The Americana and roots music authority
Social Networking: What works for you or your band?
We rely heavily on the Internet to help build our fan base and spread our music and use a lot of free (as well as a few paid) social networking sites and tools. From using social networking sites we continue to successfully grow our personal and professional base, started and maintained relationships with our fan base, learned from experts and other bands and professionals, found business potentials and gigs, shared our music and art, increased our CD and digital download sales, got publicity, expanded our reach, managed to build a database and e-mailing list as well as an "outline" of who are fanebase is and how to approach them and now we are learning to build our personal 'brand' while multi-tasking....all of this, pretty much for free!
We'd like to know what tools and websties do you and your band use? What websites work best for you? Where have you received the most "hits" or what sites do you use to help build up your fanbase? Do you use on-line radio? Do you subscribe to any pay tools on websites? Do you advertise on-line and if so, WHAT websites do you advertise on and has the advertising paid off?
Do you think that bands rely too much on social networking? What issues and problems have you had with some sites? What are the negative impacts that you have experienced?
Below is a list of tools and websites that we DIRECTLY use.
1.) nodepression.com
2.) Artistdata.com (we use this site heavily as it links to other sites and makes updating all our social networking website easy to control)
3.) Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/themuckrakes)
4.) Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/themuckrakes)
5.) Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/themuckrakes)
6.) Reverbnation (http://www.reverbnation.com/themuckrakes) **we also pay for a subscription of $4.95 a month to reverbnation that host/ distribute our EPK
7.) Blogger
8.) YouTube
9.) Ilike.com
10.) Lala.com
11.) CDBABY.com
12.) Itunes.com
13. ) Garageband.com
14.) RVA / Tidewater Music Ring
There are a few other sites that we use that are DIY (for booking and making contacts throughout the USA for touring) that are linked from our myspace page. Also please feel FREE to add us to your myspace, facebook, nodepression friend list as well as follow us on twitter as well.
What are your experiences and what sites work for you?
Sound off fellow bands and fans and friends!
We'd like to know what tools and websties do you and your band use? What websites work best for you? Where have you received the most "hits" or what sites do you use to help build up your fanbase? Do you use on-line radio? Do you subscribe to any pay tools on websites? Do you advertise on-line and if so, WHAT websites do you advertise on and has the advertising paid off?
Do you think that bands rely too much on social networking? What issues and problems have you had with some sites? What are the negative impacts that you have experienced?
Below is a list of tools and websites that we DIRECTLY use.
1.) nodepression.com
2.) Artistdata.com (we use this site heavily as it links to other sites and makes updating all our social networking website easy to control)
3.) Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/themuckrakes)
4.) Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/themuckrakes)
5.) Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/themuckrakes)
6.) Reverbnation (http://www.reverbnation.com/themuckrakes) **we also pay for a subscription of $4.95 a month to reverbnation that host/ distribute our EPK
7.) Blogger
8.) YouTube
9.) Ilike.com
10.) Lala.com
11.) CDBABY.com
12.) Itunes.com
13. ) Garageband.com
14.) RVA / Tidewater Music Ring
There are a few other sites that we use that are DIY (for booking and making contacts throughout the USA for touring) that are linked from our myspace page. Also please feel FREE to add us to your myspace, facebook, nodepression friend list as well as follow us on twitter as well.
What are your experiences and what sites work for you?
Sound off fellow bands and fans and friends!
Tags: e-mails, fan, letters, list, mailing, networking, plug-ins, programming, social, tools, More…
Views: 14
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dina Becerra on -
Twitter is by far the best social media tool right now. MySpace is unfortunately pretty dead with non-music users. The sad part about that is that MySpace offers a great platform for displaying music and a lot of musicians use it as their main website.
Here's a tip to try. There's a website called bit.ly. You might have noticed that in Twitter, sometimes regular URLs are automatically shortened into a bit.ly link. You can track these links- anyone can. You can also create these links on purpose by going to the bit.ly site. I suggest opening a free account so you can monitor your links.
Here's how it works. Enter a URL in the bit.ly shortener window. Try it with your MySpace page. Then post it to Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else. Then go back to the bit.ly account and see how many hits you got.
If you want to be a little nosy and check the performance of other people's links or don't want to open an account, put the link in the address bar and just add a + to the end of a link then hit enter. It will take you to a tracking page as well.
The types of information you can get from this is how many hits you get, locations (countries) and who is forwarding or retweeting your link. You can experiment with messages and see what gets more people to click on links over others. Good stuff to know!
If this explanation made no sense, let me know and I'll try and walk you through it.
-Dina
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Permalink Reply by Kyla Fairchild on -
Thanks for this tip Dina. I just signed No Depression up and will give it a try.
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Permalink Reply by Kyla Fairchild on
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Ian Rogers from Top Spin is documenting his foray into band management and internet marketing on his blog. He's full of great knowledge and insights. If you're an artist or artist manager/marketer looking for out of the box thinking it's a good read.
I've already posted this link elsewhere on the site, but I highly recommend that anyone interested in thinking about how artists can generate revenue read this article, 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. It's one of the best I've read on the subject to date and the comments that follow are also very informative and interesting.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Wells on -
Hey Kyla, thanks for the Fistfulayen tip, I've been familiar with TopSpin and I remember chatting with you about Ian Rogers, but I hadn't checked out his blog until I read your post. Lots of great ideas in there!
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Permalink Reply by Katelyn Hackett on -
The main thing is to understand that social media is a two-way street - you have to respond to folks on Twitter, for instance, and not just to tweets directed specifically at you, in order to really get anything out of your time spent on developing that network. I rarely follow bands or groups on Twitter if they are just using their feed to spam me with show dates. I'm glad to follow groups if they're using their feed to connect with their fans (hence "social" media) and to give us useful information along with that personal connection. As far as other avenues to check out, I've noticed a lot of artists starting to use Bandcamp and (to a lesser extent) Tumblr. Tumblr can be easily integrated with your Twitter feed.
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Permalink Reply by Exebelle on -
Hey all,
I'd suggest Bandcamp.com to any artist looking for a place to upload and sell their music online. The site is easy to navigate and lets bands track their stats (similar to ReverbNation). My band has used it to upload and sell our music. The site allows you to name the price for songs/albums or allow free downloads. Also, to the original poster: what exactly is the RVA / Tidewater Music Ring? I'm in a band from Richmond (Exebelle & The Rusted Cavalcade) and would greatly appreciate any info about the site. Thanks.
- Ryan
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Permalink Reply by kevin Dunn on -
Hello
I'm Kevin Dunn. Singer Songwriter based in Victoria BC Canada. You can now listen to the complete set of tracks from two of my older CD’s “Gravel Road” and “My Old Blue Truck’ on Youtube now. Just go to youtube and put in “Kevin Dunn….. My old Blue Truck” and it will lead you to all of them.
There are 15 great original songs for someone to cover. Or get back to me with your ideas. I have many more new songs and writing all the time.
I can write to order mostly folk or country music some other. Some of these songs have already had radio play.
I am a member of SOCAN.
Regards.
Kevin Dunn.
Call me on Cel 250-882-8258. . Email reply to this one.
Pat Bay Hwy. Victoria BC Canada. V8Y 1S8.
PS.
If you liked these, it would sure be nice if you could forward this E-mail to your friends. I would like to get some of these songs covered.
Kevin
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Permalink Reply by Kyla Fairchild on
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I just saw this web site (Kickstarter.com) referenced in an article about fan funded releases. It appears that relatively unknown artists are having success raising funds for records using this platform.
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Permalink Reply by The Muckrakes on -
Yeah, there's also a website called sellaband.com, basically is the same type of thing as kickstarter.com. Personally, we think that it's a waste of time and effort and money, but we're sure it's done some good for some band somewhere.
But it's taking a gamble because people are investing in your music and to tell you the truth, if a band is motivated and talented enough, they'll do what we did; and that's play enough, make enough money and put it out on your own instead of asking others for a handout or "investment" to a crappy band that's NOT gonna be around within 2-5 years.
It's an "okay" idea, but I wouldn't suggest any band do it...time you spent asking for cash and promoting yourself through their website you could spend booking shows, making real contacts with venues, sending out your EPKs, recording and writing songs.
For websites like sellaband and kickstarter, ya gotta ask yourself, is it worth it? In our case, no.
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Permalink Reply by Will James on -
Gram National uses ReverbNation. Music player, update status across different sites, apps to use on other sites, links to online store vendors, venues, artists, etc. Love it. Ours at reverbnation.com/gramnational, #3 in the Boston area for Country. Also MySpace for music; Facebook is lax in that area. Others no reach.
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