Unfortunately, without a website, a musician is basically invisible to most of the world. In a previous post entitled Music Marketing 101 written by guest blogger Kim Brittingham she covered the difference between a website and a blog. You at the very least need a true website as your primary marketing tool. So let’s take a look at the top eight reasons you should get a website up and running, and then look at your options.
1. Branding
Creating your own brand is a key part of online music marketing, and all the large corporations know this and use this as part of their strategy. When a musician uses branding, he can craft his own message and emphasize his own unique brand. This also prevents others from using your name and trying to capitalize on your popularity or reputation. Uniqueness! This is key! And this is why having www.yourband.com is more superior in the long run than having www.yourband.rocksite.com
The website will establish your brand.
2. Reach ears the world over
With a website, your name and brand is going to travel far and wide. You can reach people in Asia as fast and efficiently as those who live right next door. The more people who hear your music, the more your name gets out there and the more fans, revenue and popularity will be yours. So, to give reference to #1 you want to give them a stable home base to go to that will never change.
3. Increase loyal fans
Your continuing fans are going to have a place to go to find out what is coming next from your talented mind. They will see when shows will happen and where. They can follow your news and views. When they can interact with you, they develop more enthusiasm for you and your music. You get more credibility with a website and thus strengthen the fans’ trust. New people will discover you and bookmark your site. Gives your confidence incredible boosts to see those new fans coming on!
4. Make money with your music
This should have possibly been number one? Making money can be a huge incentive to get a website up and running. There are various ways you can make money. You can sell merchandise, place paid advertising, get people to join affiliate programs or have a paid membership option. The choices are many. And you keep more profit when you have your very own shopping cart.
5. Control
With your own website, you have complete control over what is communicated about your music, what merchandise is displayed and how. Your ability to display what you want is unlimited. You can easily control exactly the impression you want to create on your audience. And you will always be there! It won’t shut down unless you shut it down. In other words own your own Internet Real Estate.
6. SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most important things to factor into building a website. Without effective Music SEO, it’s going to be tough to reach new audiences online. Building it and publishing it does not automatically mean people will find it. Page rank on the search engines is vital to all the above steps. When you have effective SEO with your website, you can be found when people are searching for your kind of music, a song you’ve recorded, your CD or your name in particular. With all the promo you’re publishing on the web keep the link-juice for your yourself. It makes more sense to pass that link power to your own website rather than a 3rd party site.
7. Mobile-friendly
Having a website that is mobile-friendly gives you the advantage in this Information Age. Your website will show on smartphones the world over. People can download your music. This is the only way to go as more and more are searching online using smartphones.
8. Puts You Out in Front
If you have ever tried a third-party site, you found yourself competing with hundreds of other artists in a venue that was not exactly under your control. When you have your own website and it is optimized as above, you will find your chances at success increase many-fold. You will be in front of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. Keep your presentations professional, creative and special, and with a stable presence on the World Wide Web, you are bound to see the results.
What do you think?
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