This would be a good practice when you first name yoru band to see if your desired user name is already taken.  Also, if you have the budget it would be a big time saver to let them register your user name on these sites.

Social Metrics Pro Plugin For WordPress

There are times when we get overloaded trying to keep up with all the social websites. Sometimes you decide to take a stand. You would rather be a solid pressence on a few sites, instead of a no show on many. How do you choose which social sites to focus on? You can use a plugin cal Social Metrics Pro that allows yo to track all of your tweets, posts, pages, etc and see which ones were the most popular and where they were popular (which shows you where you can focus your energy).

Once you install the Social Metrics Pro plugin, you will be able to track tweets, likes, +1s, Stumbles, Diggs and LinkedIn shares for all your posts. You’ll be able to do this conveniently from within your WordPress admin area.

The best thing if you just have one website it’s only $27 and if you have multiple sites is onlt $47. Check it out at socialmetricspro.com

As many of you know Cyber PR® is a hybrid of Internet Marketing, Social Media and PR. I am an avid Internet Marketing student and I gather the nuggets I learn from my studies for musicians.

For many years, I’ve attended internet marketing retreats and seminars; a favorite of mine was a two-day intensive course run by the incredible marketer, Ali Brown.

The course was a whirlwind, and the core principles I learned were both basic and critically important.

There are three ways to increase your income:

1. Increase your number of clients (fans).

2. Increase the frequency of purchase, how often your fans buy from you. (and you’d better have more than just music to sell).

3. Increase the amount of money that you charge.

Okay, none of these three things is brain surgery, but from a musician’s perspective, it brings up some interesting points.   In my last article about Internet marketing, I point out that music sold online cannot be treated like a diet product. So, marketing music from a straight-up traditional Internet marketing approach is, in my opinion, not entirely possible. The reason why I think this is: Products that sell very well online tend to solve people’s problems.  (Like Losing weight or making more money). I am captivated by how musicians can use some of these basic principles, to increase their own bottom line in the digital space. I’m going to break each one of the three principles down from a musician’s perspective, and my next three posts here will focus on each one.

This blog post will focus on #1.

So How Do You Increase your number of clients (fans)?

I am always shocked when musicians I work for at Cyber PR®, are desperate to reach more and more potential fans without really focusing on the fans that they already have. These fans don’t need to be found, because they are already your fans.

Studies have proven that it is much harder to make a new client and get them to purchase something than it is to get a client that already knows you and trusts you to purchase from you over and over.

I always suggest that, in measuring fans, the best place to look is at your social networks and at your mailing list.

Your newsletter list is the only place where you can directly engage with your fans on your own terms.

Not Facebook’s terms, and not Twitter’s terms.

10 Fail-Safe Ways to Increase/ Engage With Your Fan base

Here are 10 fail-safe ways to increase / engage with your fanbase by pulling from fans that you already know and have who trust and like you!

1. Get serious about your newsletter.

Use Fanbridge.com or ReverbNation.com and send your newsletter one time per month.  Track your effectiveness by monitoring your open rates.

2. Mine your inbox and outbox for names and addresses to add.

Ask all of your friends if it’s OK to add them to your list, otherwise you might be considered a spammer.

3. Bring a clipboard to each and every live appearance.

Invite people onto your mailing list with a raffle or giveaway from stage, and collect e-mail addresses.  During your performance, hold the CD up on stage and than give it away, you’ve just inserted a full commercial into your set without feeling “salesy” and you’ve excited one of your fans by giving them a gift.

4. Include a special offer on your home page with a free exclusive MP3 or video.

Use the Reverbnation Fan Collector or Free Download widgets to deliver it.

TIP: Make sure this download is not available anywhere.  Not streaming on your Facebook page.  Only on your website.

And of course it can also be available for purchase on your CD, but make sure that no one can get it anywhere else online. This will motivate people to sign up to your mailing list!

5. Follow 25 new people a week on Twitter.

6. Send out e-mails to your most engaged fans on Facebook and ask if you can have their e-mail addresses for your newsletter.  This is a bit arduous but the results will pay off.

7. Do the same with Twitter.

8. Start a blog and start sharing photos and stories and thoughts.

Note: you can also use Instagram to take pictures from your iPhone or Android phone, which can then be shared through Facebook and Twitter.

9. Start a podcast or a vodcast and interview other artists with big followings.  Ask them to share your podcast with their fans and followers.  It doesn’t have to be a big production.  It can be a small, informal video at YouTube.  Click here to see mine.   http://www.youtube.com/arielpublicity

10. Ask your fans to review your music at CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon.

Boost Your Spotify Profits Using Fanbridge Page

The FanBridge Fan Page Creator just got more social, thanks to our new Spotify Play Button integration. If you have music available on Spotify, you can add an album to your FanBridge Facebook tab and allow fans to stream music with Spotify. Using the Spotify module on a FanBridge Facebook tab allows artists to get the best of both services by embedding audio directly onto their Facebook page and collecting streaming royalties through Spotify. Make your music more shareable and get paid for it, too!

How does it work? Simple. Just add the Spotify Play Button module to your FanBridge Facebook Fan Page, search for your artist name, and select the album you’d like to include on the player. When fans go to play your tracks, Spotify will automatically launch. If your fans don’t have Spotify, they’ll be notified that they’ll need it to access the tracks and will be prompted to either open or download the app.

By the way the video now has over 11 million views.

Brilliant.

In the last podcast episode we talked about how Kevin Hart build his audience one person at a time. I wa so inspred by Kevin that I watched his “I’m a grown little man” performance (hillarious) and at the end he brought out his kids (which much of his material is based on). They are two adorable little children, with one to tired to eaven open her eyes to look at the audience. When he says, “C’mon let them see your face, she says “noooo” in a half awake voice thats just beyond cute. His son, is like any small male child fixated on a ceiling fan or something.

He ends his show by saying, “I wanted to you to see my babies and know that what I’m talking about it real..”

It added a whole new dimnesion to the performance. I already liked him becuase he just made me laugh, but now I resepcted him as I could see his obvious love for his children.

This is so different from the “reality” tv we see on cable. This was truly keeping it real, and it showed.

A fun version features clips from many different performances

He recently had an opportunity to play an arena, but opted to play many smaller shows (for what sounds like the same money). This is a more intimate setting, and one where he can connect with his fans directly. I bring this to you today in case you’re not happy with all the venues you play. Forget the surroundings, and focus on connecting with your audience. Hopefully you are connecting with your music, now take it to a more personal level.

When my band was flying high, we not only learned fan’s names, but we learned what they did, their hobbies. We truly wanted our fans to be “friends” and in the end they were. This way if I ran across someone knew and I found out they were into cars, I knew to get them introduced to Fred. If they were into pool, I needed to make sure they challenged Connie to a game. By doing this, and helping our audience make a connection with each other we then had people with something in common (their hobbies and OUR MUSIC) and so when the weekend rolled around they could plan to do something together. It was (as Seth Godin calls it ) a Tribe. This also took some of the pressure off the band as people were coming out to see each other in addition to the band.

As more people were coming out, then the club owner was happy. Then as you connect more with your Tribe, they will follow you outside of their “normal” hangouts and venues. Then club owners really like you as you are bring ing in an audience.

I love how Kevin talks about playing clubs where you are underpaid, and under appreciated. He stated he was there to steal the clubs audience. To connect them with them, and then have them follow him. He makes his connections through things like twitter, Facebook etc. You can see his website at http://www.khartonline.com/ You can hear the full interview at http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_272_-_kevin_hart

Twitter Contents Tools

If you are looking to hold a contest on Twitter, you might want to check out tweetaways.com This website is free ($3.50 if you want the advanced features) here is a video with some horrible audio but it explains how to use the system

Where is the Facebook Page?

Ali from sarcood.com asked, “Does the Marketing Musician website have a Facebook Page?” In the past I have dabbled with one. The problem is, I hate doing things poorly. I don’t use Facebook a ton for business stuff. It’s all family and friends, but on the other hand you guys are my friends, so I’ve setup a Facebook Page for the podcast. I say this up front that I’ll try to catch it a few times a week, but I apologize if you need a response within 24 hours. It should be a great place to share ideas for the show. To get in touch with me, use the info on the contact page.

Just started working on https://www.facebook.com/marketingmusician

1. Google (organic) 56.1%
It’s not surprising that Google’s number one, however, it’s pretty amazing that it accounts for more than half of our traffic. Plus, this is organic traffic, which means that it’s from searches and not from paid advertising (see “Google PPC” below).

2. Direct traffic 14.4%
We found it interesting that our second most popular source of traffic doesn’t come from ANYONE! This is from word-of-mouth and people actually typing “gigmasters.com” into the URL box, or by using a bookmark. For example, GigMasters members who use the site frequently.

3. Other websites 11.2%
There are hundreds of sites that make up this percentage, such as Ask.com, PR Web, One Wed, New York Times, Twitter, YouTube, and CD Baby.

4. Bing 5.4%
Who uses Bing? Apparently, a lot of people. Bill Gates must be proud of this one.

5. Yahoo 5.3%
Good ol’ Yahoo is still in the game representing a sizable chunk of our traffic.

6. Google (PPC) 5.2%
PPC stands for “pay-per-click.” In other words, we pay Google for this one.

7. Facebook 1.1%
We thought this would be higher, but it’s still impressive since Facebook isn’t a “search engine,” technically. Also, we found that Facebook’s conversion rate to actual gig requests ranked very high. That’s a whole other topic that we could get into in a future blog post.

8. AOL 0.7%
Yup, America is still online.

9. Search 0.6%
This includes Search.com itself and other miscellaneous search engines that aren’t Google and Yahoo.

If you have any questions, contact GigMasters anytime. They also recommend these video tutorials to help you get more gigs!

How to Check your Website stats

Login to your web host. I’ve used Host Gator for over 10 years. You will see what’s called a control panel (or cpanel) with all sorts of icons. Scroll down until you see the  “logs” section and click on the awstats icon. Your website will be lsited and a magnifying glass.

Click on the magnifying glass to view your stats

You can see things like how much traffic you got from sites liek Google and Bing. But you can also see what people typed into a search engine to bring them to your site. Here is a list of things that people entered to find this site:

Other Things I See:

As this site is still relatively new, I had a whopping 123 people read last weeks blog about moving to where the food is.

I can see what day of the week is the most popular on my site (not shocking its Monday the day that my podcast and email list are sent out).

You can see what pages people enter your site, as well as the last page they were on before they left.

You can see what browser people are using

You can also see how long people are on your site.

See What’s Working and Keep Doing It

When you see what’s working, you can see if its something that is brining quality traffic to your site, and continue to persue it.

1. Understand your audience. You can get to know them by starting a podcast, creating a poll with free websites like Polldaddy and Survey Monkey

2. Go to where yoru audience is.

3. Make friends with them.

4. After you have developed a relationship with them, tell them about your music.

Kevin Mulryne started a podcast about Yes Music. He went to the official website of Yes. He followed people that followed the band YES. He commented on their Facebook page. Slowly the Word of mouth got out about his podcast, and he is continuing to build an audience.  You can do the same thing with your band.

Think about your band and if there are bands that you sound like. You could go to the band’s twitter and Facebook account (because if their fans like their music – and you sound kind of like them – then they may like you.

Happy Easte everyone.

“I was reading American Songwriter magazine when I came across an advertisement for the “Aritst Growth” app and account.

Sign up before March 18, 2012 and receive a year for free. After that, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial before it becomes $5 per month, which you can totally avoid paying if you sign a friend up via our referral rewards program.

 Keep rockin’!

Rich

richpalmer.com

Getting Clicky Real Time Statistics

I had hread about Clicky, but had not used them. I was pleased to see there is a plugin that makes it super easy to apply the code to my website, and within SECONDS I was getting real time stats in my Clicky dashboard. I could see what brought people to the site, where they came from, what pages they visited. It’s insane, and it’s FREE for 100,000 daily impressons over three websites. It’s definitely worth looking at. There is even a “SPY” section where you can see exactly wehre anyone on your site is doing. Cool. If you’re not using WordPress you can still use them. They have plugins for just about every platfrorm (or just manually add their tracking code). This is very cool. If you need more impresisons (or websites) the price is 9.95 a month.

I read a book last year that was called “Just 10 lbs.” The idea is when we think about a giant task in front of us, we can get overwhelmed and either quit, or get frustrated. A better approach is to think about the next 10 lbs (instead of the 100 you need to lose). For me I think about my next meal. If I string together a bunch of good meals, and throw in some exercise I lose weight. We can do the same for playing gigs.

Think about your next gig. Forget about how small or big it is. Ask yourself, “What can I do to make this a gig that ensures the owner of the vendue asks me back?” One of the wasy to find out what to do is ask.

Ask the owner when they would like you to drop off any promotional material.
Make sure you have a way to collect e-mail addresses at the gig.
Have promotional material for your website and explain why people should visit.
Ask if there is any promotional items the owner would like you to mention during the performance.
Do your best to have the staff names.
Make sure you know when you are expected to setup, and what is the best door to come in.

Think about your next gig. Think location of the neighborhood. Think about your promotional material, and your merch. See what you can do to make sure this is the best gig ever.

Still Want A Record Deal?

Later in the video Eddit and David Lee talk about their first record deal where they got 11 points. Before you go thinking that is 11 cents for every dollar. Think again. There is a stipulation (based on old 78 records) that 10 percent of records broke during delivery. So you got 11 points for every 90 cents. The producer (Ted Templemen) took three of the 11 points that the band got. According to Van Halen, Ted Templemen makes more on their records than the band members do (as they split the 8 points by four people that means you get 2 points per person).

From that you have to pay agents and attourneys. As David Lee put it, “The whole thing is a loan.” The band split $1.15 between four people and paid for everything.

They toured the world. Their album went platinum. When the tour was over Warner Brothers let them know that the band owed them 2 million dollars and another record.