Jake Hartsfield is a songwriter, producer, touring sound engineer and a new addition to the TuneCore Marketing Team.
Something
that I always advise new artists to consider is “What are you going to
call yourself?” Seems like an easy question at first, but it is
becoming increasingly important to make sure that your name is unique
enough so that you can market yourself effectively online
Brand Yourself Uniquely
Ideally, you want a name that no one else has or has even thought of
before. When you are inventing a name, here are a few checks you
should make:
• Google It. Is anyone else using the name? Another artist?
• Search the US Patent & Trademark Office (uspto.gov)
• Is “www.yourname.com” available? “www.yournamemusic.com” ?
• Look for MySpace.com/yourname
• Facebook.com/yourname
• Ilike.com/yourname
• yourname@gmail.com
• YouTube.com/yourname
• Check Knowem.com for your username
• If your URL is already taken, you could settle for “yournamemusic” or some other variation, though this is not ideal.
YourName.com
I cannot stress how important it is to buy your own web domain to use
as an artist. Even if you don’t use it right away, reserve it! You
can buy yourname.com for about $10/year at GoDaddy or any other domain
site. It’s worth it.
Having a central location to point your fans to is essential for
streamlining your marketing strategy. You own everything on this site
and you’re not relying on an unreliable company to host your media and
manage your fans. You want your fans visiting YourName.com more than
any other profile you have online. Your other profiles (Myspace,
Facebook, iLike, Twitter, etc) should be extensions of your brand that
ultimately direct your fans to YourName.com.
To improve your Google listing for your domain, buy as many years in
advance as you can (reserve YourName.com for 10 years) and Google sees
your web page as more important than another site that is only going to
be around for a year or so. Also, use good solid keywords and
descriptions in the meta data for your website.
Google Presence
When you Google your artist name, you want to be in the Top 10
results. You want to be #1 if possible. To improve your presence on
Google, you should consider creating profiles on the current hot
websites I’ve included in this article. The more web real estate you
have, the larger your web for collecting fans (and customers!).
In a study
done by Cornell University, 57% of people clicked on the #1 result, 13%
clicked on the #2 result, and 10% clicked on the #3 result. Only 3%
clicked on the #10 result. The percentage of people that looked at
page 2 was something like 5%… So, if you don’t appear in the first
page of results on Google, you’re losing about 90% of your potential
fans/customers.
Artist Email Your Team Can Share
Set up an email – Gmail is my favorite – dedicated to your
brand/artist/band name. Use this email to manage all of your other web
accounts. This makes it easy to share access to your web assets with
your team (manager, web promoter, band) without giving them access to
your personal email or information.
Mailing List – Cash For Emails
Wherever you go, wherever you play, wherever your fans go, you need to
be collecting emails! Have a signup sheet at your shows; have a signup
form on all of your websites, use the TuneCore widget to collect fan
info. Email is your best advertising medium – you can send a direct
message to all of your fans…whenever you want.
There are tons of mailing list clients out there. iContact is a great
program. But there are a bunch out there so find one that fits your
needs.
URL Tracking
You want to track as much of your promotions as possible. URL
shorteners are a good way to track clicks as well as save space on
posts and tweets. Bit.ly is a good tool as well as TinyURL.com.
When you tweet about your new song on MySpace, use a bit.ly link to
point people to myspace.com/yourname. Then you can see on bit.ly how
many people actually followed your link. You can compare that # to how
many followers you have.
All Your OTHER Websites
It’s important to stay on top of what new websites are hot/popular.
Whatever new social network is getting the most press or has the most
users is where the largest percentage of Internet users are going to
be. Facebook,. Twitter and MySpace are all important branding tools.
Imeem is getting some press. Spotify is getting huge press, but it’s
currently only in the UK. Below, I’ve listed a number of the current
hot sites I’m aware of that I think every artist should be using.
Anyone else know of any good sites?
Facebook – www.facebook.com
Create an Artist Page. Get Facebook.com/yourname if you can. I think
right now you have to have 25+ fans to get a dedicated URL, but I could
be wrong. These things change every day.
iLike – www.ilike.com
iLike is the Music Application for Facebook. It is easily integrated with your Facebook Artist page and personal page.
YouTube – www.youtube.com
One of the most viral and popular websites active today. Also valuable
for hosting videos for your other websites – you can integrate YouTube
with almost every other website you have.
Myspace – www.myspace.com
MySpace is popular because it’s one of the only sites that fans know
they’re guaranteed to find music. If people can’t find you on here,
they Google you.
Twitter – www.twitter.com
Build your list of followers and send them periodic updates to keep
them up to date with any band news. Use Twitter to help blast a
promotion out and ask people to re-tweet it, tracking the link with
bit.ly.
imeem – www.imeem.com
Users must create a profile to listen to music – recommended and
similar artists pop up and lets users create playlists. Hop on the
bandwagon while it’s still growing!
Purevolume – www.purevolume.com
MySpace’s rival site during the rise of Emo, Indie, and Hardcore bands – still a hotbed for Pop-Punk and similar genres.
Questions, comments? Let me know!
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