SEO Guru Gregory Markel Interview Excerpt

When I was writing the Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, I was lucky enough to interview search engine Marketing guru Gregory Markel. Here's an excerpt from that interview.
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One of the pioneers of search engine optimization and marketing, Gregory Markel’s Infuse Creative touts major entertainment clients such as Gibson Musical Instruments, New Line Cinema, The National Geographic Channel, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the television show 24, and many more. As a recording artist formerly signed to Warner Brothers (and a great singer too), Gregory has a deep empathy for the plight of today’s artist and provides an abundance of good advice in the following interview.

What is Search Engine Optimization exactly?
SEO these days has a broad definition. It means optimizing anything and everything that a search engine is going to return. That means a web page, a video, a newsfeed, a blog, a product, a book, an article; it’s paying attention to all those areas.

We have 3 basic types of clients. The first is a client that wants branding awareness. A good example of that is a theatrical release where they can’t measure the number of people who might have visited the website that later went on to buy tickets, but they feel that it’s something they have to do in order to get the word out.

The second is a client that does e-commerce where they sell a toaster or something with a specific fixed cost. If you can choose and effectively setup the right keywords with the right ads with the right landing pages at the right cost, then if your cost is $15 and you deliver a sale at more than that, it’s a positive outcome.

The next type of client wants lead generation, which can be extremely effective if your product has a moderate to large margin. There are companies like mine helping to generate leads to companies that need them where they can turn that into $20 to 100k per day.

Turning to music, if your music’s good there are so many opportunities with social media, free technologies and methodologies available that you can definitely get a large number of people to find you. Whether you do these things for yourself or have someone who partners with you as your designated on-line communicator and extended member of the band, there’s lots that you can do now without paying for media. Of course there are a lot of paid options which are very powerful and immediate, but they might not be cost effective for someone who has a limited budget or even none at all.

What would you suggest to a new artist that’s trying to break that wants to use SEO to get the word out?
Everybody knows to set up a MySpace page and a Facebook page. Beyond that, regardless if you’re offering your music for free or not, you want to utilize the rest of the web that doesn’t cost you anything, meaning all the Web 2.0 and social media stuff like personal profile pages, bookmarking and tagging, and an official Twitter channel. It’s figuring out a way to broadcast to your fans and affinity groups, which are groups of people that like the type of music that you play. For example, if I sound a lot like John Meyer, then I want to reach out to John Meyer fans. You can do all that simply at no cost by simply putting the time in.

Now the ones that do well with this are either going to have a webmaster as a partner or be a new type of musician. Most musicians are abstract and creative types and don’t really have an entrepreneurial or measurement oriented brain, so a new kind of musician who thinks this way, or has a webmaster, is essential.

For more of the interview, go to this section of my website.

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Meet The Contributors To Music 3.0

Like my other books, Music 3.0 would be nothing without the contributions of some of the most respected voices on the cutting edge of different aspects of the current music business.

Let me briefly introduce them to you:

Ted Cohen - Known throughout the technology and music industries as being "part ambassador and part evangelist," Ted Cohen has been on the cutting edge of digital music from its inception. Currently a managing partner of the industry consulting firm TAG Strategic, Ted is one of the most influential voices in digital music today and can be seen speaking on the subject worldwide.

Richard Feldman - A very successful songwriter, producer and Grammy winner with platinum and #1 records to his credit, Richard is the CEO of a music library publisher called ArtistFirst Music and the president of the Association of Independent Music Publishers. Richard comes to publishing from the point of view of a musician and songwriter, and he has a unique perspective on the changes that M30 brings.

Larry Gerbrandt - An expert on entertainment analytics, Larry Gerbrandt’s Media Valuation Partners advises its clients on the economics of media and content on traditional and emerging technology platforms. Formerly a Senior Vice-President with research giant Nielsen Analytics, Larry provides a wealth of experience in entertainment market research that we’re pleased we could tap. Get ready for some interesting and insightful facts and figures regarding sponsorships, branding and advertising - all the things necessary to monetize M30.

Bruce Houghton - Bruce Houghton started his highly influential Hypebot blog because he wanted to better understand the changes in the music business in order to help educate the clients of his Skyline Music agency. Since then, it’s become a must-read for anyone at any level of the music industry. Bruce’s keen observations come not only from being a highly prominent blogger but as a booking agent working in the industry trenches every day.

Thom Kozik - A seasoned tech industry executive for over 20 years, Thom Kozik has spent considerable time on the gaming side of the tech industry, having served as president of gaming search engines Wazap!, and All-Seeing Eye, (which he sold to Yahoo in 2004), before he became Director of Business Development for Yahoo!’s Media Group. Thom now serves as Managing Director for Bigpoint, one of the largest gaming companies out of Europe.

Gregory Markel - One of the pioneers of search engine optimization and marketing, Gregory Markel’s Infuse Creative touts major entertainment clients such as Gibson Musical Instruments, New Line Cinema, The National Geographic Channel, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the television show 24, and many more. As a recording artist formerly signed to Warner Brothers (and a great singer too), Gregory has a deep empathy for the plight of today’s artist and provides an abundance of social media advice in his interview.

Rupert Perry - One of the most respected and beloved executives in the music industry, Rupert Perry held a variety of executive positions with EMI for 32 years, from VP of A&R at Capitol, to president of EMI America, to managing director of EMI Australia and later, EMI Records UK, to president/CEO of EMI Europe, to the worldwide position of VP, EMI Recorded Music. During his time at EMI, Rupert worked with variety of superstar artists such as The Beatles, Blur, Duran Duran, Iron Maiden, Nigel Kennedy, Robert Palmer, Pink Floyd, Queen, Radiohead, and Cliff Richard. Rupert is well up on the latest technology and trends within the music business and shares some surprising contrasts between the old business and the one we’re in right now.

Ken Rutkowski - Ken Rutkowski is widely considered to be one of the most informed and connected people in the media, entertainment and technology markets today. His daily radio and Internet show, World Tech Round-Up at kenradio.com, is a source of inside information for listeners in more than 40 countries, often scooping the major media and giving perspective to emerging trends, developments and industry maneuvers. Ken is also the creator and guiding force behind the Media Entertainment Technology Alliance (METal), a members-only group of alpha influencers.

Derek Sivers - Derek Sivers' life has certainly been interesting so far, from working as a musician/ringleader of a circus to a stint at the publishing giant Warner/Chappell to being on the road as a touring musician to creating and running CD Baby, one of the most widely used music distribution services today. After selling CD Baby in 2008, Derek now spends his time thinking of new ways to help musicians. As you’ll see, his insights are as thoughtful as they are cutting edge.

Howard Soroka - I first met Howard Soroka when he was the primary programmer for the famed GML recording console automation system some 25 years ago. Since then, Howard’s gone on to being more executive than programmer, rising to vice-president of media technologies at Universal Music Group's eLabs. Always on the cutting edge of technology, Howard had some great insights on the digital workings of the world’s largest record label as well as a look into the future of the music business.

Jacob Tell - Jacob Tell’s Oniracom is a new breed of company that provides a full line of digital media services to artists, labels and management.  Helping artists in the digital space before there was a YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, Jacob has watched the development of Web 2.0 and learned how an artist can best take advantage of it along the way.

Michael Terpin - Michael Terpin is the founder of SocialRadius, a marketing and public relations company focusing on social media outreach and strategy. Among the projects that the firm has worked on include the outreach for recording artist Will.i.am’s Yes We Can video for the Obama campaign (which won 2008 Emmy, Global Media and Webby awards), social media event marketing for Live8, LiveEarth, the Green Inaugural Ball and the David Lynch Foundation, and the social media launch of start-ups ranging from Software.com to Shapeways.

As with my other books, the full interviews are included because they're not only insightful, but a fun read as well. As an example, here's an excerpt featuring Infuse Creative's Gregory Markel.

Thanks once again to all contributors!