Jim Carlson dot Net

I’m guilty. Ive broken the golden rule of blogging: Write frequently.

It is funny, I preach this simple commandment to my clients. I tell them how important it is to keep providing their readers information, or you will lose them. Have I lost you?

Quite frankly, it is easy to get caught up other business activities and personal issues. So what’s a blogger to do? Here are some ideas that I’m hoping to use to keep this blog current:

• Set aside time on your schedule to write. Keep your appointment with yourself.
• Write a series of articles and ‘post to the future’. Have them in reserve, mix it up.
• Invite guest bloggers. No one knows everything, bring a new voice to the table.

So what have I missed? What do you do to ensure you post regularly?

I’ve read many studies that it takes the average website visitor 3-5 seconds to decide if they are going to stay on your site. With that in mind, I have worked with many clients who pay great attention to their home page to ensure their message gets across quickly and efficiently.

After conducting some SEO research for a client this week, I was reminded of something incredibly obvious and commonly overlooked: Search engines direct traffic to all pages of your site.

Although it is important to optimize your home page, it is equally critical to ensure all of your pages have a clear vision, are optimized for search engines and that the navigation of the site effectively allows users to find what they need quickly.

Never assume your visitors will land on your home page, make each page count. You have five seconds, make the most of them.

This discussion reminded me of the YouTube video “Information R/evolution“, which demonstrates how technology has changed the way we create, store and locate information:

Additional Reference:
5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site’s Content Pages

In my last post on Musicians and Social Media Networks, I discussed the basics of social media networks that help musicians communicate and promote their music. I have a MySpace band page, and as I discussed in the post mentioned above, managing social media networks can be a challenge, but may be worth the effort.

Needless to say, when Facebook announced Band Pages, I wasn’t the first to jump on bandwagon. However, after reading an article on New Muisc Strategies: What websites should I be on? (part 3), I took another look.

To set up a Facebook Band Page, you must already have (or create) a Facebook account. Once you are in your account, you can create ‘pages’ using the Page Manager application link in the left hand navigation.

At first glance, the band pages share similar features that MySpace band pages have: photo albums, fans (friends), videos, music player, The Wall (comments), and events (gig calendar). Pretty basic stuff. So why create another page on another social media network?

The Facebook Band Pages have a lot of additional, useful and innovative features that MySpace simply doesn’t have:

• Mini-Feed, a quick look at what’s new on your page
• Fans can upload photos and videos to your page. What a great concept: Your fans can contribute to your page by adding footage of your gigs!
• Discussion Boards allow you or your fans to discuss your music
• Notes: Jot a note to share with the group. A mini-text wall that also lets you tag tour pals
• Discography: List your complete recorded history
• Admin Section: Allow others to manage your page. Too busy to keep up? No problem!
• Tracking: Facebook Pages utilize Insights, an analytics package that lets you track Page Views, Unique Views, Fans, New Fans, Removed Fans, Wall Posts, Discussion Topics, Reviews and Photo Views. You can also track your visitors by gender and age. To top it off, you can export the data (daily or weekly) to Excel or .csv formats.

A couple of other notes about Facebook Band Pages:

• If you already have Facebook friends, they must choose to become one of your fans. This is a cool feature, as you may want to maintain a private life as well as promote your music.
• You can message your friends (one at a time) or fans (all at once, or target by: location, sex and/or age) with event updates or special messages
• No offense to MySpace, but Facebook’s interface is far more functional and in my opinion, easier to use.

One of the best things about setting up the Jim Carlson Facebook Band Page was Google indexed the page within hours. As of this writing it remains in the top ten results for the keywords: Jim Carlson.

Facebook Band Pages are a great way to reach out and communicate to fans that MySpace may not reach. Setting them up takes a bit of time, but the maintenance is quick and easy. Since MySpace and Facebook have different demographics, it is definitely worth considering setting up a Facebook Band Page.

As a musician who has leveraged social media for several years, I use social media networks and tools every day to communicate with others and promote my music. The majority of these services are free, the only expense is your time.

Social media sites allow you to promote your music, videos, photos and gig schedules with your fans in an environment where they can interact with your music and share it with others in their network.

This article will look at two categories of social media:1) all-in-one social media networks and 2) stand alone networks which include specialty media and communication services.

All-In-One Social Media Networks

All-in-one social media network sites feature an area for your bio, blogging, photo/video sharing, bulletins and event calendars in an environment where you can become ‘friends’ with others on the same network. Obvious examples of these network sites are: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, PerfSpot, Xanga and TagWorld.

Being on several social networks simultaneously presents some serious challenges. The biggest challenge is keeping all the sites up-to-date. Each interface is different, so updating gig schedules and uploading fresh pics/videos/and songs to each network can be an incredibly time consuming process. Since these are social networks, there is the expectation that you will actively generate friends/fans and communicate with them as part of their community.

I eventually decided to focus my time on MySpace and Facebook. This choice was simple, more of my friends and fans were on these two networks than all the smaller networks combined. That is not surprising, as these are the two biggest social network sites on the internet. I also found that the majority of my friends on the smaller networks were also my friends on both MySpace and Facebook, thus maintaining additional networks was not necessary.

Specialty Social Media Networks

In addition to the ‘all-in-one’ social networks, leveraging ’specialty’ social media and communication sites is another great way to increase your exposure. Examples of sites within this category include: YouTube, Viddler, Flickr, Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, Digg, del.icio.us and stand alone blogs like WordPress and Blogger.

The advantage of the specialty social network services is that they are highly specialized and generally offer expanded functionality since they are dedicated to only one purpose.

You are probably wondering: If I have a MySpace and a Facebook page, why would I want to use additional social media services? Didn’t you just say to pick a network or two and keep it simple?

It does seem like a contradiction, doesn’t it? The social media networking sites do have some of the same services that the stand alone sites have: video, music, photos, blogs, chat rooms and bulletin areas. However, Facebook and MySpace require user registration to view and share some media, where the specialty sites often provide the media without credentials.

A good example is a music performance video. Uploading it to MySpace and Facebook allows users to easily share and embed the video into their profiles. Since most bands don’t upload videos on a continual basis, uploading the video to additional video sharing services increases your exposure on the internet and provides SEO-friendly links back to your MySpace, Facebook and/or stand alone website.

Blogging is another great way to communicate with your fans, and search engines love both Blogger and WordPress. Why? Google owns Blogger, thus they index the content all the time. WordPress is built on extremely clean, search engine friendly code. You can embed music, photos and other media from your other social networks into your blog posts, thus cross linking your various sites. By incorporating a content sharing service like AddThis, your viewers can share your blog’s content on the network of their choice.

Other social media tools such as Twitter and Plurk allow you to communicate quickly and directly to your network. If you update your MySpace, Facebook, blog or stand alone website, you can notify your followers and pass along the updated link.

It is All About Networking

The goal of leveraging social media is to ensure your fans can find you on the major search engines, and that potential fans will be exposed to your music within their networks. By combining social media platforms, you can communicate with your fans in the environment of their choice and encourage them to share your information with their friends, come to your gigs and purchase your music.

Additional Resources

The social media and social networking landscape changes all the time. Keep up-to-date with the following links:

Social Media on Wikipedia
List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites

Kanon Kulpa recently published a post on Branding During a Recession. After discussions with fellow musicians, I’ve been thinking about how musicians are impacted by an economic slowdown.

As prices rise and incomes are stretched, entertainment is one of the early casualties of cutbacks. As Kanon mentioned in his article, people do not necessarily eliminate entertainment, they tend to look for lower cost alternatives. For example, it is a lot less expensive to grab a 12-pack and have a house party than hit the clubs.

For entertainers and venue owners, this can be a problem. As bar revenue decreases, owners and managers are forced to look at their expenditures and ask the question: Does providing music continue to generate revenue, or is it an expense that can be cut?

Obviously, there are many venue types out there; some are 100% dependent on music, others fall into an area where music is optional because they have other streams of income including food service, juke boxes and dare I say it…karaoke. Not all clubs will survive, others will thrive.

Among fellow musicians, we’ve discussed the following issues:

Clubs asking for musicians to take a cut on their rate
It is important to ask yourself: Do you have a good relationship with the club owner? Will the rate go up once things get better? Will a temporary rate cut lead to long term bookings? Remember, you have to balance your expenses (gas, strings, etc) and make an practical decision.

Reducing travel
With rising gas prices, many musicians are reducing their travel distance or asking for more money to travel further. This is a tightrope issue; if clubs are cutting back and you are asking for more money, will you loose the gig? On the other hand, this may be an excellent to and expand your market by expanding your territory.

Cancellations
Some bands are finding that their gigs are simply canceled due to the economic strain on venues. This situation is difficult for the club, the band and the fans who may have been planning on attending the show.

Promoting Yourself
If you continue to bring in fans and generate income for the venue, chances are you’ll fair considerably better than bands who just ’show up and play’. Recessions are a great time to spend extra effort building and maintaining your fan base.

There are no hard and fast answers to the impact of recessions on the music scene. Every market, venue and performer has idiosyncrasies that make each situation unique.

Handling yourself in a professional manner and promoting yourself is essential at all times, but especially so during hard economic times. The important thing to remember is that recessions tend to come and go on a cyclical basis.

What issues have you seen? What have I missed?