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The hardest part of marketing a band
We would never be able to afford the services that are out there to market and advertise our band. There are so many things that you have to do. There are so many sharks out there in the waters that will take whatever you have and do next to nothing for you. Basically, all they have is a multi level marketing scheme that they want you to invest your passion into. We are going to write this article but we must confess that our father is the one that taught us about marketing cheap and effective. We have to rely on people that like us, our fans and supporters. Here is a small list when it comes to a band but I am sure this can apply to many businesses.
- Write the song
- Record The Song
- Produce The Song
- Mastering a Song
- Write A Script For Video
- Record Video
- Produce Video
- Master Video
- Optimize Video and Recordings
- Upload to Web sites
- Do Your Research
- Target Your Market
- Organize Your Social Media
- Collaborate With Other Bands On Websites
- Times to Release Updates
- How To Release Updates
- What Sites To Use To Release Updates
- Email Marketing
Now what is really crazy is that you have to do that with each and every song!
Create a Website
The first thing that you want to do is create a website. There are a lot of free ones out there that you can take advantage of if you have no budget. Thankfully our dad is a web developer and we have the best kind of website the world has to offer, that would be the ezBloo system. Since we host some videos and audio files we also have a dedicated server. If you are starting out the best thing to do is just go to wordpress.com and make a free site. However, if you have like $20 to invest I recommend getting your own domain name before someone else takes it. You can also host your website there for like $7 a month after you create an account. There is a learning curve to this but it is all laid out by our father's free course. Its free to watch and you learn a lot. Here is a list of video lessons that we watched for the first time. It takes you from buying the domain name to what is important if you are using WordPress.
Videos
If you don't have that much time to invest he also made a crash course on the same thing in one video called. "Warning Web Developer For Hire".
Remember the first thing that you need to do is set up a website to drive traffic there! All the steps below are for that very reason.
Social Media Marketing
YouTube
Your number one source if you are a band is YouTube. It is the second most searched engine in the world. So take the time to set it up right and make sure it reflects your brand whatever that may be. Next when you go to upload your video the most important parts are the Title, Tag, and Descriptions. You can also use hashtags in descriptions to try to reach a broader audience. You may need help putting your video together so you can do a Google search for video people. We, of course, use our Father for that as well.
Oh my, you are competing with a lot of bands on Facebook. However, it is worth the time. The only thing that I will tell you here is that if you want to promote a video on Facebook, you want to use the Facebook platform and not the YouTube platform. You have to make sure that you have a Facebook page like ours. Remember this is not a profile this is only a business page.
The thing about Instagram is that you have to do it from a smartphone or tablet. They do not allow you to upload photos or videos from your computer. Also if your picture is too wide they crop it off. You will have to experiment to see what works for you. Also, the videos have to be very short. Here is a great article on videos for Instagram.
Google Plus Communities
This is a great place to hook up with other bands and artists. There are many music enthusiasts on there. Once you have a Google account you just go and check out the communities and there are thousands of them out there. You can even create your own community for your band. You can share links back to your website, songs from your YouTube channel and more! Here is an example of our YouTube communities that we joined and a message that we sent them when we joined.
Hi All, Thanks for letting us join your group, it's awesome. We would like to collaborate with other bands and get fans of course.
We would also like to continue posting the new things that we do. Videos, photos, articles and more. We also have other social networks we belong to that we listed below. Our website is https://coinflipband.com and we would love to network with all of you. We are indie artists with a couple thousand fans and hoping to grow that number. It seems like the harder you work the less support you get, lol. We hope you enjoy our video.
My name is Harley and I am 16. My brother is David and he is 14.
http://twitter.com/@Coin_Flip_Band
https://www.facebook.com/coinflipband/
https://plus.google.com/u/2/communities/110592228162867453391
https://www.instagram.com/coin_flip_band
https://www.pinterest.com/harleymccullough/
We are still working on our Twitter stuff. We know that networking with the right people is the key. It's finding the right people to network with that is difficult sometimes. It takes a lot of time and sometimes we just don't have it. That is why we rely upon buffer a lot as well as Reverb Nation to make our posts for us.
Band Media Marketing
Reverb Nation
This has to be the best platform to upload your music, videos, pictures and more. They also have an app that you can connect to your Facebook band page like the one you see here. There are also a lot of positive musicians on there. We fan a lot of them and they fan us back. There are paid services on there but we have not taken advantage of them yet.
SoundCloud
Soundcloud is another great place to upload your music to get exposure. However, they do not have as many features as Reverb Nation does. Basically, you upload your profile and cover photos and your songs. You can embed the songs on your website as well, just like you can with Reverb Nation.
Last FM
This one we have to give a thumbs down. You have to listen to a bunch of music on their website before you can even think of getting your stuff on there. They may cover a lot of people but their recent policy changes really suck for new bands like us.
Organization is Key
Get Google calendar and stick to it. Set up appointment times to write articles and more. If you have to call key people make sure you do it. Never slack off. If you are trying to promote a band or music no one really cares. It is not something they need like food, water, housing, clothing etc. Not to mention there is already a lot of great music out there being promoted. So you have to be tough on yourself. It is not going to be an easy road and you are going to have a lot of time invested with a very little payoff at first.
One thing that I forgot to mention is just4u.ezbloo.com This has been a MASSIVE advantage to us for social media marketing. It's totally free and you sign up for a profile here. Add all your likes and choose the ones that are important to you. We visit ours every day to check up on things that we have spread out through the entire web. It is a life saver for us!
Buffer
You have probably heard of HootSuite and many others but nothing we have found compares to Buffer when it comes to timing your posts. So sign up for a Free Buffer account. Hook them up to your social media sites and they will post all your stuff at certain times for free. This is an awesome advantage to us. We are getting ready to go back to school but we need to post things at like 12 pm, 2 pm and 3 pm these are the sweet times to post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google plus. We just load up our cue of links and schedule the posts. Buffer does the rest for us.
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