Band Promotion for every musican is the key to success. To sell your music online, promote your band, promote your music or just showcase your band to the world you need to be able to promote your music with success.
As you well know, blogs have been all the rage for the last few years and rightly so. Blogs provide the reader with current news and content rather than some of the out of date and stale content that may appear on a lot of websites. If you are a musician or have your own band then starting a blog could help promote your music. Band Promotion is difficult enough and this is just one way to help in promoting your band.
Blogs also rank highly in the search engines for a number of reasons, most notably for their current and relevant content. There are, however, several key elements to creating a successful blog about your band or music as outlined below. You are competing with thousands of other bloggers within your subject area of music so you need to be different and follow each of the key steps as outlined.
Do your research! You must know what is already out there in terms of competition. You can do this by typing in your blog subject matter into the search engines and seeing what appears in terms of blogs. Also, search the many blog directories to see who is already writing about your topic of interest. Use the Google keyword search tool to see what people are searching for each month in relation to your topic. For example, you would be best suited to focus on a topic that people are searching for and attracts more than 50,000 searches a month. When it comes to music, you could write about band promotion which has over 70,000 searches for these keywords each month. Or maybe write about how to sell your music online or a related topic that people want information about.
Find Your Niche! As already mentioned there are thousands of blogs out there on the internet about music, bands etc. They key is writing about a niche topic and then you will be more likely to attract a targeted audience. To try and compete with an already established blog that has high page rankings, a strong viewer base, and lots of existing content is going to just get you frustrated. Focus on one key area of music or playing in a band and you will create your own loyal fan base who will crave informative articles.
Think about your blog title, domain name, description and content. Take your time in thinking about a catchy but relative domain name. It is very difficult to find the domain name you want as most one, two and three word top level domain names have already been registered. You can buy one of these top level domain names from the owner but often the requested purchase price is unrealistic and just too costly. Also, try to get a popular domain name extension. Try to get the keywords in your domain name and blog title. This will help in the search engine rankings.
If you already have your own website then create a blog using your own domain name. Why? If you create a blog from your own band or music website then you will provide readers with the opportunity to explore and navigate to other pages on your website. This will also help in branding, brand exposure and providing one link for fans to find you.
If you don’t your own website and are not keen to start your own blog then try starting a blog on one of the top music network sites such as MyBandMate or MySpace. Both provide tools for musicians to promote their music in many ways for free and one is in the form of a blog. This way you will already have an established audience to read your blog. I would recommend doing this even if you do go ahead with your own independent blog. The more exposure for your band then the more band promotion you will achieve.
With your own independent blog it is important to develop keyword rich content with the keywords appearing in the title, description, first paragraph without going overboard. You will be penalised if you just “overload” your pages and articles with too many of the targeted keywords. You just don’t need to do it and Google is aware of all the tricks webmasters try to use when it comes to achieving high page rankings.
It’s all about the content! Readers will return to your blog if you provide them with informative and valuable content about the subject you are promoting. You are reading this article most likely because you want to start your own blog or are looking for ways to promote your music. As a result, if you gain some valuable information from this article then there is a good chance that you would return again to my blog to read other articles.
The content needs to be informative and relative. You will lose your reader just as quickly as you got them if you have nothing to offer. There is just too much competition out there so you must add top quality content. If you are not sure what to write about then read other blogs, not to copy their articles but to get ideas. There is nothing wrong with seeking out ideas and then writing your own article with a different twist or adding new material. If your readers like your blog they are likely to refer it to their friends which will increase your subscriber base.
Provide some incentive to get your reader to join your blog newsletter or RSS feed. One of the trends in recent times is to give away eBooks when someone signs up. You can create a 5 or 10 page eBook about your niche topic. It has to be catchy enough to get the reader to give up their name and email for it.
Promote your site via bookmarking. Some of the most popular sites include Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Jumptags, stumbleupon and many more but these are the top ones. You will be accused of spamming if you constantly promote and add your own content or site so get some of your friends to help you out with this. These sites will track your IP address and can permanently shut down your account so you will need to respect their terms of use. You can find that these “bookmarks” will give you some promotion on the first few pages of the search engines for your keywords.
Use RSS feeds. RSS feeds provide the reader with an option to receive updates when you add new content to your blog. Once again you will need to submit regular articles or news to your site and it needs to be worth reading to keep the reader subscribing to your blog. I have subscribed to blogs, newsletters and sites before only to be bombarded with emails selling products. I quickly went to the “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email.
Encourage readers to submit comments about the various blog entries to submit. Your readers are there because they have an interest in your topic so try to create a bond with them in making them feel a part of your blog. If they leave a comment be sure to respond otherwise you will find that they are less likely to write a comment again.
You will need to market your blog. This can be done by submitting your blog to the various blog directories or by writing articles and submitting them to article directories with an active link back to your blog. Submit a free press release about your blog, get into related forums and include an active link. Be sure not to spam or just sell your blog as you will be expelled from the forum, be discrete in promoting your blog in these forums.
Form joint ventures with fellow bloggers or websites. Invite other bloggers to submit content to your site and in return you can submit content to their blogs and therefore cross promote. Most bloggers will follow up on a lead that will increase their exposure. As long as you are not in direct competition and only complement another blog then this can be a valuable option. You will also gain more content for your blog.
Make your blog stand out! Add other forms of media to the site. Add MP3s, videos, photos or even an audio interview. There are plenty of cheap ways to add this rich media content to your site. Make sure that they provide relative content that your readers are craving.
Fresh Content! I can’t state enough how much your blog needs to contain fresh, informative and related content. It will take some work to maintain a dynamic and successful blog so devote at least an hour a week to working on your blog. Improve the appearance, promote it, add new content or pursue partnerships.
You can make money from your blog by adding Google Adsense, affiliate links or generating income from advertising on your blog. You will only gain interest from advertisers if you generate a significant number of hits each day. If your goal is to promote your music or band then don’t lose focus of this by distracting your readers. Good luck in promoting your music or band.
To promote your band or sell your music online for free you should visit MyBandMate.com for more great tips!
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