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. ]
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