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 UniquelyIdeally, 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!
I am amazed to see all the parts and they are awesome and going to rock in this world.
Posted by: passport holder | October 15, 2009 at 11:45 PM
Its odd to see the snow in your parts as it has been awfully hot here. Opposite ends of the world
Posted by: Games | October 10, 2009 at 02:02 AM
Do you like alternative hip hop?
Check out Soulja Soulja @ www.rapspire.com if you want to learn more about 'RapSpire!'
'RapSpire UR Area!'
Posted by: Terry Clark | September 29, 2009 at 07:46 PM
Aha, as the digital world progresses more rapidly than ever before, my article was outdated the night it was published :)
Bit.ly has now started up a new site with an even SHORTER URL called "j.mp"
j.mp
All you bit.ly account holders - all of your account info, links, and data will transfer. Just go to j.mp and sign in as usual :)
happy marketing!
Jake
Posted by: Jake Hartsfield | September 25, 2009 at 03:59 PM