Writing the post and then saving it and coming back to it when I’m ready to edit it seriously.

Posting at a smart time, like a weekday morning or afternoon, not in the dark hours of sunday morning.

As I said, I’m doing okay, but if I want to lift my game and get up there having these muddled posts is no good, you’ve got to make a commitment to value for your audience.

It’s lower value, lower quality if you’re not making the effort to be presentable.

It’s easy to say oh y’know it’s just my blog, i’m just gonna throw some words up to keep it fresh with my SEO and such but if you really want to engage and go from hundreds to thousands of daily visitors, you’re going to have to present a “professional” image.

You need to look as if you’re serious.

Spelling mistakes and unfinished paragraphs with concepts that go all over the place is not going to be taking me to the next level. I’ll get leads sure. You’ll pick up some fans here and there. But not that many.

Gerd Leonhard made a great metaphor while he was drifting down the digital content stream in his little boat in a recent talk, he compared your audience to puppies. Feed them content and they’ll be the ones waiting for you to come home, who’ll follow you everywhere.

You can’t ask a puppy for $1 on Itunes. All you can do is give it love.
Ariel Hyatt has an amazing post over at Music Think Tank.

http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/the-ugly-man-behind-the-curtain-in-music-publicity.html
It’s sad the decaying structures of the traditional music industry model are still held in place. This is indicative of our general global situation here, vested interests have too much too lose to progress.

This is what a recession looks like to me. It’s when a lot of accepted practices that no longer provide value are removed from the production chain out of necessity.

It’s a correction for most. Except for those who were right all along.

The digital music realm is only going to thrive in these conditions.

I’m not saying 2009 will be all candy. But if you can survive it, it’s just going to get easier.

Because maybe you don’t need to find a band manager for your music, you need to find a fan manager.

This is the new model. You might still need a traditional manager figure who goes into bat for the artist to bust balls and make sure they’re being looked after. But now that the music industry has changed to enable musicians to engage fans directly, we start talking about a “fan manager”.

This describes the changing role of band and music management to incorporate tasks that face the reality of  creating revenue from music because increasingly now, you’ve got to go directly to the fan.

And you’ve got to understand the complexities of how fans are engaged online.

I’m only talking about this now because I turned up on the http://www.fanmanager.net site and they also have a blog at http://fanmanager.wordpress.com- which was how I found them, their was a trackback on their link to a Lefsetz post.

It’s funny that they refer to themselves as “fan managers” because that’s a term I’d begun using that recognises where the most important work is going on in the music industry now, and that’s enabling artists and enabling fans, not making backroom deals with high rolling music industry dons.

Now Fan Manager the business intrigued me and I thought was worth a mention because they are obviously dealing with a higher level of client than I do and most likely charge accordingly. But they run a very comprehensive service. It’s inspired me to start thinking how I can bring my service levels up in the way these guys have because they’re projecting a powerful solution to cover the great many varying needs of artists building a brand and interacting with fans in a digital era.

Here’s what they were offering in their service packages. Yes, I know many many shonky music service websites promise so much - I’ve just about seen them all - but I saw a lot of evidence on the site that these guys were actually doing this stuff, not just providing a big long list to impress people!

• Fan Club Management
• Street Team Creation, Building and Management
• Work Exchange Programs (Merchandise Booth, E-Mail List Teams, Festival Teams)
• Database Management
• HTML Newsletter creation
• Online Street Team Creation, Building and Management (E-Teams)
• Social Media Creation, Design, and Management (Social Networks, Blogs, Micro Blogs & Widgets)
• Viral Marketing Research
• Viral Marketing Campaigns (outreach on blogs, message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc)
• Comprehensive reporting using pictures, digital reports, and screen shots
• Creative Contests and Promotions
• Setting Up and Overseeing Special events such as listening parties, DVD Parties, and meet and greet events
• Graphic Design (handbills, posters, stickers, admats, etc)
• Printing (B+W, 4 color process, cutting, and sorting)
• Website Design, E-Cards, and Animated Banners
• Website Back End Management
• Tour Date entries using all mediums
• Shipping (FedEx, Priority Mail)

Even if they don’t deliver half of what they say they do or they’re being a little ambivalent, that sure is a solid list of services that a modern marketing or fan managing company or service provider should be aiming to provide for musicians and other clients.

I’m not sure how these guys run their operation but with my work, I need to be paying one on one attention to my clients whenever possible because when you’re carrying out this work, so much is required to personalise and customize services to the specific act in order to make marketing communications and fan management authentic and successfil, as well as research involved to develop methods of qualifying and targeting high quality contacts and cultivating a growing group of connected and enabled fans.

And also it’s something for me to aim for because if I could do a decent job of all that I could definitely start charging more but as it is I’m still affordable!

I notice there’s a few things that they don’t mention that I do, such as SEO, PPC and ad supported revenue - I guess this is more hardened internet marketing stuff and they are, afterall, “fan managers”.

So maybe, given the needs of the large clients they serve who already have established fan bases that need maintenance, this suggests interacting with fans becomes a core revenue operation.

One you reach that “1000 true fans” point, then you bring on your “fan manager” who helps you facilitate an authentic relationship.
Especially if you’re paying in US$. How about this - the coupon code is “fan manager” if you mention that you want a “fan manager” I’ll take 10% off my service in US$. That’s $500 down to $450 - $150 US per month for comprehensive online music marketing management.

In a new model I see, musicans and entertainers require the assistance of a trinity of support parties to create revenue.

The first is the producer or the musicians musical mentor that aid the musician bringing their musical product to the most professional standard possible. This might also include someone who takes responsibility for ensuring the “talent’s” video content is also of a high standard.

The second is an agent. An agent takes a commission based on bookings and placements.

And the last is the fan manager.

Before I’ve said that the last was the online guru but I think just taking the attitude that some geek can fix your problems with technology isn’t going to be enough.

That’s why this term “fan manager” is so important. Rather than a band manager who used to organise your relationship with your label and with your agent if they didn’t already act as your agent, out of economic necessity your manager now must be proficient in organising and monetizing your relationship with thousands of fans to make it authentic and valuable for them so that the experience they get motivates them to make purchases - and of course the fan manager will facilitate such commercial operations online.

So last thing I want to say is how are you engaging fans and is their someone in your team dedicated to this?

Have you “got it” yet that the digital music revolution now is all about engaging fans?

They can have your music for free. But earn their respect as Lefsetz said, and they’ll pay for it anyway.

Gerd Leonhard compared them to puppies. Feed them free content and they’ll be loyal to you for life.

Right now, I’m posting about my membership site and artist community New Music Marketing it’s really getting over run by spammers and I don’t even have much foundation content there.

So the outcome is a forum needs a lot more maintenance than a blog.

But I really feel I need to get active there.

I don’t care about controlling the content. What I’m motivated by is creating a “tribal” environment. I don’t claim to be an expert, but there is clearly a methodology I’m developing and I’m happy to discuss this on my blog in kind of broad theoretical terms, but I’m desperate to ensure my actual clients are the first to benefit from my knowledge and I like the idea that inside the forum, discussing practical techniques as they apply to specific artists, as well as being completely open about what is available in terms of scripts, bots, automation, outsourcing, etc. - this is stuff I’m not keen to discuss on my by public blog, because I generally tend to charge for it, that’s my living!

The idea for the forum originally came from all the value I was putting into 1-on-1 email consultations and wanting other clients to benefit from what I was saying.

A lot of my clients, I have to accept, are not very advanced in web 2.0 and often this is precisely why they’ve come to me. They don’t read my blog and for a lot of them the pieces of the puzzle are only slowly coming together.

The forum can become an interactive environment which could provide controlled access to content and 3rd parties - outsourced staff such as graphic deigners, web designers - who could work directly with artists. So all I need to do is focus on bringing my clients together there.

I see this as being efficient without even thinking about the main point of such forums - you’re leveraging your user base for content and feedback. When you can control your tribe within such an environment which is perceived to be somewhat insular, we can talk freely about the issues and what blind spots might be coming up for artists in the process - I can respond directly to their actual needs, rather than waffling on my blog.

It’s just a bit of a mess in there right now! I had plans. But those plans have been on hold. These holidays hopefully I’m able to rally and move forward with this platform. It’s something new, I see benefits, I see scale, I just have to tackle the challenge of maintaining it to a point I can dedicate outsourced staff to it’s upkeep.

Or at least stop the spam!
Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.

Talk to Matt at: kurbpromo@gmail.com

Starting to do really nicely with the outsourcing stuff right now.

Right now I’ve just kicked of a blog promotion campaign for this blog which is going to create cumulative search authority and probably start bringing in a fair few curious readers.

There are just so many basic jobs required in online promotion and marketing that are really just scaling up basic repetitive tasks which can get boring for a creative REAL fast.

I first need to point out that a practical part of building online promotions is the “nesting” - getting settled in your spot with your website and your blog. You don’t want to really swing into full scale internet marketing if you haven’t made the necessary preparations.

Ultimately you want to have a .com domain for your website and your blog hanging off that site at www.yoursite.com/blog. This helps the work you do writing on your blog add to the search authority of your website which is the business end.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on a wordpress site or you’ve got a .info or a local site like .co.nz for new zealand, the work you put in building up blog post content can be shifted and preserved when you move your blog to a .com, but if you’ve put all this work into promoting the www.yourband.info and then you switch over to www.yourband.com . . .

Which is what I did when I moved from

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com

to

http://musicmarketingmanagement.com

You’re gonna waste all that effort.

The reality is staying within the wordpress network does get you more traffic short term, but I needed the freedom to develop my blog, and I lost out on a lot of the effort I put into promoting the kurb promotion blog on wordpress, and that blog still brings me more business than this one does. For now.

So this is why we won’t get into outsourcing promotion work on a website or a blog that hasn’t reached it’s final incarnation.  Much like I don’t want to push to far into social media campaigns with bands when their design is unprofessional - that’s where I’m outsourcing designers - but today I’m talking more about outsourcing more mundane stuff that doesn’t require skills such as design work, but is just too boring for most to cope with, and it’s precisely for that reason that these techniques are so successful.

That other band you see yourself as being capable of being like in a years time?

Do you think they or their management spend hours upon hours building links? You think they’re paying someone else to do it - is their management really that smart? Probably not. So give yourself the edge and give me an email. I do online music marketing for bands kurbpromo@gmail.com

I’ve got this blog promotion campaign going now that’s costing me next to nothing. I paid them yesterday, they started work an 2 hours ago, look at them go!

		Add My Site	»	Add My Site - www.musicmarketingmanagement.com…‎ - Welcome kurbpromo@gmail.com (www.musicmarketingmanagement.com): Click below to add your site …		6:42 pm
		admin	›	Submission details at z-Blogs Directory‎ - Your Listing ID: 672 Your Listing Title: Music. Marketing. Management. URL Submitted: http://www …		6:36 pm
		webmaster	»	Link Submission Confirmation‎ - Dear Matt Turner This is to confirm that we have received your site submission. URL: http://www …		6:35 pm
		Mike	»	WIcked Blog Directory recieved your blog‎ - Wicked Blog Directory has recieved your blog http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com. It will be …		6:33 pm
		me	»	New User at Music Marketing Forums‎ - There is a new user, tymnmouro at Music Marketing Forums To view their profile, go here: http …		6:28 pm
		submit-site (2)	»	Your link submission at blogaz‎ - blogaz Welcome kurbpromo@gmail.com - http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com Click below to add …		6:24 pm
		Blog Folders Blog Direct.	»	Link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com/ in Blog Folders Blog Directory directory‎ - Dear Sir/Madam, We are glad to inform you that a link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com …		5:51 pm
		Admin	»	Your Link Request at The Blog Directory‎ - Dear Matt Turner, Thank you for your request for inclusion in our directory The Blog Directory …		5:45 pm
		ShoutYourSite	»	Pending Resource‎ - Thank you for your submission to ShoutYourSite.com. Title : Music. Marketing. Management. Url …		5:44 pm
		Blogs all over the World	»	Listing was submitted to Blogs all over the World‎ - Dear Sir/Madam, We are glad to inform you that a link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com …		5:39 pm
		BlogMyWay Team	»	Your links submission to BlogMyWay.com Blogs Directory‎ - Dear Matt Turner Your http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com has been submitted to BlogMyWay …		5:39 pm
		A Blogin Blog Directory	»	Link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com/ in A Blogin Blog Directory directory‎ - Dear Sir/Madam, We are glad to inform you that a link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com …		5:34 pm
		Julia	»	Your Link Request at “Do Follow” Blog Directory‎ - Dear Matt Turner, Thank you for your request for inclusion in our directory “Do Follow …		5:32 pm
		Topsites Mailer Daemon	»	Topsites Submission‎ - Topsites Submission Dear sir/miss, We would like to thank you for your submission to the TopSites …		5:22 pm
		Favouritelink Directory	»	Listing was approved in Favouritelink Directory‎ - Dear Sir/Madam, Congratulations! Your listing http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com has been …		5:17 pm
		blogrankings.com	»	Your URL has been added‎ - Please use the code below to link us. <a href=http://www.blogrankings.com><img src=http …		5:14 pm
		musab	»	Your Link Request For Inclusion‎ - Dear Matt Turner, Thank you for your request for inclusion to BLOG DIRECTORY & BLOG SEARCH …		5:08 pm
		me	»	New User at Music Marketing Forums‎ - There is a new user, memeUnise at Music Marketing Forums To view their profile, go here: http …		5:08 pm
		admin	»	Your Submission to Superblog Directory‎ - Your Submission to Superblog Directory has been received and is awaiting review. You will be …		5:04 pm
		BlogDir	»	Link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com/ in BlogDir directory‎ - Dear Sir/Madam, We are glad to inform you that a link to http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com …		4:48 pm
		Flookie Blog Search	»	Thanks for your submissio

They’re doing 60 for me. 60 high quality backlinks from top blog directories where users are searching for blogs in their niche I’m definitely running this campaign for all clients who have their final blog set up configured.

If you’re a past client or contact of mine I’ll do a blog promotion deal for you for $US30 /$NZ50

Or of course, that’s included in a 3 month campaign starting at $US500, but I can cut kiwis a discount on that.
So once you have your blog and website set up where you intend it to stay for years to come, and you’ve had someone like me do some basic on page optimisation, and as an artist you’re committed to producing posts, then you can begin promoting your sites. By building links.

Links is the most important thing that Google uses to rank your sites for certain terms.

Masses of links is what you want. I’ve talked about how we build links:

- commenting blogs, particularly “do follow” blogs that pass on link juice. In the http://newmusicmarketing.com forum I provide several extansive lists of do follow blogs that pass on search authority.  Hours if not days of work.

- submitting your site to search engines. Google is the big mama boss search engine that matters. But google also “crawls” all the 1000’s of other little baby search engines and though you’re probably already indexed by Google, being indexed by all these other search engines shows Google you have authority. with 5000+ search engines out there, even cutting and pasting to the top 200 would take again, hours and hours.

- syndicating articles. Using your blog posts and submitting them as free articles that webmasters may publish as long as they use your attributive link is one of themost powerful search based website promotion techniques available. Reposting stuff to wordpress, blogspot, myspace, facebook is one thing,

Also at this point we’re swapping over from promotional tactics that are search based to those that are social based - that is, submitting to article directories and also blog directories as I described in the campaign above, is great for improving search authority but at the same time, a high quality article or blog directory submission is going to add to the search benefits with actual readers who are going to come through the sites where you articles and blogs are being listed and syndciated.

Then you can go one further than I have at this point and submit your RSS feed to RSS directories, which is totally going to maximise the potential to syndicate your content and get links and traffic coming back through that.

So there are powerful and proven strategies to market your website and your blog content but they will bore the life out of you. I just cannot spend hours doing these repetitive submissions.

But outsourcing these jobs to companies who specialise in it, you can get a massive edge on other entertainment brands that just aren’t utilising strong leverage of the digital music environment.

Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.

Talk to Matt at: kurbpromo@gmail.com

Okay I’ve been thinking about this rebranding thing a lot.

Why are we talking about rebranding?

Because artists, creative people and entrepreneurs are coming into this online space using online tools, building websites, social networking, blogging, putting out free high value content, building email lists and developing new high value propositions.

They’re doing all the online marketing I’ve been doing for the last few years, because they see people like me and know that it is possible, they’re looking to join the dots to create digital music revenue, and so they’re throwing everything into making a new model work.

And then suddenly after years of building content, using solid online promotion methods, struggling and providing users and fans alike with value and leveraging online audiences and environments  . . . what happens when the new model does work?

You reach the point that I have. That you’re doin’ alright. That you’ve made it work, you’ve made something of this mad digital music realm, and you’ve established yourself and you could continue to do well in your own little way.

And you might reach the same conclusion that I have. It’s great to have got somewhere struggling to do this and put it together, to forge a jagged new path . . . but what if we actually started doing this properly?

What if I started taking this stuff seriously? You might find yourself in same position I am that you say okay it’s great that we can earn a living and that people appreciate what we do, but now that we’ve put food on the table isn’t it time to start thinking about the bigger picture?

Rebranding isn’t a revenue strategy.

It’s probably going to cost to have better looking videos, a more professional website and blog design. To have a professional standard of art and video and offer functionality, features and usability that are fresh. To build strong stories with powerful writing and video making.

I’ve talked about the content crisis - “a survival of the fittest” in digital content, raising your standard and attempting to give your user base more is a long term strategy to connect authentically with an ever narrower niche who are particularly responsive to your message: Your Tribe.

You built your music to a this point based on a brand, based on a message in your content. Now it’s time to start refining that message into a powerful story, a story that will resonate and motivate members of your tribe.

A tribe is a group you belong to with which you share common values. You can connect, participate and/or lead. This is what rebranding is about. It’s not about being like Madonna and reinventing yourself, although it could be for some artists; It’s about a response to the these converging trends in digital culture.

When I’m talking about rebranding I’m not just talking about a makeover. I’m talking about showing leadership pertaining to the values shared amongst your target niche, that engage them and motivate them, that connect and bond them to you.

It’s not about change for the sake of it, it’s about refining and developing your brand, your message, in a modern way with the new technology you have available to do so.

Marketing and branding is a deeper part of the value an artist provides than ever before. Marketing stories are now narratives, artists are protagonists, our heroes, are characters playing out stories and messages that represent what ever more complex networks of fragmented fanbases value.

See the whole rebranding thing for me is about embracing social media and web 2.0 maturely and intelligently.

We’ve had myspace. We’ve had the photoshopping and the messed up custom profiles. We have youtube sitting there ubiquitous in the online video space, the mammoth in the room that won’t go away.

We learnt how to engage with users/fans/audience.

We learnt that people are looking for connection, for gratification, that have choices and they want to engage in a way that’s personally meaningful, they want to participate.

We now have the guru’s, the experts telling you how new marketing and branding should be done, information is free and it’s everywhere, it’s now time for artists and entrepreneurs alike to make sense of this environment, make sense of this information and make sense of the role their content plays.

That is rebranding, using the digital means now available to anyone who’s reading this to create a more powerful message.

I’m going to talk more about specifics in some future posts, but we’re obviously talking about video and youtube . . .  websites, blogs - we’ve been talking about using this technology to build revenue for awhile now. Technology is only as good as the purpose it’s used for, so now we’re talking about this technology helping us to really articulate to our fans and audience . . . to lead your tribe, to be an “ideas leader” and bring fans and audiences and uses along with you.

Building a brand and articulating it is often about refining to make sure the message is getting through to your audience. Obviously I don’t know how much longer and can go on without breaking down some examples.

I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a musician, I’m a writer.

I want to be successful in business, I want to connect with people and be afforded approval and recognition, and I also want to achieve creative connectivity.

So in the next post hopefully I’ll getting stuck into how I want to rearticulate my brand so that the messages I want to connect with my audience are authentic and meaningful.

Matt Turner from kurb does online promotion for musicians, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management. Contact kurbpromo@gmail.com

Thought before I get carried away with my rebranding post I should just do one of my quick diary round ups.

Yes my CSS (”cascading style sheet” it’s web design thing that tells my website what to look like) is a little bit all over the place as I tried to integrate the style of the original http://www.kurb.co.nz site with our blog here at http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com

This is where I talk about what I’ve been doing recently in online marketing and music marketing, and given how busy I generally am, you know I’m only doing the important stuff and the stuff that really matters to get results and move forward.

Now in the big picture I’ve been getting really excited about and focused on “rebranding” or developing, progressing or growing my brand. For musicians and other brand aware identities this speaks to the need for artists to develop strong personal messages that engage deeply and connect with fans - otherwise you might have to think seriously about turning around and going home, and just staying there.

You’ve got great songs? That’s great, now who are you and why should we care?

A word I’ve got right back into is “articulating”. Artists and musicians I see are not “articulating” their brand, they expect fans to just “know” the powerful messages you’re representing to your “tribe” and connect. Unfortunately people take more persuasion and compulsion than ever due to the sheer volume and endless bombarding of brand aware messages projected at them.

In fact, that’s why so often, they’re looking for empowered individuals with empowered brands to take them away from the crappy advertising mounted brand invasions they’re subject to.

So how do we articulate our brand? Through messages. Through media. And what media are musicians leveraging to articulate their brands? Their websites and videos.

You want to be engaging through your website content - that may be your blog posts, or posting galleries etc.  diaries, how to’s - interactive games? quizzes? - all that secondary content that is not your songs, not your premium content.

And special note of this must be made with videos. I always say it’s just like the 80’s but Youtube has replaced MTV. Everyone’s watching it, if you’re not leveraging it then you don’t have an edge and you’re not generating additional exposure and you’re more likely to miss out.

My feeling is that a video, or some video is better than no video. I think a lot of people are challenged as I am by the revealing nature of video, but that us exactly it’s advantage and it’s challenge. Sure you can hit record and go for your life. But in order to articulate your brand as a serious musician you’re going to have to rise to the challenge.

WEB 3.0 AND THE “CONTENT CRISIS”

Recently I’ve been talking about a “content crisis”. That is, as more and more people grab the tools of a digital age and become content providers themselves, there will be more and more substandard low quality content that people will be going out of their way to avoid. The powers that be (IE Google) will want to put the power of filtering into the hands of their users and shutting out a lot of the mediocre long tail media content we’ve seen develop in the last few years.

How bad could it be? Well even I’m worried. Even my content would probably not make the cut.

That’s why I get concerned about the position of artists who are completely in the dark. If you’re one of those artists still wandering round with your hand out asking who will pay you and how, then you might have to face that you’re a dodo and you’ve missed the boat.

You’re not going to survive this one. People like me have been talking and preparing for the digital revolution for over 18 months now.

You can’t say you didn’t know it was coming, you didn’t know what was happening. That there was a digital revolution taking place that was changing the music industry, but you failed to take the necessary steps to stay ahead of the game where such massive opportunities are now opening up.

But you may have failed to position yourself to take advantage of them.

So what have I been doing about it?

Well I haven’t made much progress to be honest because I’ve been so busy working on running my expanding operations.

NEW MUSIC MARKETING MEMBERSHIP SITE

I dread to go near my membership site http://www.newmusicmarketing.com as it’s being pounded daily by spammers, but the experiment was all about illustrating what was possible. Let’s look at some takeways.

- the “ready fire aim” technique is effective if you don’t hate losing. I launch failed ideas all the time. It’s a great experience and I don’t see failure in this case as anything other than a really valuable experience for when I’m talking with artists and other clients about creating and managing communities.

- building a community is hard work. Admittedly I haven’t tried that hard, but it does require real commitment to foster a vibe that turns into a true self sustaining online community. It’s not just like doing a blog.

- I’m dreaming if I think I can charge for my forum in the state it is. I will have to give in to my own logic and accept that the forum must be free,

OUTSOURCING

The reason I’m talking about this is because a lot of what I’m doing right now is working with designers helping artist to at least bring some character to their blogs and websites. Most artist blogs and websites I’m seeing and dealing with are cold and stale, or they’re just using myspace and I’m having to develop these things from scratch.

This is all work that has to be put in and refined before you can really expect your online promtion efforts to work. No ones going to sign up for your email list if they’re not excited about what they see on the website and if they don’t sign up then it means they don’t care and you’ll never see them again.

Again, outsourcing, just like automation or any other “underground” “secret” “cutting edge” technique I apply - well it’s fine if you want to go do it yourself because it’s no walk in the park. But like a lot of things, it seems hard at the beginning, you find your way up once you get a grasp on what you’re doing.

Basically do it wrong and fail enough times, you’ll get there.

There are lots of ways to really leverage content to promote your blog or website once you get some outsourcing going. Again, this is related to what I was describing about the “content crisis”. When you’ve got great, engaging, relevant content, then you’re going to be able to leverage online distribution techniques through outsourcing to promote your blog, or website.

SYNDICATION SEO

Just a quick SEO note: If you’re reposting blogs and stuff to myspace, facebooketc. or you’re doing a wordpress + blogspot thing, which is a great way to start out distributing content and getting it out through as many channels as possible, that’s great, just make sure they all link back to your site or your main blog like I do here http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com

PPC

I am getting so good at ppc that I’m now using it for all kinds of stuff, not just my own marketing and small business marketing, and not just gigs and the new gig promotion service I’m working on, but basically anything, which means I can apply it to a lot of campaigns which would previously have been too costly.

Also for my NZ readers - look at the value of our currency! It’s floating around 55c US to an NZ dollar, and it’s likely to be there for at least another 18 months.

If you can sell anything that has value to people in the US or Europe right now you can actually do pretty well! A lot of online business that weren’t so rewarding should be becoming attractive to New Zealanders getting paid in US dollars.

So for my US and other overseas readers - come talk to me at kurbpromo@gmail.com and you can get some great deals right now!

Okay well I’m going to keep innovating with new ways to deliver ideas, influences and services online in this wonderful digital era we’ve found ourselves in - I suggest you do the same!

I’ll be really looking to articulate my brand to connect with those who have the most value to gain from connecting with me. I’ll be using video, and I’ll be using my blogs. I’ll be using outsourced designers to leverage my currently shocking looking designs to communicate and engage more deeply with my audience.

I’ll be talking in more detail about the articulating and the rebranding soon.

Need online music marketing services? Check out http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info or email me kurbpromo@gmail.com - great deals in US dollars going now!!! Get your music promotion moving so you’re actually going somewhere!

Need online music videos and youtube marketing we guarantee our youtube marketing campaigns!

kurbpromo@gmail.com

100 posters? Uh Try . . . 100,000 ad impressions targeted at your audiences age demographic in your area. US$100 buys you a comprehensive online campaign on Google, Myspace and Facebook - we can even design poster/eflyer cheap - $US50

I always offered online promotion strategies on as part of my postering options - of course most poster campaigns are for gigs that are happening in a few weeks - most online marketing and management campaigns revolve around propelling an act towards increasing online revenue, so they can put more into developing content, more into marketing and promoting that content, more into digital management systems that can create income.

But finally had a band who realises that when you’ve got a gig you can pay me to stick posters and stuff all over the street . . .

OR

you can stick your ad all over the internet using google, facebook and myspace.

We do some pretty good deals on posters.

What I usually suggest is a big whack of cheap black and whites - 200+ plus maybe 50 or so colours - they’re just to go up around the shops and cafes.

This band has a bit more of a profile so we’re doing all colour, 100 for $175.

But this time, the promoter has decided to go with my suggestion of spending $150 on an online campaign tailored specifically to promote the gig.

In the past, I used this as an opportunity to demonstrate the myspace software, and that will be part of the package, just sweep through a few keywords (location, similar sounding local band etc.) and pick up some extra friends, before doing a comment out.

Of course you might not know the proper etiquette for spamming myspace, so again, leave it to a pro, it’s worth $50.

Of course, spamming myspace used to be a powerful tool, now we also employ other strategies, building content on blogs and other networks and using targeted online advertising.

But 3 weeks is not enough time to build blog authority which leaves online advertising or pay per click.

You know my feelings on pay per click. If you don’t - pay per click is for musicians who have successfuly developed a high value proposition.

First we build a platform (ie a blog or website), then we engage fans with that platform, then monetize that platform, and only once we can see that your brand can sprint the 100, that’s when we give it the steroids of an online advertising budget. Budget, as in, a drug habit costs money to keep going.

A gig of course, IS a monetized platform, offline. Promoting the gig is an attempt to leverage the (band x venues) brand. That is why unfortunately posters suck for the bands who use them the most, new bands.

Because new bands have no brand (and even more disasterously, new bands playing at venues that have no brand), they’re not leveraging any exposure from putting posters all round town with their non existant brand that says nothing to anybody on it.

So you MUST at least have on the poster: A wicked night of Funky Drum and Bass DJ’s or whatever genre you’re doing. It must have big words on it, no one is stopping in the street to read your poster except maybe young delinquents. I need details in the 5 seconds it takes for me to walk past, so if you want to put a beautiful woman on your poster, i’m not going to argue that it is a terrible idea.

But If your band is not on traditional media - tv/radio/print - then posters wont work because you have no brand. Your crappy poster is just like your crappy website, it doesn’t engage. It tells people stuff but it doesn’t connect. Unless you’re engaging then you’re not motivating.

Therefore, posters and gig promotion really only serve to leverage your brand to get people to your gig. All you’re really doing is reminding people the gig is on if they’re already engaged by your content; if not, you’re merely hinting at your existance.

Okay I’m wandering perilously down the path to suggesting why  you shouldn’t gig at all if you haven’t built a brand so lets just cut that right out and get back to online advertsing for your gig - because everyone needs the humbling experience of playing to 6 people when you expected hundreds. Counting the staff.

Okay now I just love adwords pay per click. As I said, once you’ve learnt to make money, then you use pay per click to make more. The whole trick with pay per click is you get people to click on your ads, higher click through rate, and google rewards you with nicely priced clicks. Again, worth paying a pro. As in someone geekesque like me, not a real PPC expert, you dont have that much money.

But the thing with PPC for a gig is that you dont want people to click the ad! you just want them to see it!

And don’t you know the sweet as thing about pay per click?

They don’t click . . . you don’t pay.

So when you’re putting together your ad copy, all you want to do is to achieve what you would with your poster. Letting people who know your brand and more importantly if you’ve got a low profile, the venues brand, know you have a show in their town on that date.

OR if you’ve got quite a genre based bent, go for an add that blares Free Genre Frenzy so you get niche interest.

So this is what I do, I put the bid sky high at like a $1 a click, so greedy old google will show thousands and thousands of ads to all the 18-24 year old females in your area, but because I can pretty much say there’s not enough competition that anybody would want to pay a $1 for clicks in the gigs or music genre niches, so the most you’ll end up paying is like I’d say . . . 30c.

For like . . . 10,000 impressions targeted at your local demographic.

So where are your ads showing? They’re showing in Gmail. And they’re showing on myspace! And ya know what? You’re paying less per click through google then you’d pay myspace for the same spots! hohoho.

Again, make sure you list names of other similar, bigger bands than you in your area, because all the kids on mysapce will have that keyword on their page, and google will do it’s thing and the ad will show to them.

Facebook, similar, but you get a lil pic and more text to your ad. Except the thing about facebook is the targeting is on another level. You can target people by their occupations . . . oh, not to mention what bands they like, but the keywords will only register for international branded acts.

Another point about postering town is that a lot of unless they work or go to school in town, people only come into town to see a gig. It’d be much harder to argue that - depending on your demographic - that less people will see it on myspace, facebook, google and gmail.

Oh but Matt, people ignore those ads! Sure they do! They also ignore your posters, but there’s not 100,000 of those hitting your target. And of course they’re allowed to be there - there’s no vague council bylaw. There’s no street cleaners on Monday. There’s no haters pulling them down in a convoluted local band rivalry.

But those punks will sit there clicking my ad, costing me 30c! They can try, google will only charge you once.

So what are you doing? Get an online campaign going for your next gig.

It’ll be cheaper than posters, and it might just be more effective. Then you can make a video of all your fans at the gig saying how wicked it was - so you can keep building that brand as great entertainers for next time . . .

Gig coming up? Talk to online music promotion expert matt @ Kurb about a powerful online solution.

kurbpromo@gmail.com

We do graphic design, and of course poster printing and distro in New Zealand.

US$100 buys you a comprehensive online campaign on Google, Myspace and Facebook.
100 posters? Uh Try . . . 100,000 ad impressions targeted at your audiences age demographic in your area.

Time to rock some more Music marketing strategies and music management online, y’all!

Sorry, too much hipster runoff for me - hilarious satirical blog especially for all you indie/electro/k rd/ vice reading types . . .

But yall gotta keep your blog updated, because Google likes that. Likes fresh content, and if you’re starting out in the early days, you can get away with being a bit stale and stuffing your keywords like music marketing and music management and online music strategy and stuff.

That’s right, music promotion tips and advice, social media for musicians, all that stuff. yummy yummy keywords.

Once you’ve built your brand, you’ve got something to look after, but when you’re all about pushing the innovative high value propositions and the unique selling point like me, then, well really we’re just leveraging our blog for another way to get paid. Which is a good thing.

Of course I have a whole schedule of stuff I said I’d be rolling out:

- Developing the new music marketing forums

- Producing new videos and an ebook
- Looking into pro email management with aweber
- Also reverbnation launches digi distro at US34.95 p/year with 0% commission!!!

Instead I basically just veered off - zeroing in on the hot money on and getting my youtube video promotion site happening.

Because like any good businessman online we remember cash is king, and it’s the activities that we pursue for short term revenue that ensure our long term survival. I’m working with musicians and kid’s entertainers and local small businesses and online entrepreneurs not only using online tools, using a digital mindset to pursue more innovative offerings and interactions, but really looking at how we can use these opportunities online to really get jogging along in terms of the hot money, the now cash.

So what’s happened is that I’m finally learning to manage my business a little better and things are going really great.

The NZ dollar has dropped which means I’m getting great money overseas and rather than kiwi and also Aussie artist who are in the same boat getting grumpy, it’s time to read the writing on the wall and recognise that I collect half my pay in US$ and that’s sweet money. Focusing on NZ is just completely short sighted.

Leverage your local market where you can for now, but you gotta think like me - you want $US and Euro’s - you want real money! That’s where your focus is for actual cash selling high value digital propositions.

The NZ dollar is not going to get back up soon, so listen to my advice.
But yeah all this frantic operative activity just hasn’t left much time for my blog. I’m actually working on some posts right now talking about the need to get more into video if you’re serious about building an online platform for your music or enterprise, mainly because the value of SEO and google optimisation may be ready to tip soon in favour of the REAL engagement offered by video.

But honestly I feel it’s time for a good hard look at blogging for musicians again, even after only 6 months.

Now that I’m making a decent living and I can now reflect more on that now that it’s more under control and less of a struggle - you really have to weigh up what resources you have at your disposal to leverage for income as soon as possible.

I posted a lot recently about getting more lean and mean in your marketing and monetizing efforts, and it led me to the point of saying - sure - for example, I love writing, I’m fairly good at it, and I love sharing knowledge knowing that it helps to build my brand.

BUT it takes near 6+ hours a week out of my work schedule, and in terms of money now, that crucial capital we need to build in the short term to leverage later on, it’s not paying off.

I’m making more money launching new services and concepts, developing - and most importantly - executing new propositions and ideas. Bu tobviously that’s because not only do I have the knowledge, but I also have the cash behind me now to confidently push into new areas and try new ideas, sniff, sniff, looking for the cash that keeps us alive in it.

Building a music brand is a long term investment. If you’re going to stay alive you’ve got to maintain forward momentum, and burning your self out on non income related projects isn’t sustainable, especially if it’s based around some concept of how it all works, when in terms of the music industry for most, it’s not actually working at all.

This was exactly what I was like in my mid 20’s and a lot of my clients are like now. Burning myself out in the belief that I was “paying my dues”, when I wasn’t actually building my brand at all, not in the way that you can in 2008 leveraging your content and leveraging propositions online to a targeted audience.

But when your product is low value, like recorded copies of your music - a cd, an mp3 or something - then your basically on a long road to get anywhere. You’re rolling on square wheels.

Old style models can still work, except unfortunately MOST musicians are stuck in the past so it’s a competitive market space. Sure, you might make heaps of money from CD’s and touring after the best part of a decade “paying your dues”, or being some labels muppet.

But we want the digital future now. And we need the leverage that cash

So as before, it’s best to keep your blog updated, because google likes it fresh.

And do the same.

Do video’s,do podcasts, do content that engages,

until you can get to where I am, and once considering the value of developing content you can leverage to develop your brand, you can then leverage your brand/knowledge/experience/talent in new ways with new propositions - like I have to make more money, faster and easier.
Kurb Online Promotion Management Packages - New Music Marketing Artist Community - Music Marketing Management Blog - Youtube Video Promotion

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingmanagement.com for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

Hi it’s Matt from Kurb again here.

At Kurb Youtube Promotions we are proud to announce the addition of video production services that we can offer to clients around the world, as we are able to integrate your digital footage, stills, music and other audio such as voice overs and narrations from you to add the authentic touch without all the work and hassle creating your own video takes.

Our professional video production team have made over 40 videos and are ready now to begin work on your promotional video for youtube. We have a range of packages available, so it’s a great opportunity to get a deal that meets your needs for video content as well as video promotion to expose more viewers to your clip.

Firstly, I will discuss with you to create a concept for your video, and we’ll put together the content you need to provide our production team. Once the team have got started and have everything they need, it shouldn’t be longer than a week before your video is prepared. Then once you’ve approved it, we’ll get that up through multiple video sharing sites, work with you on optimising your youtube and youtube video pages, before implementing a 3 month campaign to get you GUARANTEED authentic views and viral traction through increased video exposure internationally.

CHECK OUT THE DEALS ON OFFER! CURRENT AND PAST KURB CLIENTS - ASK FOR A DISCOUNT!

Basic Video Production + Youtube Marketing - up to 90seconds: $697 ($497 without marketing)

Production: Create a 60-90 seconds video related to your website, product or music. Send us all the materials you want featured in the video.

Promotion:
Video distribution to 6 networks in addition to youtube
3 months video promotion OR until you have 20,000 authentic views GUARANTEED

Video Production 90 seconds - 5 minutes + Boosted Youtube Marketing: $997 ($697 without marketing)

Production: Create a 90 second to 5 minute video related to your website, product or music. Send us all the materials you want featured in the video + includes full research on your website .

Promotion:
Video distribution to 18 networks in addition to youtube
Youtube optimisation for tags and keywords
3 months video promotion OR until you have 50,000 authentic view GUARANTEED
Social Media and Web 2.0 Promotion

Video Production 5-10 minutes + Campaign Youtube Marketing: $1297 ($897 without marketing)

Production: Create a 5-10 minute video related to your website, product or music. Send us all the materials you want featured in the video + includes full research on your website .

Promotion:
Video distribution on up to 30 video networks in addition to youtube
Youtube optimisation for tags and keywords
3 months video promotion OR we continue until you have 100,000 authentic views GUARANTEED
Boosted Social Media and Web 2.0 Promotion

And by practical results I mean getting all the cash monies for us.

Before we begin, please follow the link if you are here looking for DVD duplication New Zealand, or this link if you’re looking for Youtube Promotion Services, and don’t forget to follow my blog at Music. Marketing. Management for cutting edge application of modern online marketing techniques for musicians, talent and content providers.

How do we make money? You’ve got to really zero in on your opportunities to leverage the most high value or most in demand product or services you are capable of providing.

Like me, you probably can do a whole lot of stuff. I can pick my nose AND watch TV at the same time, but I decided to drop that as a service I offer for revenue because I didn’t feel the margins or the demand existed in the current market for that service.

You see it wouldn’t be much use providing a high value service such as DVD Duplication or Performing Kid’s Birthdays where you have quite a large margin if there’s no demand for it.

It wouldn’t be much use providing an in demand service such as Youtube Promotion if the margins are not significant enough for you to make good cash.

It wouldn’t be much use providing a CD of your music because CD’s are not high value or in demand, and neither are you most likely if you’re strapped for cash. I mean you can and you should, but I wouldn’t rely on it as an income source, so perhaps you might agree it’s not a priority.

But there are lots of ideas for high value, in demand music services, such as getting into doing more weddings and 21sts or Kid’s birthday parties, and exploring monetization through licensing. Often, like I did, you can bring new technological innovations to your local area.  If you live in a small city, you might find no one else offers DVD duplication, youtube and online promotion, licensing and background music for media usage, or wedding / kids birthday performances locally.

You might feel this is stretching beyond your bounds as a musician, but you will have to make sacrifices to make up the financial equation that allows you to support yourself, and you’ve got to remember there are very little entry level barriers in the online environment for getting into business.

But how are you going to generate leads?

Easy! By using one of the world’s most powerful company’s flagship product, The Google Search Engine, which, due to Google’s efforts in providing such an accessible high value, in demand tool with which to process the information available online, has become ridiculously popular, made Google ridiculously rich, and is a medium by which anyone can leverage the attention of targeted consumers.

And I recommend both Optimisation for Google’s Search Engine as well as the Adwords Pay Per Click platform, it really is a great way to market your music related products and services. And that’s what we’re learning about today!

Now the problem with DVD Duplication and Youtube Promotion and other high value, in demand products and services as a musician you can leverage for income is of course competition, and the internet is so damn big! How is Google going to let people know that I do cheap DVD duplication and Youtube Promo?

The Google Search Engine is a highly developed and constantly developing product of computer science engineering. But there is one thing - I’ve explained before on my blog about how the internet is computers using telephones to talk to one another, and that Google’s Search Engine can read, but it doesn’t really see.

This underlines why words are so important on the internet, and while songs and videos engage with fans, words engage with fans AND Google, and Google engages with lots and lots of fans! This is what makes blogging so important, because blogs are mainly for words, and organising them in the best way for Google to read them. Because the Google Search Engine wants to know what kind of words you have on your website before it goes suggesting to its users that they visit you.

So the more of the right, relevant words to the person using Google to search for a term you have on your site - these are called “keywords” - the more Google is likely to say yes! you make the list!

Now there’s just one more thing that’s even more important. Having the right Keywords on your site shows Google that you’re talking about the right thing, but having other people link to your site tells Google that other people also think that your website is important. Finally, if the links to your site actually use the words that people are searching for, then that’s going to move you further up the list of search results, check it out:

DVD Duplication

Youtube Video Promotion

This is called a “keyword rich anchor text backlink”.

And one thing about Google and how popular it is? If youre at the top of the list in your country, you’re gonna have to be pretty incompetent not to be making a sweet amount of cash from the high value and in demand products, and/or services you provide in your area or around the world through digital means.

But unfortunately, because people do make sweet amounts of cash this way, boy competition is strong!

So you need to work your niches - that is, you need to break down aspects of your high value, in demand product that are targeted to a certain kind of consumer, an ever more refined audience so you can compete where competition isn’t so strong.

cheap short run dvd duplication auckland new zealand

I wouldn’t say

Buy the CD from DJ Romantech

I’d say

Downbeat Chill Out Music New Zealand

So it tells Google to put me up on all the searches including “Downbeat” “Chill Out” and “New Zealand”.

But how the hell are you going to know what people are looking for? Guess? You can do better.

Because if you’re Google and you do have all that power and money, it seems only right that you should help your clients and users to get the information they want by giving them the tools they need.

So if you do head along to www.adwords.com which is basically the paid search engine advertising service that makes Google all it’s stupid amounts of money because of how effective and high value it is as an advertising tool, (they’re all the guys on the right when you do a Google search) if you already have a google ID (y’know, like a gmail) you can sign up.

Now my advice is not to spend money on adwords until you’ve learnt to make sales without it. It’s a great tool, but it’s much better to spend money getting sales because you know you can get sales, then just to be spending money and hoping.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t use all Googles cool tools - like the keyword tool, which pissed a whole bunch of people off when it came out a few months ago because there were plenty of people selling products and services that did this job, and look, Google came a long and offered it to everyone free.

You’d think myspace would offer an automated messaging service for a premium rather than forcing the whole thing underground, but hey.

So yeah, now we’re learning about keyword competition and using niche search terms to dominate and get cashed up selling high value products and services!!! Sweet!

So, right now, I’m checking out the competition on “dvd duplication” in New Zealand.

There’s are bar to tell you how fiercely the keywords are being contested, and an approximate figure on the sort of volumes, or the number of searches being done in the region in the last month, and an average month.

Needless to say, competition is way fierce for “dvd duplication”, thats why I’m paying 80c a click.

There are some other highly contested terms to steer clear of too, their bar is all full up:

cd dvd duplication, dvd duplication services, dvd r duplication,

But then there’s some tasty ones there also that aren’t being worked quite so hard:

bulk dvd duplication is there but because it says “not enough data” for volume, it suggests it could well be negligible - less than a dozen searches per month.

but look what else we’ve got:

dvd duplication company
880 searches per month

fast dvd duplication
290 searches per month

dvd duplication prices

390 searches per month

discount dvd duplication

390 searches per month

I was also stoked to discover the word variations hadn’t been contested much either

so dvd duplications and dvd duplicating both came up with good numbers but relatively low competition.

Alright! So we’ve got some keywords and we’re ready to write our parched dry SEO article so we can get higher rankings in Google and getting people coming through our site to buy!

Now it’s great to be a really compelling writer. But why bother? I mean sure, you might get some additional sales through persuasive high quality copywriting, but we really just want the Google rank, so while there’s a few bonus points for being glib and putting sentences together that make sense, it’s not really essential. Google is smart. But not THAT smart.

I can get my guys in Pakistan to do it if you like.

So let’s go with it shall we? Here’s my SEO optimised blog post for boosting Google searches to my blog for the relative terms!

“Deciding which DVD duplication company in New Zealand to use if you’re searching for fast dvd duplication and discount dvd duplication is easy when you choose the DVD duplication company that gives you the best options on dvd duplication prices and cheap dvd duplication.  Whether you need multiple DVD duplications or only one dvd duplicating job, we’re the DVD duplication company that provides cheap dvd duplication and discount dvd duplication / cheap dvd duplication - just check out our dvd duplication prices by following the link to our website.”

Pretty sweet blog post! Well it aint shakespeare. But that aint the point. A typical SEO piece would probably stretch to 300 words without having the backlinks stacked quite so densely.