What I Learned From Justin Bieber

Baby, baby, baby oh…Ok I’ll stop right there.  So the story goes that Justin Bieber and his mom uploaded videos of Justin singing at a talent competition on YouTube in 2007.  The next thing you know he’s having a meeting with Usher and on his way to stardom.  Wow!  That is one crazy story!  So anyone can do the same thing and just wait for that major record label to call them,right? Lets just say the odds are not good!

Instead of kids getting their new favorite artists from pop radio, kids discover music on the web. We live in a fast instant gratification world and there is a vast amount of information.  Which means for artists that your 15 minutes of fame (AKA Vanilla Ice) is now 15 seconds of fame.  So as artists, how do we use internet marketing in a way to get real results?

Well lets go back and look at Justin Bieber and break that story down.

A.     Justin Bieber has talent and is a good looking kid

B.     He focused on a specific website where his potential fans (i.e. 10-18 year old girls) already were.  YouTube is the second most used search engine next to Google!

C.     He used an already popular song (i.e. Ne YO) to grab the YouTube user’s attention.

D.    He moved quickly after there was a fan base to get constant songs, pictures, video’s out to them as fast as possible. I believe that more songs of average quality are more valuable in this market than one amazing song! (Man that really hurt to say that!)

E.     Justin had an interesting story that made the media take notice.

F.     Lightning struck and he’s making the most of it.

G.     I’m still not convinced that this wasn’t a record label manufacturing a rag’s to rich’s story.  Even so, it doesn’t matter because it worked!

Less about Justin Bieber and more about You

Let’s make this less about Justin and more about you. No matter what website you use that website has a shelf life. Remember when MySpace was the greatest thing ever? Facebook and YouTube at some point will be replaced so throwing your career to the internet fates is not a wise thing to do. Instead stop and think about who your potential fan base is? If you’re a finger style guitarist then 40 - 60 year old men are right in your target market. Find websites where those people are already hanging out and focus your efforts there. There are even websites for certain religious denominations, so if you’re a Christian band then go find the websites that you know people will identify with you.  Check out shoutlife.com

One of the mistakes that I made as an artist is that I tried to sign my band up for every website in the world in the hopes of being at the top of the search engine listings.  Here is what happens when you do that: you end up spending all of your time signing up and loading music and images when you could be focusing in on the right two or three websites and constructing a plan that would build as you go and not just be Facebook “Likes”, but real fans.

The Benefits Of Video

Try to use video as much as you can! Honestly, this is something that I need to start working into my blog! These days people don’t like to read so try to use video as much as you can. It’s amazing what you can do with a $200.00 flip cam and imovie. (Every band or artist better have one!)

Your Website Needs To Be Your Anchor.  Find ways to funnel traffic from your Facebook, Youtube, or whatever it is back to your website. Example: post a few pictures on Facebook as a teaser.  Then post,  “To see the rest of the photo’s click on this link”, which takes viewers back to your webpage. Always, always, always make your website more of a priority than your Facebook page.

There Is No A+B=Record Deal!

There is so much to cover on internet marketing, so in the coming weeks expect more on this topic as we are just scratching the surface. Remember there is no A+B=Record Deal, so what works for you in internet marketing and what works for someone else maybe be all together different.

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