In this crazy ever-changing music industry landscape we see the same issue over and over again:  A vast majority of artists don’t have a long-term plan in place.

The reason for this is in today’s DIY landscape there is no one in charge of creating such a plan. To make things worse the pressure of consistently releasing great singles or EPs, social posting, writing newsletters, booking, plus learning new technology and platforms keeps artists busier than ever and these never ending tasks battle long-term perspective.

Marketing Plans used to be a combined creation of manager, label A&R and marketing team, booking agent, and publisher who would be responsible for coming up with a big picture strategy and implementing a plan for each domain that he or she was responsible for.  

Today, most agencies that indie artists hire tackle what needs to be done right now and handle only their responsibilities without taking a 30,000 foot view.

This sadly has a lot to do with how the artists approach their releases. We know once the music is finished a deep sense of urgency rushes in screaming – release release!  

We urge you to take a deep breath and read on…

It is completely baffling that an artist or band would work so hard on new music, dedicating hours and hours practicing, writing songs, not to mention spending large sums of money recording, mixing and mastering, creating visuals, and album artwork only to rush the release with no plan in place.

Here are the basic components of our long-term marketing plans to show you the key elements you need to consider before you get too far ahead of yourself.

Even if your release is not new, it’s important to backtrack and reset the stage.

There are 15 elements to keep in mind when planning a new release – they break down into 3 groups of 5.

THE FIRST 5: RAMPING UP FOR RELEASE

The 5 areas that need to be addressed before any official announcements should be made about a new album, EP, or even a single coming out are:

1. Distribution
2. Website
3. Social Media
4. Newsletter
5. Press

Let’s dive in!

(again, if you already released music don’t worry! Backtrack and reset the stage.)

1. DISTRIBUTION 

Digital distribution moves a lot faster than it used to but you should still choose a distributor and make sure if you are ordering physical copies of your music that you get them in plenty of time, especially if you are running a pre-sale or having a release party and you want to offer physical product at the show.

*Note albums used to come out on a Tuesday and now Friday is the official release (if you going by industry standards)

CD Baby, Tunecore etc doesn’t cover everything and independently you need to also be aware of additional distribution outlets for increased reach, a list that includes Soundcloud, Pandora and creating playlists on Spotify.

2. WEBSITE

The music industry is built on appearances. To be taken seriously it is very important to have a complete and professional looking online 360 degree presence. This starts with your online home – your website. You need have a modern and functional site that you can update on your own. Your website should have a section where fans can easily listen to and buy your music (not a player that automatically plays please!), a news section with latest happenings and a newsletter sign up offering an incentive juicy offer such as exclusive tracks.

Ariel wrote a detailed guide to help you with the architecture.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

Time and energy needs to be spent building a strong online presence in order to be taken seriously as an artist for when the time comes to start actively promoting.

What we see is many artists don’t know the basics. This will hurt your promotional efforts as music industry professionals, music bloggers, and fans you may be contacting will visit your socials to see what kind of existing following you have and how serious you are. Stale, overly promotional, or boring profiles will not help your chances or engaging anyone.

We will focus on the 4 most important: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Branding is Key

Upload cover photos and banners that are in alignment with your brand. Use a publicity shot or your current album artwork with text on top of the images that promote the single, EP, or album release date, new music videos, and tour announcements. We love a tool called Canva – https://www.canva.com/ for fast and easy banner and social skin creation.

TWITTER

We love Twitter because you can easily build a following of targeted users and jump into conversations.  Every single person you interact with in real life should be followed on Twitter (friends, musicians, producers, club owners, etc.) Jump start your followers by following people and many will follow you back. Lastly target similar sounding artists and follow their Twitter followers, as there is a high probability that they will also like your music.

To keep your profile active with Tweets use Hootsuite. In as little as one hour you can schedule a weeks worth of tweets. Vary the topics you tweet about from career news (which should be no more than 20% of your output) to your interests, passions and hobbies. News, politics, sports, culture are all great topics to share for people to engage and connect around.

There are many relationship building practices and benefits for being active on Twitter of course that we teach our clients, but by following these instructions you will at least have a respectable presence on this powerful platform.

Watch Ariel’s Twitter Video Class it goes over the basics:

FACEBOOK

Pay-to-play is the reality on Facebook for a Page to get any real exposure. We suggest you spend money from time to time but have goals in place before you do, and you should have a complete Page that is active with daily posts. Make sure the page has a cover banner as discussed above and install apps that work as promotional tools for you and your music. Three we love are artist profile Bandpage, a store Bandcamp, or CD Baby, and a mailing list signup form  MailChimp. Even though posts won’t get seen by a large percentage of fans who have liked your Page without advertising, organic reach is still possible and an active Page helps show that you are an active artist. Videos and images have a greater chance of being seen, so share photos and upload videos as much as possible and finally ask questions to increase engagement.

For an advanced deep-dive into Facebook Pages our resident Facebook strategist Andrew Salmon has a 2 part masterclass in the Cyber PR Social Media House Course.

Watch Ariel & Andrew’s Facebook Class:

Part 2:

YOUTUBE

YouTube is the first place millions of people go searching for music. It is a very powerful platform where artists are getting discovered. For any artist looking to increase awareness, it is imperative to have a presence on YouTube with a professional looking channel, with a cover image that is linked to your other socials so people can connect with you across platforms. Make categories to group your videos for easy viewing, such as “Behind The Scenes”, “Official Music Videos”, and “Live Performances”, and highlight an official music video in the featured spot at the top. The channel for The Flaming Lips is a great example of these practices put to use.

For the videos themselves we often see artists leaving off their artist name in the title of the video, which is terrible for search. Make sure you include keywords in your tags and place those most important keywords and keyword phrases at the start of your tag fields. Use adjectives that describe your music and similar artists as keywords with your artist name also being a keyword, the latter of which will will show up in the “related videos section” after one of your videos is viewed.  We also often see description sections left blank too. This is a crucial piece of real estate to tell the viewer what they are watching and provide links to other content you own, such as your website and iTunes, where they can go for more. Here is a video from NYC blog The Wild Honey Pie, they pack all their descriptions full of information where the viewer can go to learn and watch more. Their Channel is branded well too, utilizing the features discussed.

Read our guest blog post (from an Ex YouTube Employee!) as well:

6 Ways to Make Sure You Don’t Waste Your Time on YouTube

INSTAGRAM

The most popular visual social platform has experienced a meteoric rise. As of the beginning of 2015, there are over 300 million active Instagram users, over 20 billion photos shared and 60 million photos a day. If you haven’t yet, connect to people you already know on Facebook, and if you choose, you can also search and connect to contacts in your phone. Next, link your socials.

When you post photos, choose at least two hashtags, as this is how photos are found. http://top-hashtags.com/instagram/ is a site that will display the top hashtags trending in real time if you are stuck, or want to get into the conversation.

In addition to hashtags, you can also add captions to your photos before posting. I caution you to be selective about what you cross-post to socials. You want to tell a separate story on each social channel to get people to join you, and not get fatigued by the same posts across channels.

4. NEWSLETTER 

This is the most important part of the strategy that you will want to skip – DON’T.

While social media is key for attracting your crowd and building your numbers, email is still the most vital asset you will build for generating revenue.  You make relationships with fans on your social networks, but you turn those relationships into customers with email.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing produced an ROI (return on investment) of 4,300% — or $43 for every $1 spent.  

Contact your mailing list once a month with news. Spend money on a mailing list service provider that can help you design a rich looking email and provide analytics and tracking capabilities so you can measure the effectiveness of your newsletters and make adjustments where need be. A premier solution that many of our clients enjoy working with is MailChimp.

Here are Ariel’s recent articles on Newsletters:

5 Critical Things to Keep In Mind for Your Newsletter

Cyber PR’s 3 G’s – GREETING, GUTS & GETTING – How To Write An Effective Newsletter

5. PRESS

It might seem a bit early to start talking about press, but it’s not. PR takes time and effort to execute well.

Sadly, many artists believe that PR = blasting a press release out to the top 100+ music sites that they have Googled. This never works. because PR placements start with astute research.
Blog savviness gets placements.

You should be starting now to identify and familiarize yourself with online publications (blogs), podcasts, and radio outlets that are appropriate and strategic for you and your release. If you live in a smaller town (read: Not in New York, San Francisco, LA, or Chicago) there may be some local press that you can go after too.

There are thousands upon thousands of active music sites, and there are a million more non music sites that can feature your music as well.

Your big goal might be a review on Pitchfork, but what’s your backup when Pitchfork doesn’t respond to you and then doesn’t respond to your follow ups? Is Pitchfork even the right outlet for you to showcase your project? Sure, they have a large audience, but is it the right audience for you? It’s OK if the answer is no.

Not only will familiarizing yourself with music publications help you to know where to pitch your music, but it will also give you invaluable insight and ideas for your press photos, your music video, and pinpointing your genre.

Research is not the only thing you need before you send your first pitch. To find out what to do next, read our 5 Critical Things You Need Before You Start PR.

Pro Tip: Keep in mind that a music blog is made up of content written by individuals. When it comes time to pitch you will be pitching to these individuals. Increase your chances that they will be interested in you by first being interested in them. Make a connection by following them on social media and retweeting them. Better yet, try to strike up a conversation with them on Twitter if the opportunity aries. A conversation about literally anything other than your music is recommended.

This way when you send that writer an email about your music, or if a publicist does that for you, there could now be some familiarity there and existing relationships that will help in getting your emails opened and then your new music hopefully featured.

Now that you know how to build a solid online foundation and the beginnings of an online community dive in and do it.  

Do not cut corners here. Having a true base will put you  in a much better position when you are getting ready for your next 5 which is when you will start calendaring for your release, This is the topic for PART 2 of this 3 PART series.

In our next post we will discuss The Next 5: Ordering the Chaos.

The post The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans – Part 1 by Ariel Hyatt, Brooke Segarra & Chris Hacker of Cyber PR appeared first on cyberprmusic.

A few weeks ago, we published the first installment of our newly updated Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans. We addressed the overlooked importance of having a marketing plan and went through the first five of 15 elements to keep in mind when planning a new release.

In part 2 we will be addressing the next five elements for promoting new music. This can be a single, a music video, an EP, or an album.

The Second 5 Elements: Ordering the Chaos

The next 5 elements that need to be addressed before any official announcements should be made about new music coming out are:

1. Timeline
2. Release
3. Social Media
4. Press & Promotion
5. Shows

If you didn’t get the chance to read through Part 1 we encourage you to please do so before reading this.

1 & 2. TIMELINE AND RELEASE

We have condensed these 2 elements as they go together like cookies and milk. Plan some milestones starting two months before the release date, and have some benchmarks for at least one month after the album comes out. Here is how this could look:

Two Months Before Release

Are you Registered?
Contact an entertainment lawyer to make sure your copyrights are secure and register your music with ASCAP, BMI or Sesac.

Start by rounding up as many people as you can to your socials and newsletter

This is a practice that you should get in the habit of and your whole band should be helping (if you have band social accounts). Find your friends and people you admire (bloggers, other artists, venues, local spots you like to hang out in, etc.) on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and friend away! This will increase your audience as many of the people you follow will follow you back. If you have not curated lists on Twitter make some to keep track of your favorites. Also start reaching out to people in your inbox and outbox and get them on your list (remember it’s illegal to just sign people up so do this with integrity and ask each person).

Your newsletter is the place where you will be able to monetize so, don’t skip this step.  Here is Ariel’s comprehensive Newsletter lesson from Social Media House.

Next, Plan to Take Everyone along on the Journey With You

People like to follow along to real life stories (case and point: reality TV). It’s a great way to form a stronger bond with your current and growing base.

Send updates on how the recording, mixing and mastering is going using videos and photos via your socials, plus capture longer form stories for your blog and newsletter. Engage with your following on milestones like artwork and song titles by polling your fans (Twitter has a new polling feature which is pretty cool!) and holding contests to select what cover or title to go with. The goal of all this activity is to get people excited so they are engaging and sharing your updates with their friends.

One Month to 6 Weeks Before Release

Release Single(s)
This is a great way build buzz, get fans excited, and also get some music bloggers interested. Any reviews you can place will help  build your overall online profile. On the press side of the house aim for appropriate blog targets. If you are a brand new artist Pitchfork is probably NOT appropriate.  Go for smaller, more targeted music blogs!

That being said, be sure to reach out to your “within reason” dream targets with your single(s). It’s not the best idea to wait to reach out to these loftier sites with your album. Album reviews take a considerable amount of time and, if you look, most music sites are reserving these full album review slots for the most anticipated albums.

Announce a Release Event – Live Show or Listening Party
If you play live shows, book a release show and do something to make this show more special than the others.  Decorate the venue, work with the bar to create a special shot or cocktail, pre-sell a merch pack, hire a party bus, ask a food truck to pull outside the venue, etc.

If you don’t play out, create a listening party at a small bar, create an after work happy hour, or choose a local favorite.   If you are just starting and don’t think you can draw a large crowd, hold a listening house party with wine tasting, cupcake bake-off, fondue party, etc.

Think about your fans and make this special for them! And of course they key is to announce that tickets are on sale.

Press Campaign Begins
If you are hiring a PR team – work on the strategy with them or if you plan to do it yourself it’s time to prepare – Read Brooke’s guide on 5 Critical Things You Need to Know Before Starting a PR Campaign. (See the PR Plan section of this post for more detail)

Start Your Pre-Sale Campaign
Send word out through your newsletter and socials.

Create a Facebook Invite
Create a Facebook Invite for the new release, send it to all your Facebook friends and cross-post on your Page.

Two Weeks Before Release

Build the Momentum!
Keep the excitement up on socials by scheduling a countdown. Hold a contest to win the new music or give away tickets to your show or listening party.

Release Day 

• Write a post or make a fun video about the release and post on your website
• Send out a newsletter announcement to your mailing list
• Skin your socials with “out now!” and artwork  (Use canva.com to help you)
• Update all socials with an “out now” post and images with links to purchase

One Month After Release

Keep the momentum going!
Again, the more activities you can plan leading up to the release and after it drops will help continue your story and profile building. The more press and social media-worthy points you can arrange for after a release will keep contacting press with new content, while at the same time reminding them about the new album.

Also don’t forget to ask your family, friends and fans to write reviews of your new album on iTunes, Amazon or CD Baby, and other digital retailers when it becomes available. Studies have shown that albums that are reviewed on iTunes actually sell more albums.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

A lot of social media elements are covered in the timeline above. At Cyber PR Music we consider your blog and your newsletter to be part of your social media strategy.

Just because you may not have a big “news” item (for example: a new release) doesn’t mean you should stop communicating with your fans on a regular basis. Newsletters should still be going out once a month, blog posts being posted, and socials should never go stale. You should be updating daily.

In addition to all the content we have gone over in this guide, post about things happening in your personal life, repost interesting articles or news items or post a song from a band that you love. News, Politics, Celebrity gossip, parenting, fashion, art, and sports all make good topics for people to engage and connect around. Let your personality show!

Social Media rules are constantly changing and shifting (hello Facebook) so make sure you keep up on social trends so that you are not using antiquated techniques. We love Mashable, Social Media Today, and Social Media Examiner.

4. PRESS & PROMOTION

Your PR Plan

A big component when promoting a new album is of course getting PR. You can accomplish this by hiring a team or by going the DIY route. When hiring a PR team make sure you do your homework and make sure your music is a good fit with that firm’s approach and philosophy. Be sure that the team talks to you about their well-thought-out plan for your campaign.

A PR company should work with you to make sure you are fully prepared before you are introduced to the press. This is the first part of their job when you engage.

If you’re going with a do-it-yourself approach here are some tips for an effective campaign:

Pictures
Make sure you have at least 3-4 great images and variety is important. Most music blogs feature square or horizontal photos. When getting photos taken think through your brand and think about variety to keep your images fresh as time goes by.

Bio / Your Signature Story
This series is packed with DIY tips, but we suggest hiring a professional to write your bio, which we call a signature story around here. Even if you are a strong writer, it can be challenging to write about yourself. A professional writer will be able to craft a compelling bio that effectively conveys all the important details while keeping the audience in mind, which in this case includes press and music industry folks.

Press Outreach
The first people to target should be local press and press outlets that have written about you in the past (if applicable). When contacting blogs make it personal. (If applicable) Be sure to research which writer/journalist of the site is the best or most appropriate to reach out to. Before you start talking about your music be sure to address why you approached them and not some other blog. ALWAYS include a soundcloud link to either your single or album. If your album/EP is unreleased, you can include a private Soundcloud link to the album/EP in a private playlist. Follow up approximately once a week and if you’ve received some press since the last time you contacted them, be sure to include a link in your follow up email.

Then as we touched on in Part 1, plan ahead so you will have content for multiple press outreaches such as a new music video, remixes, or tour dates, as you don’t want to repeat the same message about the new music.

Words of Warning About Press Releases
Please DON’T write and pay to distribute a press release. Press releases are relics of the past and are not looked upon as cool by 99% of music bloggers. Press releases are great if you have something truly newsworthy and releasing an EP, single or album is actually not “news” (even though it is extremely important to you).

Building a Targeted Media List
There are many ways to start building a targeted media list. One method – identify a musician or band that is slightly further along and fits into your musical wheelhouse, and take note of the press outlets that they are getting featured on. There is a great chance that those publications may also feature you.

Learn Spotify
Spotify has an entire site dedicated to helping you learn how to get established in the Spotify ecosystem. Start here with their guides and best practices.  >http://www.spotifyartists.com

5. SHOWS

If you are already building through touring, continue to tour, hitting the same markets that you played while supporting the new album to build on the momentum that has been made. Martin Atkins has the BEST book on touring called Tour Smart. If you don’t have it get it! We also love this post from Sam Friedman on the Sonicbids blog.

There are undoubtedly limitations though on how often you can tour and you more than likely won’t be able to tour to every market where there are fans.

The post The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans – Part 2 Ordering the Chaos by Ariel Hyatt, Brooke Segarra & Chris Hacker of Cyber PR appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

As an independent musician, a digital PR campaign can be a critical component to an overall marketing strategy that will help you to:

1. Reach new fans

2. Increase online influence

3. Create new content that can be used to continue to build strength of existing fan base through social media

4. Better understand marketplace position

While all four of these goals are essential for you to have, and there is no doubt an effective PR campaign can help you achieve them, many artists jump into full-fledge PR campaigns a bit too early.

In order for music PR to be truly successful and achieve everything you want it to, you must have the 5 following assets at the ready:

1. Music For Release

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. There is no need for a PR campaign, no matter what direction or niche you’re going to target during it, if you don’t have music available for the media to listen to. You’re wasting your time, the media’s time, and your money.

The ideal scenario is that you have at least an upcoming EP (containing at least 4 songs) that is set for release around 1 to 1.5 months from the date you start outreach. For the most part, bloggers don’t like to mention an upcoming release if there is any more than 1 month of lead-time between their feature and the release. And they’ll be less enthused about your single if there is no upcoming EP slated for release within the next three to six weeks.

And let’s not forget to think about the readers! With the web being the way it is, music blog goers are confronted with interesting info 24/7. Therefore, it’s really not in your best interest as an indie artist to space singles and EPs light years apart from each other. Keep the rollout tight and the momentum up.

That said, it IS certainly possible to do a PR campaign for music that has been released previously. Try to keep it conservative though, like six months, a year, but beyond that, you might be pushing it. When releasing previously released music, just know that there will be journalists who will pass just on the fact that the music hasn’t been released within the last three months.

Bonus Note: Your songs MUST be professionally recorded. Live tracks are fine if you are promoting a live release, but even then the mix needs to be of professional quality.

2. A Professional, Compelling, Telling Bio

A professionally written bio that weaves a compelling story about who you are and what makes you unique is not something to overlook and leave to your Twitter stream. A great bio (we call it a signature story around here) is an essential asset to an effective music PR campaign.

Your bio should serve as a one-stop shop for bloggers to get the facts on you, your project, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. And, even though your music will speak for itself, you’re going to want to talk about yourself and your music in a way that will entice people to click that play button.

Unfortunately, one paragraph saying that you are a musician from so-and-so making rock music that will blow everyone’s mind is not going to make anyone want to click that button. What will make people listen, is a bio that communicates your story and pays acute attention to detail and nuance.

Pro Tip: There are bloggers out there who will repurpose your bio in order to create enough content for their blog. These are few and far between, but you will run across them! This is, however, good news for you if you have a strong bio! The fact that many bloggers will re-purpose the bio means that you now have the opportunity to control the messaging of their features, telling their readers the important points about you that may stick out to fans as unique and intriguing.

A professional bio can run you a few hundred dollars, but it’s reusable and will come in handy long after your campaign has ended.

3. Professional Promo Photos

Do you know what gets people to click on your write up? The photo. It might be kinda sad, but it’s true. If you have any doubts, just think of your own knee-jerk reaction when checking out artists without a household name. Because of this natural human instinct to care about imagery, you’ll want to pay close attention to the messaging in your photos. What do you want the takeaway to be for people who glance?

You can’t get away from needing great photos. All bloggers (and even some podcasters) will want a photo to go along with their feature. Many new media makers have a quality standard to uphold and poor photos of you and/ or your band could actually be a deal breaker.

On the other hand, unique, creative and well thought out promo photos can be the ice breaker needed to get bloggers to check out your music.

Here are a few great promo photos of a few Cyber PR® clients that absolutely helped them to have great campaigns:

Zoya

Syre and Fresko

Taylor Casey

4. A Niche to Conquer / Some Serious Consideration of Genre

Identifying a specific niche to target and/or pinpointing your genre is a critical component to any successful digital music PR campaign.

Let’s talk about niches first.

It is important to note that your niche does not, in any way, need to reflect your genre of music. Anything that you are passionate about, anything that has inflicted you as a person (such as a disease or social plight) or any part of your upbringing that has helped to define who you are as a person and a musician can be a great niche.

The idea here is that on music blogs, you are just another musician being covered, however on, say a positivity blog or an anime blog, you are the one, or one of very few musicians being covered making your story and your music far more unique which can help it to resonate with the reader-base.

Okay so genre.

The media is getting to a point where it hears singer-songwriter and eyes glaze over. You probably are a singer-songwriter, and that simple categorization is important at times, but it may not work for everyone.

It’s important to think of the publications you want to be in, read them, and see how they describe/talk about music. If they label everyone as singer-songwriter, you’re good to go! If they are approaching things from a more intricate perspective, you might want to think of yourself in those terms as well. You don’t have to be a music journalist yourself. You just have to be conscious.

There are many more genres (and subgenres) than just rock, pop, country, jazz, EDM. Do some poking around!

5. A Social Media Presence

Too many musicians underestimate the importance of a social media presence to a digital music PR campaign. While it’s all important- the music, the bio, and the promo photos- there are two reasons why it is so important that you also have a strong social media presence:

1. With so many musicians and music publicists inundating the inboxes of bloggers and journalists, it is inevitable that they will check out the social media presence of each submission as a filter for who to, and who not to, consider for coverage.

This certainly doesn’t mean that you need to have a HUGE social media presence with hundreds of thousands of fans, but it does mean that you need to be consistently posting content to your socials that communicates “you”, and you need to be engaging with your fans (and the media too!).

Ultimately, apart from being introduced to totally awesome music, bloggers are interested in driving traffic to their sites. A blogger wants to know that if he or she is going to take the time to cover your music, you will be able to return the support by sharing the feature with your fans, helping the blogs to build their followings as well.

2. In order for PR to truly be effective, each feature needs to be properly leveraged through social media to mobilize the existing fan base.

In other words, each feature is new content that you can use to engage your fans without having to say ‘listen to my music’… this form of sharing your successes is a much more subtle form of self-promotion than the much dreaded shameless self-promo that all too many musicians practice (and no one likes).

Again, having hundreds of thousands of fans isn’t the point here, but rather you need to have a consistent content strategy that covers all 6 rooms of your social media house, which includes (but isn’t limited to) Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Blog, Newsletter. Here is a quick outline of how often you need to post to each platform in order to remain ‘consistent’:

Facebook:

1 Post Per Day

Twitter:

2 – 3 Tweets Per Day

Blog:

At least 1 new post every other week

Newsletter:

1 newsletter per month

Youtube:

At least 1 new video per month (note this doesn’t need to be a professional music video)

Instagram:

Posting at least 5 times a week.

Just to recap for successful music PR outreach you will need music that’s ready to go, a professional, compelling bio, great promo photos, a niche to conquer, and a social media presence. If you don’t have these five things, get to it!

The post 5 Critical Things You Need Before You Start Music PR appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Welcome to the final part of our 3-part series on how to build a comprehensive marketing plan.  In the first two articles in this series, we discussed building a solid and complete online foundation and outlined strategies for a successful new release launch. Now it is time to kick back and relax for a little while before starting to write material for the next album that you’ll release a year or two down the road right? …..Couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Constant 5: The Ongoing Work!

Your job now is to keep supplying consistent compelling content to strengthen your relationship with your fans and potential fans. The Constant 5 are:

1. Release new music 
2. Live shows ­
3. Ongoing Social Media 
4. Merchandise ­
5. Making money 

1. KEEP THE MUSIC COMING

Gone are the days of releasing an album once every couple of years and leaving it at that. Today’s artists need to be constantly feeding their fanbase new music. Releasing singles will keep people engaged while they are waiting on a full length, but you’re not limited to just releasing original new works.

Create alternate versions of your studio tracks:

Get a DJ to remix one of your songs. Not saying this has to be a famous DJ, just someone who knows the technology and is creative. If you’re interested in holding a remix contest you should contact the folks over at Indaba Music. They put together some great remix campaigns for artists.

Or take a page from Nirvana and release an album of stripped down “unplugged” versions of your studio tracks. A great way to show a different side of the band and appeal to potentially new listeners.

Lastly release a live album, preferably from the CD release show, but any show will work as long as the audio is of top quality.

Record cover songs:

Music fans love covers. Recording cover songs is a great strategy for gaining awareness for new artists and it provides fun content to share with your fans. You can cover artists that inspire you, or similar sounding artists to further entrench yourself within your genre. Don’t box yourself in though. Covering a song outside of your genre can be a great way to tap into a whole new fanbase. This is exactly what the pianist Scott D. Davis did when he decided to combine his love of heavy metal with the beautiful piano pieces he was recording. The result was millions of youtube hits for his metal covers and new fans out of the heavy metal community, even of the artists themselves; Scott has been invited to open for Godsmack, Korn, P.O.D., Sevendust, Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe and Queensrÿche among others.

*Please note, to legally sell a cover song you will need to obtain and pay for a mechanical license. Harry Fox Agency is the foremost mechanical licensing agency in the US. Or work with Easy Song Licensing who will get the license for a small fee per song on top of the mechanical license fee.

2. LIVE SHOWS

Continue to tour, hitting the same markets that you played while supporting the new album to build on the momentum that has been made. There are financial limitations though on how often you can tour and you more than likely won’t be able to tour to every market where you have some fans.

Live Streaming

Live streaming is a great solution to these limitations. You can use a company like Stageit or Concert Window to broadcast a weekly or monthly show from the comfort of your home or rehearsal space. Be sure to make a Facebook invite with all the details and send to your fans, post on Twitter, and let everyone on your mailing list know when to tune in. Streaming a show is also a great way to interact with your fans on a more personal and direct level. 

Keeping the shows fresh and different will help with increasing viewership from show-to-show:

1. Play a game at the end of the performance or midway through using the chat feature. Trivia would be very easy game to pull off, where people could win merch or any other prizes that you can get your hands on.

2. Play new cover songs each week, better yet, ask people what covers you should play for the next week. Post the question to Facebook. The song suggestion that gets the most likes will be the one(s) you cover.

3. Have guest performers join you. It’s a great way to add a new element to the live stream while cross promoting to each other’s fans at the same time.

3. ONGOING SOCIAL MEDIA

We are not going to belabor this – Pay attention to your social channels and post often. Please see parts 1 and 2 of this article to deep dive and keep your Facebook Page, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Blog, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, or whatever your favorite social media channels are alive and active.

And don’t be a jerk and expect others to come to you – follow people and make friends.  If you are not interested in them they shouldn’t be interested in you (it’s a 2-way street)

4. MERCHANDISE

We see this way too much and we want you to avoid this costly mistake!  You do NOT need to create merch until you have a fanbase who will buy merch and a sense of what they want to buy.

Merch has become very sophisticated over the last few years,  there is no need to order a bunch of Tshirts (unless of course your fans like to roll that way!)

Our three favorite Merch ideas are

USB Flash Drives – Different kind of merch item to sell that you can load up with music, pictures, videos, lyrics, sheet music etc.

Vinyl –  Is hot right now. According to a recent Noisey article: “In the past ten years, the sale of vinyl has increased to a staggering degree—a roughly 900 percent increase in LP sales between 2004 and now.” Make sure you keep the fact that ordering can take months and make sure you are prepared to mail it and carry it to shows (its heavy!)

DIY Craft Items – We also love the idea of creating unique DIY items as a vehicle of selling your music, our client Mary Jennings sells bolo ties at her shows and in her Etsy store when she’s not on the road.  We loved hanging out with her and watching her fans try on ties after her set. 

Musician Simon Tam wrote this fabulous post on Music Think Tank,The Ultimate Guide to Band Merchandise, a few years ago and it’s jam-packed with fabulous links and unique ideas. 

5. MAKING MONEY

You want to be considered an artist and not a hobbiest right? So making money is key for your ongoing strategy.

Crowdfunding – This is a great way to fund an album, a tour or a big idea and by the time your campaign ends, your contributors are invested in both the idea and the journey, increasing their loyalty levels to “super fan” status. However you must keep in mind that the average crowdfunding campaign raises $7,000 according to fundable, and and it takes dedication and perseverance to pull off successfully.

Also – no crowd, now crowd funding so make sure you have a real dedicated fanbase before you try this. In order to raise $5,000, you would need around 250 backers who would give an average of $20 each. In order to raise $10,000, you would need around 500 backers, who would, again, give an average of $20 each.

Experiences – Backstage meet and greets, private Skype sessions, and dinner with the band before a show are all possibilities and you don’t need to run a crowdfunding campaign to sell experiences. Many indie and major label artists, are taking advantage of them and here BandPage makes it easy to set them up and track buyers for this great revenue generating strategy.

Subscriptions –  is another area that artists are moving towards, where people sign up to receive music via Bandcamp or support the creation of videos through Patreon. Just because people don’t buy CD’s much anymore (I for one don’t even have access to a CD drive/player) and even downloads are in a decline, people are willing to support artists, you just need to give them the platform to do so and interesting items and experiences on offer.

So there you have it!

This 3-part series is a LOT and we know it and we hope that you find it extremely helpful.

And if it all feels like too much we would be happy to write a custom plan for you that goes MUCH deeper than this and tailored for your specific needs.

This is a 3 part series.

Read Part 1 Album Release Preparation

Read Part 2 Releasing an Album 

DOWNLOAD OUR MUSIC MARKETING PLAN CHECKSHEET 

The post Post Album Release Tips: The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans Part 3 appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Instagram — the most popular visual social platform has experienced a meteoric rise.  As of the beginning of 2016, there are over 300 million active Instagram users, and 60 million photos shared every day.  Instagram was acquired by Facebook for 1 billion dollars in April, 2012.

Why and How Should I Use It?

Instagram is an awesome way to connect with your fans on a platform they are probably already using. Unlike all the other socials that can function from a computer, Instagram is an app – meaning it can only be fully used from a mobile phone.  To experience it, you must download the iPhone or Android app to your device.  This is where you will be editing and posting photos, following other users, and adding hashtags, which are the primary language of Instagram because users search hashtags to discover photos they like.

Creating a Profile

Instagram allows you to change your profile photo and add a 150 word bio with one link, so choose carefully!  Next, connect to people you already know on Facebook, and if you choose, you can also search and connect to contacts in your phone.  Next, link your socials by locating the little “wheel” at the top right of the app where you can link to your Facebook, Twitter, and others.

After this is complete, it’s simple.  Take a photo (or choose one already stored on your phone). Next, apply a filter which will enhance the photo, change the color, make the photo look old, rotate it, soften colors, etc., and then post!

TIP: Try to keep your user name consistent with your Twitter handle! Not only does this make it easier for fans to find you across social channels, but if someone tweets an Instagram photo of you, it will connect to your Twitter account as well.

Hashtags

When you post a photo, choose at least two hashtags, as this is how photos are found.  http://top-hashtags.com/instagram/ is a site that shows the top hashtags trending in real time if you are stuck, or want to get into an active hashtag conversation. You can put these hashtags in the actual caption, or post them in a comment under the photo after it’s been published.

#RIP #whyiseveryonedyinglately

Captions Should Tell A Story

In addition to hashtags, you can also add captions to your photos before posting. What’s going on in your photo? Fans want to connect with you on a personal level, so tell them a story! Post a few photos in real time, documenting the lead-up to a show, a day on tour, a trip to the zoo, etc.

Humor is always welcome

Timing is Everything

It’s vital to track which times your fans engage with your posts. Posting at 2 am on a Saturday might work perfectly for an EDM DJ, but it’s not a great strategy for a Christian folk singer. Think about your target fan, and when they’re most likely to be scrolling through Instagram. If you need help with this, there’s a great website called Iconosquare that connects with your account and gives you detailed analytics on your followers and their engagement.

Cross Posting to Twitter

I caution you to be selective about what you cross-post to socials.  You want to tell a separate story on each of your socials to get people to join you, and not get fatigued by the same posts across channels.  Once in awhile, it’s perfectly OK to cross-post.

TIP: when you cross-post to Twitter, your photo will not show up in your tweet stream (nor will it be added to your photos section on your Twitter page.  It will instead show up as a link to Instagram.  This is beneficial to get followers from Twitter, but can become annoying to your Twitter friends — another reason to use sparingly! There are ways to get your photos to show up on Twitter, but we’ll save that for the next blog post.

Cross Posting to Facebook

Ditto with Facebook. You want to be Instagramming several times a day, and if you cross-post to FB every time, it will get real old, real fast. The way you get people to follow all your different social channels is to actually make them different. It’s okay to occasionally put an Instagram photo up on FB, but save it for the really good/important pics.

Create CTA Posts

Make special posts to advertise events, releases, or get people to follow your Page on Facebook or your Twitter stream. There are a few apps that help you write on top of Instagram photos, creating beautiful and professional CTAs. We’ll go into these in our next blog post.

Ed Sheeran used a pretty nifty CTA to get his fans to follow him on Snapchat.

Videos

Instagram allows you to post 15-second videos – just long enough to catch the chorus of your latest song! Take the video from your phone, or upload a higher quality clip. This is a great way to promote your new music video, or your next show. Keep in mind that engagement rates on videos in Instagram tend to be lower than the engagement rates on photos, so don’t rely too heavily on the video option. If you want to post lots of videos, Vine might be a better option for you.

Other Tools and Apps to Optimize Your Account

There are dozens of great apps and sites you can use to optimize your photos and fan engagement on Instagram. We’ve touched on a few of them in this post, but stay tuned for our next post, because we’re going to give you a run-down of these tools, and show you some examples of musicians who are rocking it on Instagram!

Still Struggling to Come Up With Content?

At Cyber PR, we encourage our clients to focus on thematics when coming up with content to post on social media. What do your tribe/followers want to see? What fits your personality? What are you trying to say? What do you care about? We recommend choosing up to five thematics, and focusing on those when posting on social media. Here are ten examples to get you started:

1. Charities/causes that you care about – #unicef #childfund
2. Family – #bro
3. Your pets/animals – #grumpycat #puppy
4. Other music/musicians, shows you go to, etc. – #musicmonday
5. Your upcoming events, premieres, etc. – #livemusicNYC
6. Your creative process – #coffeecoffeecoffee
7. Food – #COOKIES
8. Your hometown/where you live – #nyc #brooklyn
9. Nature – #outdoors #dirt
10. Your hobbies – #adultcoloringbooks

Then there’s always #tbt (Throwback Thursday). Awkward childhood photos go down a treat.

There you go – the basics of Instagramming. Once you have a few photos, you will begin to lay out a visual story for yourself. Instagram is a great place to figure out what you want your brand image to be, and what parts/how much of your life you want to share with your fans. Above all, don’t forget to engage with other users! Follow users who interest you, search for hashtags, and then like or comment on photos. This is how you really start to build your community!

The post The Musician’s Guide to Instagram appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Raise your hand if keeping your social media channels updated and compelling feels like an overwhelming task. It’s okay, I understand! It’s a lot of work to keep your online presence fresh and engaging. Especially if you’re also trying to create music at the same time.

That’s why a lot of musicians hire someone to take that work off their hands – a Social Media Manager (or an SMM for short), will work with you to create content that attracts more fans and supports your brand. An SMM will also post regularly on your socials so that you don’t have to get into the daily tedious grind.

Our team at Cyber PR manages social media for a wide range of artists and entrepreneurs, and we often find ourselves explaining what a social media management campaign actually entails. Many are wary of letting someone else post for them, with good reason. You put a lot of work into gathering your tribe of fans – you don’t want to confuse them with posts that don’t sound like they came from you!

In this post, I want to assuage some of these fears, and give you an insider’s look at WHAT WE ACTUALLY DO for our clients during a social media management campaign. And if hiring someone to do your social media is not your bag, there will be some helpful hints on how to get better at your own daily posting and content strategy.

Laying The Groundwork

The most critical part of any social media management campaign is what happens before a single Tweet or Facebook post goes out. We have to get to know you – as an artist, and as a person – before we can start to post for you.

The Intake Process

Our SMM campaigns are handled by a team of one or two social media managers. We start by sending an in-depth questionnaire that asks dozens of questions about your current social media strategy, what types of content you like (and dislike), and what your fans are reacting to currently. We ask you to share your favorite artists, videos, quotes and content (even if it is unrelated to your music).  After you return the questionnaire, our whole team meets to analyze it and create themes, content ideas and a personalized content calendar. Next, we set up an in-depth meeting (phone, Skype, or in-person) with you, in order to go over the questionnaire and begin to really understand your voice.  Together, we go deeper into your interests, influences and what kind of content you want us to add to your current posting schedule.  We also look deeply at your analytics to identify other social media users it might be fruitful for you to engage with, and what online conversations you might want to join.

Dropbox & Pinterest

We encourage our artists to make a Dropbox folder to gather personal and professional photos we can use for various posts (Throwback Thursday, promo, Travel Tuesday, etc.). We also encourage our artists to make private (or public!) Pinterest mood boards to capture photos and themes we can use to get a sense of your preferred aesthetics, graphics and color schemes. This is an easy way to curate content that you like (recipes, memes, photos, quotes, videos, Soundcloud playlists, etc.). This not only gives us appropriate fodder for posts – it also gives us greater insight into the brand image you want to portray.

Social Skinning & Special Graphics

Next, we make sure your brand is cohesive across all channels, and all sites are optimized and skinned. It is important to visualize releases, blog features, show announcements, crowdfunding campaign countdowns and social channels. Our SMMs create unique visual content that fits with each individual artists’ brands.  To do this we use Canva, but there are many great, easy-to-use apps that will help you create awesome graphics.

The SMM Organizer

Once we have the basics down, we start to prep some posts on a what we call the SMM Organizer which is stored in the cloud as a Google Sheet, and when posts are approved we use a social media scheduling system like Hootsuite or Buffer. You have full access to everything we are doing, and we ask our clients to give feedback and make changes at any point. Your level of involvement in the process is completely up to you. Some of our clients like to leave everything in our hands, and some stay very involved, even continuing to post themselves. This all depends on how much you like social media and how much time you have to get into the action. Below you will be able to download the template that we use here internally!

Social Media Channels

We choose five THEMATICS for each artist, and we try to keep the content tight and not stray too far from these 5 thematics. Topics that interest you or define you in some way are great thematic options (ie. your music, charitable causes, sports, outdoors, animals, hometowns, etc.). That way, your Twitter feed stays coherent, and new followers can immediately get a grasp on who you are and what you stand for.

I did an in-depth interview on how we create thematics, and general best practices for Twitter on the Twitter Smarter Podcast – Listen in for an in depth dive: http://bit.ly/TwitterPodcastAriel

Our goal is to make sure that when WE post something, it sounds exactly like something YOU would say. We want to make it so similar that not even your besties will be able to tell the difference.

Twitter 

An effective Twitter management strategy has two major components: content creation, and audience development.

Content Creation

Our SMMs Tweet between 3 and 10 times a day for our artists. We include a mix of RTs, @’s, and original posts. One of the tweets is almost always about your music and what is happening in your career, though it is important to avoid being overly promotional on social media. Obviously if you have a show coming up, or a new single, we include more promotional posts than usual.

If you are thinking that this is a lot of tweeting, know this: the average tweet shows up on peoples’ news feeds for approximately 45 seconds. That makes it impossible for us to over-tweet.

Audience Development

You build an audience on Twitter by following people who you think might be interested in you and your music. We take this off your hands, and use professional apps to build your followers systematically and efficiently. After a few weeks of Twitter management, you will see higher engagement on your Tweets from REAL people (not the fake accounts that some people pay for).

Facebook 

In general, you shouldn’t be posting on Facebook as much as you post on Twitter. Once a day is plenty, but many of our artists like to post more (it all depends on how reactive your Facebook followers are and how much money you wish to invest in ads or a promotional strategy). Content of Facebook posts needs to be more in-depth than tweets. Many studies also show that native video and images are effective on Facebook so we make sure we mix up what we are posting.

Facebook Ads

As you may know, Facebook is virtually all pay-to-play. The newsfeed algorithms are annoyingly skewed to benefit paid advertisers. Therefore, a huge part of Facebook SMM is creating and manage ads for you. We create an advertising strategy that drives engagement on promotional posts, web traffic, and encourages sharing amongst your audience’s networks.  We also monitor Ad Insights and analytics to determine which Ads are producing the best results, and which strategies resonate well among your target audience.  Lastly, we strategize on special activations such as contests, newsletter sign up drives (a free download in exchange for an email, for instance), charity tie-ins for Ads, etc.

Newsletter 

Your newsletter is where most of your engagement and revenue will come from, so getting a professional to help you with it is a great investment. You want to be consistent and regularly posting on all of your social channels, but this is ESPECIALLY important with your newsletter. We recommend sending a newsletter at least once a month. A social media manager will help you organize your mailing list, write, and send emails to your subscribers. After the newsletter is sent we track open rates and work with you to improve them and help you come up with ways to grow your mailing list.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels, and one of the easiest to use. It’s a great platform on which to build your brand, increase your following, and create compelling content. We’ve written several blog posts that are full of advice on how to use Instagram effectively. A social media manager can do all sorts of things for you on Instagram – creating and posting custom graphics and images to support your brand, gathering your approved personal photos and scheduling at least one post a day, utilizing appropriate hashtags and engaging in conversations to get you more followers, and connecting your account to all your other social channels.

Blog

Your SMM is basically your brainstorming buddy.  She has been working in the music business for years, and have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.  She help you come up with blog topics and brand-consistent ideas, and help you with all the backend technical work. She can help you choose SEO-friendly (Search Engine Optimization) titles for your blog posts, and even find you a ghost writer, if blogging isn’t your thing. One of our past clients at Cyber PR was a sociologist with many published scientific papers, and we worked with her to re-work her published papers into compelling blog posts to expand her influence online.

Organizing Your Posts with The SMM Organizer

One of the most important components of managing social media is keeping on top of the daily posts. Here at Cyber PR, we organize posts for our clients in a giant spreadsheet, which ensures that no social channel is left behind. As a reward for getting all the way to the bottom of this GIANT blog post, we’d love to give you a free download of the very template we use! The Social Media Management Organizer will make your life so much easier, and ensure that all your social channels are receiving the tender loving care they deserve. Click below to get your social posts organized!

Final Note

In the end, our goal in a social media management campaign is to streamline your social media strategy, and build your audience organically. In order to do this, we learn how to use YOUR voice, YOUR interests, and YOUR music to create compelling content to attract new fans and strengthen the relationship with existing fans.  If you want help we would love to talk to you – just click below to set up a call and HAPPY POSTING!

The post Inside A Social Media Management Campaign appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

While social media is a critical component to any musician’s overall marketing strategy, it needs to be done effectively and efficiently. Without a clear set content strategy, it is likely to become just another source of frustration, rather than THE source responsible for moving you towards your goals.

There are quite a few simple pitfalls that musicians often make while using social media that need to be avoided. By doing so, you will set yourself on a path towards an effective social media presence and a more loyal fan base.

Mistake Number 1: Self-Promotion is the Only Form of Communication (Or, Content is NOT Varied!)

According to the latest research, mixing up social media content is KEY. Unfortunately, most artists are too busy with self-promotion to put the correct amount of time and effort into varying their content. While the message in the text of your socials is important, don’t forget to integrate eye-catching photos, graphics and videos.

A good general rule to use is that only 1 in every 10 posts should be self-promotional, with the rest focusing on mixed media content that focuses on sharing your interests and passions.

My social media pyramid will help you stay the course and you will never push out boring content ever again!

Mistake Number 2: Lack of Branding

A huge issue I see all the time is artists not thinking about how they look across all their most important social media channels. Consistency is key – don’t have your Twitter theme be red, while your website is blue and your Facebook has no thematic elements whatsoever. Your logo is a great starting point to setting a specific look, feel and color scheme.

Below are a few examples of artists with strong branding; note the common feel across all pages. You will notice that all three artists have:

– A clear common color scheme
– Branding that reflects their sound
– A common profile picture on 2/3 networks

MANATEE COMMUNE
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

DONNA MISSAL
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

THE AQUADOLLS
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Mistake Number 3: No Newsletter!

Every single study you will read still points out one fact: Your newsletter is where you will make most of your money.

I know you either don’t have a newsletter, or you have a newsletter that goes out once in a while because you are:

1. Too scared to over-communicate with your fans and you don’t want to overwhelm them, making them want to unsubscribe.

2. You don’t feel you have anything interesting to say, for example you have no shows, no studio time booked and absolutely no “music news”.

3. You feel you have enough to do with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. etc. etc. and so you don’t even bother with the newsletter.

The only thing you are affecting with this attitude is your bottom line.

What does the newsletter have to do with social media?

Your social media should feed your newsletter in every way possible. You should never give away music without getting an e-mail address in exchange and should always have a widget for people to sign up to your newsletter across all your platforms (i.e. your website, your blog, your Facebook fan page, etc.).

The post 3 Mistakes Musicians Make On Social Media appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Are you still not sending out a regular newsletter to your followers? Are you under the impression they are old school and therefore not effective? Do you think that nobody reads them – just because you might not?

Think again! Here is quote from Entrepreneur (August 2016)

“Email marketing works 40 times better at getting customers than Facebook and Twitter, and compared to social media, it offers 17 percent higher conversion. The secret to success is making every email count. Email not only converts better than the most popular social media, but people spend up to 17 percent more when they do buy.”

– Aaron Agius

Email is still on top when it comes to generating revenue, but you have to be strategic. You build relationships with your followers via your social networks, and you turn them into customers with your newsletter.

Let’s go through the infrastructure of an effective newsletter together. This is a structure that I have used, and coached my clients to use for years and it works

Greeting – Be Personal

In your greeting you want to share something that is non-related to your product or services. Talk about you, something that inspired you recently or something in the news. This warms people up and like a letter connects on a human level. Steer clear of controversial topics that will isolate certain readers – stay neutral.

Here are some suggestions to get you thinking,

• Vacation/current trip
• Something that interests you / a theme of fun, beauty, art, etc.
• Whatever you are currently reading or listening to
• The latest TV show you’re watching on Netflix or a movie you have seen

Post photos of these personal touches on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or blog, etc.

Guts – The Body of the Newsletter

Now you can get into talking about your current project(s). Fill your followers in on what you’ve been up to. Do you have an exciting announcement, a talk or workshop or panel coming up? Are you writing? Brainstorming? Fundraising? Remember people love and connect to stories, so tell them yours.

Getting – Put Readers Into Action

This is the most critical part of the newsletter as it is what you are leaving your readers with. This section is known to marketers and savvy business people as a Call to Action or a CTA. I have read countless newsletter that left me cold without asking me to do something. Don’t let this be you!

Examples of Calls to Action For Community Building

When you are getting started with your newsletter send a few that do not ask for money.

• Encourage them to follow you on Twitter

• Invite them to like your Facebook Fan Page

• Have them watch a video of you on YouTube and subscribe to your channel

• Give them incentive to comment on your blog

• Suggest they review you on Amazon

• Invite them out to hang with you at a bar, club, coffee house, art show, conference, etc.

• Send them a survey to fill out or a contest to participate in

Examples of Calls to Action For Money (once you’ve developed rapport)

• Invite them to an upcoming appearance

• Invite them to purchase your product online

• Direct them to your crowdfunding site

• Sell something!

There should only be one Call to Action per newsletter.

Readers will get confused and end up choosing nothing if they have more than one choice.

A Note About Subject Lines

Keep your subject line short and sweet; no more than 55 characters!

Generic comes off spammy. Studies show that including the reader’s first name in the subject line grabs their attention and increases your open rate (the amount of people who open your email).

Most newsletter management programs can easily insert first names right into the subject line. Consult with yours on how to do so.

Send Newsletters Regularly & Consistently

It’s crucial to send out your newsletter letter on a consistent basis. Give your followers the opportunity to look forward to hearing from you!

I recommend sending out your newsletter once a month. This gives you an entire month to come up with content. And keep in mind that some months may feel more exciting than others, so choosing a theme that you can thread throughout each newsletter will stop the doldrums.

Separate yourself from others who never hold themselves accountable, and stick to a consistent schedule; your fans will notice.

The post Cyber PR’s Three G’s – GREETING, GUTS & GETTING – How To Write An Effective Newsletter appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Join Women in Music for an interactive experience learning the do’s and don’t’s of social media marketing from music industry influencers. Whether you are starting from scratch or refining an existing strategy, receive helpful advice from our panelists on industry standards for social media management, helpful social media management tools and how to best optimize a social media campaign.

Moderated by Ariel Hyatt, Founder of Cyber PR®, and featuring insights from RaVal Davis, former Associate Dir., Digital Marketing at Epic Records, Rhea Ghosh, Marketing & Communications Designer, Downtown Music Publishing, Marni Wandner, Founder & President, Sneak Attack Media; and Sari Delmar, Founder of AB Co.

Date: October 20th, 2016
Time: 6:30 – 8:45 pm
Where: BMI Headquarters
7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St. 30th Floor RSVP: http://wimsocialmedia.eventbrite.com/
Hashtag it: #WIM #socialsavvy

This event is free for WIM members; $15 for non-members.

The post Get Savvy About Social Media (Presented by Women In Music) appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

A few years ago (How did time fly so fast?) I launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $60,000 and the experience changed my life.

I realized how hard the whole crowdfunding experience actually is and I promised to publish a book that walks you through exactly what to do (and what not to do) to succeed.

Today, after many edits and iterations, blood, sweat and tears CROWDSTART is ready for pre-order.

I would love your help to make CROWDSTART an Amazon best seller!

To help incentivize you to order it, I’ve pulled together an awesome bonus pack that beautifully accompanies the book.

This Pre-Order Bonus Pack is only available till October 24th.

Here’s what you get:

My Crowdfunding Roadmap Swipe File full of the exact email templates and cheat sheets I created for my successful crowdfunding campaign so you can copy/paste and edit as you wish for your own campaign. These are the ones that helped me raise over $60K in my campaign and it includes 20+ templates and cheat sheets! (VALUE: approx. $200)

Social Media Tuneup Video Series with Action Sheets – an 11-part series delivered daily via email that will walk you through how to optimize your entire social media presence (even if you don’t want to do a crowdfunding campaign this will help you tremendously!) Each day you will get a video and an action sheet that helps you get your social media and online presence in order and fully optimized to get you on track for fall! (VALUE: $249)

So essentially, you will purchase the book for $14.99, and get over $460 worth of additional content for free. 

Kind of a no-brainer if you ask me.

All you have to do is click this button below to purchase the book and claim the amazing bonuses:

Do this today! To sweeten this deal I’ll be mailing the first 15 of you an additional autographed copy of the exclusive media version of the book as a thank you well as giving you this BONUS pack.

Just follow directions on the page.

Finally, I’d be really grateful if you’d consider sharing CROWDSTART with your friends and followers. To make it easy, I’ve pulled together a SOCIAL SHARING document here that contains sample FB and Twitter posts, artwork, and book excerpts if you’d like to share. Simply grab and go, and if there’s anything else that would be helpful to you, please let me know.

Thanks for your incredible support.

Here’s to a slew of wildly successful  future crowdfunding campaigns!

Love, Ariel

**Please note that the bonuses will be delivered the week of October 31st.** 

The post Pre-Order Ariel’s New Book CROWDSTART- The Ultimate Guide to a Powerful & Profitable Crowdfunding Campaign appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Are you free to chat at 4pm Eastern – TODAY?

I’m  hosting a Facebook advertising Q & A session with John Oszajca, at 4 PMEastern, 1PM Pacific – TODAY.

Click here at 4 PM to join us for the live Q&A Call

You’ll have the ability to either call in, or listen in via the web – and you’ll be able to submit questions via the broadcast hub, or call in and chat with us live on the phone.

In case you missed the email I sent out about this last week, here’s the deal…

As you know John is one of the smartest people I know for strategy on Facebook.  I hired him to help me with my book launch this past fall and even though I know a LOT about Facebook Ads he knows more!

John has just released a new program called Music Ads Workshop 2.0.

In Music Ads Workshop John pulls back the curtains and lets you in on the exact strategies he has used to help numerous artists top various Billboard, Amazon, and iTunes sales charts, as well as set the all-time single day sales record at CD Baby… And he even helped me get to #1 on Amazon a few weeks back.

And… just yesterday one of the artists John works with landed a GRAMMY NOMINATION…

John Oszajca was the digital sales and marketing director for my latest album “Love Wins Again”. The album debut at #5 on Billboard’s Blues Chart, with a #1 album AND single at Blues Radio. Today I learned that the album has been nominated for a GRAMMY! Facebook advertising played a huge roll in the album’s success and I couldn’t have done it without John’s help” – Janiva Magness

I know that many musicians use Facebook advertising to get their music and brand out there, and I also know that many musicians struggle to actually profit with the platform.

I’ve convinced John to join us for a LIVE Q & A to take all of your questions about Facebook Advertising, and explain how to use the platform RIGHT.

We go live at 4PM Eastern / 1PM Pacific TODAY.

Click here to join us on the call

The post appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

While social media is a critical component to any musician’s overall marketing strategy, it needs to be done effectively and efficiently. Without a clear set content strategy, it is likely to become just another source of frustration, rather than THE source responsible for moving you towards your goals.

There are quite a few simple pitfalls that musicians often make while using social media that need to be avoided. By doing so, you will set yourself on a path towards an effective social media presence and a more loyal fan base.

Mistake Number 1: Self-Promotion is the Only Form of Communication (Or, Content is NOT Varied!)

According to the latest research, mixing up social media content is KEY. Unfortunately, most artists are too busy with self-promotion to put the correct amount of time and effort into varying their content. While the message in the text of your socials is important, don’t forget to integrate eye-catching photos, graphics and videos.

A good general rule to use is that only 1 in every 10 posts should be self-promotional, with the rest focusing on mixed media content that focuses on sharing your interests and passions.

My social media pyramid will help you stay the course and you will never push out boring content ever again!

Mistake Number 2: Lack of Branding

A huge issue I see all the time is artists not thinking about how they look across all their most important social media channels. Consistency is key – don’t have your Twitter theme be red, while your website is blue and your Facebook has no thematic elements whatsoever. Your logo is a great starting point to setting a specific look, feel and color scheme.

Below are a few examples of artists with strong branding; note the common feel across all pages. You will notice that all three artists have:

– A clear common color scheme
– Branding that reflects their sound
– A common profile picture on 2/3 networks

MANATEE COMMUNE
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

DONNA MISSAL
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

THE AQUADOLLS
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Mistake Number 3: No Newsletter!

Every single study you will read still points out one fact: Your newsletter is where you will make most of your money.

I know you either don’t have a newsletter, or you have a newsletter that goes out once in a while because you are:

1. Too scared to over-communicate with your fans and you don’t want to overwhelm them, making them want to unsubscribe.

2. You don’t feel you have anything interesting to say, for example you have no shows, no studio time booked and absolutely no “music news”.

3. You feel you have enough to do with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. etc. etc. and so you don’t even bother with the newsletter.

The only thing you are affecting with this attitude is your bottom line.

What does the newsletter have to do with social media?

Your social media should feed your newsletter in every way possible. You should never give away music without getting an e-mail address in exchange and should always have a widget for people to sign up to your newsletter across all your platforms (i.e. your website, your blog, your Facebook fan page, etc.).

The post 3 Mistakes Musicians Make On Social Media appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

You have your music, your vision, and you are eager to make that first move in the world of music PR. But before I jump into what you’re here for, the nine critical things you should now about PR, we need to be sure that your ready to begin such a relationship with the media. It’s not a matter of feeling ready, it’s a matter of being ready.

Before you even begin thinking about PR, you need to have what I refer to as your social media house in order. This is your foundation. You need to have your presence sufficiently fleshed out on the internet from your website to your blog to your Twitter page. You won’t get the results you want from your PR campaign if you don’t have a strong internet presence.

With the number of musicians and music publicists flooding the inboxes of the media, you can count on the fact that these editors and writers will be checking each submission’s social media presence as a means to weed out who not to cover. As always, you want to have the edge. Having a presence doesn’t mean having more Facebook likes than everyone else. It means having consistent activity online and engaging with your fans.

Once your social media house is built and stable you can begin thinking about amassing the publicity you’re looking for.

Let’s get started!

1. What is publicity exactly?

Before we delve into specifics, let’s make sure we have the basics covered. Her are some definitions of what publicity is exactly, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Publicity – “An act or device designed to attract public interest; specifically: information with news value issued as a means of gaining public attention or support. Also: The dissemination of information or promotional material.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Publicity is precisely all of these things.

A music publicist is hired as a member of your team to represent you to the media. Media is traditionally defined as editors and writers of newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, and television. Some publicists may also cover radio for interviews or live sessions on tour stops. But if you want to get on the radio charts (like CMJ), you will need a radio promoter.

A music publicist’s job is to liaise with the press. In other words, a publicist establishes working relationships between you and those in the media. You should not expect them to get you a booking agent or gig, a label deal, or any other type of marketing deal. That is what a manager is for. A savvy and well-connected music publicist may be able to hook you up with all of the things mentioned above, but it is not in his or her job description.

2. You Are the Visionary Here.

Remember, as the artist, you are the buyer, and you are shopping for music PR. You’re in the driver’s seat. It’s your money and your music that enables publicists to stay in business. Hiring a publicist is like hiring the next guitar player for your band. You have to choose someone you like, who jives with your vision and your short-term and long-term goals. Everyone on your team has to be on the same page for you to advance. All too many times I’ve heard that a publicist was hired in spite of the artist’s personal opinions. You should like your publicist, and they should be the right fit for you.

3. With Publicity, You Pay for Effort – Never for Results.

I’ve had disgruntled artists call me and say, “I hired a publicist and I only got six articles. That cost me $1,000 per article!” Unfortunately, this is not how you quantify a PR campaign. You pay for the amount of time, effort, and consideration the publicist makes on your behalf. Now, of course, you should get some and even many results. Getting nothing is totally unacceptable. But you never know when your publicist’s efforts will show up months, and sometimes even years, after your campaign is complete. Not everyone who is going to see your YouTube video is going to view it the day you post it.

4. A PR Campaign Needs to Be Planned Well in Advance.

For long-lead press (meaning, for example, magazines with national distribution like Rolling Stone), the editors put their publications to bed three full months before they are published. So if your album is coming out in October, you must have it ready to go, artwork and all, in July. Of course, not every PR campaign focuses on national press, but no publicist will take you on with zero lead-time, so you definitely need to prepare lead-time for every scenario.

• Recommended Publicity Campaign Lead Times:
• National Campaign – 3-4 months before the release
• Tour Press Campaign – 4-6 weeks before the shows
• Local Campaign – 4-6 weeks before placement
• Online Campaign – 2-3 weeks before placement (minimum)
  • (Placement = blog article, album review, calendar listing, podcast/radio interview, etc.)

5. The 4 Components of a Press Kit.

In today’s digital world, a thorough one page press kit consists of four parts: the bio; the photo(s); the articles, quotes & album reviews; the music.

The Bio – Create a one-page bio that is succinct and intriguing. You have an original story; tell it! I strongly advise hiring a bio writer. If you are not ready to pony up the cash, consider enlisting an outside source to help you. I find that people who are great storytellers make great bio writers.

The Photo – Arrange a photo shoot; if you take this seriously, you will benefit tremendously. Create a photo that is clear, well-shot, and attention-grabbing. Showing movement is a plus (sitting on a couch or up against a brick wall has been done too many times before). If you have a friend who knows how to use PhotoShop, enlist him or her to help you do some creative and fun editing. Always utilize your resources!

The Articles, Quotes & Album Reviews – Getting that first article written about you can feel daunting. Two great places to start are your local hometown papers (assuming you don’t live in NYC or LA). Also don’t forget to check for comments on iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby that you can use!

The Music – The way you present the music, like the press kit, must be well thought out. Do not bother sending out copies of your CD via snail mail – instead send a link to Bandcamp or SoundCloud with professional artwork and proper tagging so the writer can access your tracks easily.

6. Publicity is a Marathon, Not a Sprint.

PR is very different in nature from a radio campaign that has a specific ad date and a chart that you are paying to try to get listed on. There is no top 40 publicity chart. With the number of albums coming out into the marketplace (approx. 1,000 per week), it could take months longer than your publicity campaign runs to see results.

7. Online Publicity Is More Important for an Indie Artist than Offline Publicity

The evolution of devices, expanding social channels, the 24-hour news cycle, and instant access to every imaginable type of media for all who are connected constantly shifts the landscape. The opportunities for exposure online are far greater for an independent artist. We at Cyber PR exclusively offer digital PR. Since we serve independent artists we want to do what actually works.

8. Publicity Does Not Sell Music.

If you are hiring a music publicist to see a spike in your record sales, I have news for you: There is absolutely no correlation between getting great PR and selling music.

PR is designed to raise awareness of you in the press, to help build and share a story, as well as build up critical acclaim. Of course, a great article can lead to sales, but overall, if selling albums is your goal, PR is not the only thing you will need. To sell albums you will also need to build a loyal fan base (see In Defense of 1000 True Fans) and take care of fans with sweet offers.

9. All Publicity is Good Publicity.

I know we have all heard the phrase “all publicity is good publicity”, but it’s beneficial to truly understand this. If one of your goals for PR is to get your name out there (and this should be a goal), the truth is that the average person remembers very little of what they read. People only retain a tiny percentage of what they read. Readers and internet scrollers are not going to remember a lukewarm or mediocre review of your album. I mean when was the last time you remembered the band that was the subject of a tepid review?

And never ever take your own PR seriously. As my favorite artist Andy Warhol once said, “Don’t read your press; weigh it.”

<!–HubSpot Call-to-Action Code –>
<span class=”hs-cta-wrapper” id=”hs-cta-wrapper-a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e”>
<span class=”hs-cta-node hs-cta-a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e” id=”hs-cta-a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e”>
<!–[if lte IE 8]><div id=”hs-cta-ie-element”></div><![endif]–>
<a href=”http://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/1728714/a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e” target=”_blank” ><img class=”hs-cta-img” id=”hs-cta-img-a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e” style=”border-width:0px;” src=”https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/1728714/a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e.png” alt=”New Call-to-action”/></a>
</span>
<script charset=”utf-8″ src=”https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
hbspt.cta.load(1728714, ‘a9ba316d-2de0-4466-be28-40d5bf22fd2e’, {});
</script>
</span>
<!– end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code –>

The post 9 Critical Things You Should Know About Music Publicity Before You Make Your First Move appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Welcome to a whole new year.

I trust you are getting back into the swing of things and beginning to think about creating something amazing… Yes?

I’m here to help!

I just posted a new 11 part video series, called Social Media Tuneup!

I designed this to give you all the tools you need to improve your social media presence, increase the size of your online footprint, and ultimately drive more traffic to your site, your socials, and your business.

This series is the same process we use with our clients at Cyber PR to assess where they are, and bring them to the next level. And I’m offering it to you as a gift.

This is where your influence online begins. Without these three things, you can tweet and Facebook and Instagram until the cows come home and you won’t see an increase in revenue for your business.

Each video will give you tips on how to assess your current socials, and suggestions for how you can improve.

A new Social Media Tuneup will arrive in your inbox every day, and you will learn not only how to make all your followers into evangelists, but also how to get them to become customers.

Every part of Social Media Tuneup is accompanied by a detailed Action Sheet, digging further into each topic.  This is the actual spreadsheet that my team at Cyber PR uses to organize social media posts for clients. Click to Download the Action Sheet

It will help you organize your thoughts, and come up with a coherent strategy for your socials.

I wish you a productive and fruitful winter season and I can’t wait to see what you have in store!

X Ariel

The post Social Media Tuneup is Free for 4 Days Only! appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

While social media is a critical component to any musician’s overall marketing strategy, it needs to be done effectively and efficiently. Without a clear set content strategy, it is likely to become just another source of frustration, rather than THE source responsible for moving you towards your goals.

There are quite a few simple pitfalls that musicians often make while using social media that need to be avoided. By doing so, you will set yourself on a path towards an effective social media presence and a more loyal fan base.

Mistake Number 1: Self-Promotion is the Only Form of Communication (Or, Content is NOT Varied!)

According to the latest research, mixing up social media content is KEY. Unfortunately, most artists are too busy with self-promotion to put the correct amount of time and effort into varying their content. While the message in the text of your socials is important, don’t forget to integrate eye-catching photos, graphics and videos.

A good general rule to use is that only 1 in every 10 posts should be self-promotional, with the rest focusing on mixed media content that focuses on sharing your interests and passions.

My social media pyramid will help you stay the course and you will never push out boring content ever again!

Mistake Number 2: Lack of Branding

A huge issue I see all the time is artists not thinking about how they look across all their most important social media channels. Consistency is key – don’t have your Twitter theme be red, while your website is blue and your Facebook has no thematic elements whatsoever. Your logo is a great starting point to setting a specific look, feel and color scheme.

Below are a few examples of artists with strong branding; note the common feel across all pages. You will notice that all three artists have:

– A clear common color scheme
– Branding that reflects their sound
– A common profile picture on 2/3 networks

MANATEE COMMUNE
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

DONNA MISSAL
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

THE AQUADOLLS
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Mistake Number 3: No Newsletter!

Every single study you will read still points out one fact: Your newsletter is where you will make most of your money.

I know you either don’t have a newsletter, or you have a newsletter that goes out once in a while because you are:

1. Too scared to over-communicate with your fans and you don’t want to overwhelm them, making them want to unsubscribe.

2. You don’t feel you have anything interesting to say, for example you have no shows, no studio time booked and absolutely no “music news”.

3. You feel you have enough to do with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. etc. etc. and so you don’t even bother with the newsletter.

The only thing you are affecting with this attitude is your bottom line.

What does the newsletter have to do with social media?

Your social media should feed your newsletter in every way possible. You should never give away music without getting an e-mail address in exchange and should always have a widget for people to sign up to your newsletter across all your platforms (i.e. your website, your blog, your Facebook fan page, etc.).

The post 3 Mistakes Musicians Make On Social Media appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Are you still not sending out a regular newsletter to your followers? Are you under the impression they are old school and therefore not effective? Do you think that nobody reads them – just because you might not?

Think again! Here is quote from Entrepreneur (August 2016)

“Email marketing works 40 times better at getting customers than Facebook and Twitter, and compared to social media, it offers 17 percent higher conversion. The secret to success is making every email count. Email not only converts better than the most popular social media, but people spend up to 17 percent more when they do buy.”

– Aaron Agius

Email is still on top when it comes to generating revenue, but you have to be strategic. You build relationships with your followers via your social networks, and you turn them into customers with your newsletter.

Let’s go through the infrastructure of an effective newsletter together. This is a structure that I have used, and coached my clients to use for years and it works

Greeting – Be Personal

In your greeting you want to share something that is non-related to your product or services. Talk about you, something that inspired you recently or something in the news. This warms people up and like a letter connects on a human level. Steer clear of controversial topics that will isolate certain readers – stay neutral.

Here are some suggestions to get you thinking,

• Vacation/current trip
• Something that interests you / a theme of fun, beauty, art, etc.
• Whatever you are currently reading or listening to
• The latest TV show you’re watching on Netflix or a movie you have seen

Post photos of these personal touches on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or blog, etc.

Guts – The Body of the Newsletter

Now you can get into talking about your current project(s). Fill your followers in on what you’ve been up to. Do you have an exciting announcement, a talk or workshop or panel coming up? Are you writing? Brainstorming? Fundraising? Remember people love and connect to stories, so tell them yours.

Getting – Put Readers Into Action

This is the most critical part of the newsletter as it is what you are leaving your readers with. This section is known to marketers and savvy business people as a Call to Action or a CTA. I have read countless newsletter that left me cold without asking me to do something. Don’t let this be you!

Examples of Calls to Action For Community Building

When you are getting started with your newsletter send a few that do not ask for money.

• Encourage them to follow you on Twitter

• Invite them to like your Facebook Fan Page

• Have them watch a video of you on YouTube and subscribe to your channel

• Give them incentive to comment on your blog

• Suggest they review you on Amazon

• Invite them out to hang with you at a bar, club, coffee house, art show, conference, etc.

• Send them a survey to fill out or a contest to participate in

Examples of Calls to Action For Money (once you’ve developed rapport)

• Invite them to an upcoming appearance

• Invite them to purchase your product online

• Direct them to your crowdfunding site

• Sell something!

There should only be one Call to Action per newsletter.

Readers will get confused and end up choosing nothing if they have more than one choice.

A Note About Subject Lines

Keep your subject line short and sweet; no more than 55 characters!

Generic comes off spammy. Studies show that including the reader’s first name in the subject line grabs their attention and increases your open rate (the amount of people who open your email).

Most newsletter management programs can easily insert first names right into the subject line. Consult with yours on how to do so.

Send Newsletters Regularly & Consistently

It’s crucial to send out your newsletter letter on a consistent basis. Give your followers the opportunity to look forward to hearing from you!

I recommend sending out your newsletter once a month. This gives you an entire month to come up with content. And keep in mind that some months may feel more exciting than others, so choosing a theme that you can thread throughout each newsletter will stop the doldrums.

Separate yourself from others who never hold themselves accountable, and stick to a consistent schedule; your fans will notice.

The post Cyber PR’s Three G’s – GREETING, GUTS & GETTING – How To Write An Effective Newsletter appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Marketing is not a job. Marketing is not something you need to put on your daily to-do list. Marketing is acclimating your audience with the whole vision of your brand.

Marketing is everything.

Anything that can be used to give your fans or, potential fans, a better idea of what your music is all about and who you are as an artist. Marketing is any time you spread the word about your music; Every time you engage with your fans you are giving them another piece of you, and in essence you are further developing a clearer understanding of your brand.

Why is this so important?

Because a well-developed brand will lead to stronger loyalty and long-term sales. It is the difference between a movement and a fad.

Here are 10 important components of marketing that will help you further establish your brand:

Emails & Phone Calls

Every single email sent out and phone call taken is a direct interaction with your brand. It is an opportunity for your brand to make a lasting impression. Here are a few ways to make that happen:

– Word choices
– Demeanor
– Font

Social Sharing

Literally everything you share through social networks is a reflection of you, and you are your brand. How you represent yourself is the basis for how your brand will develop over time. A few things to keep in mind:

– Photos
– Videos
– Liking pages
– Status updates
– Location-based check-ins

Lifestyle

How you live your life has quite a strong impact on the decisions you make which will ultimately affect the direction of your brand as it continues to grow. Lifestyle is one thing that many people feel very strongly about and it is a great opportunity for you to create a stronger connection with fans who live in a similar manner.

– Green
– Political
– Healthy

Blog Commenting

How you comment on blogs and interact in a discussion will give others an honest look at how you approach music, your fans, and the industry. However you comment on blog posts, make sure it accurately reflects how you want others to perceive your brand:

– Honest
– Insightful
– Opinionated
– Biased
– Cynical
– Optimistic

Gigs: Before, During & After

For performing musicians, gigs are where the brand comes to life. You can do all you want through social media, blogging, videos, etc. but if people show up and your performance sucks, or you were just a complete jerk, you can kiss those fans goodbye. Especially now that albums are not selling as they used to, make sure you perfect how your brand is perceived in person:

– Networking w/ fans before and after performance
– Crowd interaction during performance
– Enjoyment during performance… no one wants to see a sponge play the guitar
– Merch booth is stocked and ready to go

Song Quality

Your approach to songwriting is a very, very important part of your marketing and how you brand yourself. How you approach the music and where you apply your focus will be THE most revealing look into your world as an artist and a person. Here are a few different ways to approach the music that seem to stick with people:

– Having GREAT songs
– Producing songs quickly and on a regular basis
– Recording only the best of the best of your material
– Deep lyrical content

What You Wear Onstage

Image is and has always been an extremely important part of branding. What you wear is a reflection of your brand image and is something that you would be foolish to overlook. People are visual in nature, so what you wear may even unintentionally be the one thing that people remember about you. Don’t underestimate how important this is to your overall brand:

– prep
– urban
– hippy
– gothic
– trendy

Any & Every Fan Interaction

This is essentially customer service. When a customer or follower interacts with a brand, they want to be treated properly or they are left with a sour taste in their mouth about the whole experience. Make sure you go about this properly so that your efforts as an artist are not undone by poor interactions with fans:

– Timely response
– Respectful
– Insightful and/ or honest

How You React To Criticism

Every worthwhile brand will run into criticism, and as a part of marketing your brand properly is maintaining strong public relationships. The worst thing you can do for your brand is to come off as defensive. Rather you should be thankful for the honest input. Simply doing so can actually turn a negative interaction into a positive experience and is a great way to maintain a strong relationship with fans.

– Positive or negative
– Defensive or thankful

Adding Value

A crucial element in the success or failure of any brand is how valuable it is perceived to be. Keeping this in mind, and adding value at all times is a great way to increase the loyalty of your brand:

– Give away free music (occasionally)
– Free UStream performance
– Exclusive music for newsletter subscribers
– Blog post focusing on something other than news or updates
As you can see marketing is truly everywhere. It’s omnipresence is what helps us to establish a brand and a culture for our fans to grab a hold of, and for potential fans to recognize. It’s not so much a “necessary evil,” but more so a way to achieve your goals in the most time efficient manner. Get creative and stay positive – happy marketing!

The post 10 Ways You Are Unknowingly Marketing To Your Fans appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

This is our most widely read series here on the Cyber PR music blog and we have recently updated it, just for YOU.

In this crazy ever-changing music industry landscape we see the same issue over and over again: A vast majority of artists who don’t have a long-term plan in place.

The reason for this is, in today’s DIY landscape there is no one in charge of creating such a plan. To make things worse, the pressure of consistently releasing great singles or EPs, social posting, writing newsletters, booking, plus learning new technology and platforms, keeps artists busier than ever. These never ending tasks battle long-term perspective.

Marketing Plans used to be a combined creation of manager, label A&R and marketing team, booking agent, and publisher who would be responsible for coming up with a big picture strategy and implementing a plan for each domain that he or she was responsible for.

Today, most agencies that indie artists hire tackle what needs to be done right now and handle only their responsibilities without taking a 30,000 foot view.

This sadly has a lot to do with how the artists approach their releases. We know once the music is finished a deep sense of urgency rushes in, screaming – “release release!”

We urge you to take a deep breath and read on…

It is completely baffling that an artist or band would work so hard on new music, dedicating hours and hours practicing, writing songs, not to mention spending large sums of money recording, mixing and mastering, creating visuals, and album artwork only to rush the release with no plan in place.

Here are the basic components of our long-term marketing plans to show you the key elements you need to consider before you get too far ahead of yourself.

Even if your release is not new, it’s important to backtrack and reset the stage.

There are 15 elements to keep in mind when planning a new release – they break down into 3 groups of 5.

THE FIRST 5: RAMPING UP FOR RELEASE

Below are the 5 areas that need to be addressed before any official announcements should be made about a new album, EP, or even a single coming out. To see these in more detail, download our checklist at the bottom of the page:

1. Distribution
2. Website
3. Social Media
4. Newsletter
5. Press

Let’s dive in!

(again, if you already released music, don’t worry! Backtrack and reset the stage.)

1. DISTRIBUTION 

Digital distribution moves a lot faster than it used to, but you should still choose a distributor. If you are ordering physical copies of your music, make sure that you get them in plenty of time, especially if you are running a pre-sale or having a release party and you want to offer physical product at the show.

*Note: albums used to come out on a Tuesday and now Friday is the official release day (if you are going by industry standards).

CD Baby, Tunecore etc. don’t cover everything, and independently you need to also be aware of additional distribution outlets for increased reach, a list that includes Soundcloud, Pandora and creating playlists on Spotify. 

2. WEBSITE

The music industry is built on appearances. To be taken seriously it is very important to have a complete and professional looking online 360 degree presence. This starts with your online home – your website. You need to have a modern and functional site that you can update on your own. Download the checklist to make sure you’re doing everything you can to build your online presence. Your website should have a section where fans can easily listen to and buy your music (not a player that automatically plays, please!), a news section with latest happenings, and a newsletter sign-up that offers an incentive through a juicy offer (such as exclusive tracks).

Ariel wrote a detailed guide to help you with the architecture.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

Time and energy needs to be spent building a strong online presence in order to be taken seriously as an artist for when the time comes to start actively promoting.

What we see: many artists don’t know the basics. This will hurt your promotional efforts as music industry professionals, music bloggers, and fans will visit your socials to see what kind of existing following you have and how serious you are. Stale, overly promotional, or boring profiles will not help your chances of engaging anyone.

We will focus on the 4 most important socials: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Branding is Key

Upload cover photos and banners that are in alignment with your brand. Use a publicity shot or your current album artwork with text on top of the images that promote the single, EP, or album release date, new music videos, and tour announcements. We love a tool called Canva  for fast and easy banner and social skin creation.

TWITTER

We love Twitter because you can easily build a following of targeted users and jump into conversations. Every single person you interact with in real life should be followed on Twitter (friends, musicians, producers, club owners, etc.) Jump start your followers by following people and many will follow you back. Lastly, target similar sounding artists and follow their Twitter followers, as there is a high probability that they will also like your music.

To keep your profile active with Tweets, use Hootsuite. In as little as one hour you can schedule a week’s worth of tweets. Vary the topics you tweet about from career news (which should be no more than 20% of your output) to your interests, passions, and hobbies. News, politics, sports, and/or culture are all great topics to share for people to engage and connect around.

There are many relationship-building practices and benefits for being active on Twitter, of course, that we teach our clients, but by following these instructions you will at least have a respectable presence on this powerful platform.

Watch Ariel’s Twitter Video Class it goes over the basics:

FACEBOOK

Pay-to-play is the reality on Facebook for a Page to get any real exposure. We suggest you spend money from time to time but have goals in place before you do, and you should have a complete Page that is active with daily posts. Make sure the page has a cover banner (as discussed above) and install apps that work as promotional tools for you and your music. Three we love are: an artist profile Bandpage, a store Bandcamp, Tunecore or CD Baby, and a mailing list signup form MailChimp. Even though posts won’t get seen by a large percentage of fans who have liked your Page without advertising, organic reach is still possible, and an active Page helps show that you are an active artist. Videos and images have a greater chance of being seen, so share photos and upload videos as much as possible and finally, ask questions to increase engagement.

For an advanced, deep-dive into Facebook Pages. Our resident Facebook strategist, Andrew Salmon, has a 2 part masterclass in the Cyber PR Social Media House Course.

Watch Ariel & Andrew’s Facebook Class:

Part 2:

YOUTUBE

YouTube is the first place where millions of people go to search for music. It is a very powerful platform where artists are getting discovered. For any artist looking to increase awareness, it is imperative to have a presence on YouTube with a professional looking channel, and a cover image that is linked to your other socials so people can connect with you across platforms. Make categories to group your videos for easy viewing, such as “Behind The Scenes”, “Official Music Videos”, and “Live Performances”. Also, highlight an official music video in the featured spot at the top. The channel for The Flaming Lips is a great example of these practices put to use.

For the videos themselves we often see artists leaving off their artist name in the title of the video, which is terrible for search engines. Make sure you include keywords in your tags and place those important keywords/ keyword phrases at the start of your tag fields. Use adjectives that describe your music and similar artists as keywords with your artist name also being a keyword, the latter of which will show up in the “related videos section” after one of your videos is viewed. We also often see description sections left blank too. This is a crucial piece of real estate to tell the viewer what they are watching and provide links to other content you own, such as your website and iTunes, where they can go for more. Here is a video from NYC blog The Wild Honey Pie, they pack all their descriptions full of information where the viewer can go to learn and watch more. Their channel is branded well too, utilizing the features discussed.

INSTAGRAM

The most popular visual social platform has experienced a meteoric rise. As of the end of 2016, there are over 600 million active Instagram users, over 30 billion photos shared and 80 million photos a day. If you haven’t yet, connect to people you already know on Facebook, and if you choose, you can also search and connect to contacts in your phone. Next, link your socials.

When you post photos, choose at least two hashtags, as this is how photos are found. Top hashtags is a site that will display the top hashtags trending in real time if you are stuck or want to get into the conversation.

In addition to hashtags, you can also add captions to your photos before posting. I caution you to be selective about what you cross-post to socials. You want to tell a separate story on each social channel to get people to join you, and not get fatigued by the same posts across channels.

4. NEWSLETTER 

This is the most important part of the strategy that you will want to skip – DON’T.

While social media is key for attracting your crowd and building your numbers, email is still the most vital asset you will build for generating revenue. You make relationships with fans on your social networks, but you turn those relationships into customers with email.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing produced an ROI (return on investment) of 4,300% — or $43 for every $1 spent.

Contact your mailing list once a month with news. Spend money on a mailing list service provider that can help you design a rich looking email and provide analytics and tracking capabilities so you can measure the effectiveness of your newsletters and make adjustments where need be. A premier solution that many of our clients enjoy working with is MailChimp.

P.S. We strongly suggest downloading the checklist (at the bottom of the page) to make sure you’re not missing anything about this extremely vital step.

Here are Ariel’s recent articles on Newsletters:

5 Critical Things to Add to Your Monthly Newsletter

Cyber PR’s 3 G’s – GREETING, GUTS & GETTING – How To Write An Effective Newsletter

5. PRESS

It might seem a bit early to start talking about press, but it’s not. PR takes time and effort to execute well.

Sadly, many artists believe that PR = blasting a press release out to the top 100+ music sites that they have Googled. This never works, because PR placements start with astute research.

Blog savviness gets placements.

You should now start to identify and familiarize yourself with online publications (blogs), podcasts, and radio outlets that are appropriate and strategic for you and your release. If you live in a smaller town (read: Not in New York, San Francisco, LA, or Chicago) there may be some local press that you can go after, too.

There are thousands upon thousands of active music sites, and there are a million more non-music sites that can feature your music as well.

Your big goal might be a review on Pitchfork, but what’s your backup when Pitchfork doesn’t respond to you and then doesn’t respond to your follow ups? Is Pitchfork even the right outlet for you to showcase your project? Sure, they have a large audience, but is it the right audience for you? It’s OK if the answer is “no.”

Not only will familiarizing yourself with music publications help you to know where to pitch your music, but it will also give you invaluable insight and ideas for your press photos, your music video, and pinpointing your genre.

Research is not the only thing you need before you send your first pitch. To find out what to do come download our Ultimate Guide to Music Publicity.

Pro Tip: Keep in mind that a music blog is made up of content written by individuals. When it comes time to pitch, you will be pitching to these individuals. Increase your chances that they will be interested in you by first being interested in them. Make a connection by following them on social media and re-tweeting them. Better yet, try to strike up a conversation with them on Twitter if the opportunity arises. A conversation about literally anything other than your music is recommended.

This way when you send that writer an email about your music (or if a publicist does that for you), there could now be some familiarity there and existing relationships that will help in getting your emails opened and even further, help your new music to be featured.

Now that you know how to build a solid online foundation and the beginning of an online community, now is your time to dive in and do it!

Creating a long-term plan with proper execution will put you ahead of the game. Do not cut corners here. Having a true base will put you in a much better position when you are getting ready for your next 5 steps, which is when you will start calendaring for your release. This is the topic for PART 2 of this 3 PART series.

Now that you have The First 5 outline, download our checksheet and see what you still need to work on…  Click on this image to get started now:

The post Release Preparation: The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans Part 1 appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

In the first installment of our newly updated Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans we addressed the overlooked importance of having a marketing plan and went through the first five of fifteen elements to keep in mind when planning a new release.

In part 2, we will be addressing the next five elements for promoting new music. This can be a single, a music video, an EP, or an album.

The Second 5 Elements: Ordering the Chaos

The next 5 elements that need to be addressed before any official announcements should be made about new music coming out are:

1. Timeline
2. Release
3. Social Media
4. Press & Promotion
5. Shows

If you didn’t get the chance to read through Part 1 we encourage you to please do so before reading this.

1 & 2. TIMELINE AND RELEASE

We have condensed these 2 elements as they go together like cookies and milk.

Plan some milestones starting two months before the release date, and have some benchmarks for at least one month after the album comes out. Here is how this could look:

Two Months Before Release

Are you Registered?
Contact an entertainment lawyer to make sure your copyrights are secure and register your music with ASCAP, BMI or Sesac.

Start by rounding up as many people as you can to your socials and newsletter.

This is a practice that you should get in the habit of and your whole band should be helping (if you have band social accounts). Find your friends and people you admire (bloggers, other artists, venues, local spots you like to hang out in, etc.) on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and friend away! This will increase your audience because as many of the people you follow will follow you back. If you have not curated lists on Twitter, make some to keep track of your favorites. Also, start reaching out to people in your inbox and outbox and get them on your list (remember it’s illegal to just sign people up so do this with integrity and ask each person).

Your newsletter is the place where you will be able to monetize so, don’t skip this step. Here is Ariel’s comprehensive Newsletter lesson from Social Media House.

Next, Take Everyone along on the Journey With You

People like to follow along to real life stories (case and point: reality TV). It’s a great way to form a stronger bond with your current and growing base.

Send updates on how the recording, mixing and mastering is going using videos and photos via your socials, plus capture longer form stories for your blog and newsletter. Engage with your following on milestones like artwork and song titles by polling your fans (Twitter has a new polling feature which is pretty cool!) and holding contests to select what cover or title to go with. The goal of all this activity is to get people excited so they are engaging and sharing your updates with their friends.

One Month to 6 Weeks Before Release

Release Single(s)

This is a great way to build buzz, get fans excited, and also get some music bloggers interested. Any reviews you can place will help build your overall online profile. On the press side of the house aim for appropriate blog targets. If you are a brand new artist Pitchfork is probably NOT appropriate. Go for smaller, more targeted music blogs!

That being said, be sure to reach out to your “within reason” dream targets with your single(s). It’s not the best idea to wait to reach out to these loftier sites with your album. Album reviews take a considerable amount of time and, if you look, most music sites are reserving these full album review slots for the most anticipated albums.

Announce a Release Event – Live Show or Listening Party

If you play live shows, book a release show and do something to make this show more special than the others. Decorate the venue, work with the bar to create a special shot or cocktail, pre-sell a merch pack, hire a party bus, ask a food truck to pull outside the venue, etc.

If you don’t play out, create a listening party at a small bar, create an after work happy hour, or choose a local favorite. If you are just starting and don’t think you can draw a large crowd, hold a listening house party with wine tasting, cupcake bake-off, fondue party, etc.

Think about your fans and make this special for them! And, of course, the key is to announce that tickets are on sale.

Press Campaign Begins
If you are hiring a PR team – work on the strategy with them or if you plan to do it yourself it’s time to prepare – Download the Ultimate Guide to Music Publicity

Start Your Pre-Sale Campaign
Send word out through your newsletter and socials.

Create a Facebook Invite
Create a Facebook Invite for the new release, send it to all your Facebook friends and cross-post on your Page.

Two Weeks Before Release

Build the Momentum!

Keep the excitement up on socials by scheduling a countdown. Hold a contest to win the new music or give away tickets to your show or listening party.

On Release Day 

• Write a post or make a fun video about the release and post on your website
• Send out a newsletter announcement to your mailing list
• Skin your socials with “out now!” and artwork (Use canva to help you)
• Update all socials with an “out now” post and images with links to purchase

One Month After Release

Keep the momentum going!

Again, the more activities you can plan leading up to the release and after it drops will help continue your story and profile building. The more press and social media-worthy points you can arrange for after a release will keep contacting press with new content, while at the same time reminding them about the new album.

Also, don’t forget to ask your family, friends and fans to write reviews of your new album on iTunes, Amazon or CD Baby, and other digital retailers when it becomes available. Studies have shown that albums that are reviewed on iTunes actually sell more albums.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

A lot of social media elements are covered in the timeline above. At Cyber PR Music, we consider your blog and your newsletter to be part of your social media strategy.

Just because you may not have a big “news” item (for example: a new release) doesn’t mean you should stop communicating with your fans on a regular basis.

Newsletters should still be going out once a month, blog posts being posted, and socials should never go stale.

You should be updating daily and updating also means responding to and interacting with others.

In addition, to all the content we have gone over in this guide, post about things happening in your personal life, repost interesting articles or news items or post a song from a band that you love. News, food celebrity gossip, parenting, fashion, art, and sports all make good topics for people to engage and connect around. Let your personality show!

Social Media rules are constantly changing and shifting (hello Facebook) so make sure you keep up on social trends so that you are not using antiquated techniques.

We love Mashable, Social Media Today, and Social Media Examiner.

4. PRESS & PROMOTION

Your PR Plan

A big component when promoting a new album is of course getting PR. You can accomplish this by hiring a team or by going the DIY route. When hiring a PR team make sure you do your homework and make sure your music is a good fit with that firm’s approach and philosophy. Be sure that the team talks to you about their well-thought-out plan for your campaign.

A PR company should work with you to make sure you are fully prepared before you are introduced to the press. This is the first part of their job when you engage.

If you’re going with a do-it-yourself approach here are some tips for an effective campaign:

Pictures

Make sure you have at least 3-4 great images and variety is important. Most music blogs feature square or horizontal photos. When getting photos taken think through your brand and think about variety to keep your images fresh as time goes by.

Bio / Your Signature Story
This series is packed with DIY tips, but we suggest hiring a professional to write your bio, which we call a signature story around here. Even if you are a strong writer, it can be challenging to write about yourself. A professional writer will be able to craft a compelling bio that effectively conveys all the important details while keeping the audience in mind, which in this case includes press and music industry folks.

Press Outreach
The first people to target should be local press and press outlets that have written about you in the past (if applicable). When contacting blogs make it personal. Be sure to research which writer/journalist of the site is the best or most appropriate to reach out to (if applicable) . Before you start talking about your music be sure to address why you approached them and not some other blog. ALWAYS include a Soundcloud link to either your single or album. If your album/EP is unreleased, you can include a private Soundcloud link to the album/EP in a private playlist. Follow up approximately once a week and if you’ve received some press since the last time you contacted them, be sure to include a link in your follow up email. 

Then as we touched on in Part 1, plan ahead so you will have content for multiple press outreaches such as a new music video, remixes, or tour dates, as you don’t want to repeat the same message about the new music.

Words of Warning About Press Releases
Please DON’T write and pay to distribute a press release. Press releases are relics of the past and are not favored by music bloggers. Press releases are great if you have something truly newsworthy and releasing an EP, single or album is actually not “news” (even though it is extremely important to you).

Building a Targeted Media List
There are many ways to start building a targeted media list. One method – identify a musician or band that is slightly further along and fits into your musical wheelhouse, and take note of the press outlets that they are getting featured on. There is a great chance that those publications may also feature you.

Learn Spotify
Spotify has an entire site dedicated to helping you learn how to get established in the Spotify ecosystem. Start here with their guides and best practices.

5. SHOWS

If you are already building through touring, continue to tour, hitting the same markets that you played while supporting the new music to build on the momentum that has been made. Martin Atkins has the BEST book on touring called Tour Smart. If you don’t have it, get it! We also love this post from Ari Herstand.

There are undoubtedly limitations though on how often you can tour and you more than likely won’t be able to tour to every market where there are fans.

And many artists are not touring at all, so if this is the case for you – you can consider virtual shows and live streaming.

Now that you have the second 5 outline, download our checksheet to see what you will need to prepare…  Click on this image to get started now:

The post Releasing Music: The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans Part 2 appeared first on Cyber PR Music.

Welcome to the final part of our 3-part series on how to build a comprehensive marketing plan. In the first two articles in this series, we discussed building a solid and complete online foundation and outlined strategies for a successful new release launch. Now it is time to kick back and relax for a little while before starting to write material for the next album that you’ll release a year or two down the road right? …..Couldn’t be further from the truth. If you haven’t downloaded the checklist at the bottom of this post, now would be a REALLY great time to do so.

The Constant 5: The Ongoing Work!

Your job now is to keep supplying consistent compelling content to strengthen your relationship with your fans and potential fans.

The Constant 5 are:

1. Release More Music 
2. Live (or Streaming) Shows ­
3. Ongoing Social Media 
4. Merchandise ­
5. Making Money 

1. KEEP THE MUSIC COMING

Gone are the days of releasing an album once every couple of years and leaving it at that. Today’s artists need to be constantly feeding their fanbases new music. Releasing singles and videos will keep people engaged while they are waiting on a full length album, or your EP, but you’re not limited to just releasing original new tracks.

Create alternate versions of your studio tracks:

Get a DJ to remix one of your songs. This does not have to be a famous DJ, someone who is familiar with what is trending on Hype M (if that is a goal), or has worked with an artist you love. If you’re interested in holding a remix contest you should contact the folks over at Indaba Music. They put together some great remix campaigns.

Or take a page from Nirvana and release an album of stripped down “unplugged” versions of your studio tracks. A great way to show a different side of the band and appeal to potentially new listeners.

Lastly release a live album, preferably from the CD release show, but any show will work as long as the audio is of top quality.

Record cover songs:

Music fans love covers. Recording cover songs is a great strategy for gaining awareness for new artists and it provides fun content to share with your fans. You can cover artists that inspire you, or similar sounding artists to further entrench yourself within your genre. Don’t box yourself in though. Covering a song outside of your genre can be a great way to tap into a whole new fan base. This is exactly what the pianist Scott D. Davis did when he decided to combine his love of heavy metal with the beautiful piano pieces he was recording. The result was millions of YouTube hits for his metal covers and new fans out of the heavy metal community, even of the artists themselves; Scott has been invited to open for Godsmack, Korn, P.O.D., Sevendust, Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe and Queensrÿche among others.

*Please note, to legally sell a cover song you will need to obtain and pay for a mechanical license. Harry Fox Agency is the foremost mechanical licensing agency in the US. Or work with Easy Song Licensing who will get the license for a small fee per song on top of the mechanical license fee.

2. LIVE (OR STREAMING) SHOWS

Continue to tour, hitting the same markets that you played while supporting the new album to build on the momentum that has been made. There are financial limitations though on how often you can tour and you more than likely won’t be able to tour to every market where you have some fans.

Live Streaming

Live streaming is a great solution to these limitations. You can use a company like Stageit or Concert Window to broadcast a weekly or monthly show from the comfort of your home or rehearsal space. Be sure to make a Facebook invite with all the details and send to your fans, post on Twitter, and let everyone on your mailing list know when to tune in. Streaming a show is also a great way to interact with your fans on a more personal and direct level.

Keeping the shows fresh and different will help with increasing viewership from show-to-show:

1. Play a game at the end of the performance or midway through using the chat feature. Trivia would be very easy game to pull off, where people could win merch or any other prizes that you can get your hands on.

2. Play new cover songs each week, better yet, ask people what covers you should play for the next week. Post the question to Facebook. The song suggestion that gets the most likes will be the one(s) you cover.

3. Have guest performers join you. It’s a great way to add a new element to the live stream while cross promoting to each other’s fans at the same time.

3. ONGOING SOCIAL MEDIA

We are not going to belabor this – Pay attention to your social channels and post often. Please see parts 1 and 2 of this article to deep dive and keep your Facebook Page, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Blog, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, or whatever your favorite social media channels are alive and active. There are a lot of outlets for social media, all which have been organized neatly on our checklist.

Don’t be a jerk and expect others to come to you – follow people and make friends. If you are not interested in them they shouldn’t be interested in you (it’s a 2-way street).

4. MERCHANDISE

Please avoid this costly mistake: You do NOT need to create merch until you have a fanbase who will buy merch and a sense of what they want to buy.

Merch has become very sophisticated over the last few years, there is no need to order a bunch of T-shirts (unless of course your fans like to roll that way!)

Our three favorite Merch ideas are

USB Flash Drives – Different kind of merch item to sell that you can load up with music, pictures, videos, lyrics, sheet music, etc.

Vinyl – Is hot right now. According to a recent Guardian article: “sales of vinyl in 2016 reached a 25-year high as consumers young and old have once again embraced physical formats of music.” Make sure you keep the fact that ordering can take months and make sure you are prepared to mail it and carry it to shows (its heavy!)

DIY Craft Items – We also love the idea of creating unique DIY items as a vehicle of selling your music, our client Mary Jennings sells bolo ties at her shows and in her Etsy store when she’s not on the road. We loved hanging out with her and watching her fans try on ties after her set.  

Michele Enoch wrote this fabulous guest post on youbloom,The Ultimate Independent Musician Guide to Merchandise, a few years ago and it’s jam-packed with fabulous links and unique ideas.

5. MAKING MONEY

You want to be considered an artist and not a hobbyist, right? So making money is key for your ongoing strategy. As you’ll see in your Music Marketing Plan Checklist, there are dozens of ways to make money- but you have to be smart about it.

Crowdfunding – This is a great way to fund an album, a tour or a big idea and by the time your campaign ends, your contributors are invested in both the idea and the journey, increasing their loyalty levels to “super fan” status. However you must keep in mind that the average crowdfunding campaign raises $7,000, according to fundable, and it takes dedication and perseverance to pull off successfully.

Also – no crowd, no crowd funding, so make sure you have a real dedicated fan base before you try this. In order to raise $5,000, you would need around 250 backers who would give an average of $20 each. In order to raise $10,000, you would need around 500 backers, who would, again, give an average of $20 each.

Ariel wrote a whole book on Crowdfunding called Crowdstart, that will walk you step-by-step through your entire campaign, and it comes with amazing done for you bonuses!

Experiences – Backstage meet and greets, private Skype sessions, and dinner with the band before a show are all possibilities and you don’t need to run a crowdfunding campaign to sell experiences. Many indie and major label artists, are taking advantage of them and BandPage makes it easy to set them up and track buyers for this great revenue generating strategy.

Subscriptions – is another area that artists are moving towards, where people sign up to receive music via Bandcamp or support the creation of videos through Patreon. Just because people don’t buy CD’s much anymore and even downloads are in a decline, people are willing to support artists, you just need to give them the platform to do so and interesting items and experiences to offer.

So there you have it!

This 3-part series is a LOT and we know it, but we hope that you find it extremely helpful.

If it all feels like too much, we would be happy to write a custom plan for you that goes MUCH deeper than this, and can even be tailored for your specific needs. Being your own marketing consultant is a difficult task, but it’s not impossible. If you stay determined and organized, you’ll be amazed at the results that will follow.

Now that you have read The Third and Final 5 outline of this 3-part series, Download our checksheet to see what you have left to check off or still need to prepare…  

Click on this image to get started now:

The post Post Music Release Strategies: The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans Part 3 appeared first on Cyber PR Music.