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I know, I know, another bloody social network to add to add to the pile. Add some pinning to your tweeting, ‘booking, and blogging schedule and pretty soon you’ll be able to give up this music lark entirely, right?

Well just for you poor, beleaguered souls, I’m going to start this one off by listing some of the reasons you might not want to be on Pinterest:

If your fans are mostly male. Estimates run that over 3/4 of Pinterest users are women, backed up by the firm stat that 97% of the Pinterest Facebook fan page likes are female (AppData 2012). Although this has probably evened up somewhat as the site has grown, it’s fair to say that a metal band with a predominantly male audience can spend their time more productively elsewhere.

If you have no artist hub site. You’ll need a place to connect the visual angle you present on Pinterest to the music that we’re hoping to nurture new eyes and ears towards. If you don’t have a site that you control to achieve that, then we have bigger fish to fry. Ask me why.

If you’re already neglecting your existing social platforms. Don’t invest time you don’t have. Spend that reviewing what sites you have, which you need to trim away, and commit to developing the one or two you keep. Come back here in six months if you get that together (or immediately, if Facebook eats Pinterest).

If your music has little in the way of visual imagery. This one is fairly weak, as every subject can be spun into a visual in some way, but some may be less intriguing than others. The basis of the rising image-based social platforms is communicating something via a striking visual, so if you have no inspiration to that end then feel free to excuse yourself.

If you hate puns. Seriously, pinsanity can set in pretty quickly and you probably get that enough from your tweeps already.

Still here?

Great! Then let me explain why Pinterest is going to be worth your time.

How Musicians Can Use Pinterest to Attract New Fans

We’ll assume that you’re already signed up and have the standard boards – ‘Places & Spaces’, ‘Books Worth Reading’ and the like – ready to go. At this point, two questions unfold in front of you: What do I pin and where do I pin it?

Being just over a year into its rapid ascent, both the joy and the trial of pinning is that there are no well paved roads to success. Experimentation is to be encouraged, but do follow the shining social netiquette that you would on other sites… share the work of others, don’t spam (or sell to the point of it), and give back more than you take out.

That said, here are some ideas to get your boards hanging alluringly in the sights of fellow Pinheads (errr….):

Associate your songs with appropriate imagery. This may be an iconic location, landmark, work of art, piece of literature, or anything you can find that both fits the theme of the song and is also a striking visual. Connect image and audio on a single page of your site, explain briefly your inspiration, then pin the image to an appropriately titled board (‘Artistic Inspiration’ or ‘Sparks for Songs’ spring to mind).

Explain your own influences. Create boards that pull together your favorite writers, painters, philosophers, and anything or anyone else that has Keep in mind that the better known they are, the more searched and therefore visible they will be on Pinterest. Nonetheless, you should keep this authentic and an honest expression of who you are as an artist and the inspirations that brought you here.

Add your lyrics to existing works of art. Pin your favorite pieces of art (from your favorite site or by searching within Pinterest and using the ‘Repin’ option), adding suitable lyrics or poetically-inclined thought that you yourself have written.

Blog with visuals in mind. Begin to integrate images into the heart of some of your blog posts, in a similar way to the first tip here, but include the work of others and anything visually alluring that catches your eye. Take this one out to the real world, snapping anything that stirs words or music in your soul… this could be a board in and of itself!

Repin others, often. Take time to follow people with similar artistic vision/tastes and take time to browse your stream for pins that catch your eye. Repin them and add your own (brief) comment as to the inspiration for doing so.

Collaborate with visual artists. This may take more effort, but if you have artist friends, look for opportunities to connect your sounds with their visuals. This could be anything from a blog post (see above) about the connection, to a full blown collaborative project like a video or audio-visual mini-site.

Create a variety of boards representing your artistic tastes. Users can ‘Follow All’ but will be more likely to follow only specific boards, so as to fit to their interests and keep their pin stream free from clutter. Increase your chances of connecting by offering of wide range of interest touch points.

Don’t forget the admin basics. Ensure you complete your bio and location, include links back to your website, and consistently use key words or phrases that represent your music and creative tastes for other users to easily find.

These are just some starting points for your exploration. Try out variations on the above to see what your followers show most interest in. Keep what works, discard what doesn’t.

Take aways:
Keep strong visuals at the heart of everything you do on Pinterest, from board creation to individual pins.
Remember that Pinterest is a strong driver of traffic to source sites, so incorporate your images into your own hub, associated with your music wherever possible.
Vary what you pin and think up relevant categories to slot them into, so that you build up some attractive, inspiring collections for people to stumble upon.

How does this all sound… artistically invigorating or another colossal social time suck?

If you think this is of value to you, connect with me on Pinterest and I’ll be happy to discuss approaches with you.

Best of the Blog, Case Studies, Marketing, Success Stories

Creative Music Marketing (On a Shoestring Budget)

November 19, 2012 Steve Leave a comment

Music marketing matters. Hopefully we established that in the mini-series of the same name earlier this year.

What keep on coming, though, are the examples of independent artists getting creative with their music marketing.

From 10,000 hours of practice to getting social across many media, there are plenty of theories on how you should be behaving as a musician seeking to break out. But what are your peers doing, down in the trenches of small clubs and minimal budgets? How are inspired artists communicating what they do and what fuels their passion?

Most importantly, what can you take away from the examples of others and use in your own marketing efforts?

Leading by Example

To continue the spirit of the MMM series, every week I’ll be posting a few brief examples of smart, affordable marketing from musicians at your level. Not artists with major label backing. Not those who have hit it rich with a lucrative licensing arrangement. Just those taking an alternative or interesting tack towards spreading their music and winning new fans. Each example will have a more general marketing takeaway, that you can then apply to your own situation.

Continue reading Creative Music Marketing (On a Shoestring Budget) →

Best of the Blog, Marketing

Music Marketing Matters: How to Win Data & Influence People

July 30, 2012 Steve 9 Comments

In broaching the subject of data gathering and marketing for musicians last week, I quickly realized that this was going to be bigger than one post would allow. Unless one is talented enough to compose enormous articles that remain fresh and coherent throughout – as can Judy Gombita, for example – one should make like a dubstepper and Break. It. Down.

As luck would have it, this is also the approach that you should take with your data gathering.

Break down the walls of your fan data — Image Credit: Ross

Bite Size Data

Unless you’ve been diligently collecting and organizing your fan data for years, which I imagine is akin to the 1%, it’s likely you have one large block of unsorted data, knocking around with several other scraps. Taken as a whole, these form your overall audience database.

And take them as a whole is exactly what we’ll do first, before going on to break it all down again. This time, however, we’ll be doing so in a more productive manner.

Building Your Audience Database

Follow these steps to build your initial database. If you already have this in good order, please move on to the next section, ‘Music Marketing Segmentation’.

1. Gather every piece of fan data that you’ve collected on one place, in an easy to read format.

2. Start a spreadsheet in Excel (or a free equivalent, like Open Office‘s Calc or Google Docs) and type out each relevant category across the top row of this sheet. For every recurring piece of data you have, e.g. First name, last name, E-mail, location etc, you should have a category for it on your sheet. Discard any infrequently occurring data like nicknames or feedback. If it’s pertinent, we can record it later in a general ‘Notes’ column.

3. Transfer all the data, once you have all the column headings you need, over to your new spreadsheet. Yes, this is the particularly tedious part… don’t worry, I can wait….

4. Done? Congratulations! Have a cup of tea to celebrate and come back in half an hour.

5. Now begins the fun… data gathering and filling in the blanks. Add any ‘would like to have’ pieces of information to your column headings. Examples might be income, job title or industry, type of relationship (friend, family, or some more complex measure of acquaintance that we can work on). Don’t stress too much on these, as we can add more later, but DO think about the type of information that you’d like to know about your fans. What would help you connect to them more effectively?

6. Once you’re happy with the skeleton of your database, it’s time to add as much flesh to the bones as possible. Thankfully we live in an age of seemingly constant sharing, so ~~stalking~~… researching your fans to fill in any data blanks is more viable than ever before. Start with a basic Google search of names, focusing on social networks to begin with as they have more standardized information layouts. If you’re still drawing some blanks, delve into blogs they frequent, pseudonyms that they use for online handles, or combination searches involving other data that you already have.

Once you’ve exhausted as many avenues as you can think of to complete your data set, accept any omissions and save the sheet in a couple of safe places, one hard drive and one accessible remotely, if possible.

Et voila, your information foundation is set!

Remember to use the header categories that you’ve laid out here for all future data that you collect from people. This keeps everything complete and aligned with what you have identified as important things to learn about your fan base.

Music Marketing Segmentation

Types of segmentation — A preferable form of segmentation

As I mentioned earlier, we only built this up so that you can break it back down again. This time we’ll do it in an orderly fashion, however, by segmenting the market for your music.

Having gathered all this data about your existing fans, you can use it to make your communications to each of them more targeted. This benefits you because you can offer more clear and relevant news and offers to each segment of fans. It benefits the fans as well, as you aren’t just blasting out general announcements to your entire list, hoping that some of of will stick.

Segment Suggestions

You can slice and dice your database into segments in many ways, subject to your targets and the data that you managed to gather.

Here I’ll offer up five segmentation suggestions to get you started. If you start to play around with these, you should find that you begin to understand your data set and develop your own segments.

1. LOCATION: Where people live is one of the easiest and readily available pieces of data that you’ll have to hand. It is also one of the most potentially valuable, allowing you to identify clusters of fans for tour plans, geographical trends, and areas for potential street teams or fan meet ups (if coupled with number three on this list). Location is a solid place to start to feel out your data and get comfortable manipulating it into groups. If you need to add broader categories such as East coast, Midwest etc, feel free to create another column and segment in this way as well.

2. AGE: How old your audience is can help you to infer many follow on points, such as their spending power, media preference, musical tastes, and much more. Although some of this will be an educated guess, it also gives you a platform from which to ask these questions the next time you engage them. You can also combine with other data, such as location, to identify audience diversity in various regions. This can help with anything from merchandise choices to venue decisions e.g. if much of your audience in Detroit is under 18, you’ll know you need to find a venue without drinking age restrictions.

3. FAN STATUS: You can add an extra nuance to your data by assigning your own ranking of fan level. This can be based on any number of factors, including number of gigs attended, purchases made, length of relationship, feedback received, or some combination thereof. Digging this deep will allow you to tailor communications to the appropriate sections of your fan base. For example, to crowd fund a limited edition vinyl release you will probably only approach ‘super-fans’, where as sending brand new fans only a special offer for your older material will avoid a pointless communication to long term fans who already have those releases.

4. PREFERRED GENRE: Understanding the types of music that individual fans enjoy gives you the chance to hyper-target new material, right down to releasing an individual song especially for that group. It can also help to refine set lists when combined with location and age related data, target recommendations of similar artists when you try to help out other artists, and perhaps even influence the way you write your next material. I know, I know, you write what’s in your heart. But it can’t hurt to have an insight into what your fans like as well, can it?

5. INFLUENCE LEVEL: This may require further research, or you may simply have a good feel for those of your fans who are influential over the tastes of others, but either way, knowing who to approach to spread your music is a valuable piece of data to have available. Though there are sites like Kred that can help you to ferret out influencers in a certain field online, your most likely route to segmenting in this way is to assign a simple rank for each person, based on recommendation behavior you see online (or lack thereof… perhaps you use a null value, in cases where you simply cannot tell). Does the person regularly share music, post YouTube videos that get likes on Facebook, or write about their tastes online? All are indicators that they should be added to a segmented group that you can go to when your hot new tune needs that extra push.

Over To You!

Have you already worked on something similar to this? How did you segment your data and what results did you see?

For those of you just starting out, does this seem like a valuable exercise? What questions are lingering for you?

Best of the Blog, Web Presence Development

A Friendlier Facebook: 25 Tips to Improve Your Musician Fan Page

March 7, 2012 Steve 1 Comment

In the last few years, Facebook has emerged as the undisputed king of the social networks.

Several other platforms hold their own in a niche battle but, as Zuckerberg’s baby nears 1 billion global users and over 1/3 of the US population signed up, it’s almost impossible to ignore Facebook if you want to reach your fans online.

What becomes the burning question for you artists, regardless of size, genre, or location, is how to connect with those fans and keep them interested in the contents of your Facebook fan page.

The Burden of Growth

Unfortunately, as Facebook’s user count has grown, so has the number of groups trying to get their message in front of ever-wearying fans. To rise above the static noise of this Facebook update deluge, you need to vary your content, encourage fan likes and comments, and keep your posts engaging enough to continue attracting attention.

“Yes, yes, yes, we know all this…”, I hear you chorus, “But how?”

Well that’s exactly why I probed some of the smarter and socially savvy artistic folks I know – in addition to the depths of my own experience – to bring you these 25 tips for creative Facebook fan page content:

1. Ask fans to comment with their favorite artist, song, genre, or anything that you believe will fire their passions to contribute. You learn about your fan base, as well as gaining traction in their News Feed from their participation.

Threyda Art Collective Facebook Page — Threyda's Facebook page often posts art for auction or direct sale, based on bids in the comments.

2. Auction or sell one-off items in the comments section of a post, with the image of what’s up for sale. This real-time selling can create visible demand and prompt further interest in your future posts or other sale items, as fans watch more closely for these specials.

3. “A big thing is cross promotion. For example, the Foo Fighters have a FB page and I cover Everlong in a video. So I can tag and say, “Hey, check out my @FooFighters cover” and it will show up on my page and theirs, increasing clicks and impressions.” ~ Khaled Dajani (NYC singer-songwriter)

4. Produce a few different versions of cover art for your next release. Post each separately to a Facebook album and ask fans to pick the art work that you’ll use by most liked/voted for piece.

5. Be timely in responses. You need not be on 24/7, but the sooner you can respond to developing conversations on your page, the better the discussion and closer your fans will feel. Plugging in via mobile devices and getting into the habit of checking in a few times through the day will help your engagement levels no end.

6. Hand over control of your Facebook page to one or some of your most passionate fans for a set period, perhaps a few days to a week. Give them room to express their musical and artistic interests, as far as is appropriate for your page.

7. “Let fans vote on new song choices or additions to your set list.” ~ Karlton Utter of The Hazmats

8. Ask for fan stories from your shows that they’ve attended. Many will be happy to share; you’ll remind them of a great time associated with your music and you’ll get more testimonials/comments encouraging those who haven’t yet seen you to catch that next gig.

9. Check your Insights. Your fan page has the ‘Admin Panel’, which offers a look at your most popular posts by date, time, type of content, and much more. Check these every week to see what your fans are reacting well to and what you need to dump.

10. Let another band or artist run your page as administrator for a few days to a week. Give them access to your audience and they’ll likely reciprocate by bringing some of their friends and followers to your page. It will also freshen up content and allow you to see how fans react to the change.

11. “Use your new show or project poster/art as your profile pic. For your fans, it’s an easy visual reminder of what you’re working on and keeps your visual message fresh.” ~ Alejandra O’Leary (Michigan singer-songwriter)

12. Run ongoing competitions that encourage multiple clicks and comments, such as entries to sweepstakes drawings or picture posting/voting contests. Each interaction gives the fan a greater chance to win and gives you a greater number of connections to these fans.

13. Expanding on number 1, make use of the Facebook ‘Question’ function (pictured left). This gives you instant poll-taking on your page and in the fan news feeds, providing an easy opportunity to encourage one click feedback. Questions on topical subjects, favorite artists, or those that give your fans a choice in your creative process are all great ways for you to increase interactions.

14. Post non-profit or cause related content that aligns with your personality and/or music subject matter. People like and share good causes more readily, helping both the message and your page to spread.

15. Make Facebook content feel like bonus material. Share things there that you don’t post elsewhere, including a look into your tastes, interests, and current listening, viewing, or reading habits.

16. Share an insight into one of your songs, preferably something that hasn’t been explained elsewhere. Ask fans to share their own perspectives on the song & encourage discussion around the themes that develop.

17. “I’ll use Facebook to discover who I know in each city, then communicate with those folks about how to best turn out their friends and their friends’ friends. The best PR is word of mouth.” ~Danny Ross (NYC singer-songwriter & band leader)

18. Give away one-off items by asking fans to like or comment on the post, keeping entry easy & increasing interaction with your page. Draw a winner randomly and offer unique, unexpected prizes to keep interest and participation high.

19. Weave videos into the tapestry of your page. As YouTube links automatically translate to an embedded video when posted, your fans can watch and listen without leaving the comfort of your page. Remind them to comment or like the post as they watch.

20. Highlight your most compelling content. The new Timeline based Facebook layout will allow you to pin important posts to the top of the page. Take either your main calls to action (e-mail list sign-up, music downloads etc) and make them one of the first pieces of content that people see.

21. Work with other bands to exchange page tags. When you’re playing on the same bill as other artists, this helps to encourage each act’s set of fans to check out the other easily, leading to extra visibility and, in the case of complementary acts, more likes of each page.

22. “Pictures, pictures, pictures! Pictures convey so much more than text alone. Keep your page as visual and colorful as possible to create a non-verbal vibe around your music.” ~ Alejandra O’Leary (Michigan singer-songwriter)

23. Err on the side of posts that inspire conversation and feedback, rather than too much promotion of your own links and content. Of course you should highlight new music and important announcements related to your art, but these should be sandwiched between non-promotional content and entertaining posts. Offer more than just another sales pitch.

24. Request, infrequently, an event or page share. Fans don’t like to feel put upon, yet a certain amount of involvement in sharing your music does help to build a closer bond. When you have an important site on which you need to gain traction, or when you simply need a boost to share your content or a big event, don’t be afraid to explain just how crucial it is and make the ask of your fan base.

25. Integrate your Facebook presence into other social media and communication channels, especially e-mail newsletters. Go a step further than the simple social buttons that often appear in e-mails and create a special incentive for your subscribers to click over to like your Facebook page. Competitions promoted by newsletter but actually carried out on your fan page are a great example of weaving together your communications lines for those who follow you.

Phew! Plenty to be working on there….

….BUT, we’re not done!

What would you add?

How have you used Facebook to offer your fans a unique, interactive experience?

Add away in the comments below or on Facebook itself. Include a link to your site or Facebook page so that I can update this post and give due credit with a link back.

Above The Static |