This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Neil Patel is widely considered an Internet marketing genius. Those who know me well know I say the word genius a great deal but I am being completely sarcastic. I would not be sarcastic at all when using that term referring to Neil.
By the age of 21 Neil was named a top blogger by Technocrati and one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. He has founded two Internet companies, Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics and through those companies he has helped major corporations like AOL, General Motors and Viacom with their web strategies. I first came across Neil on his blog Quicksprout.com and he also blogs at Online Poker Lowdown.
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A side note, in April of 1985 I was about halfway through completing Pitfall II and listening to a lot of Van Halen. Neil was born in April of 1985… I am having trouble wrapping my mind around this but I am also beyond flattered that he would take the time to answer some questions.
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Neil Patel
Musician Coaching:
Neil thanks again for taking the time to speak with me. I wanted to speak with you because of your background with start-up companies (which I often compare to developing artists) and because you have done a wonderful job marketing your companies and yourself online. Most artists / bands out there are just struggling to be heard. Bearing in mind that having great content is the X factor that is completely up to the musicians themselves; what would you say are absolute requirements when selecting a domain name and trying to get relevant traffic to their websites?
Neil:
I recommend selecting the name of your band. If you can’t get that, then it’s going to be a tough road ahead. In addition to that, I would also buy the domain names for each of the band members. If for some unlucky reason you can’t get your band name, I would recommend buying it from whoever owns it. Just don’t tell them that it is the name of your band or else they may ask for a bit more.
As for relevant traffic consider leveraging popular music sites like MySpace and some of the websites listed here:
*** Note – the linked list is a bit out of date, as you will see if you explore it. Some of these companies have changed business models or closed all together. I would recommend checking out the sites from that list that still work and adding ReverbNation & IndabaMusic ***
Musician Coaching:
Are there things that should be avoided at all costs, online strategies that could damage a company / band’s online presence or that just aren’t effective?
Neil:
Spending any money on marketing should be avoided. Especially if you are a new band, you can always put your money better to use. Go after all of the grass root marketing before you spend money on advertising.
Musician Coaching:
You have run Internet marketing companies in the past. In terms of SEO, what percentage of the work would you say is on-site vs. off-site? Are the basics making sure that everything on-site is correctly tagged and the keywords highlighted in the right order for search engines? Is the off-site as simple as creating new content and having link-backs?
***Note – if you don’t know about SEO now is the time to learn***
Neil:
The most important part of SEO is link building (off-site). The more websites that link to yours, the more search engine traffic you will receive. As for on page SEO there are a lot of basic things to consider. But instead of going through each of them, I rather point you out to a well-written white paper called the Beginners Guide to SEO:
And as for link building tactics, I would consider cross promoting your website with other local bands. Writing good content is also a good strategy, but for a band releasing your music for free online may be a better strategy.
Musician Coaching:
Before there is significant traffic on your site providing you analytics and metrics to look at, how do you go about finding the audience for your companies and / or your companies clients, is their a science to this? What methods do you use to size up the competition?
Neil:
There is a science behind measuring your audience. I wish I could explain it in a few paragraphs or even in a few pages, but it just isn’t possible. Instead I recommend reading: Web Analytics – An Hour a Day.
Musician Coaching:
… it’s a great book.
Neil:
A good way you can size up your competition is through sites like Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. These 3 sites will give you a good understanding of how much traffic your competition is receiving to their website.
Musician Coaching:
Your last few ventures have been very data oriented. Above and beyond determining what online content or marketing strategies were effective for your company – what is the next frontier, how are pioneers using this data today and / or the rest of going to use this data in the future?
Neil:
I think the future is giving customers actionable data. There are tons of business intelligence and analytics solutions that spit out data, but consumers are confused about what to do with it. With my new company, KISSmetrics, our goal is to provide consumers with actionable data. The stuff that tells you how to improve or grow your web based business/site.
Musician Coaching:
Given that some of the most important content that artists will have is rich media (photos, audio and video) – does this alter an online marketing strategy? Are the recommendations for making sure this data is found above and beyond alt tagging / making sure the associated meta-data is intact?
Neil:
Yes, it does alter your strategy. Because of all the rich content you have, you can promote your content through sites many businesses can’t leverage.
You can upload your band photos to social photo sites like Flickr.
You can upload your videos to sites like YouTube.
You can upload your audio to social networks like MySpace and Facebook.
The possibilities are endless; you just have to get creative.
If you do leverage these social sites, make sure you don’t just add your videos and photos to these sites. You need to tag them with the appropriate keywords. Not just your band name, but also popular terms that are related to your music.
Most importantly, with every photo or video make sure you are using an attractive title that describes your content as well as a keyword rich description (don’t spam, but use keywords when it makes sense).
Musician Coaching:
There is so much out there on online marketing and SEO. Are there books or blogs that you think have superior information?
Neil:
I am not a fan of books on SEO because the information in the book can get outdated pretty quick. I would consider reading:
SEObook – one of the best blogs when it comes to SEO advice
Search Engine Land – general news and tips on search engines.
SEOmoz – another blog with good SEO tips.
Musician Coaching:
Last question, if you had a group together and were trying to get their music heard online and offline what would your (very basic) strategy be for getting heard? I know the core music business isn’t your expertise but the music business is disarray at the moment. I figure you might have some great ideas.
Neil:
I would first create band pages with my music on all of the major social networks. After I have done that I would go to all of the other popular bands that are similar and make them my friends. And lastly, I would then interact with other bands through their social profiles. I would do this through commenting, which is a great way to drive their visitors back to my band profile page.
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I would like to thank Neil again for his time. Please visit his blog Quicksprout for some amazing business advice and to learn more about his story.
Recently I was approached by an artist through my website that wanted me to listen to his music. His pitch was that he had thousands of fans but just needed help “getting to the next level” with his music. I was kind of perplexed by email because quite frankly if someone has thousands of real fans – they don’t need a music business consultant and they won’t have any problems getting a qualified manager and agent on board if they want them. I did what most people would do – I turned to the web for answers.
A search for his band name yielded only a MySpace page and one reference on a blog that spoke about a show they were on with a dozen other groups. I did get back to this guy but then again I am in the business of selling a service to musicians – not in the business of finding artists to partner with (Like a manager, agent, publisher etc). Had I been a manager I think the email would probably not have been returned.
His email reminded me of two things that are amazingly important for all artists to keep in mind these days about their image and their business.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on thought number one – we allegedly all learn not to lie in Kindergarten in spite of forgetting it now and then. The second thought though, your web presence, is something you absolutely have to make a concerted effort at building and maintaining.
I often interview my music industry contacts to get their opinion on getting ahead in the music business pertaining to their niche in the industry. Invariably these people all say the same thing. “What gets my attention is when an artist demonstrates to me that they have built a following.” The first place people look for signs of life in an artist’s career is online. How many MySpace friends or followers on Twitter does the artist have? Do they blog or vlog and do people comment and interact with them on these pages? Has anyone written anything about the group or posted photos or video of them performing live? Does their website or profile pages have signs of life and provide concrete examples that this artist has a community that supports what they do? That last point is key – pure volume of friends on the social networks can be manipulated. Making sure your fans have a place to interact and behave like a supportive community on the other hand can make all the difference in presenting well online.
Back to basics though, It all starts with what you tell the web to tell people about you. Every artist should have his or her own website. MySpace and Facebook are great tools but they are just tools. Having your own website (and no – not a free one) has tons of advantages.
Your website is the place to host the official press shots, the official bio and the most current news about what is going on with your music. Anyone who (hopefully) would write about you will be using your official page for reference materials so it is your job to provide them to people. It is also your way of guiding people to visit you on the social networks and connecting with you there. This won’t detract from your website but it will give people an excuse to have a connection with you in places that they are already frequenting. Keep in mind that a website need not cost more than a few hundred dollars to do its job. All it really needs to do is look professional and convey your information and store your media – that’s it.
Speaking of social networks… Yes- they are a required evil. That said – pick and choose your battles. You do not have to be on every last one. My personal favorites for music purposes are:
MySpace (because it is an industry standard and because it allows you to search users by what other artists they are fans of enabling you to effectively market to fans of similar music)
Facebook (because everyone I have met from the age of six on seems to be on there)
Twitter (because it is GREAT at driving traffic to things you want people to see)
LastFM (because it allows you to see what else people who visit your page were listening to)
You need not update these all the time – in fact you can have Facebook and Twitter connected as well as Myspace and Twitter connected. You can also have every social network and your blog connected if you choose to do so through a free service like Ping.FM.
Having a website and a handful of social profiles is great but let’s also keep in mind that prospective partners want to see that there is a conversation taking place online – a dialogue between you and people who like your music. The artists that seem to be the most versatile and the most enduring in the last few years are ones who have harnessed the power the web brings to make sure that there is two way communication. Don’t get my wrong – start by just making sure you show up in search results! That’s is absolutely essential and should be everyone’s step one but what will ultimately sell you to the music business is not that you have set up this virtual podium to address the world but what music business executives really want to see if a tangible demonstration that someone is listening. If you are sending messages out into cyber space and you get 50-100 comments per post… that’s a great performance indicator. These are just examples – by all means be creative in how you interact. I have seen everything from Twitter to Blogging, to podcasts to video notes from the tour bus really engage and build fanbases for artists.
I will be going back to interviews shortly. Thanks for reading.
Rick
