish Music Think Tank's comments sections let us link directly to specific comments -- being in SquareSpace, that's probably pretty simple to implement, no? Because Jed Carlson's comment was SCIENCE. I'd like to point people towards it without being like "just count to 18 or so."
I agree with Eric and Jed. You need your own web site at the center of all your online music marketing activities.
I describe this as Octopus Marketing. The head at the center is your own artist site. The tentacles represent the many ways you reach out and create a presence in the places online where your ideal fans hang out.
Your goal is to have people discover you on these other sites and then funnel them to your main artist site, where you control the message and the conversation.
If you use MySpace or any other social site as your main Internet presence, you will still reach fans -- but you short-change yourself in the long run.
Don't be an Octopus without a head :-)
Bob
TheBuzzFactor.com
Jed knows his stuff, that's why I always plug his product when I can!
The Instinct plugin can be buggy yes - I had problems in the past, but with these kinds of things bugs are going to exist.
I'm not saying everyone will be able to use and install this stuff on their own - but those who take the steps to do some research and learn how to do it (or find people like myself to help them out) shouldn't have too many problems.
I'm checking out the Shopp plugin now...
The amount of bugs in the Instinct plugin are far, far beyond what is reasonable. I've worked with hundreds of stand alone PHP installs and dozens of Wordpress plugins. I expect the occasional weird quirk or bug. But the Instinct e-commerce plugin is the worst piece of software I have ever used for anything. No one should use it unless they can write PHP and can reverse engineer the application.
I've been working on website promotion techniques since 1994, but it's only five years ago that I became interested in website promotion for bands. To promote a website, you've got to have a website, and back then (2004) most 'wannabe' bands were wasting their time with free sites like, FreeWebs, Yahoo! GeoCities, LYCOS.tripod, then they turned to MySpace for a whole range of reasons - the point is, many bands don't own a Real Website. Never have!
If you are in an independent band and you want to make money from your music and you're going down the DIY road, then you've got to realize, You Are The Machines Churning Out The Product, focus on what you do best. Recruit fans, friends and family to help with the rest: website, mailing list, merchandising, logistics, accounts, promotion and marketing - to name but a few, it's a big list - don't push a band member into being a Jack of all trades, find someone else who knows!
Use your various profiles to network and direct interested people to your website - NOT the other way around, big mistake if you do. Your website is the focal point where you have ultimate control. Give your visitors what they want: tell them about your next gig, sell them something, thank them for giving you the last sausage on the B-B-Q, collect their email address...
You own your website, MySpace isn't your space, it's Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation's space. You need your own website.
Want to know how many real friends you've got? Multiply the number of Profile Friends by 0.06%, that's how many friends you've got!
This blog/article tells of the tools to help with building a band's interactive website, of course there are more options but the selection made by Eric Hebert is an excellent place to start. I'd add in iPowerWeb for web hosting, PayPal for the ecommerce and AWeber for the mailing list (I recommend they host your mailing list).
^^ Aweber was built for direct sales internet commerce, not music, not branding, not fan communication. I really think that, feature for feature, Mail Chimp TKO's Aweber.
If you're looking to build a huge niche list and make serious money selling information products online, you'd be insane to use anything BUT Aweber, but....that's not what this is all about here.
@ Justin B - if you click any comment from the right column of this site, or from the comments page (see Comments Page at the top of the right column), you will find the ability to target a comment right in the URL..
My own personal preferences for building a site are...
I like SquareSpace (see link in the left column of this site). It's super powerful, relatively easy (given the capabilities), and the advanced capabilities are off the charts great. Moreover, my impression is that one can get started with SquareSpace (including using your own URL) with a lot (underline) less thinking than what would go into setting up a Wordpress site (correct me if I am wrong). At least watch the SquareSpace video on how it works before you choose a platform.
For music players I personally like the Yahoo Media Player. Its incredibly simple to install (one line of code), and then all you have to do is upload an MP3 to your site and link to it. In addition, it's the most attractive option I have found.
For email collection and management, I am fan of Mailchimp. However, Reverb Nation rules if you want to do things like trade downloads for email addresses. Moreover, Reverb's back-end reports and analytics are powerful and built with artists in mind. I just don't like the overpowering RN branding on their widgets.
For site analytics I use Google Analytics.
For merchandise I agree that fulfilling the stuff yourself is not recommended. I recommend Zazzle for (online) merch. You upload your artwork, pick the merch you want (yes, it can be high quality stuff), you set the markup you want, and Zazzle takes care of everything else, including the fulfillment.
For generating additional revenue, I like the Amazon a-store widget or SquareSpace's dead simple way to sell Amazon items (including your Amazon MP3s).
On a side note, I think working with thirty artists to build one site is a far better option than spending a boat load of time on a standalone artist site. However, that's complicated and a subject for another day...
http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/forget-myspace-how-to-build-the-ultimate-website-to-interact.html#comment3915029
Justin Boland, don't worry AWeber will/could/would do the job too ;) - I'd recommend Reverb Nation. A lot of this has got to do with what people recognise and feel safe with. PayPal for instance, Shyte in reality, but almost everyone has an account... wonderful.
http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/forget-myspace-how-to-build-the-ultimate-website-to-interact.html#comment3916105
Bruce Warila, "On a side note, I think working with thirty artists to build one site is a far better option than spending a boat load of time on a standalone artist site. However, that's complicated and a subject for another day..."
....True, I've got about twenty as my calculation though, I'm starting with ten!
...Race on?
I have been advising clients to choose wordpress for their main site for a couple of years now. Joomla and other big CMS systems work great too, but require a higher learning curve and have less in the way of freebies. Only fools would choose to use blogger for a professional site, it is simply a stupid business mistake to use any system you don't fully control. MySpace, FaceBook and LiveJournal are all great sites to have a presence on and get a pointer from, not to mention, but like blogger you simply don't own or control your site. As often as the TOS and/or layout changes for those service you run the risk everyday of losing everything.
BTW you can cross post to most social sites from within wordpress with several different plugins.
Hi guys,
I feel kinda bad for the self-promotion here, but the service you're looking at with regards to the website/social network thing for a band is pretty much what I do for freelance:
Velvet Grooves - Website Design/Development & Social Network Strategies/Integration
I finished a project for a band last week, and it'll be interesting to see how it goes with them. As for digital stores, they're initially using 7Digital because it's flexible as a widget across the main networks. I'm looking into Bandcamp though as I've read over various places about how great it is - and if Dubber is on board, well then it must be good! :P
VERY nice article, Eric, thank you! So many people write about distribution and compare and review, but you're offering a PATH for people, and that's more important than yet another review.
I do want say, though, that a distributor used right is a PARTNER, and can really, really help. It's not just about getting the tools in place, vital as that is. It's also about access and growth and, of course, the right partnership--finding that distribution model that gets your music into places like iTunes in the best way, with knowledge and understanding of iTunes's systems.
More to say than I can in a comment, but anyway, thanks again! If you or any of your readers have questions about TuneCore or the industry in general, feel free to drop me an email.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Word Eric! I very much believe in a revival of the official artist site: http://www.digitalrenaissance.se/2009/01/23/revival-of-the-official-artist-site/
Great post. I agree with everything you are saying.
Nobody has mentioned HostBaby. The reason I went with them some years ago, despite the $20 monthly fee, is because of the email list management, which initially was inferior to most other services in terms of feature but had one brilliant point in its favor: static pricing. Most email management services are volume-based, so sending newsletters out to fans gets more and more expensive as your list grows. Any comments? Am I throwing my money away continuing with HostBaby?
I too am a Blogger user. But where do you find Blogger tools? There is no Blogger CMS, either, right?
Thanks! Great post!!!!!
Ciao people!
My name is Stanley and I examine this community forum now a really long time time and I ought to say, it is in fact a great place to be.
Up to now I was all the time the individual getting aid and help here and I have the impression it is time to pay a little in return
Some time ago I experienced really a lot of inconvenience with my roof and I desperately searched for service. Either it is altogether overpriced or the quality is extremely low. My search ended, as I found this notable company. See below and if you have trouble with your roof, just make contact with them. They do great work!
[url=http://www.roofingfortworthtx.net]Prompt, Friendly Service[/url]