Updated march 2018
Maybe you’re a musician who’s been devoted to your art for years. You’re passionate, you’re masterful. And you know you have something of value to offer the world. And you’re ready and willing to reach out to that wider world via the internet.
But maybe, due to your admirable absorption in the music itself, you’re lost as to how to promote yourself online. You’re not unwilling to learn, you’re just…bewildered.
And hey, that’s not surprising. But when this post was originally posted blogs and websites were often separated entities. Now, blogs are considered a main part of a website, there is no more separating the two.
If you’ve got a website (which I hope you do at this point) you should definitely have a blog attached to it. A place where you can share content for your fans, post new videos, and share exclusive content that can only be found ON YOUR SITE.
Why is this important?
Your music social media marketing should be teasers designed to get people engaged and provide value, then hit them with the CTA (call to action) to come back to your pace (AKA website) and get access to your blog content for the latest behind the scenes footage or free download.
Social media, YouTube, Soundcloud, etc are platforms to GET new fans. Your blog and your website is the place to KEEP them fans.
Music Website and Blog Structure
Webpages are typically static meaning they don’t change or if they do it is not much. BUT, this does not have to be a hard written rule. In fact, you should be updated your main web pages periodically with newly updated content, this drives Google back to spider and re-index your pages, pushing you up in search results.
Your blog on the other hand is article based. Your content marketing starts there. Your blog posts should inter-link to your main product pages. In the digital marketing world we call these our “Money Pages”, because these are the pages we want to rank high in Google for specific search keywords. When you can rank high in the search results for the RIGHT keywords, you can make a lot of money.
That being said, you should be pushing out quality content that inter-link to your main pages that are optimized for keywords to get your music website ranking.
So what makes a website? Try to imagine a website for a guitar shop. That might include a description of the store and the products it sells. It probably also includes their business hours, address, and directions to the shop. They might also offer some products for sale directly through the website. Maybe they provide information about current and future sales. Maybe they announce special events, like an in-store guitar signing with Eddie Van Halen. Maybe they include photos of the store, both inside and out. And maybe their website includes a blog.
Now, for this fictitious guitar store, the blog is just a section of their website. The blog kind of serves as a magazine or mini-newspaper built into the website.
The idea of blog content is that it changes from time to time. Some companies with blogs update their posts several times a day. Some bloggers blog weekly, or monthly. Some people have the best of intentions, write one excellent blog post, and never blog again. After all, it takes a time commitment many people just can’t make. (Last I heard, there were literally billions of abandoned blogs on the ‘net. Billions!)
Meanwhile, the other parts of the website don’t change as often. For example, directions to the store may only change if they move. Hours might only change during the holidays.
In theory, the blog portion of the website should give you a reason to keep coming back. You should be able to visit a blog on a regular basis and find something fresh to read – whether that regular basis is once a week, once a month or whatever.
Blogging Platforms and Traffic
These days, the terms “blog” and “website” are interchangeable. How did that happen? Free blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger, which you can use to create a blog, have evolved and become much more sophisticated. Blogging platforms have become full-blown website-builders in their own right.
Early blogs basically looked like computerized diary pages – plain text on a white background, one entry after another, scrolling endlessly down a long page. Now, with a free blogging platform like WordPress, you can essentially build a multi-page website. It can include a blog — or not.
However, if you’re up for it, blogs are a great way to draw attention to yourself and your music.
This is where you want to be creative.
Let’s say you decide to share exclusive backstage photos that your girlfriend took at that last gig. Great idea! Where do you put them? Well, you could post the photos on your blog, then tell people through social media to go to your blog to see them. (And while they’re there, they might do some other nice things, like check out your gig schedule, sign up for your mailing list, or see an ad for your album and be motivated to buy it.)
Another thing you could do is write the occasional blog post. Maybe you’ll tell stories about what goes on at your recording sessions. Maybe you’ll talk about your songwriting process. Maybe you’ll review other artists’ albums.
All of this content will “live” on your blog/website. And as you unroll this content on a regular basis, each new published post gives you a fresh excuse to get on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.
So having blog content can be useful. But again, it’s something you should commit to doing on a regular basis to be used as the platform to your content marketing strategy. Any questions? Post below or shoot us an email.
