Using Hashtags To Increase Your Twitter Presence

One of the most egregious errors for an artist using Twitter is overlooking the use of hashtags (the "#" symbol before a keyword).

Using a hashtag is like including a keyword in your tweet. It's an unofficial feature of Twitter but now widely accepted and supported, and is an easy way for people to search for and find a particular topic.

Here's how it works, using some of my own tweets from the last couple of days.

"The Secret To The Merch Table. Want to sell more merch at gigs? Here's how. http://bit.ly/7GFjDq #merch #gig #bands"

This is a simple tweet regarding my Music 3.0 blog post from yesterday, complete with a shortened url link. At the end are the hashtags #merch, #gig, and #bands. How did I select them? First of all both "merch" and "gig" appear in the tweet, but I researched them first to see what kind of searches there were by going to hashtags.org (You can also do the same search on Twitter at twitter.com/search). There I searched for "merch" and determined that there was a sizable enough search so it was worth using, as was "gig." I figured that bands would be most interested in this tweet and the blog post, so I did a search and found that "bands" was also sizable, so I used it as well.

Here's another way I could've used the hashtags in this tweet.

"The Secret To The #Merch Table. Want to sell more merch at #gigs? Here's how. http://bit.ly/7GFjDq"

In this case I embedded the hashtag directly into the tweet text. This works too but I find it too difficult to read and it can turn quickly into a negative for less sophisticated users, so leaving some room at the end for the tags seems to work a lot better.

Here's another example.

"The Magic High-Pass Filter. Some tips for using the mixer's secret weapon. http://bit.ly/dpL9bv #highpass #filter #mixing"

Same thing here. I did a quick search and discovered that #highpass had a lot more searches than #high-pass and #mixing more than #mixer (there was also some confusion with a food processor as well).

Since I've been using hashtags the traffic to my blog sites have gone up by about 25% and I've gained some more Twitter followers as well. Using hashtags is a great way to help people find you, but don't forget to include a link to take them to your blog or website as well, since that's the real goal.

Follow me on Twitter either here, or here.

The Secret To The Merch Table

In Music 3.0, we use music as a promotional tool and not as a moneymaker for the band or artist. Where the artist really makes money is from gigging and merchandise. This income stream concept isn't really all that different from any time in the past though. In fact, one of the most powerful music attorneys in LA once told me that most famous recording artists have always made 95% of their income from touring and merch, not record sales.

Even if merch is really where the money is at, most musicians have a natural aversion to selling it (or selling anything for that matter). Yet one simple act that doesn't directly involve selling can help you make up to $500 a night from the merch table. Here's a great tip I found on a post by Daniel Kohn and his askkohnny blog.

In his post, Kohn talks about a band he saw where the lead singer would announce during their show, "After our show, we're going to be hanging out at the merch table, so come and say hi." He wasn't specifically selling anything, just announcing that the band would be available to chat later and where to find them.

At the end of the set came another announcement from the lead singer - "Thanks again for coming. We are xxxx. We'll be at the merch table so come and say hi," who immediately jumped off the stage and headed for the mech table where he was followed by fans.

At that point, nature took its course, and fans began to look at, then buy the merch as they were talking to the band (and buy and buy). It's a brilliant, low-key and low pressure way of getting people to look at your merchandise, which is always half the battle.

This one simple act can make a big difference in your merch sales, and that's the one place that you can be assured of making money these days, especially if you're just starting out. Remember, you don't have to physically sell anything yourself, just be there and talk to fans. Can you imagine what the sales would be like if Bono did that after a U2 concert?

A Social Network Changing Of The Guard?

By most accounts, a strange thing happened at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference this year - a new social network dominated.

While last year was the year of Twitter for most of the communications between attendees, and the year before it was Facebook, this year foursquare was the social network of choice for learning about what and where things were happening at the show.

If you haven't joined the foursquare craze, it's a combination of social network and game. Everyplace you go you "check in" to receive points, and you can see where your friends are as well. The more places you go (even if they're the same ones over and over), the more points you receive and you move up the rankings amongst your friends and players, unlocking prizes, secrets and suggestions as you go. While it started as strictly a consumer network, businesses are now getting in to the act by giving free items to players after 10 or so visits.

But foursquare is more than a game. It's a way to explore and share your experiences with your friends. If you check in at a restaurant, for instance, you might receive some suggestions regarding the best item on the menu, or the best place to sit.

There's a foursquare app for most mobile phones and that's where this network shines, making it one of the new generation of mobile apps that can truly exist without it's web counterpart. And at the rate it's exploding, it may soon become one of the most used phone apps ever.

Is foursquare just this years fad and will it have some legs? It's too early to tell. But even though Twitter use seemed to slow down at SXSW this year, it shows no signs of overall diminished use, which is also true of Facebook. But remember that there are over 100 social media networks that have more than a million subscribers with new ones coming on line ever day, so don't be too surprised if a new social media app that hasn't broken out yet dominates at next years conference.

Finding Keyword Phrases - Part 1

Following up on my deep linking post of the other day, I thought it would be a good time to talk about keyword phrases since there's so much misunderstanding about them.

The common mistake that people unfamiliar with SEO (search engine optimization) make is to add as many words as they can to the metadata in hopes of improving their search rank. A common example would be for the website for The Blu Bullit Band to use an assortment of meta tags like "blue, bullit, band, group, guitar, music, vocals, blues, willie dixon, eric clapton, robert johnson, etc.

Here are the problems when this occurs:

1) Don't underestimate the boffins at Google. They're smart and always ahead of the curve. Whenever they think that someone has figured out a way to game the search rankings, they change the algorithm to compensate. Google figured out years ago that web designers were typing in hundreds of keywords into the metadata to ensure a higher search ranking, so they changed the system. 4 or 5 is now the most that will rank, and adding more is known as "keyword stuffing" for which you'll be penalized.

2) Choose those 4 or 5 keywords (or keyword phrases) carefully and keep them relevant to the page. In our example above, The Blu Bullit Band used "willie dixon, eric clapton, robert johnson" in their metadata. If the copy on the page with those metatags doesn't contain those phrases somewhere, then Google raises its digital eyebrows and penalizes you again. That's to prevent you from just using Lady Gaga keywords (like Lady Gaga, Pokerface, Paparazzi, Just Dance) in an effort to have her traffic give your site a look.

One of the good things about Google is that it places great importance on the user experience, and if anything diminishes that experience, the website owner will pay for it. In this case, if someone searching for Gaga or Clapton or Willie Dixon was directed instead to The Blu Bullit Band's site, that wouldn't be a great user experience unless there was something relevant to those keywords, so Google guards heavily against that. That's why all links must be relevant. If you put Gaga in the keywords, Gaga better appear on the copy of the page.

3) Don't use those keywords too much. Keyword stuffing can work another way as well. Even if you only use 4 or 5 keyword phrases (that's a multiple word phrase that counts as a single keyword like "Blu Bullit Band" or "black mini HD camera"), but then repeat them over and over in the copy of the page, that calls for a spanking from Google too. Different experts will tell you different ratios from as low as 1% to as high as 5%, but if you keep those keywords in the 2% range you're probably safe. That means that for every 100 words, you can only use your keyword twice.

Although not directly related to keyword phrases, Google also penalizes your website if you have broken links (a big no-no), and although you don't get penalized, Google can't index Flash files so any text within is never seen by the search engine.

In the next part of Finding Keyword Phrases, we'll look at how to find phrases that work and how to apply them.

The Music Alliance Pact Promotes Music Discovery

Music Discovery is one of the buzzwords of Music 3.0, but while other such phrases might be more technobabble than description, this is one phrase that carries a lot of weight in the music business for one reason - no music discovery, no new music business.

For most of recorded music's life, consumers discovered new music through a single source - the radio. With music radio listening decreasing in importance every day due to the tight playlists and takeover of talk-radio, consumers have had to look elsewhere to discover new music and that has mostly been from a variety of sources online.

Music-related blogs have increasingly become more and more important to users trying to find new hot music, and they act in the same way that the FM DJ's did in the 70's. You listened to the DJ's show because you trusted their taste and knew that you'd probably like what they played. Same with many music bloggers. You read them in the hope that you'll probably be introduced to something you like.

Now comes a new twist on the music blog idea. Every month on the 15th, 34 music bloggers from 34 different countries cross-post an identical list of hot bands from their nation along with MP3s. This blog group is called the Music Alliance Pact (MAP) and is the brainchild of Scotland's The Pop Cop as a way for the acts that he writes about gain exposure beyond Scotland.

It's a great idea that once again shows how small the world has become. While acts have sometimes gained exposure in other countries in the past, they always required the enormous infrastructure of a major label to do so. Now, an unknown local band in an overlooked corner of the world can gain exposure around almost everywhere in practically no time at all. Good job, Pop Cop!

Here's a list of participating bloggers, thanks to Hypebot.

• ARGENTINA: Zonaindie
• AUSTRALIA: Who The Bloody Hell Are They?
• BRAZIL: Meio Desligado
• CANADA: I(Heart)Music
• CHILE: Super 45
• CHINA: Wooozy
• COLOMBIA: Colombia Urbana
• DENMARK: All Scandinavian
• ENGLAND: The Daily Growl
• ESTONIA: Popop
• FINLAND: Glue
• FRANCE: ZikNation
• GERMANY: Blogpartei
• GREECE: Mouxlaloulouda
• ICELAND: I Love Icelandic Music
• INDIA: Indiecision
• INDONESIA: Deathrockstar
• IRELAND: Nialler9
• ISRAEL: Metal Israel
• ITALY: Polaroid
• JAPAN: JPOP Lover
• MEXICO - Red Bull PanameriKa
• NETHERLANDS: Amsterdam Event Guide
• NEW ZEALAND: Counting The Beat
• NORWAY: Eardrums
• PERU: SoTB
• PORTUGAL: Posso Ouvir Um Disco?
• ROMANIA - Babylon Noise
• SCOTLAND: The Pop Cop
• SINGAPORE: I'm Waking Up To...
• SOUTH AFRICA: Musical Mover & Shaker!
• SOUTH KOREA: Indieful ROK
• SPAIN: Oscuro Magazine
• SWEDEN: Swedesplease
• UNITED STATES: I Guess I'm Floating
• VENEZUELA: Barquisimeto Musical

Establishing Your "Tribe"

Here's another excerpt from "Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age."

Establishing Your Tribe

According to Seth Godin, the originator of the tribal concept (from his landmark book "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us"), a tribe is  “…a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea…” In M30 (Music 3.0), a tribe is connected to each other and the artist via their passion for the artist’s music, but the leader is the integral part of the tribe. In fact, without a leader the tribe is only a “self-organized group.” As an example, a blog may have thousands of readers who never add a comment, so this makes it a group. The blogger could be the leader, but if she’s the only one that posts, there’s still no tribe.

Now we’re assuming that there are more than 3 people that are passionately connected to the artist, since this is obviously essential to the creation of a tribe. The music is what connects them to the artist and to each other.

The Leader

The most important thing that the tribe needs is a leader. Although the artist is the most logical leader, a representative that speaks for the artist could work as in that capacity as well. In the old fan club days, the fan club president acted as leader and today she still could be the leader of the tribe, but unless she directly represents the artist, the tribe isn’t as powerful or as dynamic as it could be.

So how does one become the leader of the tribe? The leader initiates contact with the tribe and leads the conversations. For instance, the artist/leader might send or post a tour schedule with a list of “meet and greets” especially for tribe members. She makes it easy for everyone to participate and rewards the members that do so. Before the artist makes a new recording, she might ask the tribe what direction they’d like her to go in, then reward the ones that respond with a link to download a special mix of the song. And most importantly, she gives projects to tribal members to work on. The artist might ask for suggestions on venues in a certain area or to pass out flyers before an upcoming gig. Remember that tribal members are passionate and truly want to be part of something. Active participation fulfills that longing.

However the leader reaches out, it must be authentic and show true caring for the tribal members. Tribal members can feel in an instant if you’re just going through the motions and the tribe will begin to dissolve. If you’re posting just as an exercise because “That’s the way M30 works, dude,” then you’re better off finding a surrogate leader.

The next thing that a tribe needs is a place to meet. This is pretty easy in M30 as there are a variety of alternatives from blogs to Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or a custom social network on Ning. Whatever the online technology used, the tribe has to be able to communicate with each other easily or the glue that holds the tribe together will be weak. That being said, even a simple mailing list can be enough to connect the tribe.

The Relevancy Of Record Labels In The Digital Age

Mark Mulligan recently posted "Three Key Questions For Record Labels In the Digital Age" on his blog which goes over some points I made in my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook. Here are the questions asked:

1) Are record labels relevant any more? 
Despite all the talk to the contrary, they sure are, just not in the same way as before. Once upon a time (back in the Music 1.0 through 2.5 days) a label was virtually the only way to go because there were so few legitimate alternatives. In Music 3.0, artists have more ways than ever before to do it themselves without label help, but there comes a time when you need a label's infrastructure if you wish to go to the next level popularity and sales-wise.

Take a look at every big seller on the charts today. Almost all of them are on a label, and the ones that aren't on one used a label to propel them to where they didn't need one any more.

Can the labels do a better job? Absolutely. Can an artist or band or artist do it themselves? Yes, until you hit that certain point when you need the infrastructure to really blow up. That being said, the point where you need a label is getting further and further away each day.

2) Are they innovating enough?
I think the industry as a whole stopped innovating by 1980 when it was taken over conglomerates like Vivendi, Time Inc., Thorn and Sony and the bottom line was more important than the nurturing of talent. If there's one thing that could turn the label's fortunes around, talent incubation is it. We'd get better product, artists would view them as a viable alternative because of long-term support, and we might even see some new superstars and trends arise as a result. It's probably a pipe dream to ever expect this to happen though.

3) What role should they play?
Certainly not the 360 deal where they take a piece of everything from merchandise to touring along with record sales. The record labels were only ever good at a few things - marketing, sales and distribution. Even those core competencies have diminished greatly over the years, so why would anyone ever let them assume what is essentially a management role? If anyone is ill-suited to be someone's manager, it's a record label.

But if they would concentrate on marketing, sales and distribution in the digital domain (to be fair, some are trying), they could remake themselves into a viable alternative to DIY. Until then, hello DIY.

SoundExchange Money

A few weeks ago, Billboard magazine reported on the dismal returns that artists were making from digital royalties, and we even followed up with a post about it here. Now SoundExchange, whom we've also talked about a couple of days ago, has responded with some numbers that they claim are reality, and they're quite a bit different from what was previously reported.

Here are the numbers:

• a total of 1,602 artists were paid more than $2,000 in 2009 
• 500 of those received more than $9,000
• more than 60 earned more than $50,000 
• 4 cleared $100,000

The amounts are only for royalties paid on recordings played on non-interactive digital streams in the US (Internet radio and satellite) and don't include publishing.

As I said the other day, there may be some money waiting for you, but you've got to register to get it. Do it at SoundExchange.com.

SoundExchange is currently at SXSW attempting to match an estimated $1 million in royalties to performing artists that are not yet registered.

The Importance Of Deep Links

Usually most bands and artists always provide a link to the landing page (top page, home page, they're all the same thing) of their site in any correspondence or social network post. Of course this is better than no link at all, but it might not be the best strategy. There's now some evidence (according to many SEO gurus) that "deep linking" can bring you a higher Google ranking by also providing some value to the person following the link as well.

Deep linking is any link on your site that's not your home page AND has the appropriate information. For example, if you have your picture taken with Jeff Beck, it's better for both you and your visitor if you link him directly to the page that has the picture, rather than sending him to your homepage which does not, and forcing him to dig down. Not only is it annoying, but you can get penalized by Google for providing a less than perfect user experience as well.

A better strategy might be to mention the picture and provide a link on your homepage to a separate dedicated subpage with the picture, complete with the story behind the picture (don't skimp on the copy - 300 to 500 words is about right), the appropriate metadata (your name, Jeff Beck, the place where the picture was taken, etc.), and the appropriate keyword phrases (your name, Jeff Beck, the place where the picture was taken, etc.) baked into the copy at about a rate of about 2% (that's about 6 times or so for each keyword phrase). If you use the keywords more frequently, Google may penalize you for "keyword stuffing", which means trying to get a higher ranking by using the keywords so much that it diminishes the user experience again. Same thing if you use too many keywords or phrases - the first 5 or so is all that will get Googles attention.

Seems like a lot of work, and it is. It's especially difficult to design copy around keywords. I'm a writer with a lot of words under my belt and I still find it hard. But it's worth it if it helps raise your visibility.

What your aiming for is a lot of backlinks to your deep link, which will raise your ranking and visibility even more.

One last thing - don't forget to submit this subpage to the various search engines and directories. But remember, the subpage has to be able to stand on its own or the entire exercise probably isn't worth it. If it takes the visitor only a few seconds to read the copy, then you don't have sufficient stickiness for it to be any benefit to you.

There's still a lot more to cover on deep linking as well as keyword phrases, but that's for a future post.

How Bad Metadata Costs Artists $$$

If you're an artist and don't already know about SoundExchange, then you should. The company was appointed by the US Copyright Office to collect royalties for artists and performers who's music is played on any digital service, either online or satellite.

That means if you're an artist who didn't write the song you're performing, you can still get paid for your hard work. Performance royalties have been long overdue in the US (Europe has paid them for a while now), and the battle still rages regarding royalties from radio broadcasts, which will hopefully be settled this year sometime. But for anything digital, it's a done deal.

Don't confuse artist performance royalties with songwriters performance royalties; they're not the same. Songwriters have always been paid if they retained their rights, but until now, performers were never paid a dime. It's hard to believe that a group like the Righteous Brothers can have the most played song ever on the radio with "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and never make a penny out of it, but that's the way it's always worked. At least on the digital side, this has now changed and performers can expect to see at least a little cash.

But a couple of roadblocks stand in the way of a payday. First of all, you've got to sign up with SoundExchange so they know that you exist and where to send the money to. But the second one is the big one; the metadata of a song hasn't been sufficiently logged.

Metadata is data about the data, so in the case of a digital song, it's everything about the song, from the artist to the label to the musicians to the year of release. Surprisingly, the copyright owners sometimes don't include that information. As a result, there's money that sits in an escrow account at SoundExchange for "Beethoven" (who never recorded anything) instead of the orchestra that recorded one of his pieces, or "Various Artists", or "Artist Unknown." You can pay money to someone if you don't know who they're supposed to credit. Gradually, the word is getting out that carefully including a song's metadata gets everyone paid, so expect to see the problem to lessen a bit as the word gets out. Just remember that if you're self-releasing songs online, be crystal clear about all the metadata.

If you're an artist, register with SoundExchange. It doesn't cost anything and you might be surprised to find out that you have some money coming. And treat your metadata seriously.

Check out this article about SoundExchange and monies owed by Laura Williams.

Gaming The System

The sales charts of the music business has always had someone gaming them.  It never gets old and it never goes away, no matter the attempt to stem the tide. Want some examples?

From the 50's through the 80's, a record label would pay off record store clerks to lie about the sales of a particular record when Billboard called in order to get a more favorable chart position. This ended with the institution of Soundscan, which entered the purchase based upon the bar code of the record at the point of sale.

Then the labels would pay off radio station program directors to put a song in heavy rotation. More airplay meant more sales and also meant the song would rank higher on the sales and airplay charts, thereby influencing more airplay and sales. This was the the dreaded "payola" and was eventually declared illegal. The labels got around it by paying third party promotion companies to do their dirty work.

Then the labels began to ship large quantities of a record they wanted to be a hit on consignment to dealers. They'd declare to the press that it "shipped platinum (over a million)", which again would influence programmers, distributors, one-stops and even the charts. This ended when reports started to come in from the dealers about shipping unsold records back in platinum as well. Everyone wised up to listening to sales figures from a label.

Music 3.0 is hardly immune to being manipulated, starting with artists and groups gaming their MySpace accounts by inflating their friend counts by using 3rd party "friend finder" apps, and using bots to inflate the number of plays their songs got.

Now comes the interesting case of Boston rapper Sam Adams, who came out of nowhere to hit #1 on the iTunes charts by selling over 20,000 downloads of his single "Driving Me Crazy" in one week. Sensing there's some trickery afoot, a number of journalists and pundits (like Bob Lefsetz) have questioned the sales. Now comes some informed speculation by Jay Frank, author of the book FutureHit.DNA and the blog of the same name. Jay believes that Sam Adams or people close to him bought the majority of these downloads themselves. He comes to that conclusion by analyzing the sales figures between iTunes and Amazon, Google search data, similar artist recommendations, file trading, and the song itself. It's an interesting bit of detective work that you can read for yourself. For the record, Adams recently presented a 3500 page document showing all the sales as evidence that the sales were legit, but Frank doesn't buy it.

This is just another example of trying to game the system, but in Music 3.0, it's by the artists instead of the record labels like before. The thing to remember if you ever consider trying it is that now there's always plenty of forensic evidence to sniff it out quickly. Get your friends and plays the old fashioned way - earn them.

How To Gain 200 Fans A Week

I recently clipped an article by Brian Mazzaferri of the band I Fight Dragons that discusses how the band gained 200 new fans a week. Unfortunately, the link to the full article is now dead, but I did manage to save some of the more valid points. Here they are with my comments following.

1. Give your music away, but don’t throw it away.

We’ve given away a free digital copy of our debut EP to everyone who signs up for our email list.  For people who don’t know us, it’s a free and easy way to learn about our music for free.  And then we’ve got their ear.  Note, this is VERY different to just posting it online for free download.  The price may seem the same, but the result is 100% different, because we now have a foot in the proverbial door.

They're following one of the golden rules of the Internet - you've got to give something to get something. In this case, what they really doing is harvesting email addresses, which is vital to their strategy of getting new fans. Even if the track that was downloaded doesn't interest the potential fan, they have a chance to grab them at least one more time because they have the email address.

2. Regularly give away stuff that’s way too good to give away.

Next, we send an email to our list every Monday at 11AM (for the most part).  More weeks than not, that email contains free music.  And not just some off-the-cuff track, it’s a track that is up to our personal standards, which I’d like to think are very high.  In holding ourselves to that standard, we give our fans something new that they really want to show their friends.  And when the next new track goes out, the new converts get to become the evangelists.  But they need new music to do that, and not just any new music, YOUR BEST new music.

Of course, giving something really good away to get a customer has been a sales strategy probably since the beginning of sales, but many artists see their music as so valuable that they're afraid to let it go. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, the fan will decide, but the fact that they're willing to part with what they consider their best to convert fans means that many of those fans will become purchasers at some time down the road.

The other thing important here is that staying in touch via a newsletter is a vital communication link with the fan. It's inexpensive, the fan feels good about receiving it (most times), and it's a controlled message. This is the reason why you want to harvest all those friend and follower addresses from social networks.

3. Be real, be available, and be involved.

This seems like a no-brainer, but it actually takes a LOT of work.  We’re on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, our Blog, and TheSixtyOne every day, talking with people and being involved in conversations.  I’m NOT talking about one-way, blast-yourself-out-there stuff like MySpace adding.  I’m talking about joining in conversations on Twitter that you have something to add to.  About commenting earnestly on music you like.  About joining a community, not trumpeting your own message.

Yes, it sure does take a lot of work, and that's why you must have a strategy in order to take full advantage of social media in an efficient way. It's too easy to spend all of your time communicating, then be so burned out that there's no longer time for the main event - the music. We'll cover social media management strategies in a future post.