Episode 5: The Music Biz Weekly Podcast - Social Media Etiquette

Here it is folks, this week’s episode of The Music Biz Weekly Podcast, with your hosts Brian Thompson from Thorny Bleeder and Michael Brandvold from Michael Brandvold Marketing. 

This week’s discussion is about Social Media etiquette on Facebook and Twitter, along with some additional tips and tricks to help take you to the next level of engagement and interactivity with your followers and fans.

Episode 5 Music Biz Weekly Podcast - Social Media Etiquette by MichaelBrandvoldMarketing

Be sure to follow Brian on Twitter here and Michael on Twitter here.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and share your own tips and tricks with us!

Thanks for listening, see you again next week!

Brian

How To Easily Add a New Facebook iFrame Tab to Your Facebook Page and Manage with WordPress.

Many of you may or may not have heard about the recent change Facebook has made to Pages; ending the use of FBML for custom tabs and replacing them with iFrames. If you have existing tabs using FBML they will continue to work, but you will not be able to add new tabs that use FBML. Moving forward every new custom tab you add will use iFrames. iFrames are type of html programming that in its simplest form imports and displays a website or web page inside a frame, in this case the frame is the custom tab in Facebook. Don’t panic if this sounds complicated or confusing. I just spent the weekend looking for the simplest way to create new Facebook iFrame tabs and think I have a drop dead simple way that anyone can do. If you are running your website on WordPress and can install a new plugin, even better! I am going to try and walk you through doing this without any heavy geek speak or programming. If I cross the line please slap me, lol. Step 1: Visit this Page in Facebook, Static HTML: iframe tabs. Click Add this application to your Page in the left column. Goto your page and click the Welcome tab in the left column.

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Interview with Brian Thompson of Thorny Bleeder Records

If this were a bio on Twitter, it would be short and sweet: “Music biz entrepreneur, artist manager, marketing guru, strategist, consultant, speaker, blogger & web designer.”

“Today, my goal is to find the best unsigned, independent artists and deliver their music to the world. I develop careers, facilitate business connections, negotiate deals, present opportunities, and consult on marketing and branding initiatives. I distribute music to record stores and digital download sites, chase down radio stations for airplay, and execute press and publicity campaigns. I preach about the power of the blog, social media marketing, and how new technologies can make your music heard. I understand the music business, the needs of an artist, the desires of a music fan, and the essential tools needed to help artists realize their goals.

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Maximize Your Dead Myspace Profile (For Artists)

Nearly every active band/artist/musician today has a profile on Myspace and they’ve spent years building up their friend count trying to impress labels and radio stations. Now it’s 2011, everyone has moved on to Facebook or Twitter and these acts are left with thousands of fan connections on a dead social network. What a waste. It doesn’t have to be this way! Here are some tips on how to make the most of your fan connections on Myspace.

Myspace is still a popular music destination. It’s high domain authority lets Myspace rank well for many search keywords, which means lots of targeted traffic to your profile. Visitors to this page are probably not a “fan” yet and it’s unlikely that many visitors will “friend” you. So, make sure you’re leading potential fans to where they will make a connection, whether its Facebook or your mailing list. 

Myspace isn’t totally dead yet, it still has 28 million users a month according to Quantcast. You should spend a little time updating the few fans who still use it. Use a service likeping.fm or artistdata to save time if you must.

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Time To Find An Alternative To Facebook?

A week or so ago, I started to notice a steep decline in response to updates and general postings on my Facebook fan page. Then, like the great Sherlock Holmes, I followed the clues and stumbled upon another link in the chain, my posts were getting about 50% less impressions than before. Elementary my dear Watson. I was still puzzled until one day I saw one of my friends had posted this next clue:

“ Have you noticed that you are seeing updates or getting comments only from the same people lately? That’s because Facebook made a change. You only see posts from people you interact with regularly. To change this, scroll down to the bottom of the newsfeed on the homepage and click on ‘Edit Options’, click on ‘Show Post…s From’ and change the setting to ‘All of Your Friends and Pages’.REPOST AND LET EVERYONE KNOW”

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How To Get New Fans To Your Music Website From Facebook

As a musician do you find it harder and harder to get new fans to listen your music? You’ve  probably been using social media like Facebook already to promote your music. If you are wondering if there are ways to improve your success in getting people to check out your music then you are in luck because here are 5 ways that really do work.

1. Use Facebook To Build Your Fan Base By Actually Using It For it’s Intention!

Do not make the mistake of using Facebook personal pages like many musicians used Myspace which is by treating it like a bulletin board to advertise your band. You may get banned and people will get annoyed with you or worse by just ignoring your page. The truth is most people are not interested just because you are in a band. The good news is that once new facebook friends get to know you they may find it interesting that you are in a band and want to know more. Timing is everything. Yes, this process takes longer and has to be genuine but it really works to build your fan base when people can become interested in you as a person first. Start to think of fans as friends who like your music and you will be way ahead of the game. Often times your new friends will want to help you build your fan base too as a bonus!

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Musicians Love Facebook, But Does Facebook Love Music? The Data Says…Not Sure

Here are some quick stats about Facebook and music that basically add up to this – Fans and artists love to connect on Facebook, but not for spending money on music related items.

1. Music-related pages are about a third of the top 20 pages on the site (Inside Facebook)
2. Music-related pages are fourth most likely to be “liked” (HubSpot Blog)
3. BUT – there is only one app in the top 50 apps on the site that is music related (All Facebook)

Apps are where money is made on the social network itself, and the music industry needs to learn how to better take advantage of them. Even RootMusic, the one music-related app in the top 50, simply turns into an app what we already knew – that music fan pages were very popular on Facebook.

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Indie Artists: Keep Your Social Media Profiles Unified

We receive many submissions from independent artists and bands who want to be featured, but they leave out important information about their projects. So we research their website, blogs and social media profiles to see if we can put the missing pieces together in a timely matter.

Unfortunately, we regularly find that bands are inconsistent with updating their social network accounts. Their websites offer outdated information or just don’t offer the basic information a fan or news/feature writer would be looking for.

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One Artist’s Saga of Getting Added to Apple Ping

I have been assisting my good friend, legendary blues harmonica and sax player Jimmy Z, with his online presence and marketing for him and his band, ZTribe. Though he has recorded and toured with Rod Stewart, Eurythmics, Tom Petty, Etta James and others, and has worked in nearly 1000 sessions, he still struggles to make a living as an independent musician. So I help him any way I can. Right now, he has a presence on MySpace, Facebook, Reverbnation, Soundcloud and we’re building our Amazon page as well as a page on the sixtyone.com.

I have worked with Apple and it’s reps over the years and have learned that their only interest is self-interest. So when iTunes Ping was announced last September, I treated it with great suspicion, but also realized that I should get Jimmy on it, because you have to explore every opportunity that seems worthwhile. And having any leverage on iTunes is an opportunity that should not be missed.

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Everyone Is Lying To You On Facebook

I mean this in a tongue in cheek way somewhat.

The reason I say this is because of this question I got one time on a karate forum (More about THAT experience later)

“What are your thoughts on pushing information out to people on the web?”

This is a fair question but it details a common error when it comes to social networking. Social networks are not I repeat NOT TV, radio and press.

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Relationships Are The New Distribution

Social Media superhero Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on the basics – the 4 P’s of marketing(product, price, place, and promotion) and talked about how many people don’t spend enough time on their Product, and try to make up for it in Promotion. If that doesn’t work they try competing on Price. But rarely is much time spent thinking about Place.

This got me thinking about how music is marketed, and how absolutely right he is. A lot of indie musicians tend to spend the majority of their time on Product and Promotion, with Price usually being the standard $0.99 per track. The common mistake is in thinking that Place, which is your distribution, is taken care of once you’ve gotten your music up on iTunes or Bandcamp.

I think we need to start thinking of distribution as more than just where people download or buy your music from, and maybe shuffle a few P’s around in the process.

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Simple website builder for artists launches while declaring end of recession

Canadian startup Sayvee has just launched a simple and easy way for musicians to create a professional website without the need to be a geek. Their launch is combined with an announcement declaring the official end of the recession and a creative Facebook contest.

Not often do you find a technology company with a lot of personality. Sayvee is changing that by turning the heads of their biggest competitors with their tongue-in-cheek promo videos and their latest contest on Facebook where they declared July 1, 2010 as the official last day of the recession.

“We decided that it was time for the recession to be over,” commented Steve Devries, co-founder and photographer. “We’ve been building Sayvee for the past 2 years and figured that since people are doing things like selling stars and space on the moon that we could claim a date for the end of the recession.”

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'BandPage' On Facebook; Is This What Will Replace MySpace?!

MySpace, once the best place for anything music related. If you wanted to hear audio from your favourite musician or discover up and coming talent, MySpace was the place to go.

These days however, MySpace is full of musicians promoting to each other. And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it led more sales, but the truth is most of the people on MySpace are only in it for themselves. The ‘real people’, the potential fans, have more or less all left, choosing to instead use the multimillion pound social networking website Facebook.

Those forward thinking musicians instantly jumped onto the Facebook train, hoping to pick up fans with their newly set up ‘Facebook fan page’. But while Facebook has allowed musicians to create their own fan pages from near the beginning, it’s never been a complete music solution… That is until now!

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5 Tips to Increase Sales in this Failing Music Industry

1. Personal Communication
FACT: Social Media is a great “Keep In Touch” tool. With social networking sites like Twitter, Myspace and Facebook now giving fans 100% access to artists, many aren’t sure what to say or how to keep their fans actually engaged and coming back. The key to this is understanding how to personally communicate with your fans. Ariel Hyatt wrote a great article that breaks down easy ways to create that emotional connection with your fans. (http://musicsuccessinnineweeks.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-i-learned-about-marketing-from-new.html)

2. Mix It Up – Try Variations of Content
Event blast, and promo tweets are not the end-all answer to everything. Try mixing your content up a bit!

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