6 Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fan Engagement

Carl Jacobson, Nimbit's Vice President of Marketing, recently posted some great advice about how to increase your Facebook fan engagement. Nimbit's new MyStore for Facebook lets you capture the fan's information, reward them, and makes it easy to sell them music, merch, and tickets, but you still have to have a strategy to go with any tool that you use.

"IDEA 1 - Be Ready to Sell Today!

• When is the best time to make a sale? When a fan is excited.
• When is a fan excited? When they discover your music.
• Where's the best place to make a sale? Exactly where your fan is when they are excited.

That means you've got to be ready NOW to make a sale from your Facebook page. You can't rely on fans going somewhere else to find your music, and the last thing you want to do is ask them to go somewhere else.

IDEA 2 - Engage...Don't Advertise

When you see updates like the following on Facebook, you tune out…right? Your fans will too.

"BUY MY NEW ALBUM!"

Try asking questions instead:

"Hey everyone, we just put up our new album. We're trying to decide on the next single. Please a listen and leave a comment about your favorite tracks. [link to your album on your store]"

The key to success with your fans on Facebook is all about engagement. And asking questions, or asking for their support is one of the best ways to do that.
The example above is a soft sell, and has additional promotional benefits:

• You're inviting people to share their opinions
• You're asking them to try before they buy
• They'll see they can purchase the album or other items in your store
• When they leave a comment/review, it will appear on their friends' newsfeeds making more people aware of your music.
• Earlier this year, Forbes reported that people were much more likely to buy after online recommendations from friends.

IDEA 3 - The Virtual High-Five
Any time a fan leaves a comment like this, or any comment for that matter, it's important to be responsive. At the very least "Like" their comment. If it's warranted, make sure you respond. And lastly, if it's particularly great, share their comment with a thank you / shout out on your wall. This is the online equivalent of a high-five from the stage. A like, response, thank you, or shout out is a subtle way to reward your fans. When they see a status update from you, they'll be thrilled, they may even share it again.

IDEA 4 - Reward Fans Then Ask Them to Reward Their Friends
Free tracks are a great way to reward your fans, and they aren't really "free" when you capture the fan's information, or get them to Share it with their friends, which increases your reach by hitting all of their friends Facebook Tickers.

Once you capture the fan's info, you can then build the relationship. Many times, they'll later reciprocate with a purchase or by attending a live show. In a recent Nimbit promotion, Suzanne Vega teased her fans with a free download, and later found that 61% who later made a purchase also received that free download.

Don't you love turning a friend onto a really amazing artist or song? Your fans do too. So when you give that free track away, always ask your fans to share it with their friends. You can either set the song's price to Free or use a promo code that people will need to redeem.
Here's how to get started:

1. Start by sharing a song from your store. It's as easy as clicking the share button next to a track in your Nimbit store.
2. When you send it, include a personal message like this:
   
   Hey everyone, I'm pretty excited about this new track, and I'd like you to check it out. Take a listen. If you like it, get it for free by clicking the link. If you really like it, click Share to also send it to your friends.

We've seen a few artists using this approach and when they have an established and active fanbase, it spreads like wildfire.

IDEA 5 - Advertise Yourself to Fans of Similar Artists
Once you have your Musician/Band page set up, Facebook makes it incredibly easy and affordable to create an ad that's perfectly targeted to your demographic. I know, you're a songwriter, not an advertising agent, but this is a lot easier than you think.

The steps are fairly straightforward, but here are some key tips for you to consider.

1. To reach the right people, type in names of similar artists in the "Precise Interests" field. That will target your ad to people who entered that artist as music they listen to. Completely original? Then enter your influences.
2. Pick a geographic region that makes sense. If you're a touring musician, only select the areas you play or want to play.
3. Start Small - Set your daily budget low, Select Pay for Clicks (not impressions), and set your Bid way below what they select. If you set a low bid, you'll pick up ads on off hours, or when other campaigns end.
4. Fine Tune your ad as you go along. Set it up, check back to see how it's doing, then change your settings to see if you can increase your reach

IDEA 6 - Get Creative
These are just a few ideas of how you can engage your fans and increase your sales and promotion on Facebook. There are as many ways to succeed with your fans on Facebook as there are songwriters signed to ASCAP (maybe more). So find your voice, and try things out. The nice thing about the Facebook, is if you try one promotion, and it doesn't work you can quickly switch to another."

These are great ideas, and something that you should consider, since Facebook is one of the most powerful social media tools at your disposal.

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

How To Pick The Right Band Name

Here's a great article from Mashable about ideas for that perfect company name. Okay, we're not talking company here, but the principles are the same when it comes to a band, so I've changed some of the language to better reflect the music business.

"1. Set the tone. Your band name sets the tone for all that follows. What’s the first thing you want a fan to think in regard to your band? The tone of your name can be playful or academic, edgy or professional. Just make sure it reflects what your band is and what you want it to be in the future.

2. Simple is strong. A powerful name is easy to spell, pronounce and remember. After all, what good is word-of-mouth if your fan tells a friend, “You really should check this band out. I think their name begins with an A…”

3. Do not use initials! We all know the business landscape has an affinity for acronyms, but try to avoid using initials for your band name. A random collection of letters doesn’t inspire an emotional connection. And you can run into legal and branding headaches by juggling two different business names (the initials and the name spelled out).

4. Watch out for language pitfalls. A word in English may have a negative meaning in another language or culture. And enthusiastic bandmates can be blind to awkward puns and double entendres. The best way to avoid creating an embarrassing or damaging brand situation is to test your name on your target audiences; they may see something you missed.

5. Give any new name time to sink in. It can take some time for a new name to feel right, and you may need to use your name for several months before it starts to feel natural. This is particularly true when a name is off the beaten path, which is often the case for some the industry’s most memorable and impactful names. Just imagine the initial reaction to the name “Google”  or "LMFAO." That said, a strong product can overcome a potentially ill-conceived name.

6. Don’t finalize too soon. The most important lesson is not to get too attached to any one name during the brainstorming process. When inspiration strikes, it’s all too tempting to start envisioning your logo, web design, album artwork, etc. But you’ve got to make sure that perfect name is legally available for you to use — no one wants to be on the wrong end of a trademark dispute."

By the way, if you're still stuck for a name, try the following band name generators here and here.

You can read the entire article with a business slant here.

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Social Media Tips From The Roxy In Hollywood

The Roxy Theater on Hollywood's famed Sunset Strip has long been a prime venue for acts of all sizes and genres, regardless of their level of success. But like so many other venues, it met with some challenges during the tough years of the financial crisis. Owner Nic Adler decided to turn to social networking to breathe some new live into the club, and did so with resounding success.

Lydia Dishma interviewed Nic Adler for Fast Company and he revealed his tips for using social media. I found this part of the interview on the ever excellent Hypebot blog.

(1) Be Early To Be Influential

"It is this land grab that's happening. If you are on early you can move your base. By the time it becomes an awesome network to be on, you are already at 20K followers."

(2) Keep Moving

"If you miss a beat they've passed you by, so be everywhere. That is why we find ourselves in so many different networks. If we were just on Myspace we'd only be talking to a small group. If we spread out we have a better opportunity to reach more people."

(3) Forget Search. Discover

"I go on Pinterest without anything in mind, I'm just looking and discovering in this different mode...So say you are a business and you have this idea to find the best 20 beers, so you ask your fans. Then you build a new board of your followers' favorite beers and turn around and tweet that out. Your fans are then going to a place where all their ideas are visually placed with links."

(4) Be Generous

"It's about watching that feed and seeing someone tweet, 'Hey I'm broke but I wish I could go to that show,' and I'll turn around and say, 'Hey you are on the list plus one.'...It's better than a contest. It's not something we do every day but the response is amazing."

(5) Be Authentic

"Being authentic and organic are the two biggest things we talk about at The Roxy. It's about a slow build and being honest, and if we are wrong we are honest about that, too. When we are wrong and we make it right, those are almost the most important marketing moments we have at The Roxy."

(6) Change The Way You Think About ROI

"For us, Facebook is more about communication and awareness than trying to get people in the door. People use Facebook as this tool for selling, but more of our content is about music, food, TV...More than 50% of fans might not ever come to The Roxy but we all have this interest in music and pop culture in common."

As with all social media promotion, what works for The Roxy might not work for you, but then again it just might. Especially take note of #6. Too many times we try to measure our promotion by the amount of sales, but sometimes it's more about communication to your fanbase that's important.

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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 Do Artists Earn Online?

Okay, ready to have your mind blown? Here's an infographic that describes just how much you have to sell to earn the US monthly minimum wage of $1,160. On the right is the percentage of sale that you actually make. The graphic comes from informationisbeautiful.net.

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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.

The Ins And Outs Of House Concerts

House concerts are gaining popularity as a legitimate way to tour, but there's a lot more to it than just singing some songs in a friends home. Although I've been to a number of house concerts, I wasn't aware of just how sophisticated this whole scene has become. Fran Snyder, the founder of ConcertsInYourHome.com, DinnerAndSong.com, and ListeningRoomNetwork.com, recently wrote a great post that includes just about everything you'd want to know about playing or hosting a house concert. Here are a couple of excerpts.

"Different Formats

There are different formats available for house concerts, and each can be tailored not only to the needs of the artist, but to the tastes and comfort level of the host. Using the different options like DinnerAndSong is a great way to introduce new people to hosting, and to create opportunities during the week.

• Traditional Format - two, 40-minute sets, preceded by meet and greet and/or potluck. 20-50 guests or more.
• Dinner And Song - 8-10 guests, 35-minute, simple dinner with artist, 35-minute unplugged performance.
• Dessert And Song - 10-20 guests, 15-minute dessert and meet and greet, followed by 40-minute concert.
• Breakfast And Song - 10-30 guests, 30-minute buffet-style breakfast/brunch, 35-minute concert."

"How To Find House Concert Hosts

• #1 Resource? Your Fans - Even the most experienced and in-demand artists will tell you that a growing fanbase is the best resource to book house concerts. Consistently provide your fans with the inspiration and tools they need to help you fill the gaps in your tour.
• Search engines - The challenge with search engine results for house concerts, is that those who show up in the results are typically hosts with a long reputation for hosting great shows. This gives you a list of hosts who are least likely to have available dates in the next 12 months, and are unlikely to book an artist they don't know.
• Facebook/Myspace - Cumbersome to connect to house concerts this way, but people do it all the time.
• Other sites include: http://houseconcerthub.ning.com (europe), http://houseconcertsaustralia.ning.com, http://www.houseconcerts.us"

Check out Fran's post as it has the most comprehensive info on house concerts I've ever seen.

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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.

More People Own TVs Than Cellphones

It's been estimated that out of the 7 billion people on this planet, 2 billion of them own cell phones. But in the US, the cell phone still is not as popular as the one common object statistically found in every household - the television.

According to Nielsen, 290 million Americans in 114.7 million households own at least one TV. If you compare that with the 234 million cellphone owners, the 211 million Americans who are online, and the 116 million (ages 13 and up) who surf the mobile web, television is still the medium of choice for most people of all ages.

Want some more stats? Nearly one-third (35.9 million) of TV-owning households have four or more televisions (wow!), and only 17.5 million households have exactly one television.

So what do these figures mean? First of all, cellphones are still a growth market. We keep hearing that mobile is the future, and it surely is for audio, picture and the Internet. There may come a time when most of our consumption may be on handheld devices, but that time is not now. Of course, if the new OLED televisions as thin as wallpaper come down in price, all bets are off.

But more than anything, these statistics tell us that television is still the major media consumption device in our lives, bar none. Sure, it's losing it's power to other devices, but that's because we're becoming a multi-device culture. But don't underestimate the TV's power, because it's still there and will continue flexing its muscles for a long time.

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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 discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Music Business Is Not Dying

As all the various research and trade organizations begin releasing their 2011 sales figures, a number of them have jumped out for perfectly defining the state of the music industry today. Check this out:

• US album sales were up 1.3% last year, the first year since 2005 that's happened. 66% of these sales were CDs.

• There were 249 million albums sold in the US last year. People will tell you that the music industry is dying, but 249 million of anything is still a huge number.

• 75% of all CD sales were made offline. That means that people physically purchased the CD at a brick and mortar store or an event.

• 40% of all CD buyers are over the age of 45, which means that the demo that mostly grew up with CDs are the ones still buying them.

• Vinyl sales increased 37 percent in 2011, but only accounted for 1.2 percent of all physical sales. That doesn't mean that people who buy vinyl actually listen to it. Just like the old days, many still buy it for the cover and the artwork, and the trendiness (which is new).

• Rock is the most popular genre of music, with 32 percent album share, while pop music represents 40 percent of all current digital tracks sold. Ninety-three of the 100 best selling vinyl albums in 2011 fall within the Rock or Alternative genres. I guess that means that the hip-hop and rap trend has run it's course.

• People who live in New York or LA buy more country records than those who live in Nashville by almost 2 to 1. Having just come from a speaking tour in Nashville, I can tell you first-hand that it's a very cosmopolitan music town, with country no longer the major part of the industry as it once was. That said, country music represents 13% of the total album sales.

• Digital country music sales are up 31% over last year. While it might have been true that country music lovers were slow to get into digital music, that's obviously no longer the case.

• Acts that perform at halftime during the Superbowl get an average sales bump of 555%. Critics may pan them and you might hate them, but you still buy them.

All these numbers (which mostly come from Nielsen Soundscan and the IFPI) show that the music business is still huge, is still extremely diverse, and is still as quirky as ever. It is changing, morphing, shifting, and evolving, but it is not dying.

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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.

Square Expands It's Features

Square has been mentioned on this blog many times before and with good reason. It's a disruptive force in the financial business and a boon to concert merchandisers everywhere. If you're not yet familiar with Square, it's a way of doing financial transactions (like accepting credit cards) without using a traditional bank and paying their transaction fees. Square provides you with a credit card reader that attaches to your iPhone or iPad which makes these transactions a snap, especially on the road.

The Square card reader is already available at Apple stores, Wal-mark, Best Buy, Radio Shack and Target, and soon at OfficeMax and UPS stores, for only $9.99, but each purchaser can redeem a $10 credit to their bank account, so it really costs you nothing. Over a million merchants already use Square, which is impressive because there are only 8 million merchants that accept credit cards in the United States in the first place.

This year Square is rolling out new features like adding in-depth merchant analytics to its iPad experience, allowing merchants to access information about which inventory is selling well, and what they can do to help make more money. Square is also trying to upgrade the experience of running a business on just an iPad with their new iPad app Square Register, which is designed to be a point of sale replacement for cash registers and terminals.

While all that's cool for artists and bands trying to make a buck out there on the road, a new feature might be even better for consumers. Card Case, which is a virtual wallet that consumers fill with the info of all the merchants they visit and buy from who accept Square. These mobile cards include locations, merchant contact info, coupons, order and purchase history and more. Users can also use Card Case to ‘pay with their name’ and even enable hands-free payments. That means that the purchasing experience is easier than ever, which is something that everyone likes.

So if you're about to do some shows and want to sell some merch, check out Square. It's a service that you can't do without.

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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.

CDs Still Dominate Album Sales

Here's something that might take you by surprise. According to Nielsen Soundscan, more than two-thirds of all albums purchased in the US in 2011 were physical CDs.  That means that out of a total of 330.6 million albums sold during the year, 223.5 million of them were discs, or 67.6 percent.  
That said, a few days ago the UK's BPI stated that 76.1 percent of all albums purchased last year were CDs, so they're still somewhat behind on the digital transition.

Want some good news about music sales? In the US, album unit sales were actually up by 1.3 percent last year, while the sales of CDs slumped 5.7 percent. Digital albums also gained a healthy 19.5 percent to reach a record 103.1 million units.  But the big winner was vinyl, which was up by 36.3 percent to nearly 4 million units. Will 2012 show the same results?

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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.

The State Of Music In Gaming

Gaming was a huge new source of income for the music business a few years ago, but it seems like the Rock Band and Guitar Hero fads are now long past. That said, a number of new opportunities will soon be available in gaming, as you'll see in this interview excerpt with Thom Kozik. The interview comes from the 2nd edition of Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age.

"A seasoned tech-industry executive of more than 25 years, Thom Kozik has spent most of that 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, then Executive Vice President of Online Gaming at Atari. He is now president of Nüko Games.

What’s changed in gaming in the last couple of years?
There are two big things that have changed; the explosion of online gaming in the Western markets (predominantly driven through Facebook), and the music games that we were talking about two years ago have sunsetted with the change in appetite among gamers.

As far as console games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, there’s a feeling by video game publishers that they’ve milked that cow as far as they could and can no longer sell tracks endlessly into those franchises. They haven’t turned them off completely and there’s still an effort to continue to sell into their installed base, but we’re not going to see another Beatle’s Rock Band on the horizon. The economics just aren’t there.

For an artist who wants to produce for this space, I think there’s actually more opportunity than there was a couple of years ago. Back then the focus was on the music games, but the publishers really didn’t worry about new music at all. They just wanted old back catalog to throw into the channel.

Now browser-based and mobile gaming (which I still consider to be online gaming) is where the action is. The truth is that the biggest growth area is based around games that depend upon and live via an online connection. In mobile games in particular, most of the early games in this area were self-contained experiences where titles like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump had the audio assets for the entire experience, along with all other elements, in the download package that the consumer purchased from an App Store. That’s shifting quickly to games like Infinity Blade, which uses a traditional console gaming engine and has taken the iPhone and iPad markets by storm. No one expected to see a game of this breadth and quality on a mobile device. It wasn’t because of the limitation of the device, but more about the nature of the product being released by the game developers. What’s most important about a game like Infinity Blade and those that are going to follow is that they’re structurally more like console games in that different levels load dynamically as the player progresses. What’s important for musicians is that there’s a need for more soundtracks and audio assets as the publishers continue to sell and ship those new levels to players. This trend in mobile gaming is much bigger than the equivalent of “map packs” that publishers put out for console and PC games in years past.

From a creative standpoint, now you have a few leading indicators of what can really be done on these mobile platforms. We’re opening up a really cool opportunity for the composer, artist or publisher to do the same kind of grand scoring and creative expression of music on a mobile device that they would have done on a console as recently as a couple of years ago. That’s a big opportunity.

On the browser game side, one of the things that we’re going to see is that the game developers and studios have had their eyes opened to what can be done in a web browser, so the games are getting much bigger in scope. What’s important is that in the Angry Birds or Doodle Jump world, the ability to create a score or the amount of music available in the game is fairly limited. Contrast that to the kind of games we’re used to seeing on consoles or PCs or massive multiplayer games like World Of Warcraft. The music is epic -- it’s a lot more than some catchy loops.

It’s soon going to be easier to have great epic scores on mobile games than on the browser because of the nature of the way that a browser talks to the Internet. There is technology out there that can make it easier on a browser, but it will be a question of how smart the game developers are with this."

You can read more from this and my other books at bobbyowsinski.com.

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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.

Website Performance Metrics

One of the things about Music 3.0 is that we can finally measure exactly what the buzz is. Here's a way to interpret your Google Analytics data to see just how successful you website really is. Thanks to Hubspot for the definitions.


1. Unique Visitors - That's the total number of individual visitors to your site during a specific period of time, not counting repeat visits by the same individual. Obviously, if this number continues to increase, you're doing well.


2. New versus Repeat Visitors - This is a comparison of your unique visitors vs. the number of visitors who came back more than once. Although it's great to have repeat visitors (and you really need them), a rate higher than 30% means that you're probably not growing your audience quickly enough.

3. Traffic Sources - This is a breakdown of the specific sources of traffic to your website. There are two - Organic traffic comes from a link found on a search engine results page. Referral traffic comes from a link on another website. This tells you how well your search engine optimization is doing. A referral level of about 30% is what you're looking for.

4. Referring URLs - This is the specific, non-search engine URLs that send traffic directly to your site. They represent the inbound links that are crucial for boosting your site’s search engine rankings and tells you which  sites or bloggers are linking to your site and what type of content they tend to like.

5. Most/Least Popular Pages - This is a comparison of the pages on your site that receive the most and least traffic that tells you which kind of content your visitors prefers.

6. Conversion Rate - This is the percentage of visitors to your site who take a desired action, such as purchasing a product or filling out a lead generation form. This tells you how well you're converting leads into fans or customers.

7. Bounce Rate - This is the percentage of new visitors who leave your site almost immediately after arriving, with no other interactions. A high bounce rate means that your visitors don't find your pages particularly compelling.

Interpreting the above metrics should give you some idea of just how well your site is performing. Hubspot has a bit more on all of these points, plus a few more, if you're interested.

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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.

Optimizing Video For Mobile

ReelSEO recently posted a video called "5 Tips For Optimizing Video For Mobile Users" that had a number of good points. I'm going to save you the 6 minutes it takes to watch it by giving you the tips below.

As my recent post about mobile video engagement indicated, viewers watch videos a lot longer than they do on their desktops. In order to maintain their attention, take note of the following:

1. Avoid using tiny text. Make sure any text you use is readable on any screen that the video might be viewed on.

2. Make sure the audio is clear. Great audio is always a plus, but even more so when viewing on a phone. Remember that the speakers are small, so you're not going to hear a lot of bass, but that's okay as long as everything is intelligible. Also remember that there's lots of ambient noise so make sure the audio is able to cut through it.

3. Make sure to include links in the video description. A video without links to your site is an opportunity wasted. You want them to continue as a fan, so be sure it's easy for them by including a link.


4. Use lots of close-ups. Close-up shots work great on small screens - wide shots don't.

5. Test the video on your own phone before you upload it. What good is it if it doesn't get the point across? The only way that you'll know for sure is if you test it.

Good tips to keep in mind the next time you make a video. Remember that it's more than likely that a great number of your viewers will be watching on their phone. You can watch the entire clip on ReelSEO.

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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.