5 Things Music Bloggers Hate Most

There was a great post the other day on Digital Music News by Nina Ulloa about the "9 things not to do when emailing music blogs." It's something that you should definitely read, but I've created my own version of the things to avoid when email a music blogger (although you can find a similar list in my Music 4.0 book).

1. You get the blogger's name wrong. No one will take your email seriously if you misspelled their name.

2. You send a generic email blast. This is especially bad if you happen to CC all the other blogger's addresses for everyone to see. If you're going to do this, at least do a BCC (blind carbon copy, which means that no one other than you can see the addresses).

3. You place them on your mailing list without advising them first. Most email service providers prohibit this anyway, as they want everyone on your lists to voluntarily opt in. Music bloggers particularly hate this though, so don't do it unless they ask.

4. You turn on the SPAM machine. Music bloggers hate when you keep badgering them with the same info. It's OK to follow up or send a reminder, but if they don't respond after a couple of tries the chances are low that they're going to respond at all.

5. You don't read their blog before emailing. Bloggers hate it when you send them something that blatantly indicates that you've never seen their blog before. It's the ultimate turn-off, and will probably get you permanently banned from the site.

Want to know the way to a music bloggers heart? It's simple really. Contribute to their blog with regular comments that are not self-serving in the least. When you become a part of their community, you're much more likely to get a blogger's attention when you need it.

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When People Read Email

Boomerang For Gmail, a service that allows you to schedule your email through your Chrome browser, recently analyzed 5 million emails and discovered a number of interesting facts.

• Most people read most of their emails from 5AM to 7AM, and read the least from 1PM to 4PM.

• However, most people think that people read their email at 8 to 9AM. 

• The best words to use in the title to get a response are "Apply, Opportunity, Demo, Connect, Payments, Conference, Cancellation."

• The worst words to use in the title are "Confirm, Join, Assistance, Speaker, Press, Social, Invite."

But there's more. The average person gets a lot of email.

• The average email user receives 147 messages every day and spends more than 2 1/2 hours on email every day.

• On average, we delete 71 of those, which takes just under 5 minutes.

• On average, we get 12 messages a day that require substantial work, and they take almost 90 minutes to complete.

• The average person writes 40 email messages a day and each one takes an average of 72 seconds to write.

• Deciding to defer an email for later takes about 10 seconds.

• 77% of people expect a response to their email within 2 days.

If your newsletter is important to your marketing (and you know it is), remember that your fans get a lot of email and you have to stand out from the clutter. Send it at the right time and use the right title to make sure that it's read.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Timing Email And Blog Posts

I've posted a lot on the timing of Twitter and Facebook posts, but here's a list of timing considerations for both email newsletters and blog posts, courtesy of Dan Zarella, the guru of social media timing.

Sending Emails:

• Open rates are higher on the weekends since subscribers have more time to pay attention.
• Most opens occur between 5 and 7AM.
• Clickthrough rates are highest on the weekends.
• Unsubscribes tend to happen within the first few emails after someone subscribes.
• Sending emails directly after a person subscribes is very effective, since they're paying close attention.

Blog Posting:

• Most blog reading occurs in the morning, declines in the afternoon, and revives at night.
• The most page views are on Monday, and dip slightly on the weekend.
• Blog posts published at 10 to 11AM tend to get the most views.
• The highest level of blog comments comes in the morning around 7 to 8AM, and on the weekends.
• Posts on Mondays and Thursdays get the most links. Posts on Friday through sunday get the least.
• Blogs posted early around 6 or 7AM get the most links.
• Blogs that post more than once a day get more views and links.

Remember that these are trends and might not apply to your particular audience. The best way to proceed is to use these timings as a starting point, then experiment to see if another time works better. It's easy enough to schedule blog posts or emails to do so, just make sure that you have enough of a sample size before you make any ironclad decisions on exactly what's working.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

What Different Generations Do Online

65% of adult internet users now participate in a social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, but they spend a lot more time on doing other things as well. Pew Internet surveyed a number of people across all generations and came to a number of surprising conclusions:

1. Although article after article seems to state that email is dead, email is still the number one use across all generations.

2. Search is the #2 online activity, no surprise here.

3. This one is the real surprise.  Health info is the third most popular activity.

4. Government websites ranked surprisingly high with everyone except the millenials.

5. Blogging and virtual worlds were surprisingly low.

Of course, this survey was from 2010. It will be interesting to see how much things have changed in 2011.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.