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 Twitter-ing Your Music
and Google Alerts...
Article by David Nevue - August 2008
Back to Internet Music Promotion 101
As most of you know, I'm the author of the book How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet. I've been marketing my own music online for what, 13 years now (since 1995)?
One
of the aspects of Internet marketing I'm working on for the next
edition of my book (the 2009 Edition) is the impact of social media on
marketing music. Now, every year there is inevitably a "buzz" about the
this or that - some big new something that is the rage in online
marketing. Well, right now it's social media.
And so one of the things I have been exploring is the viability of
using social media to promote ones music. And one of the tools I have
just started using is Twitter.
Now,
for those of you who don't know, Twitter is, essentially, a micro-blog.
You have just 140 characters to type in what you're doing right now,
your comments, capsule reviews, link recommendations and so on. People
who like you and who are interested in you (say fans, friends, your
mother-in-law) can "follow" you and watch your every move, your ever
public thought, and whatever else you want to put out into the micro-blogosphere.
Is
Twitter good? Is it bad? I don't know, but it's kind of fun. And it's a
bit addicting for some strange reason. Can addictions be good?
Another tool that I use regularly is Google Alerts.
I use this to monitor certain keywords., and Google notifies me
whenever the search engine indexes a keyword or phrase that I'm
monitoring. Of course, one of the keywords I'm watching is my name, David Nevue,
because I want to see who's talking about me and what they are saying.
Usually, this is a good thing. Sometimes it's not. Do you really want
to know what people say about you when they think you aren't listening?
:) I'm always listening. What can I say, I'm a control freak. It's part
of why I'm successful (because of my dogged do-it-myself determination)
and also, unfortunately, why I can't sleep at night.
At any
rate, I am notified by Google Alert whenever anyone posts any page
anywhere that includes my name and Google indexes it. It could be a
blog mention, a CD review of my music, a playlist, or someone giving away my MP3s illegally. If it gets into Google, I know about it.
I
mention this because of a pleasant surprise I discovered with Twitter
this morning. Now, I've only been on Twitter for a week or so. I
probably should have been involved with Twitter sooner, but the reality
is, there are a zillion things going on out there on the net and I can
only investigate so many and still keep my business running (plus I am
first and foremost, a musician - there is this thing called practice
and performing I have to do!) So I only want to spend my time on the
marketing opportunities that are here to stay for awhile. Well, Twitter
has, in my opinion, become one of the biggest successes of the new "Web
2.0" social networking experience. It has become so successful, in
fact, that it's actually had a number of technical problems keeping up
with it's popularity. Remember how unreliable MySpace was in it's first couple of years? Well, MySpace has gotten a lot better, hasn't it? Well, Twitter is going through those same growing pains now.
Here's the point of all this (my, I'm taking a long time to make my point!), I've been on Twitter for just a week now and I've got about two-dozen people following me. Hey, it's a start.
Someone
Twittered about me yesterday and guess what? Already that Twitter has
been indexed by Google. I know this because of my Google Alerts
account. Someone mentioned me yesterday and boom, there it is a day
later in the Google search engine results for my name. I was shocked at
how quickly that happened.
What this means....
Everything
you type in Twitter gets indexed (or has the potential of getting
indexed) by Google into their search engine results. That makes Twitter
a VERY useful marketing tool for those of you who are search-engine
aware. If you enter specific keywords into your twitter communications,
those Twitters may be found by people searching Google on that
particular keyword.
So, for those of you using Twitter, be aware
of this. When you Twitter anything about your day, be as specific as
you can and use keyword-rich content. If you're preparing for a concert
gig, for example, when you mention that on Twitter, include the name of
the gig venue, so that when someone searches for that Venue name in
Google, there is the chance that they'll discover you.
There are
so many ways you can target Google searches using Twitter, and then
draw people to your own Twitter page and then, hopefully, to your
music. Just ponder this, and then, as you twitter, consider ways that
you can get specific so that
your Twitter messages might benefit you on the search engines. This is
NOT to say that you should use Twitter as a spam machine (if you do
this, no one will bother following you on Twitter), but just that, as
you post your daily routine, think of ways you can include specific
keyword text that people may be searching on.
There are so many things
you can twitter about and then relate back to your music. Popular
movies you see, celebrities, artists who sound like you, books you
read, political events and so on. The key with Twitter is that you have
just 140 characters to do it! That can be a challenge. But it's a fun
one - sometimes fitting your thoughts into 140 characters feels very much like solving a crossword puzzle.
One another thing...
This
blog should be the perfect reminder that EVERYTHING you type ANYWHERE
online is being archived somewhere, permanently. So for those of you
with privacy concerns, this is yet another heads up. Watch what you
say. Nothing you do online is truly private.
And yes, (hopefully), people are following you.
-----
David Nevue
is the founder of The
Music Biz Academy
and Whisperings:
Solo Piano Radio. He is also a professional pianist,
recording artist, full-time Internet musician, and author of the book, "How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet."
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