How To Really Get Your Music On Blogs

Posted on 24 June 2010 by zach

GETTING YOUR MUSIC ON BLOGS

Having been recently popped out of the Penn State toaster, Chris Bracco has decided to serve up his Business Management skills by creating a comprehensive play-by-play handbook to help DIY musicians learn how to effectively promote their music in the world of blogs. His handbook is completely free and is available as an e-book online in PDF form of 22 pages.

The handbook in its original form was first established on a blog as a series of updated posts, but now Chris has compiled his blog into one easy to read anecdote titled, “HOW TO REALLY GET YOUR MUSIC ON BLOGS.” The e-book focuses on how to creatively get blog managers on board and feature one’s music on their site. Serving as a mentor to non-expert networkers, Chris Bracco charitably offers his tricks of the trade on several key marketing issues to aid musicians with sharpening their marketing publicity.

DEFINE YOURSELF

Chris’s e-book follows a very organized and simple outline of ideas and strategies that Chris creates through a business and marketing approach. Chris’s knowledge of the DOs and DON’Ts of the industry is very transparent and can be helpful for all skill levels of networking experience. Chris starts off his marketing spreadsheet by suggesting that the musician be able to list and define different characteristics about their music such as:

  • Personality
  • Hometown
  • (sub) Genre
  • Lifestyle & Interests
  • Fan Demographic

FINDING YOUR ADVANTAGE POINT(S)

All these categories, he suggests, will help the musician better understand what to search for in blogs and where they can reach out to like-minded bloggers; ultimately, producing a victory of being featured on a blog that will successfully promote the band/individual’s music. Chris encourages musicians to figure out how their personalities reflect diversity and then encourages them to apply their diverse personality traits to diverse (“non-music) blogs which can prove to be just as effective as music blogs because similar interests are there and waiting to be connected.

“HOW TO REALLY GET YOUR MUSIC ON BLOGS” attempts to compile various networking tools that will help you assist your ability to impact the music blogging world. His example of how this type of networking can be linked reads as:

If, for example, you enjoy exercising regularly, it would be a great idea to search for blogs related to staying fit. Maybe you can present the blogger with the idea of writing a post about listening to music while working out, and ask that your music be mentioned in the post. Targeting location-specific blogs is useful, too

Some crucial references that Chris suggests throughout his guide include: Google blog search, The Hype Machine, Captain Crawl, and Elbo.ws – all of which are can lend a helpful hand in generating music with a similar buzz.

IT’S A BLOG EAT BLOG WORLD!

Since the blogging world is always needing new material and rapidly becoming buzz-worthy, Chris emphasizes the importance of being keen enough to target blogs that appropriately match up with the characteristics (listed above) of your music so that the musician has a better chance and reason why the blog host should feature them on their site.

It’s a blog eat blog world out there and it’s not always as easy as it looks and you might not succeed your first couple of hits which is why Chris underlines the important of persistence. Musicians have to been to be persistent with showing their originality and following up with communicating their creative desires.

All in all, Chris Bracco’s resource “HOW TO REALLY GET YOUR MUSIC ON BLOGS” provides DIY musicians with a well-constructed, detailed, and easy to apply perspective on how they should pursue featuring their music on the buzz-worthy blogs they prefer and should definitely be consulted by any musician entering the blogosphere!

Download it here.

This post was written by Zach Frimmel. Catch more of his antics on Twitter.

P.S. If you are a musician looking to get their blogging game on, check out BandWPThemes, the new premium WordPress theme from Gen-Y Rock Stars. Become a platinum member today.

Why Blogging As A Musician Kicks Ass

Posted on 03 June 2010 by gregrollett

Update: BandWPThemes is now live. You can grab the Indie version for $27 and the Platinum version for $37. Learn more here.

WordPress Theme For MusiciansAs we continue to chat about blogging and WordPress this week for the pre-launch of BandWPThemes today Brett and I wanted to share a video on why blogging kicks ass.

Honestly I can relate blogging to just about every major success I have had online. This includes everything from partners to product launches to sponsors and everything in between. Really there is no better medium to share your ideas and thoughts and have a wide audience connect with you and share back.

As an artist looking to grow their music business, this is just as important. Many bands and artists think blogs and just news sections. Letting fans know about up-coming shows or features in a magazine or an interview or something.

While this can be the case, there is a lot more to being successful through the use of blogs and the WordPress platform. Here is a video we shot that talk about blogging and why it kicks ass to progress your music business.

Remember that BadnWPThemes goes live on Monday, June 7th. We will be having some really cool fast action bonuses for those that jump on board early. You can signup to the early bird list below and you will also get a copy of the top WordPress Plug-Ins for Musicians.

Bonus video:

There have been a ton of questions about getting setup. Even if you buy the theme and enroll in BandWPThemes. you have no idea what to do with it. Here is a video Brett shot that walks you through getting a domain, finding hosting and installing WordPress. The whole video is 10 minutes long and you can do it yourself in about 20 minutes or so.

Best watched in full screen mode.

Leave your comments and questions below. We are reading them all!

-Greg and Brett

P.S. Tomorrow I am going to reveal the theme as well as a video that shows you how quickly you can have your site up and looking good.

Music Marketing – Where Do I Start?

Posted on 28 September 2009 by gregrollett

Music Marketing as Content Marketing

photo by Pocheco

Sometimes the hardest step is the first. When you are a baby and trying to stand up for the first time, it’s pretty tough. Starting school, not so easy. Promoting your music, also difficult to get off the ground running.

Why?

There are so many directions to be pulled in. There are too many things to get done. Too many things on the to-do list and none produce immediate results. Spend 4-5 hours everyday for 2 weeks designing your website only to throw in Google Analytics to see that no one is coming to to the site. We are all limited by time and being indie musicians this is even more true, between working a day/night job, creating music, playing live and spending time building fans. You want to make the most of your time.

If you haven’t checked out the Gen-Y Rock Star Tool Kit, I suggest picking that up (it’s free) as one place to start. Below is what I suggested to one band that really had nothing done in the marketing department, but had a physical CD that sounds kick ass (tip 1 – don’t wait till your garage is full of CD’s to think about getting rid of them).

Step 1 – Setup Shop Online

Step 2 – Create Content

  • EPK (use Sonicbids or Reverb, or self host it – check out how Ford does this)
  • Bio / About – Tell us about your band, use keywords and content that is intriguing but also tells people what you band/music is about.
  • Videos – Not music videos, but band videos from in the studio, at practice, live shows, behind the scenes and shots of you just talking.
  • Pics – Host them on Flickr, title, describe and tag them properly.

Step 3 – Market Your Ass Off

  • Start connecting with bloggers asap. Give them something to write about, build up your inbound links and think about delivering exclusive content for every interview, feature or guest post. Think of this as getting in the Source or Rolling Stone 2.0.
  • Get people to listen to your music by paying them. Use Grooveshark and Jango and test real songs, get feedback and see your fanbase demographics.
  • Start looking at stats and tracking your progress (Google Analytics, RockDex, BandMetrics, Su.pr, etc)
  • Play live, get emails, promote to them, ask them for sales, guest blog, shoot more videos, write more content, give your fans cool stuff, ask them to promote your stuff (affiliates), leverage other bands and networks (JV Partners), play live some more, be aggressive, advertise on networks that you can target your ass off (Facebook, Grooveshark, Jango, Google Content Network, etc), sell stuff other than music-  make it exclusive – make it good and repeat as much as possible.

Rock Star Tip – No one is going to work harder than you in the indie game. Those who hustle the hardest, win. This list is really just the starting ground, but if you only did the things in this post, and did them well, you can make a living as a musicians and content producer.

A Content Producer?

That’s right. Even Jay-Z said his music sales were the lowest income stream in his portfolio. But he uses that to leverage everything else he does. For you this can mean many things from live shows, to merch, to membership sites, to DVD’s to books, custom songwriting, acting, producing, advertising revenue, affiliate income or anything your imagination comes up with.

As a Gen-Y Rock Star, your job as a musician and a marketer is to produce content worth sharing and monetize it.

I hope this post is a start to get you in the right direction as quick as possible. The best advice is to do something. You can read books, blogs, take courses and everything else, but taking action will always prevail. You may make mistakes, but you are progressing. Just like that first step as a baby or your first day of school. Look at how you walk now and well, you are reading blogs, so school did a little bit of good!

What parts of the plan do you need help with? Let me know in the comments.

-Greg Rollett