The Skinny
During a conversation with my buddy Zander Bleck, I gave my opinions on how twitter and social media can really contribute a positive & productive enhancement to his music career in terms of building his relationships with fans. His producer RedOne is starting to use twitter and I wanted to give some advice to the both of them on how to combine all of these tools. I thought it would be a good idea to create a post for him and the future of artists that would like to learn how to use these tools to establish their online brand.
So we’ve all heard all about how Social Media can better your business. Travel agencies like JetBlue, Southwest, Carnival, & Hertz have grounded clients. Retail companies such as Best Buy, American Apparel, & Whole Foods connect with consumers.
It seems as though everyone is speaking about these businesses, but never talk about the Entrepreneur artists that are seeking to sustain their disrupted industry. However, with the innovation of these cool tools, provided is a limitless opportunity to engage with your community. Here are some amazing resources and tips in a producer / artist scenario.
Establish Social Identity
Mostly everyone knows that you need your Twitter, Facebook, and I guess a MySpace (that you do NOTHING with). MySpace is basically only good for a landing page + SEO. That is it. The trick with niche’ markets is to find their niche’ social networks. For example in the music industry these are the best social networks to join according to Mashable who I really really trust.
It seems like a lot of maintenance, however think of it as every time you go out and network you can reach about 100x the reach + you save gas, traffic, time, and it is just really much more effective if you balance it correctly! That is the key. Balance! Getting involved in these networks each involves a similar approach. Listen, Engage, Converse, and Listen. It is that simple so keep doing it.
Know-ledge your Tools!
Having a Big Bertha over a 1970’s wooden driver from Grandpop should not decide how talented an individual is, however, it gives a great edge on your game! Harnessing and keeping up to date with promotional tools is a great way to keep a cost-effective and community driven experience. Mashable provided a 5 tools for Musicians blog entry that is quite enhancing to your twitter/facebook capabilities.
Here is a diagram from Tom Williams blog the Hit Singularity Blog. It is quite overwhelming, but that is why you need to quality manage and delegate these services to a company like Prince Consulting & Services or some other social media firm.
Build that Strategy
This is the hard part since every strategy is uniquely different because of the circumstances and foundation that is in place. Some people have their communities in different places, while each community likes specific things. This is vague, but let me run some examples of specific strategies that work for these specific people.
Basics of Music SEO and Social Media
• Keyword report from Google keyword tool, Wordtracker questions tool, and SEO Book keyword tool
• Focus on longtail and fat belly opportunities
• Set up music based affiliates (Amazon Store and Ticketmaster if possible)
• Create a media buy. Spend a moderate amount on content development
Band Specific SEO and Music Social Media:
• Creative Commons licensed photography and videos with the band. Search the Creative Commons with this tool.
• Members of the band (bios, interesting news stories, or explanation of lyrics)
• Album lyrics and band tours can anchor your content development and social media strategy for your music messageboard.
Listening Strategy for Music SEO and Social Media
• Set up Google alerts (perhaps a Netvibes and/or filterbox for the band and related bands)
• Set up a Google feed
• Connect a Friend Feed account to your Google feed, message board, and blog
• Create a widget to host the friend feed on the blog and message boards
• Aggregate your best content, can help point users as well as Google in the right direction.
• Aggregate the best content on the web
• Create a community of interaction and engagement on the message boards
• Get a a free link of ILL can help your music marketing and seo
• Get reciprocal links from related web portals and blogs
• Create original artwork and badges (widgets)
• Linking from external platforms via guest posts or guest interviews on technology or music blogs can help increase your Google juice.
• Bolds and italics can help emphasize your point.
• Linking out to artist related news and webpages can help you rank as well (remember this can include all forms of content related to the band or artist).
• The three biggest concepts: internal site structure (ie linking to your own stuff in a themed way), keyword usage, and getting links from outside.
Application Development
iLike artists can create an iPhone app through their iLike artist account. This looks like the the easiest, most basic, and inexpensive of the three options. Your app automatically integrates with the media content in your iLike artist profile. Currently it’ll cost you a one-time $195 to activate your app. You can choose to make your app free with the clause that iLike may place ads in it, or you can sell your app in a 50/50 split with iLike. View details and video demo.
Mobile Roadie // iphone apps for anyone from Brock Batten on Vimeo.
Mobile Roadie is a flexible service geared for musician iPhone app creation. Their app features are interactive and viral. They include deep social network integration with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Fans have the ability to stream content, comment, upload photos, and purchase tickets and merchandise through the app. A band can sync their updates with their RSS feeds and social-network accounts, or they can update them through Mobile Roadie’s content management system. Their current basic pricing for musicians is $499 set-up + $29/month (covers the first 1,000 installs of the app each month—subsequent installs cost 1 cent each). Extras include “push notification” which uses geotagging to target fans in a specific region. If you opt for Mobile Roadie then please use our referrer code virtual or this sign-up link. Watch video demo. View apps created with Mobile Roadie in the App Store.
Kyte is an online and mobile video platform providing on-demand content delivery and feature-rich application development for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Nokia devices. Their mobile app frameworks page details the key features, add-on modules, customizations, and monetization possibilities of their apps. The modules include RSS, Twitter, multimedia chat, content streaming, downloads, comments/ratings, fan media uploads, events, location-aware services, games, fan club sign-ups, and mCommerce. Kyte no doubt offers an immense customizable feature set and it is presumably more expensive than the aforementioned alternatives. You have to inquire for exact pricing, but I believe that they charge on a monthly basis for their service at different levels based on features and usage. Update—I received an email response from Kyte with the following details: Kyte iPhone Applications are available as an add-on component to the Kyte Platform and cost an additional monthly fee of $600 per app. The Kyte Platform tiers start at $500/month (plus set-up) and go up into the thousands. Kyte is a power solution for musicians with a massive fanbase.
Did I mention that these services handle the submission process to the Apple iTunes Store for you? Please share how you’re using these for your band etc. Plus, what other platforms am I missing? Update—we were informed about a new 4th platform via the comment section below. Here’s the 411:
MobBase is an iPhone app creation platform designed for musicians and brought to you by the collaborative remix community MixMatchMusic. MobBase launched today and its options enabling musicians to connect with their mobile mob include streaming audio, RSS, Twitter integration, videos via YouTube, photo albums via Picasa, artist info, events, ticketing, and merch. It looks affordable too—their current pricing for free apps is $20 set-up + $15/month (covers the first 500 installs each month—an additional 1,000 installs costs an extra $5). For paid apps, the set-up fee is the same, the monthly rate starts at $20/month, and you keep all the revenue from the sales. Digital distribution company IODA has partnered with MobBase as the app solution for its artists and labels. More detailed coverage is at RWW. View apps created with MobBase in the App Store.
Beyond these cheaper alternatives, you can always build your own iPhone or Android application from an international company like Muhammad .
Live Sessions
You have to share with the people every now and then what is going on, so I would highly suggest someone ALWAYS video taping with a Flip HD or that new Kodak jawn! If you have a RedCam that is okay too! This is the good footage though that you have fully edited for b-roll or website goodies. You need to get on the Live streaming applications like
- USTREAM.com
- Livestream.com
- Vokal.com
- Qik.com
These tools create an engagement that no fan in the past would have ever experienced. The difference is the realtime activity. A fan now can really appreciate and anticipate something that they felt part of while it was being created. There is much more value. Why dont you tell me? 
Measurements & Analytics
You gotta know the metrics! This helps you point out who, why, and where your community is coming from. Literally. From these statistics, you can build a strategy on how you are going to build. Literally. You see what has worked, what will work, and test what could potentially work so you can make sure it works! Get it? Got it? Google Analytics! It is free! However if you want a more premium service you can use tools like Twitter Analytics or other online Analytics Tools.
Evolve
Just keep chugging at it. Testing, experimenting, testing, and experimenting are the techniques that work best. New tools will come and go, but you need to make sure to be consistently qualifying. Pretty soon Augmented Reality will come along and we just need to take the next step. John Mayer did a great example for his last CD when he allowed his fans to become involved in the music video if they purchased a CD.
