Attention the Independent Artist
NOBODY CARES SHOW Jay and Dirty Bob Show
Monitoring the successes and failures of your Facebook campaigns is the key to learning,tweaking and making improvements. Bitly is a valuable tool that will give you a birds-eye-view of the interests and levels of engagement of your fan base.
Bitly, formerly known as bit.ly, is a URL shortener that also helps you track info about your fans. Let’s say you want to post a link to your blog on Facebook. Normally you would just paste in the link:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/really-cool-article.html
But if you shorten that link with bit.ly first, it will look like this:
http://bit.ly/noDWX7
Your new URL will be trackable and you’ll be able to view:
* how many people clicked your link.
* what time of day you get the most interactions.
* the time zones and geographical location of folks who opened your link.
* lots of other useful info.
Are your fans mostly in the US or Europe? Do they use Macs or PCs? Are they night owls or morning people? All these bits of data can help you construct a better promotional campaign for Facebook. Use bitly to get to know your fans and improve the way you interact with them.
By Molly King
Point & Shoot: Using Your Smartphone Video Camera
These days the cameras on our smartphones are pretty dang handy. It’s easy to grab your phone, pull up the camera app, press record and then share online. Sure, there are some flashy and spendy options to choose from for making fancy videos but sometimes it’s not about getting the highest quality video out there, but just getting your content out there, quickly. Whether you’re showing a behind-the-scenes look at you writing your most recent song or a short tour of the inside of your bus, quickly getting fresh content up for your fans is key and the video cam on your phone is useful for making quick vids on the fly.
Show Fans You’re Human
If you’re strapped for ideas on what to video record and share online, remember that fans love to know what goes on behind the scenes. Mix up the usual gig listings by showing them that you’re human and let them have a glimpse of your everyday life. Here’s a few thoughts: Sneak peak of your new album cover artwork, a tour of your studio, 30 second interview with your drummer, a 30 second clip of your dog doing that cool trick he does, a quick tour of your closet showcasing your skinny jean or Doc Marten collection, or a quick vid of your extensive Justin Bieber poster collection.
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YouTube’s a great place to post and watch videos (duh), but it’s also the perfect forum for you to provide quick links to your site, your album on iTunes, or your one-stop CD Baby page. What better time to provide someone with a direct route to purchase your music than when they’re already listening to your songs and/or staring at your pretty face?
If you can keep people in the moment, you’re much more likely to keep them engaged. Folks are finicky. Some of them won’t even bother to do a Google search for your music, or they’ll mean to and then forget two seconds later. Take the work out of it for them. Provide a link to more of your content, and keep them focused on you and your music.
YouTube has become the primary way that music fans find new music online. This is why it’s also important that your YouTube channel represents your music in an attractive and engaging way.
by Chris R @CDBaby.com
Not everything has to be a major productionSometimes less is more. Next time you want to create video content, don’t stress about complicated concert shoots with multiple cameras and capturing good audio. Don’t hire a director and spend $1000 on props. Instead, think small. Set up a camera wherever it’s convenient and try one of the following:
* Record a 45 second rant in your backyard about something that annoys you. Politics? Banjos? Noisy breathers?
* Do a mini-interview while driving to your next tour-date about the meaning behind your best song.
* Sit on the couch and talk about where and why you’ve gotten stuck writing that half-finished love ballad, and what your writer’s block says about the condition of modern man.
* Recommend your top-5 favorite new tunes by other artists, but include one that you actually hate. Say something about why you love each song, and make your fans guess which one is the bad egg.
* Highlight the best or worst moments from your last show. Maybe your fans have seen you play a hundred times, but they might never have heard YOUR take on the performance.
Obviously none of these are prescriptions. You can mix and match or come up with your own casual, silly, easy-to-film idea. Just make it short, entertaining, and a unique experience that fans won’t get by listening to your albums or attending your shows.
If you’ve posted any casual, day-in-the-life kinds of videos, please feel free to post a link in the comments section below!
(SEO = Search Engine Optimization)
I know, I’m as guilty as many of you. You’ve spent hours creating and editing a video. You’ve finally got it uploaded to YouTube, and the last thing you feel like doing is making sure you’ve chosen the perfect title and tags so your video is easy to find. But why put in all that work in the first place if nobody’s gonna view your video? I’ve outlined a few basic practices below that will allow you to optimize your YouTube videos so they get more views online. It doesn’t take much time and it will ensure you get better ranking in both YouTube and Google when people search on your keywords.
But, first: How does YouTube rank videos?
There are 5 important elements that YouTube uses to rank videos
While you don’t have much control over “number of views” or “rating” you do have control over title, description and tags. So that’s where you need to concentrate your optimizations.
Note: It’s also important to remember that your videos will be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and Bing as well as YouTube’s search engine. So there are many opportunities for a well-tagged video to be found online.
Your video title is probably the most important element that you have direct control over. While tags and yourdescription should NOT be neglected, you’re going to get the most SEO value out of optimizing your title.
When people search for a specific phrase in YouTube, the results include videos based on the tags that go along with the videos.
So, if you tag your video with “purple banana monster,” chances are you will come up first for that result (providing there are not a lot of other videos tagged with “purple banana monster”). So the trick with tags is to use unique keyword phrases that you think people would use to search for your video. Make sure to include your artist name and any misspellings of your band name. If your video is a music video you can try adding descriptive phrases like “mind-melting metal” or “Texas blues folk.” There’s no limit to tags, so add a bunch. Chances are, it will be hard to get a good ranking for one-word phrases like “blues” or “rock.”
Your description should explain exactly what is being shown in the video. Keep in mind only about 25-30 characters will be visible in your YouTube search results, so pack in all the good stuff at the beginning. Give people a good reason to check out your video. Try something attention-grabbing that also speaks to the content:
“You won’t believe this . . .”
“The weirdest music you’ve ever heard”
“Stop, Rock, and Roll!”
Note: It’s also of value to put a link in the first sentence or two if you are trying to drive traffic to your website or elsewhere.
by CdBaby
Truth be told, Facebook isn’t customizable, design-wise. But there are a few ways to make your page stand out from all those other blue-and-white Pages.
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by CDbaby
I recently discovered the Twitter account of an artist whose albums had spent some serious time in my stereo during the early 2000′s. I was eager to see what he’d been up to, because his recorded output had slowed towards the later part of the decade, and though he was/is somewhat well-known, news about his current projects was surprisingly hard to come by on the web. I hit the “follow” button late one night, looked forward to hearing about what the guy had going, and hit the hay.
When I checked my Twitter feed the next morning, I was confronted with an almost solid block of tweets from this artist, looking bullyish as they surrounded the single tweets of the other people I’m connected with. I don’t follow a ton of people, but enough to assure that I’ve always got a nice level of diversity in my stream. This guy had thrown off the balance in my delicate Twitter ecosystem, and it was messing with my flow. I thought that maybe he was having an inspirational day (he kept saying that he was), but that quickly turned into an inspirational week. I eventually made the executive decision to unfollow him, thus restoring the peace to my ultimately unharmed stream.
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