Moonah Bootstrap Class 01 Summer2008
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The document summarizes tips for musicians on creating an effective website for online promotion and marketing. It discusses including key information fans want like the artist's biography, music samples, tour dates, contact details and forums for fan interaction. It emphasizes optimizing the site for search engines through unique page titles, careful use of keywords in text and links from other sites to increase search rankings. The goal is to make it easy for fans and potential fans to find the artist online and engage with their music.
Moonah Bootstrap Class 01 Summer2008
- 1. Professional Training Webinar Course ONLINE PROMOTION & MARKETING Instructor: Jay Moonah
- 2. Webinar #1 Music Artist Website Tips n' Tricks Internet?!? Is that thing still around?
- 3. My Experience… … as a musician Playing in Toronto clubs since the late 80s Member of Uncle Seth (musicface.com/uncleseth) & The McFlies (mcflies.com) Created first band website in 1995
- 4. My Experience… … as an Internet professional More than 10 years experience consulting and teaching Previously worked full-time at Ryerson U. , University of Toronto , Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) & CANOE.ca Now at 58Ninety, online advertising & media development agency with clients including Molson Coors, Dove, CHUM Radio Network and others
- 5. Do I Really Need My Own Website? Short answer: YES! But why can’t I just use something like Myspace? Ask Bones – the Baton Rouge band who lost their Myspace page…
- 6. What Fans Want Fans (or potential fans) coming to your site want to… … know who you are … listen to your music … buy your music and merchandise … find out when & where you are playing … get in touch with you … interact with other fans
- 7. Some Sites Overdo it with Flash, graphics, etc.
- 8. Example: Jonathan Coulton 37 year-old ex-computer programmer living in Brooklyn Became a full-time musician in 2005 Doesn’t tour (at least in the usual sense) Gives away most of his songs on his website Makes a living as a musician
- 10. Fans want to know who you are.. … but keep it simple and to the point Provide extra info for those who are interested, including outside links, reviews, etc.
- 11. Fans want to hear (and hopefully buy) your music Provide option to preview whenever possible Can be a stream or downloadable sample Give fans an easy option to buy it if they like it
- 12. Fans want to see you live
- 13. Fans can even TELL you where and when to play!
- 14. Fans (and other important folks) want to get in touch with you
- 15. Fans want to interact with other fans
- 16. Fans (and potential fans) want to FIND you! (perhaps you’ve heard of us?)
- 17. Brass Dogs Search Engine Optimization in action In mid-2004, Uncle Seth decided to form a cover-band side project called “ Brass Dogs ” Created a site with: carefully written titles & text , links placed on a few sites Brass Dogs soon placed number one in Google for “ toronto cover band ” and high on other searches Has translated directly to two gigs and a dozen inquires in about 8 months
- 18. Google Indexing Principles Indexed sites have to be linked FROM an already indexed site The more pages that point to you, the better your rank Google copies COMPLETE TEXT of page Google indexes based where and how often text appears in the page
- 19. Title Tags What you put in <title> </title> very important Main page title tag should contain band name & brief description Make sure every page has a unique title tag : Uncle Seth: A Toronto-area Independent Band Uncle Seth Bio Uncle Seth Contact Information Uncle Seth: 03/05/2005 set list Approximately 50 characters max
- 20. What’s in a name? New bands: check Google and other searches first Existing bands: be extra sure to include key words like: “ music ” “ band ” genre(s) of music your location (city, country, region, whatever is applicable)
- 21. Keywords are Key Most engines read the text on the page Google either ignores metadata "keywords" or uses them to re-enforce text However, other search engines do still use them Use variations on terms on one page use " 80s cover band ” on another use " eighties cover band " Use heading (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) tags and proper HTML formatting
- 22. Don’t overdo your keywords! If you repeat one word or phrase too many times , Google and other search engines will assume they're being “spammed” and may reject your page. Use your common sense – if it reads fine, search engines are unlikely to reject it
- 23. The Importance of Being Linked Google doesn’t index anything that isn't linked! Find directories and other sites where you can submit links Create link pages and exchange links with bands, clubs, etc. also helps findability - people searching for a club might look at bands that have played there, etc A trick: when your page gets linked from a site, submit that site to Google Submission linked from “About Google” page
- 24. Link to Other Sites Do you think your site is the only site on the web? (Yeah, I didn’t think so) Give some “link-love” to other bands Clubs Labels Fans Reviewers, bloggers, podcasters
- 25. So remember... Make sure your site is linked from sites already in the index Make sure the terms your want to be searched by are in your titles and text
- 26. Final Thoughts Give fans what they want quickly and easily Make your site easy to find in search engines Make sure you have your own site that is simple to use MARGE What exactly is it your company does again? HOMER This industry moves so fast it's really hard to tell.