By
Lance Trebesch |
Lance Trebesch, CEO of
TicketPrinting.com, has a
successful 18 year track record of technology and early-stage
experience. TicketPrinting.com is a member of The Music Office
Trusted Vendors and we highly recommend his products and services.
TicketPrinting.com is the leader in affordable online ticket
printing for small-to-medium size organizations, companies, venues,
non-profits, schools, associations, and clubs. Over the past 10
years, TicketPrinting.com has designed and printed millions of tickets
for thousands of events, fundraisers, performances, concerts, plays,
sporting events, raffles, parties and more. TicketPrinting.com has
hundreds of ticket templates – just put in your event or raffle
information and we print and ship in 24 hour. Or, our Design-Your-Own
ticket online tool enables you to customize your ticket.
There once was
a day when the only way to promote your music was by going downtown,
printing off 500 postcards, licking 500 stamps and peeling 500
labels. Now in less than 5 minutes, artists can compose an email
list of the 500 people and send it off with one click. Websites
give people all over the world a central place to find band
information. This was not possible a short while ago. With all the
technology advances, artists must make the most of their resources
and create a webpage that makes fans want to return to their site.
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Show
personality.
A band’s or group’s website is their resource to show the world
what they are all about. This is often the first place a
potential fan will experience your band. Ask yourself, “What do I
want them to know?” Insert an “about me” (or an “about us”)
section where you tell the band’s story – how and why you formed,
where you have been and your future plans. Also, add videos and
photos of everything. Wherever the band goes, take
pictures. Capture the scenery, the venue and the people. Digital
video and still cameras are inexpensive and anything you share
with fans allows them to feel more connected with you.
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Keep it
simple.
Site visitors should generally only have to click one or two times
to find what they want from your home page. The fewer clicks they
need to perform, the longer they will stay at your webpage. Site
maps help visitors find what they are looking for by showing all
your pages and how they connect, as well as help search engine
spiders effectively understand and index your site. Also, do
not overdo the flash animation. Flash can add to your site
nicely, but you can easily go overboard with flash, so be aware.
Search
Engine Spider
– computer programs that crawl websites to check for updates,
complexity and format (Search
Engine News)
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Make it easy.
If you have blogs or articles on your site (which you should – hey,
if you have someone who writes lyrics, permit them to write content
for the site as well) allow the viewer to sign-up for an RSS feed
that automatically informs them of updates to the content. Or, let
them submit their email address to you to receive the updated
content directly to their email. The simpler the email update or
RSS feed is to sign-up for, the more likely the viewer will
follow through with the process. Also, think about adding a search
feature on your site so the viewer can simply type in what they are
looking for within your site. The easier you make it for the user,
the happier they will be.
-
Allow for
discussion.
Have a
chat room or
forum on your site so fans will return to the site to discuss
various topics. Your fans return to your site to interact with you,
so promptly answer all questions they might post, and periodically
join in on chat room discussions. Chat rooms are also a great way
to get feedback about your music and site, so log all discussions
and put a link on your homepage to a feedback form that fans can
fill out.
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Display
contact information.
Not only should your fans have an email address they can easy
contact you at, but also people seeking to book you should have the
ability to contact you with ease. Nothing would turn off a booking
agent more than difficulties trying to book you for a performance!
Make sure these email addresses are for band-related topics only;
displaying a personal email would be a BIG mistake. Also, write the
address in context that fans / bookers can read but spam programs
cannot, like band(at)bandsite(dot)com. Placing the contact
information on your homepage in a key position will draw their eye
to the information and make their life easier. (People tend to
first notice content in the middle of the webpage, then the top and
left sides of the page.)
-
Present your
page at every occasion.
When performing live, promptly display your webpage and blog
website. Make sure fans know where to reach you online. In
addition, allow them to sign-up for fan newsletters – collect as
many email address as possible at these shows. Just one more fan is
worth the effort. Word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing, so
if you treat the one additional fan well, they will in turn promote
your band to their friends.
-
Make band
merchandise.
Selling merchandise is one of the best and only ways to generate a
profit within a band. One good online tactic is to create band
shirts at
Café Press and link to them to allow fans to buy the shirt you
created from their site. Fans also love limited edition
merchandise, so have a t-shirt available for a month only and sell
them strictly at your live performances for that month.
-
Create a
review page.
When others say nice things about you, display it. If an online
newspaper wrote a good review about the band, put a link to the
article prompting others visiting your site to read the review.
These reviews and testimonials create good PR for you. Because
others are commenting about you, it shows first time visitors to
your site that you are a known artist or band and they should listen
to you. Remember to save a copy of the review as well, in case the
online newspaper only runs the article for a limited time so you can
directly post the review onto your site.
-
Put music on
the site.
Encourage file sharing of select songs and add music to the band’s
site.
a.
Find a computer with audio input capability and an easy to use audio
encoding application. This is easy if your music is on CD, just rip
it with iTunes or a similar application. If it is in some other
analog or digital (mini-disc) format, it gets a little harder, but
applications are freely available.
b.
Then with MP3 file in hand, you can upload the file to your web site
and link like you would link a web page or other media/image file.
c.
From there, there are more complicated ways of doing it so it is more
"presentable" with a nice embedded player, etc.
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Post an event
calendar.
The webpage should display a neat calendar of upcoming show’s
location (city and state), time and venue. Fans use your site for a
resource and need to be able to find this information quickly.
Yahoo Groups allow fans to subscribe to your calendar and
receive updates when you post a new event, which makes it extremely
easy for your fans.
-
Sign-up for
on-the-road content updates.
There are many software programs, which allow you to
update blogs via cell phone. This is a great technique because
fans can get updates even when you do not have time to update your
whole website. You can also take quick photos or video from your
phone and send it to your account online.
By utilizing all
these techniques on your site, the reach of your band online will
greatly expand. Fans will return to your site for the latest updates
on your band, booking agents will easily be able to contact you and
labels will be able to see that you are serious about your music and
the business. Online marketing is not just one easy-to-accomplish
task. Rather, it is a series of equally important tasks that you must
carry out on your road to success.
Lance Trebesch
lance@ticketprinting.com
http://www.TicketPrinting.com
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