Build it and they will come! If you do enough leg work to make sure they see you, anyway.

How many other people do what you do? How many of them do it well? What makes you different from them? What makes you stand out? What makes you outstanding? What makes you special? Are you really special, or do you just feel that way?

Say you are, "that special". What are you doing to make sure everyone knows that you are? How do you draw people to your brilliance? I hate to break this to you, but they aren't exactly like moths to a light. You may build it, but they're not going to break down walls to get to you.

We live in a time where communications with our potential audience, fans, or clients, is easier than ever. But, it's also harder than ever too. Why? Because we, as a society, are jaded by advertising and marketing. We've seen it all before. We've heard it all before, and we have DVR!!! We don't have to watch commercials. We switch the dial on the radio when the adds come on. Well, those of us dinosaurs that still listen to terrestrial radio, anyway. We block pop ups. We drop all the asshat network marketers from our Facebook friends list. WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!!!!

We are in a position though to get back to the real basics of building a following or finding the right clientele. It's communication.

If we do what we do, and talk about what we do, then we're going to start catching the interest of the people who actually give a shit about what we do. Those are the ones we want to talk to anyway, right?

Doing is 100 times better than talking about doing. No, if you build it they will not come. However, if you build it, and talk about building it, and post pictures of the process of building it, and promote the people that are helping you build it, you will see them come. Whether it's in trickles or in torrents will help you determine if you're talking about it in the right ways and in the right places.

Traditional advertising and marketing are becoming less effective. Now's the time to just talk, openly and honestly, about what it is that we do. Don't sell to people, become indispensable to people.

Less talk, more action

You know, sometimes the hardest part of being an artist, in this day and age, is that it's so easy to get caught up in the promotion, marketing, blogging, and talking about what we do that we sometimes forget to do it. Make art that is.

For the do-it-yourselfers, there is a lot to do ourselves and if we're not careful we can end up chasing the wrong rabbit. I mean, it's great that we learn how to market the art that we make, in fact, it's a necessity. Have you ever caught yourself relating more to marketers than artists though? I know I have. That's why I've taken the last couple of weeks off from, not just this blog, but most all of my non art related pursuits. It's part of the self evaluation process I talked about a while back.

What am i doing right? What am I doing wrong? What's working and what's not? Am I digging myself into a hole or am I getting done the things that are important. I mean, the last thing I want to do is look up one morning and realize that I don't have anything to market.

Yep, sometimes it's good to just shut up and plug in the guitar, set up the easel, wet the clay, or fire up the forge. You know, whatever it is you do to express your inner god or goddess. Your tribute to the Muse. Your own unique view of the world and it's inhabitants.

It's important to talk about what we do, but it's soooooo much more important to just do it.

Later,

Taking Care of Business

Just a BTO song? Hardly. It's just a fact of life for the Indie musician, especially the DIY types. Every day is a work day and there's never, REALLY, any time off. It's a constant plugging of, well, ourselves.

There are almost as many plans for marketing your music as there are dollars in the deficit and Social Media is time consuming, not to mention confusing as all hell. So, how do we balance the time spent marketing ourselves with the time spent making sure there is an "our self" to market? This gets even more confusing for the ones of us that have to hold down a "day job" to keep our dreams alive.

It even seems like there's a new "Ultimate Marketing Tool" being introduced every day.

How's this for a little secret? We don't have to reach everyone with our music. We just have to reach the right people. I'm finding that the amount of time I need to spend sending out my messages is drastically reduced by the simple task of locating my specific, targeted demographic beforehand. Once you've done that, it's really easy to schedule the messages to go out and get a maximum result with a minimum time expenditure. In other words, quit wasting your ammo with a "spray and pray" tactic. Set your sights and become a marketing sharpshooter. You'll hit fewer people, but you'll also be getting better results.

It's a new frontier for the Music World. Almost daily we're seeing new innovations, issues, technologies, and lawsuits in the digital music world. The funny thing though, is we're also seeing greater and greater sales figures there as well.

I'm starting to think the long life arc of the CD is going to be cut short for this ever growing, and always controversial medium. We're seeing a larger number of artists being thrust into the spotlight by more unconventional methods. Whether it's my "favorite" Disney creations like Miley or the Jonas Bros and their TV shows, or Fiest and her huge iPod ad, or MTV's Making the Band series, we're seeing the new music moguls always reaching ahead for the new technologies, the new marketing ideas, and the next best way to stand out and at the same time lower their costs.

Face it, more can go into promotion and marketing if you don't have to pump said money into duplication and production. It's a different world now, and we've got to roll with the waves or be drowned in the surf.


http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/mp3-compatible-music-campaign-unveiled-481711

Talk about Smart Marketing!

I make no bones about the fact that the new crop of Disney creations are not my thing, but I do find it interesting the lengths that Disney will go to to capitalize on them.

Take for instance this newest bit I got this morning from Digital Music News. It seems that you can now get Free download cards for Jonas Brothers songs from your morning breakfast cereal packs. These "kid friendly" packs contain a single serving of your favorite breakfast cereal, a juice drink, a snack, a spoon to eat it all up with, and now even your favorite empty calorie music to go along with it all!

I won't go into how wrong I think it is that the record label is getting benefits from this thing being supplied to our nation's school children (I'm sure at tax payers expense), but from the commercial stand point it is a stroke of pure brilliance.

Talk about targeting your ideal audience!

Joint Venture ideas like this could be an outstanding marketing goal for Indie artists as well. What if you were to combine your music with the products of others? Licensing opportunities are everywhere these days, and maybe your favorite up and coming Designer, Artist, Writer, or whatever, could be your future business partner.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/091708jonas

What do THEY know anyway?

I found this to be pretty interesting. It appears that music fans just don't really care what the critics have to say anymore.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories_old/070808critics

What does this mean for us? Well, it means that nothing has really changed. I believe that most Indies have always held the belief that our music speaks for itself, we don't really need the approval of music critics or reviewers to help move people to listen to us. Leave the pandering to the Major Label acts, we have a better tactic.

As "small time" acts, we have the opportunity to connect with the people who love our music in a way that Major Label artists can't. One on one. As is mentioned in the article above, a grassroots approach can be just what the doctor ordered. Though, with the ability to market via social networking sites, such as Myspace and Facebook, it has become not only easier to build fanbases, but also harder to stand out from the crowd. We need to innovate new and better ways to be noticed, and heard. What will you do to stand apart?

The Power of Everpresence

This week I'd like to talk about one of the greatest marketing tools we as Indies have, Everpresence. I know, it's really not a word, but I think it sums up a great deal. The best way we have of making a name for ourselves is to put ourselves out there and in the spot light as much as possible.

We could definitely take a lesson from the hip hop community on this one. Take the success of Lil' Wayne, in the last couple of weeks. While certainly not the best rapper on the planet, he has saturated the Internet with his name, his songs, and his "brand", and it's garnered him huge success. Shouldn't we then take examples such as this and dissect them and find the formula for our own successes?

In a world that is becoming increasingly media based, why not take advantage of every possibility to put your name, and your face, in the minds of any and every prospective fan available? Buy an inexpensive video camera and create a YouTube account, Start video podcasting from your website, be creative and come up with ways to "be everywhere" that no one else has thought of.

It's a fact that, in this day and age, anyone can be a musician, and anyone has access to all of the same marketing outlets. It's become a game of who can do it most frequently and who can do it the best. What are you willing to do to be the best?