posting blog entries to music think tank...

1. Signup here.  Login here.
2. Original material is preferred (is great).
3. Please - NO unusual (non-regular) font formatting.  All unusual formatting will be erased.
4. Please don’t cut and paste from Microsoft Word!  It’s important that you ONLY paste in plain text and not text that was formatted in Microsoft Word.  Try this:  If you first paste your post into any comment field on this site (just quickly paste and re-copy, don’t post the comment), all the Word formatting will be stripped out.  
5. Posts related to music and the industry are preferred.
6. Please read our posting advice to maximize effectiveness.
7. Please make sure your ‘facts’ are correct.
8. Please note attributions to all content created by others.
9. Please no more than one post per month.
10. Please make sure you have the legal right to publish whatever you post.
11. Popular posts are (sometimes) re-posted to the front of Music Think Tank.
12. Please put a short bio at the end of every post.
13. Please excerpt your posts.  Look for the excerpt icon in the text editor, select your excerpt and then click the excerpt icon.
    
14. Please review our Creative Commons license in the footer of this site.
15. You are automatically emailed when your post is published.
16. Or, you can instantly publish by selecting the ‘Published’ button within the text editor (turned off for now).
17. Posts about songs should perhaps go on MTT Radio.  You can link to any MP3 on the Internet (using the link icon within the text editor) and a play button will automatically appear when you close the text editor.  Or alternatively, you can upload an MP3 (instructions).
18. Once you login, you are looking for the button shown in the image below:
19. 

posting your songs to mtt radio

General guidelines for MTT Radio

1. Click these links to register and login.
2. Please only post songs you own the rights to.
3. We don’t collect or pay royalties.
4. You are posting to expose your music to MTT readers, not to consumers.  As of January 2010, MTT attracts about 25,000 industry readers a month.
5. PLEASE exactly follow the formatting guidelines listed below.
6. The ONLY song player we support is the one built into this site, which enables users to easily skip from song to song. 
7. If you embed another song player, your post will be deleted. 
8. Please limit your contributions to one song, per artist, per month.
9. UPLOADING INSTRUCTIONS - Upload an MP3 to Music Think Tank. 
10. Only registered MTT contributors can comment on songs.
11. You can turn off commenting capabilities (within the text editor) if you don’t want feedback.

Formatting guidelines for MTT Radio - Please follow.

1. Please don’t change font sizes.
2. Please don’t add graphics or videos.
3. Please keep whatever you write to less than three lines of text.
4. Best post title format: ‘Song Name’ by ‘Artist Name’
5. Categorize and tag your posts (you do this by clicking the word “categories” or by clicking the word “tags” at the bottom of the post editor.  See screen shot.).

Category and tagging guidelines for MTT Radio - Please follow.

1. As your song gets pushed down the page, if you assign categories and tags to your songs, users will be able to easily find (tune into them) in the future.
2. Categories are ‘sensible’ genres (make more if you need them).
3. Tags (not genres please) are anything important to readers looking at a list of song tags.
4. Please don’t make your name, band name or song name a tag.
5. Please keep categories and tags entirely in lower case (thanks!).

Once you login, you are looking for the button shown in the image below:

posting advice - please read...

Hello!  Just posting a blurb about you, your photo, and a link to your MySpace page is not compelling content.  Sorry, but this is the type of trivial and boring :) content that will make people unsubscribe to MTT Open.

Please take the time to write something that’s interesting. People love to read short, smart, interesting, funny, engaging stories.  If you are looking for click-throughs to your site or profile page, you will never get clicks by just cutting and pasting a bunch hype (including a generic press release) about you or your company.

Embed an MP3.  If you want to someone to listen a song, put the MP3 directly into your post (here are the instructions) or onto MTT Radio.

Keep it short.  Nobody wants to read much of anything that scrolls off the screen or below the fold.  Keep it short or post in several parts (Part 1 then Part 2).

Make it skimmable.  Consider the popularity of Twitter and RSS.  People want to skim headlines.  You may consider (it’s not mandatory) adding bold headlines to the top of each of your paragraphs to enable people to skim your posts.  The headlines should compel readers to drop into the story. 

Line breaks.  If you are having trouble with line breaks, try saving your post as just text, or pasting your post into a simple text editor first.

Your bio blurb.  Please keep this short also.  No more than four lines.  Perhaps try to be a bit of a compelling mystery that compels a click to your site.  In all cases, please do put something about you or how to contact you at the bottom of all your posts.

posting information to MTT Stats

Please closely examine the format of the posts that already exist on MTT Stats.

Please follow the existing format as closely as possible.

Your post HEADLINE should state - at a glance - the statistic or trend type (i.e.: ‘media usage survey’ or ‘twitter stat’).

Your FIRST line should be a link to the information source where you found the data. For example, if you read about a Pew Research study on HypeBot or TechCrunch, please link to HypeBot or TechCrunch, and not to Pew Research (unless you found the information directly at Pew Research).

Please categorize every post.

Please apply tags to each post if relevant.

No press releases on this page please.

Only post statistics, trends and data points that would be interesting to MTT readers.

Please don’t copy too munch information from another site. It is simply better to link back to the source of the information.

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: 4 Cheap Videos That Musicians Should Make Today • More

l

• Dartsya Tarkovska | 4 Types Of Videos That Musicians Can Make Today 
• Cherie Nelson | 5 Cloud Storage Options For Musicians 
• Jorge Brea | How To Stay Motivated To Make Music
• Larry Butler | What’s Your Name And How Do You Spell That