How to Promote Yourself Part 11: Twitter & TWT.fm

TWITTER.COM

Twitter is a site that simply focuses on status updates, and has recently been getting quite a bit of buzz. Other people can subscribe to your status updates, and you can subscribe to theirs, and this is what some call “micro-blogging” which is a fast easy way to share your thoughts. Some people hate it, others love it. I find it extremely useful, and have now put my twitter url as part of my email signature. You can rss feed your twitter updates to different profiles like Reverb Nation etc., so it’s less work, and it’s simply a way to keep your name fresh in people’s minds. Just be aware of who can see your tweets, and keep the content within the range of what is appropriate. I would also recommend keeping things positive and upbeat. You don’t want to establish your identity as a bitter and angry person. Also, think about how personal you want to make it. Hilarious as it is, [Fake] Tina Fey’s tweet which said “I don’t know why I even bother chewing corn anymore” may be a little bit more graphic and intimate than a musician should go. I’ll write more on that in another section. Look me up http://twitter.com/wwgroovecorp Another benefit of this is that you can follow key industry people on Twitter and get some very helpful information, like Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby etc.

THERE IS A PRINCIPLE IN MARKETING CALLED THE RULE OF SEVEN. IT BASICALLY STATES THAT IT TAKES A PERSON SEVEN REPETITIONS OF HEARING YOUR NAME TO REMEMBER IT, OR TO FIND IT FAMILIAR UPON RECALL. Actually, I think it may take even more than that in these days of people being barraged with information and advertisements at every turn. My reason for bringing this up is, if there is some way people can hear from you more often [but not so often that you become spammy and get rejected], then the more familiar your name will be, and people gravitate toward what is familiar. That’s why it’s good to get yourself into as many places as frequently as you can, in a positive way. Trying to blog regularly can become cumbersome, so just sending out occasional interesting status updates is a fast and easy way to put yourself into people’s brains, even if for just a few moments.

TWT.FM

This site is affiliated with Twitter and it exists solely for the purpose of allowing people to tweet a quick url of a song they want to share with other people, and then they can click on it and listen to it. I’m not sure at this time where TWT.FM gets their catalogue of music, though I do know that YouTube videos are on the list. So at the very least if you create a YouTube video of your song, that is one way to show up on TWT.FM.

[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]

How to Promote Yourself Part 10: YouTube.com

YOUTUBE.COM

YouTube and iMovie can be your new best friends if you use them to your advantage. Any time you’re in the studio working on your music, take video of interesting moments. Don’t feel the need to have the camera rolling all day long, just stage footage if you need to, that’s how they do it on TV. [I’ve had experience with 2 reality TV shows, and they were both totally NOT real! Everything was strictly for the camera and scenes that were supposedly impromptu were shot 4 and 5 times over.] Then you can edit a 3 to 7 minute “behind the scenes” or “making of” video and post it on YouTube. Be smart about choosing your title, description, and tags, so that it’s optimized for search results. Also, once you get your songs mixed and mastered, go ahead and edit a video to your finished songs. Even something as simple as the CD cover graphic in a static shot with the music playing is done quite frequently, and it’s just one more opportunity for free exposure. A video like this is also advantageous because it may be the only way you show up on some other sites that draw their content from YouTube, like TWT.FM [see following].

When Melinda Doolittle was at the peak of her American Idol fame, we put out a video podcast of us talking about what it was like to work with Melinda on our record. Totally true and directly tied to our music, and the last time I checked it had over 17,000 views. That’s 17,000 times someone has heard about Worldwide Groove Corporation and our record. We edited other videos of us talking, us in the studio, and just our CD graphic with the finished music. They’ve gotten up to 5,000 views each. This is all FREE exposure for our music.

When you’re editing the video just ask yourself what content would be interesting to a complete stranger who doesn’t know anything about you. Shave off every fraction of a second that you don’t need. Tell your story. Try to make it interesting. Surely you’ve watched enough TV to have an idea of how to pace the editing and make it keep moving. Take the time to do this because once you finish and it’s online, it will keep working for you even while you sleep. Then you can post these same videos to your various profiles like MySpace, iLike, Virb etc. And you can link to specific song videos from your ReverbNation songlist.

ANOTHER APPROACH: Everyone has heard stories of artists who become YouTube sensations by posting videos of themselves singing cover tunes either acapella or with a guitar, and suddenly they have a half million views. Some of these people are eventually found out to have already had a record deal and it turns out the whole thing was contrived. In these cases, much of that person’s appeal is gone since people like to think they’ve discovered something on their own. However, there are some other people like Julia Nunes [look her up and watch how she does “Accidentally in Love” and her “Answers to questions Part 4” videos to see a low frills, yet creative and entertaining approach] who have truly organically created a massive following simply by being consistent, entertaining, talented, and interesting. Not everyone has the personality to achieve this, but YouTube can be invaluable if you choose to utilize it and put in the time and effort. Stay true to YOUR personality and use your strengths.

[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]

How to Promote Yourself Part 9: iTunes & Links

iTUNES

You can read about how to get your music on iTunes in the sections about CDBaby and Tunecore. The reason I’m writing about it in the context of promoting yourself is to bring up the issue of actively promoting yourself on iTunes. One of the best ways to introduce your music to new listeners is to create iMixes on iTunes of playlists. A well constructed playlist of music that is similar to yours, and which includes one or two of your tracks can be a valuable tool. The trick is, you need to get your iMix voted on, so that it will show up on the pages of the other artists on that iMix. We are similar to artists like Goldfraap, Thievery Corporation, Zero 7, and Frou Frou. So if we were on an iMix with those artists, and it just so happened to be one of the “top rated” iMixes that they were on, then it would show up on their main iTunes page, or the page of the specific project the songs are from.


ITMS LINK MAKER

The url for this site is long and ugly, so just google the name and you’ll find it. This is the site that will generate the direct link to your music in iTunes, so that you can link directly to it from your various profiles for people to buy your music. Once you generate this url, you can convert it to something short and lovely at ...com or some other site like that which is great for texts and tweets.

[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]