One way that musicians and bands can supplement their income is to have a blog. They are surprisingly effective if carried out properly and professionally. All you need is a laptop, be it be a rental or otherwise and a little time on your hands. No additional software is required. You can drive traffic to your blog in numerous ways.
I shall discuss here what I consider to be the most effective and (probably) obvious ones. I won't cover the basics as you already know them but there are some points that I'd like to share with you. I do hope that you find them both interesting and helpful.
How much traffic you want can vary. If you want to make money blogging you need traffic in millions of page visits. A percentage of those (outrageously small) will either click your ads or buy your products. Having said this however, even if you don’t blog for money you still need traffic to come to your blog. From the traffic you get comments and potentially more traffic.
To get traffic to your blog, people have to know about you. You need to get indexed by Google to get organic traffic and there are countless articles which show you how to do that, using strategic linking so I won’t go into this through fear of confusing you with my own 'organised chaos' routine.
Practically every entrepreneur I meet these days is on Facebook. With over 62 million users and a 'sharing' popularity which has just surpassed 35% of the market, Facebook can’t be ignored for exposure and driving traffic. I have been on Facebook for some time and for a while I’ve hesitated at putting my business/music activities on my personal Facebook profile. After more than a little humouring, research and great advice (very important if you're serious) I set up a Facebook Fan page for my musical endeavours and it has reached almost 1,500 signed-up members in 12 months. No other sharing or comercial music site has come even close to this rapid increase. Facebook Fan Pages are pages you set up for your business profile. Fan Pages allow for great interaction between members and Page owners, a great if not the best business asset.
Personal Pages have a limit of 5, 000 friends whereas Fan Pages have no such limits. They are completely separate from profile pages, so you can keep the two separate if you wish.
You can import your blog posts with RSS and a lot more. If you want exposure and potential traffic for your blog Facebook Fan Pages are worth a second look. They are also indexed by Google. Keeping ones' Fan Page Wall updated with fresh content is of key importance.
Through Twitter I inadvertantly discovered Mari Smith. Mari has published an excellent article (in fact several articles) on her blog Why Facebook? She also has an excellent video tutorial on how to set up Facebook Fan Pages. They are completely separate from profile pages, so you can keep the two separate. You can import your blog posts with RSS and a lot more. If you want exposure and potential traffic for your blog Facebook Fan Pages are worth a second look. They are also indexed by Google.
For driving traffic to your blog Twitter gets a definite thumbs up. After initial reservations, Twitter traffic to my blog has increased exponentially. Twitter is fast becoming my second biggest source of referral traffic. On Twitter you register and select people to follow. After a while people will follow you and it grows from there. It does fluctuate and I have observed that having too many niche markets isn't the way to go. I'd suggest two or three and certainly no more that four, unless you have a system that pays your wage (yes, they do exist) while you're busy keeping people in each niche updated with exciting content. Irrespective, you will soon create an audience, or audiences, interested in what you have to say.
To use Twitter effectively, however, (in fact any Social Networking Site) sharing useful information, resources, networking, and aiming to build relationships are the key things to keep in mind. It does require patience and work. If you only ever tweet your own stuff, people will be less than impressed and you won’t gain much.
Find and share information in your niche or niches and jump into the conversations and it becomes a two-way street. I am slowly (and predictably) finding that that people don't fall for the "get-this-free" routine. I am, however, finding that people are much more interested in a venture that is new, unique, and accessible to them for a discounted price, in favour of gimmics.
Whenever you do a new blog post, you can "tweet" about it on Twitter – giving you more exposure and traffic over time. You can even have your posts re-tweeted if someone finds them interesting enough and wants to share with their own followers. It's imperative to let people know what you're tweeting about. Just putting the link or TinyUrl isn't particularly enticing. Be inventive. We all need relevance and continuity. I make a distinct point of using hashtags for my music-related tweets. My other tweets are generally humorous, off -the-wall one-liners that do pertain to what is 'behind' my tweet, ie: what one can (almost) expect.
Driving and increasing traffic to your blog is part of marketing your blog. If you don’t market it, it doesn’t matter how good it is, no one will know you exist. So if you’re not blogging, get out there and introduce yourself.
Discount Code For "Redemption": lusty
I shall discuss here what I consider to be the most effective and (probably) obvious ones. I won't cover the basics as you already know them but there are some points that I'd like to share with you. I do hope that you find them both interesting and helpful.
How much traffic you want can vary. If you want to make money blogging you need traffic in millions of page visits. A percentage of those (outrageously small) will either click your ads or buy your products. Having said this however, even if you don’t blog for money you still need traffic to come to your blog. From the traffic you get comments and potentially more traffic.
To get traffic to your blog, people have to know about you. You need to get indexed by Google to get organic traffic and there are countless articles which show you how to do that, using strategic linking so I won’t go into this through fear of confusing you with my own 'organised chaos' routine.
Practically every entrepreneur I meet these days is on Facebook. With over 62 million users and a 'sharing' popularity which has just surpassed 35% of the market, Facebook can’t be ignored for exposure and driving traffic. I have been on Facebook for some time and for a while I’ve hesitated at putting my business/music activities on my personal Facebook profile. After more than a little humouring, research and great advice (very important if you're serious) I set up a Facebook Fan page for my musical endeavours and it has reached almost 1,500 signed-up members in 12 months. No other sharing or comercial music site has come even close to this rapid increase. Facebook Fan Pages are pages you set up for your business profile. Fan Pages allow for great interaction between members and Page owners, a great if not the best business asset.
Personal Pages have a limit of 5, 000 friends whereas Fan Pages have no such limits. They are completely separate from profile pages, so you can keep the two separate if you wish.
You can import your blog posts with RSS and a lot more. If you want exposure and potential traffic for your blog Facebook Fan Pages are worth a second look. They are also indexed by Google. Keeping ones' Fan Page Wall updated with fresh content is of key importance.
Through Twitter I inadvertantly discovered Mari Smith. Mari has published an excellent article (in fact several articles) on her blog Why Facebook? She also has an excellent video tutorial on how to set up Facebook Fan Pages. They are completely separate from profile pages, so you can keep the two separate. You can import your blog posts with RSS and a lot more. If you want exposure and potential traffic for your blog Facebook Fan Pages are worth a second look. They are also indexed by Google.
For driving traffic to your blog Twitter gets a definite thumbs up. After initial reservations, Twitter traffic to my blog has increased exponentially. Twitter is fast becoming my second biggest source of referral traffic. On Twitter you register and select people to follow. After a while people will follow you and it grows from there. It does fluctuate and I have observed that having too many niche markets isn't the way to go. I'd suggest two or three and certainly no more that four, unless you have a system that pays your wage (yes, they do exist) while you're busy keeping people in each niche updated with exciting content. Irrespective, you will soon create an audience, or audiences, interested in what you have to say.
To use Twitter effectively, however, (in fact any Social Networking Site) sharing useful information, resources, networking, and aiming to build relationships are the key things to keep in mind. It does require patience and work. If you only ever tweet your own stuff, people will be less than impressed and you won’t gain much.
Find and share information in your niche or niches and jump into the conversations and it becomes a two-way street. I am slowly (and predictably) finding that that people don't fall for the "get-this-free" routine. I am, however, finding that people are much more interested in a venture that is new, unique, and accessible to them for a discounted price, in favour of gimmics.
Whenever you do a new blog post, you can "tweet" about it on Twitter – giving you more exposure and traffic over time. You can even have your posts re-tweeted if someone finds them interesting enough and wants to share with their own followers. It's imperative to let people know what you're tweeting about. Just putting the link or TinyUrl isn't particularly enticing. Be inventive. We all need relevance and continuity. I make a distinct point of using hashtags for my music-related tweets. My other tweets are generally humorous, off -the-wall one-liners that do pertain to what is 'behind' my tweet, ie: what one can (almost) expect.
Driving and increasing traffic to your blog is part of marketing your blog. If you don’t market it, it doesn’t matter how good it is, no one will know you exist. So if you’re not blogging, get out there and introduce yourself.
Discount Code For "Redemption": lusty
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