5 Key Points to Help Make a Low-Budget Video / VYCLONE Iphone APP

In todays social media world, the video seems to be the optimum format for getting your music across. As much as we like to listen to music, the art of discovery is often helped with a video.

With all the low budget tech out there, it is now within everybodies reach to create a video. I succesfully filmed a band at a live gig recently with just two iphones just to see how it would work, and it didn't turn out too bad! 

So if you fancy giving it a go, there are a few simple things you need get right before you embark on your first video production.

Peter Gavin has put together a list of 5 key points that will help you create your first video in a post that i found on evolver FM.

He says you need to consider these things..

1. It takes 2 (cameras) to make a thing go right

2. Lighting is the more important than your camera

3. Audio quality can make or break your video

4. You already own editing software

5. Resize your videos without losing quality

He goes into depth in the full article that you can read here. Which also has more leads/links to more info that will guide you through to making your first video.

VYCLONE Iphone APP

Another interesting way to create a video is to use a useful app that has just appeared on the Web.

Vyclone is a new free iPhone app which allows you to include and remix your own video footage with the ones of your friends recording the same event.

Vyclone synchronizes and edits everyone's clips to create one movie with all the angles cut together.

Sounds awesome, you just make sure you get a few friends to install the app at your gig and get them filming, all the pain of syncing is taken away so you can just use the best shots!

For more info go here

Go on give it a go... it's not as difficult to make a video as you think!

Links

http://evolver.fm/2012/08/17/5-ways-to-make-a-low-budget-video/

http://vyclone.com/

 

 

 

How To Increase Your Reach On Facebook

If you use Facebook as much as I do, you will see many disgruntled users complaining on how their fan page content is not reaching all the fans they have. This is because Facebook doesnt work in the same way as other social media tools do. it uses an algorythm called Edgerank. Once you understand this and how it works, you will definitely see an improvement in your views, and your content should be becoming more viral.

The Edgerank algorythm determines what gets placed in a users newsfeed. You will notice that in the ticker at the side of a facebook page that not all the content displayed there gets put into your main newsfeed. with the thousands upon thousands of posts going on every minute, there has to be some way of seeing what is of interest to you, and this is judged upon engagement.  

Since the last major facebook update, the two main websites I am blogging on  I noticed through my statistics for those sites that the amount of traffic coming from Facrbook was declining. 

These sites are feeding by an RSS feed all the posts created on them to their respective Facebook pages, but the engagement created by them is becoming less and less. 

So what is needed is a better form of engagement that can get traffic from these views to get to your site.

Check out this infographic from the Mariposa Agency for some facts on different forms of engagement other than status updates and how well they perform.

On the two websites I mentioned earlier, we have taken steps to change this, by utilising images placed on facebook with a link in the text we've noticed a vast improvement of engagement and traffic.

Bryan Kim director of Biz Dev at Tracksby, personaaly admins over 100 facebook pages for musicians. He has written a brilliant article going into detail on how to get your facebook page performing better. He says,

No matter how facebook slices it, your actionable instruction remains the same: GET MORE ENGAGEMENT! Get those likes, those comments, those shares. Make it your main goal with Facebook. These engagement points build on top of itself, ensuring better and better distribution on news feeds over time as your engagement improves. It’s something like a credit score for your Facebook page, and the algorithm lends you more impressions the better you perform.

How to increase your reach on Facebook?  Read his full article 'The Definitive Guide To Facebook For Musicians'  here.

Written by Steve

 

Links

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/07/facebook-for-musicians-a-definitive-guide.html

 

8 Skills That Your Social Media Manager Needs

So, with your schedule busying up, and with alot of deadlines to meet before the upcoming tourdates, maybe you should leave the running of your acts social media to someone else?

Social media is changing on a weekly if not daily basis. New technologies come and go, some successful, some not. How on earth do you have the time to try each one of these and see which is effective for your act/band/project.

Well maybe it is time to hire someone to take on this ever growing list of tasks, but with the whole world offering you solutions out there, how can you make a descision on who is right for the job of taking care of your online presence?

Here are some keys attributes here which were selected by writer Stephanie Winans in an article she originally wrote for her website that you can check to see if the person or company you are picking is the right one.

1.    Is An Online Social Butterfly

2.    Has An Understanding of Your Target

3.    Gets Customer Service

4.    Knows What’s Going On

5.    Can Spell

6.    Knows The Devil is in the Details

7.    Is At Least A Little Techie

8.    Is Okay With Being “Plugged In”

Music marketing master Micheal Brandvold has also expanded on her list, he added the following comment to her number one item 'Is An Online Social Butterfly'

This is definitely the number one item you should research. Is the person who is going to help you walking the walk and talking the talk? Do they live what they preach? If they are going to help you with Twitter see how they use Twitter. How many followers do they have? How well do they engage with their followers? How well do they use all of the various sites out there that they are claiming to help you with? Here is what it comes down to… do you want someone who has only 35 followers to advise you on what to do?

You can read Michael Brandvolds article here.

Written by Steve

Links

http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/2012/05/what-skills-does-your-social-media-manager-need-start-with-these-eight/

http://stephaniewinans.com/2011/06/11/8-skills-your-social-media-manager-must-have/

The Friday Five - 29th June 2012

Yep it's the end of the week, and here are this weeks five things we thought you might just want to take a look at.

 

1. Fanfunding Tip: Offer Imaginative Incentives to Entice More Fans

The DIY Musician have created a great list of pledge ideas to hook in new fans.

http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2012/06/fanfunding-tip-offer-imaginative-incentives-to-entice-more-fans/

 

2. Musical ‘Stock Market’ TastemakerX Puts Your Money Where Your Ears Are

An Iphone app/game that allows you to invest in your favourite acts with virtual currency, sort of like the stock exchange meets the pop charts.

http://evolver.fm/2012/06/22/musical-stock-market-game-tastemakerx-is-now-public/

 

3. Get Venues to Ask You Back: 8 Tips You Can Use For Your Next Show

Nice small article from Reverbnation on how to get a venue to ask you back. Could be useful....

http://blog.reverbnation.com/2012/03/21/get-venues-to-ask-you-back-8-tips-you-can-use-for-your-next-show/

 

4. How To Make Your Facebook Timeline POP!

Ariel gives a whole bunch of tips on getting your Facebook timeline to work better for you.

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/06/19/how-to-make-your-facebook-timeline-pop/

 

5. Free Music Making Samples Download

There are beats and hits aplenty for you in this week's bundle, plus a collection of FX stabs.

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/sampleradar-13154-free-sample-downloads-217833/111

 

 

How To Market Your Music On Pinterest

Pinterest, it is one of the fastest growing Social Media networks of all time. It currently has over 11 million users, and it's format is even changing the way people are designing their sites and blogs. The answer?

Well it must be that people just love looking at pictures, and seeing a large selection on a page just takes one more step out of the browsing experience, making much easier to consume the data presented.

I myself have already created a pinterest profile for my visual website www.bloodyloud.com. It is bringing to the site a lot more traffic, but the interesting thing for me is the use of the 'Boards'. It gives you a chance to present your content in a different way, maybe with more fun aspect, and can be used to help develop your online personality. Example: we post loads of things to do with Star Wars, so we create a board called 'These are not the droids we are looking for..'. Each of the items displayed are on bloodyloud as a serious art/news item, here we re title them with something more amusing, and we get more traffic. Also we can use multiple images from same item differently, attracting the user in different ways.

So now as i work here at Make It In Music too, it was great to see an article on Hypebot explaining how you can use pinterest to maket your music.

Writer Valeria Bornstein of Fame House says:

If you have fans that are passionate enough to follow you across multipleplatforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, it is safe to assume that they will also likely follow you on Pinterest as well. Pinterest is a great place to connect with fans on a personal level because it allows you to showcase your tastes, as well as things that interest you individually. On Pinterest, users share primarily pictures (videos too), and again, there isn’t much writing involved so it is more visually appealing and can be easier to capture people’s attention. Pinterest is not a site that is driven by music at all, so it is essentially a platform for purely sharing content with fans.

Pinterest can be an effective platform for building relationships with audiences, but is an ineffective platform to “sell” to them. By sharing on Pinterest, your fans get a better sense of who you are as a person, and you can build emotional connections with them, which should be one of the main goals of any brand-fan relationship. Fans are more willing, by far, to spend money on and support (word of mouth shall not be discounted!) those artists that have made a personal connection with them.

Check out more of her in depth article here.

Written by Steve

Links

http://pinterest.com/

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/05/using-pinterest-for-artist-marketing.html

www.bloodyloud.com

http://pinterest.com/bloodyloud/these-are-not-the-droids-we-are-looking-for/

 

13 Tips on Getting the Best Out of Twitter

I don't how often i have heard people say "No i don't use Twitter, it's just a bunch of people saying where they are, what they are doing and what they had for breakfast" and "What can I do with 140 characters?" Well, it has proven it can do a hell of a lot more than that, from distributing news, social and political commentary, to marketing, distributing not only short bursts of text but also pictures and videos. It has now been around for 6 years, and has pretty much become the leader in spreading information across the world, becoming the social barometer of our times.

It is now an essential tool in any musicians marketing strategy, and there is a wealth of techniques you can use to get the best out of twitter in keeping your fan base informed and engaged.

Not only can you use it as a news service, it also has great potential for you to find new fans, and get them to discover you.

Since its inception, there has become a wealth of third party utilities to help you exploit the potential of twitter to the full. Two i have been using the most over the years are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. They give you the ability to monitor the 'twitterverse' and search for keywords and hashtags (twitters own keyword system that allows users to find tweets on certain subjects such as #art #photography #ladygaga etc) that could be relevent to you, your music and your goals. They allow you to join in the conversations and connect with people discussing things that could be relevent to you, and in turn, you might be interesting to them.

Chris Singleton over at Prescription PR has put together a list of 13 top tips for musicians and bands using twitter which i think you should take a look at. Here is my favourite peice of advice from his article...

By all means post links to your band's new videos and MP3s from time to time, but do not get too fond of doing so; otherwise you’ll just look like a jerk. Believe me, when it comes to overcommunicating about my own music projects, I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt…and despite waxing endlessly about the importance of musicians keeping schtum for five minutes, I still see artists (who should know better) bore their friends, family and remaining fan to tears with hourly Facebook updates about their latest creative endeavours. Nobody cares after a while (if they ever did in the first place –geddit?). Instead, post links to great content from other sources – whack links up on Twitter to scintillating articles which don’t happen to be about your music (and rest assured, there are a lot of them). Or make witty observations about cheese and/or the credit crunch. In short, get a reputation for being an interesting dude, not a self-obsessed bore.

Check out the rest of his article here.

We also have an article on our Make It In Music site on twitter for musicians here.

 

Links

http://www.prescriptionmusicpruk.com/the-prescription/2012/5/1/using-twitter-top-tips-for-musicians-and-bands.html

http://www.makeitinmusic.com/twitter-for-musicians/

 

Social Media Tips for Musicians

Another long video from the IMS summit in Ibiza earlier this year.

The people on the panel are genuine experts and I do really recommend that you take some time and watch the whole thing.

BUT, for me the best stuff is from Randy Reed who manages an act called Pretty Lights that you may or may not have heard of. The facts about Pretty Lights are that he has given away (yes, for free) 1.5 million album downloads and as a consequence he sells more albums on iTunes et al and has a career that makes him a very good living from those digital sales plus touring and merchandise.

For me, he is the total answer that freemium (when applied to good quality music) clearly does work. If it's not working for you, my usual hunch is that your music isn't good enough! Therefore what his manager has to say about how to reach fans wuth Social Media is worth hearing, don't you think?

Randy comes on the video at 11.41 and then in a couple of other places, but, like I say, you ought to watch it all!

Here's the video:

 

Social Media Marketing Report 2011

You might find this a bit dry!

It's written for 'marketers' rather than musicians, but I'd suggest you check it out.

It's a report on the state of Social Media in 2011 and how brands and marketers are using it.

I found the facts about what tools people are using to help them deal with social media management as well as the things that they feel they can outsource interesting.

You might find something that helps you with your music marketing!

Read the post and report here.

Grow your fan base - experience & insight

This is an interview with an experienced and active manager who understands the modern music business - Randy Nichols of Force Media Management.

The interview is from the ever excellent Musician Coaching site. You might want to skip some of the early stuff about his own career (although it's interesting), but don't miss his thoughts on the industry, what it takes to make it as an artist today, using social media and more.

One of the biggest things I look at when I’m thinking about taking a client is whether or not the client is working really hard already. Not just working hard in the studio, but working hard on the street, getting to know people, talking to fans, using technology and doing everything a manager should be doing to build their own careers. The way I see it, a successful artist needs to be a good business person nowadays.  A manager can come in and help them run their business, but if they’re not already smartly running their business, chances are they’re not going to take my advice, they’re not going to follow everything I say, and they’re going to be in a bad situation quickly.

Read the whole post here.

Social Networking for musicians - Quality counts

New guest post on our main site - 'Social Networking for Musicians'.

Simple guidelines for what to do to make your use of social media as a musician effective.

10 strategies for fan engagement in social media

Image by Rosaura Ochoa

This a really handy 10 point list on how to approach social media as a musician.

It's not so much a 'how to', more of a 'why for', if that makes sense.

Still, it's really good and I'd go as far as to say that the thinking behind it should inform your social media use.

But for many artists, social media remains something they choose not to fully delve into. Some find it too overwhelming; with the constant posting of content onto the countless platforms and would much rather spend their time creating music.

Others may even be ready to actively engage in social media, but have no idea how to properly utilize each platform. 

Nancy Baym, a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas recently wrote a fantastic piece entitled "Engaging Fans Through Social Media."

In it, she explains how musicians and audiences can build symbiotic relationships that can nurture and sustain one another over the long haul.

The following 10 points summarize Baym's key ideas on how to maximize your social media effectiveness:

Read the post and get the much more in depth pdf here.

 

Social Networking No-No's!

2 great posts from Laura Marie and her refreshingly honest site - Nerd Alert 4 Musicians.

What you shouldn't be doing in your social networking efforts.

Part 1

Part 2

The key point - why do you want to add all those people on Facebook and Twitter if they aren't going to be a fan? What's the point?

Analytics makes the heart grow stronger!

I'm getting very freaked out by Facebook!

In the last three weeks, it has moved the game on so much that if I was a competitor (but who is there, other than Google?) I would be very worried.

It is looking like it's going to rule the internet in so many spaces that you, as a musician, just cannot afford to be left out!

The latest thing that I was gobsmacked by was the extension of Insights - their analytics - to your own site, not just Facebook.

Why does this matter to you? Well, it tells you what people like about what you're doing so that you can give them more of it and tailor your approach to promoting music based on FACTS!

This post on AllFacebook tells you what this is and how to put it on your site.

And this is Facebook's own post about it.

This is serious stuff and you should be implementing this on your site as soon as possible.

And, whilst we're talking about analytics, Hootsuite just upped their game in a big way too with analytics for social media with a very cool customisable tool.

Check that out here or in the video.

 

HootSuite Social Analytics from HootSuite on Vimeo.

Musician's Social Media pyramid

You may well have heard of Ariel Hyatt and her company, Cyber PR - she's been a leader in musician advice for some time and has some great detailed ideas.

In her latest blog post she looks again at a graphic tool that she has used to teach people best practice to follow in their use of social media to promote their music.

Obviouly, we have covered a lot of this in our guide to twitter music promotion as well, but I do like the graphical representation to remind you to mix it up.

You can also check out all her other training and well respected courses here.

Watch her video here or below.

 

5 top reasons that your Facebook fans actually hate you

Image by cambodia4kidsorg

Is the way that you're using your Facebook Fan page making you real fans or are you just pissing people off?

Loren Weisman writes on all sorts of issues affecting aspiring artists and his style is unflinchingly direct and honest. I really like it.

You know that facebook page you always check in on?

The one that has interesting updates, good videos, great blogs and cool pictures?

You know that one that even if you don’t see an update on your main page, you will still type in that page just to check in?

Now how about this for another set of questions….

You know that page you can’t stand?

The one that puts up the worst stuff, over posts, has those multiple repeat posts of the same updated two to four times, spams you with show schedules, invites to groups over and over again, excess hype and other annoying updates?

And for whatever reason, you have you have not unfriended them.  Whether it is being nice or feeling guilty or maybe you have unfriended them and they added you again and you accepted them. Maybe you keep them as a friend but you block them and honestly have no idea what they are up to.

Now the real question.

Which one are you?

Go and read the whole piece here.

Use Foursquare to promote your music....how?

There seems to be a deathly silence amongst artists in finding ways to use Foursquare to promote their music.

This post on Hypebot has 5 ways to use it as an artist.

I'm almost as intrigued though by the comments at the bottom - that Facebook and Twitter do the same thing better, and by the discovery of a site called Aka Music. I'd never heard of it and it seems to be doing well as a place that fans can fund artist's projects and the comment by the band, Dallas, about how they used it and Foursquare may inspire you.

Foursquare describes its goal as "getting users out of the house," and one way in which they do this is by offering local businesses a Merchant Platform to attract and retain customers.

Through this platform, a user checks in at a specific venue and is presented with a special offer – usually a mobile coupon, small prize or discount – to entice them to keep coming back. In addition, brands (either with physical locations or without) can create their own profiles to further interact with customers. 

Just this past year, brands such as MTV, Vh1, Bravo, Huffington Post, and Zagat, among many others, have all signed on to integrate Foursquare into their social networking activity.

But I can't help but wonder: where are the bands, artists, and labels? 

I see Foursquare as a great potential here – especially for those looking to build a loyal fanbase.

Read the piece on Hypebot - and don't ignore the comments!

Billboard's 'Uncharted' chart - Huh?

Billboard launched their Social 50 chart a month or so ago - and it got a fair bit of stick for not throwing up many new faces - obviously, the most talked about artists in social media are the biggest anyway!

So, they've hit back with the 'Uncharted' Chart. To qualify, you need to fulfill a bunch of 'we've not been mentioned or charted before criteria' and you need to have a profile on MySpace Music - so that's most artists covered.

The placings are then worked out by counting social media data using Next Big Sound - covering plays on MySace and YouTube, Twitter numbers etc.

Unlike the Social 50, I think this chart has a real chance of exposing emerging talent to the denizens of the 'old school' industry who do still take trade mags like Billboard seriously.

As we said before on the Social 50, I'd make sure to fill in my profile at Next Big Sound and have that profile on MySpace, so that I qualified as you never know if you might make their chart and get noticed from there.

Read their own post about it here.

 

You might not need MySpace or FaceBook but you do need a mailing list

This is a great piece on HypeBot about how Robin Davey's band have given up on social networks as a way to reach fans.

Instead they've made their artist site and their email list the core of all their fan interaction. I'm not sure that I'd abandon social networks - I'd rather maintain a presence on all platforms and focus people back to a great and regularly updated website - but I can't fault the data.

Last week one of our artists made two posts to the blog on their site and then emailed their list. The traffic to their site jumped exponentially (1000% the day of the email, 500% the day after and 250% the third day). As you'd expect, it takes a few days for people to open and read email, but, also, over 40% of the people on the list clicked through and spent over a minute on the site.

You NEVER get that kind of traffic and conversion from social networks - it's just not possible across all the noise!

Read our posts on building a fan mailing list and start one now if you haven't already.

No matter how many fans you have on a social network, it is the platform itself that dictates how you can communicate with them, how you can post updates, how many words you can use – the connectivity with fans is limited.

When MySpace crashed, we lost that connectivity with 40,000 + legitimate fans and our 1 million or so plays became meaningless, it is nothing more than a number. When it comes to your next release, it means nothing unless you can reach those fans again. It quickly became apparent that we could not communicate with our fans the way we wanted through these means.

We have always maintained an email list and we realized that the majority of our traffic came from posting direct to our fans through this platform. We decided to stop updating our social networks and exclusively use our email list last year. The overwhelming response from fans was fantastic. To make it a successful two way tool, when we send emails we are not just plugging our latest release, we mainly communicate our feelings and thoughts on topics we feel our fan base would like to talk about. We openly encourage people to reply and we feature the best replies we get. It's not actually that groundbreaking an idea, and I have to credit Bob Lefsetz email list as an inspiration, but it works very well for us.

Read the HypeBot piece here.

 

You need a band website

I bang on about the need for you to have a band website.....a lot!

To be fair most of the people who write about music marketing and diy musicians, say the same thing.

The image above gives you an idea of what you should be doing - it's not exactly right for musicians but, then, I just found it after a quick web fumble - but it illustrates the idea - have profiles on all relevant social media but point everyone back to your band website where you control everything.

This article on the ever brilliant Mic Control looks at the reasons why.

One question that pops up from time to time is, "Do you think artists should have their own website and domain name?" And every time I’m asked, I give the same answer: Hell yeah! I think the benefits of owning your own band website are abundant, and I will go into some specific benefits in this blog post. But I'd to start off with what I consider the main reason why, as a musician, you should really have your own website.

Read their piece here.

How to chart in the Billboard Social 50

Amp Marketing have a great site where they blog about their daily involvement in the latest methods of digital music marketing.

Last week they posted this piece about how you can make sure you have a shot of appearing in Billboards latest new chart - the Social 50. It's not going to be easy but, at least if you take the steps that you ought to be talking to have a chance, it's worth the time and effort.

It requires you to claim your social media accounts at Next Big Sound - which is simple and then try to add followers and fans to make a dent in that chart.

Last week Billboard announced the launch of the Social 50 chart, which will rank artists based on their weekly additions of friends, fans and followers (depending on the network), artist page views and weekly song plays.

Although the first week was dominated by big acts like Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Eminem, there is still room for smaller independent artists to make a splash – like Christine Grimmie at number 15.

Read their piece here.

Also check out their great tips on using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as a musician.