Bands are a dime a dozen. Garage Band in commonplace and ProTools is more affordable than the mics to plug into it. How do you stand apart from the competition?

The answer is in your brand.

Personal branding is the act of working people acting as brands. It has come of age very strongly in the last 2 years since I have been online. I have been blogging for 2 years trying to find my brand, my voice and an audience that is different than the millions of blogs that spring up every week.

I worked at this blogging thing for 2 years to find a niche that I could be unique, a thought leader and someone that people turn to, either on the search engines, in their feed readers or on social network when people are looking for Gen-Y marketers, music marketing and social media professionals. Everyday I am running to sites, blogs, networks and communities to comment, reach out, add thoughts and suggestions to help my personal brand.

What are you doing to enhance your brand, your image and your reach online beyond your music?

Music Branding Action Plan

• Make a list of associated things that your music may be a by-product of – gardening, relaxing on the beach, romance , gangster movies – whatever. These are the things that make you as an artist special.
• Then look to find sites where you can find places for your music to fit in. Whether it be reviews, a feature or a music player on their site.
• Look for these sites on search engines like Google Blog Search, Technorati, Google News, Twitter Search and AllTop.
• Look for sites that deal with music and sites that have nothing to do with music. The thing here is that if you find a site with passionate readers, that are not bombarded with music reviews or new artists to check out, you will stand out amongst their normal posts, pages and get heard and seen.
• Be sure to have a value proposition for the author whether it be splitting the mailing list from people that sign-up to your promo, a link on your site, flyers at your merch booth or sponsored content for your network.
• Repeat, everyday, for as long as you are trying to promote yourself online.

To read up more on personal branding check out Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog. For more on listening and getting involved in Social Conversations read Chris Brogan’s Blog. Both have worked hard to be in their position. Through networking, guest posting, rigorous content creation and consistency, they are now 2 of the largest players in the online world.

How are you branding your band? Let us know in the comments or send me an email to see how we can help you get on track.

Catch you later Rock Stars.

(photo by Matthew Field)