5 Tips To Optimise Your Musician’s Website Using SEO

22-Oct-2017 By Guest Blogger

As a musician, you might have spent the majority of your time making and perfecting your talent, recording an album, sourcing the artwork and trying to get your name out there into the big wide world.

Of course, one of the best ways to do this is by creating your own website, a task that’s now easier than ever. However, getting your website up to the top of the search engine results page is a whole other ball game.

Today, SEO plays such an important role in all kinds of website of all industries and businesses, organisations and artists needs to pay attention to their SEO ranking to ensure their music gets in front of their fans.

To give you a helping hand when it comes to SEO for your musician’s website, here are three tips to remember when designing or updating your website ensuring that your music is discovered by the masses

Conduct Research

Before you start designing or updating your website, carry out research, so you know what you’re competing with. You’ll also be able to see what kind of websites your competition has as well as information on what works best when trying to reach out to your fans.

Of course, you’ll have your own style and ‘brand’, but if you don’t fit into a certain niche, you won’t be able to appeal to it. You can also conduct research on how to boost your SEO ranking using tried and tested techniques. Some of the best places to look include Moz, a leading SEO organisation and Portent, an SEO-related blog.

Communicate Properly

Every single page on your website matters. Whether it’s your blog page where you share info on what you’re up to, your ‘about us’ page which gives your fans a bit of history and tells them your story up till now, all the way through to your album descriptions on your online store.

Whenever your site has written text, read through it and make sure it’s perfect. This is called editing. Of course, writing may not be your main strength so you can always enlist help from professional writers from services such as Boom Essays, or brush up your knowledge using blogs like State of Writing.

Use Perfect Content

Google will judge your website based on the quality of your content. It’s all about giving your fans the best experience possible when they visit your site.

This means you’ll need to go through and check all your existing content as well as checking any content you ever upload in the future to ensure that it’s perfect.

This means looking out for spelling, punctuation and your grammar. If you don’t trust your own editing and proofreading skills, you can always use a professional writing tool that can do it on your behalf, such as Academadvisor or UK Writings.

Use SEO Tools

One of the best ways to boost your website’s SEO ranking is by using tools that were designed to save you the time and effort. These tools are perfect if you’re not an SEO genius and will automatically tell you what you can be improving on.

For example, tools like SEM Rush is a website where you can simply input your website address, and it will start to list out all the errors and things you can fix with your website.

Furthermore, tools like Ahrefs are ideal for seeing where all your user traffic is coming from as well as your competitor bands or artists to see what techniques they are using on their website.

Content, Content, Content

I can’t stress enough how important the content of your website is. There’s a special knack for writing search engine optimised content and it can take years to master the techniques as well as continuous effort to stay up to date with the latest trends.

Of course, the chances are that you haven’t got time to do all this which is why it’s highly recommended to use a professional copywriting service, such as Essay Roo or Academized to create it on your behalf. They’ll be able to create all your album descriptions, your about us page, your contact page and any other pages you may have.

If you’re writing your content yourself, one of the main things to remember is the length of your content has a direct impact on your SEO ranking. You can’t just write 300 words here and there. You need to provide real valuable information to your readers. To start with, aim for 1,000 words or above. You can track this using tools such as Easy Word Count.

If you’re looking for ways to get your music and presence in front of a larger audience and to the top of the search engine results pages, considering your SEO should be your first point of call. Obviously, a lot goes into fully-optimising a website, but by following these tips and tricks, you’ll be able to get yourself off to the best start.

Author’s bio:

Gloria Kopp is a content writer and an online marketing specialist Big Assignments writing service. She regularly contributes columns to Engadget and Australian Help. Gloria is a paper writer at Revieweal blog where she shares her reviews with students and educators.

Best Options For Marketing Your Band To A Wider Audience

26-Sep-2017 By Guest Blogger

If you’re in a band and you want to be popular in the music scene, you have to face countless
others who want to be just as famous as their stars. Your best bet is to have a good marketing
strategy.

Marketing for any type of product continues to evolve with the market, which makes services
step up their game every so often and make marketing a daunting term to those new in the field.
Here are some tips that can get you started on a full-blown marketing campaign for your band:

1. Awareness: Who Is Aware of Your
Music?
Music isn’t your only tool to be known by
your fans. You can also invite people to
attend your gigs and review you as a band, so
they can spread the word.

● You can reach out to local bloggers
and influencers with free tickets to
your gig, or a free EP to give access
to your music. This lets them know
that you really want to engage your fans.
● Snapchat is also a growing tool you could use to post live updates of your gigs to your
fans. It’s becoming a widely used service even by popular news sites, which means a lot
of users are going to look for you here as well if they are your fans.
● Facebook is your friend, but you shouldn’t stick to groups and pages. You can use the
power of live streaming, sharing commentary, and creating the atmosphere of being
engaging by always staying up to date with Facebook’s latest trends and using them to
engage your fans.

2. Responsiveness: Are You Communicating With Fans?
Of course, you can’t exactly form a fan base if you’re not appealing to your prospective fans. It’s
not always about your music, but how you convey it. You should be a group that people want to
follow and check out. You should convey a personality of sorts when you interact with your
fans, even in social media.

● Artists and bands may want to consider how large is their fan base first before releasing
their tracks. If you want to make a partnership with labels, your social media numbers
may be your version of cred for partners and sponsors.
● One way to do this is by making design contests. You can challenge artists to create
posters or shirt designs for your band, and print the winner.

3. Exposure: Where Do You Bring Your Music?
So you have a band, and you want to be known. You have tracks ready, and you may have been
doing gigs of your own as well. However, this shouldn’t count as your overall exposure, as you
may need to do something more to fully expose your fans to your music.

● For instance, you can do unique song covers such as acoustic versions of your favorite
non-acoustic songs, or slow versions of fast music.
● Spotify is growing to be the best alternative option to the radio, and it’s popular on a global
level. It is a good option to share stream links to your fans inside and outside Spotify to
constantly engage with your fans.
● You can team up with popular podcasters to have your music featured in their episodes,
or you and your band can make a podcast as well. This is a handy way to have something
to engage your audiences with that is not always your music.

4. Online Is Not Always the Best
This may seem counterintuitive, but this
is something everyone should always
remember, your offline presence should
be just as strong as your online presence.
Help your fans know that you are
available in the real world to be interacted
with.

● You should try establishing a
home base where you’re always
expected to appear, so fans can go and see you.
● Discmaker suggests you can go to local fests, events, venues, and bars to do gigs so
people can discover your music. This is of course in venues outside your “home base.”
● You can also try out geo-targeting your audience in emails, newsletters, and Facebook
events. This means, with the right guidance, you can attract and focus on potential fans in
areas closer to the place you will have events in. This boosts the chances of people going
to see your events.

Conclusion

You may come up with the best marketing strategy that is fit for your band, but the most
important thing is to come up with something you can do consistently. All efforts you’ve done
for your marketing campaign will fail if you don’t follow through with your plans.
As Undercover.net.au says, always remember to put love and effort to your marketing campaign,
and your love for your band and the craft will come to life. Do you have other tips for marketing
strategies for bands? Comment down below and share it with us!

About the writer

SARA HARRISON
Sara is a music enthusiast who loves to play guitar and the piano. She has a
large selection of music CDs with Rock and Blues being her favourite. In her
spare time, she’s studying to be a music teacher and enjoys visiting music
festivals. She currently writes for Undercover.net.au and enjoys life.

6 Digital Marketing Tips for Musicians & Bands

08-Aug-2017 By Guest Blogger

There’s absolutely no doubt that digital marketing is the key to success in the music industry. If you’re keen to make the most of each and every ounce of exposure you receive, if you are set on becoming the next big thing, if you are striving to live life as a full-time musician or band member, then you must embrace digital marketing and acknowledge all the concepts and trends currently relevant to your industry.

How do I get fans? Is it about quality or quantity?

The 1000 True Fans concept is the idea that as long as you have 1000 ‘true fans’, you are never going to have a problem selling your music and your merchandize online. These true fans will help create a fanbase and market for your music and products that will help you drive further sales and success.

The point of digital marketing is to make the most of the exposure you receive when you perform and find those magical 1000 true fans who will give you a musical career for life. In some ways, true fans are similar to the marketing concept of brand advocacy. Encourage loyalty, reward loyalty, and give freely.

Make the most of Facebook pages

Digital marketing goes hand-in-hand with social media. If you’re wondering how to get fans, you must build a platform that allows them to express themselves, to engage with you or your band, and to learn more about you.

Begin with a Facebook page. Facebook provides plenty of tools to assist you in keeping track of who is engaging with your posts, as well as allowing you to measure how successful your reach has been. Make your page super engaging with a ton of live video, music, photoshoots, and quirky outtakes from life ‘on the road’.

Don’t forget to sync up your Facebook page with offline activities like gigs and fan meetups.

Embrace Twitter & Instagram & share your story

No matter how good your music is, your fans will want to know you or your band personally. Facebook is good for finding out information about gigs and news. Twitter, on the other hand, is good for little bits of communication and for emphasizing your personality. You can also personally thank a fan for coming to see you, as well as share articles, images and updates that you find exciting. Many people use Twitter to tell others what they’re up to. If you’re writing a new song, you can share this in a couple of words with an appropriate hashtag.

Instagram is very similar to Twitter, but favors images rather than words. You can share pictures and videos of you or your band travelling to a gig, images of the audience from your gig, shots with collaborators, or pics of your latest merchandize.

Having an engaged social account is a great confidence booster, as well as a commercial asset. Nurture the community you’re building — and think twice before purchasing fans.

Get your stuff out on YouTube

Many gig organizers will use YouTube to check out your music before hiring you. YouTube isn’t always an easy platform for new bands and musicians, so don’t worry if you don’t get many views at the beginning. Instead, focus on releasing some of your tracks in high quality for gig organizers and potential fans. Be sure to add tags and keywords to your video to increase the likelihood of someone finding your video or even stumbling across it through YouTube’s autoplay feature.

The good thing about YouTube is that your true fans will happily do the necessary advertising for you. They will share your latest releases through their social media networks and their friendship groups. They will also add their comments and likes to your videos. This interaction between fans encourages a fan base to emerge, which will develop its own personality as it grows.

Create a killer website

Still trying to figure out how to promote your music independently? A strong website can make your music enterprise look professional and serious. If you truly want to commit to a musical career, ensure that you invest in a website that has intuitive navigation, accessible contact information, and ecommerce facilities that allow you to sell your albums and merchandize yourself.

Your fans will want to be able to make purchases easily and securely, so make sure that this is possible. If you’re looking to set up your record shop, you can sell music through your own store and get up and running in a matter of hours. Setting up an ecommerce site independently is a sure-fire way to take matters into your own hands, and get your music business on the right track!

In order for your digital marketing efforts to be successful, be prepared to fully engage with these tips. Going into marketing half-hearted is simply not good enough. Just like an instrument, grasping digital marketing can take time and practise.

Author Bio:

Victoria Greene: Brand Marketing Consultant & Freelance Writer.

I work with online businesses and entrepreneurs to create valuable content and marketing strategies that yield big results. I am always happy to share my knowledge and love discovering new opportunities for collaboration. I’m also a keen singer and guitar player, but that’s strictly for pleasure!

6 Apps That Are Helping New Musicians Succeed

01-Aug-2017 By Guest Blogger

While we see hundreds of music apps on the play stores and app stores for music-lovers to listen to and download their favorite songs, there aren’t many for budding artists and musicians.

These are the people who might be looking to connect with other music artists and succeed in their music careers.

However, in the recent past, new apps made their way into app stores for musicians to connect with each other in same vicinities, find local musicians and discover new spaces to display their music. Succeeding as a musician in a highly competitive world is no joke. But there’s a ray of hope for newbie musicians now.

Here are our 6 favorite apps that are helping new musicians succeed and get in touch with their contemporaries:

1. Jambro

Referred to as a ‘Tinder for musicians’, the app’s goal is to be the best possible solution for musicians at a time when quite often they are not given due worth, respect and opportunities.

Since one of the major obstacles musicians face is the lack of space to get together and play music, the founders of Jambro decided to help musicians get over this major obstacle. The makers of this app spoke about the vision behind Jambro and said that they want local musicians to get out of their comfort zones and get together as a community that loves and creates music.

Jambro is easy to use – whether you are a guitarist, singer or pianist, all you need to do is search the app to find other musicians in your vicinity.

2. BandFriend

This app presents a new way to local musicians to collaborate by providing them with a great opportunity to jam together, come up with a new band or even have study sessions together.

The app detects your location and subsequently shows you possible matches who share your skills, interests and favorite music styles. Even if you are new to learning an instrument and are an upcoming budding artist, the app still lets you connect with others to study and learn the instrument together.

BandFriend also has SoundCloud and YouTube integration which lets the musicians show off their talent online and also watch videos and listen to songs by other artists in an attempt to help them find the perfect match.

3. GigTown

Providing musicians with an opportunity to market themselves for free on a broader stage, GigTown brings musicians, venues and party planners together. The real power and strength of this app is in its ability to connect musicians, fans and venues in a brilliant manner.

Moreover, with the option to search musician profiles, this app is a great way to establish connections beyond the already established world of music. The app allows musicians to upload audio tracks, video performances and personal information, which besides helping them promote themselves, also connects them with other artists who share similar interests.

4. Musicr

If you are looking for awesome musicians to jam out with, this app will help you do just that. Musicr is designed to bring local musicians together for the love of music.

Users of the app simply fill a profile that showcases their interests and proficiency and the instruments that they like to play. Musicians can then search for people with similar music interests and connect with them, form a band together, practice with each other and also share music tricks and tips.

5. Indaba Music

This app is more like an online community that brings musicians, the general public publishers, and radio stations, together It is a wonderful platform for new and old musicians to collaborate, work on music recordings, and interact with music professionals and fans alike.

Users of this app can also add new tracks or work on existing ones in an attempt to make music with people all around the world who share similar interests.

6. Sonicbids

This is more of an interactive open space for musicians and promoters to help them get together, collaborate and come up with jamming sessions and gigs. It also allows budding musicians to get more gigs, attain industry exposure and network with other musicians. Sonicbids helps other people find talent on this platform, get in touch with those musicians and advertise playing opportunities. Additionally, independent musicians can also connect with promoters and music-loving audience to expand their music careers.

The music industry is growing industry which is in the process of expanding and reaching out to an ever-increasing audience. While these apps and platforms are definitely helping new musicians succeed in what they love and gain exposure, an underlying reason for the growth of this industry is music’s positive effect on brain health.

Author Bio

Kamil Riaz Kara is an HR Professional and Inbound Marketer. He has completed his Masters in Administrative Science from the University of Karachi. Currently, he is writing on mental health, fitness and lifestyle. Visit his company blog and check the latest post on Online Dementia Test.

9 Tips for Making Money Online from Your Music

20-Jul-2017 By Guest Blogger

Today, I’d like to share with you some practical tips for making money online from your music. The stereotype of ordinary musicians being constantly broke is still floating around. This by itself is bad enough, but what’s worse is how much it discourages young musicians from fully pursuing their creative dreams.

The truth is that not only is it possible to make money from music, but the technology we have now means that making money online from your music is so much easier than it ever has been in the past.

Licensing

Creating music for use in soundtracks is a great way to turn instrumentals and music that doesn’t fit your usual genre into an extra source of income. Indie music licensing is growing more and more as film, tv and commercial producers are looking further afield.

Tutorials

If you’ve been spending years or even decades mastering your instrument, why not show others how to get to where you are now? All you need is a good quality camera and a microphone, which you may already have. Both are relatively inexpensive. Plus, with ad revenue from sites such as Youtube.com they can quickly pay for themselves.

Ghostwriting

Much like being in a supermarket, music can be a ‘cash or credit’ situation. You can either take credit for your work, or take cash. Once you’ve developed a bit of a following you can take both, but it’s nice to know you can start getting paid very quickly by writing music for others to perform. This is incredibly common in the music industry, and many of the biggest music stars actively use ghostwriters.

Mastering

Finding somebody who can master a track or even an entire album is easier than ever thanks to websites such as Fiverr and other platforms that allow people with different skill sets to collaborate. By mastering music for a fee, you can make a very healthy income and build a formidable skill set at the same time.

Digital Sales

This can either be through your own website, or through a third-party such as iTunes. Be aware that third party retailers will take a commission of the total price, which can be quite high.

To get the most exposure, make sure you gather a few favourable reviews from friends, family and anybody else you can persuade. This will dramatically increase your chances of selling online to people who may have never heard of you before.

High quality artwork

I know, I know. You’re a musician so why should you care about how the album looks? However, you’re missing a great opportunity to show off your band’s aesthetic with a visual representation as well as having a bit of fun. High quality, interesting artwork is also much more likely to catch somebody’s eye as they flick through all of the music available to them – so it translates to more sales and downloads too.

Crowdfunding

You don’t have to work 8 hours a day at a job you don’t want just to fund your music, nor do you have to persuade a record company. Instead, take your music public from day one and encourage others to chip in to help take it from a concept to a polished album or single. Online crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter or Gofundme are excellent for this.

Podcasting

Doing guest appearances on internet radio shows and podcasts is a great way to boost your profile. Just like a normal radio show, being part of an interview or doing a live performance is a great way to reach a massive audience without having the hassle of building one from scratch. Be sure to let the listeners know where they can find your music online for download or streaming.

Micro-producing

Instead of creating whole tracks, create tiny snippets of music. This can be in the form of loops, sound effects and samples. Developing new content for other music producers is much more exciting now thanks to user-to-user online marketplaces being supported by DAW developers. You can get in on the action in tons of different ways. Everything from programming brand new VSTs to making presets.

By now you should be feeling much more confident about having a career in the music industry. Whoever told you that you can’t make money online from your music was wrong.

Author bio:

Zac Green is chief editor of popular music blog ZingInstruments.com. He believes that music isn’t just a thing you do – it’s a mindset, an attitude, a way of life.