5 Easy Ways for Musicians To Optimise Their Time Online
1 – Use time away from the internet to prepare content, ideas and updates.
One of the common complaints I hear from artists when asked to post more regularly online is that they can’t think of anything interesting to write. The truth is that nothing interesting really occurs when you are sitting at a computer. Instead take a notepad and pen, write yourself text messages, smart phone notes or use a dictaphone to get those interesting anecdotes/stories/ideas down as and when they happen. Then, when back at a computer, there will be lots of jumping off points for content.
2 – Get some help.
This may seem obvious but to speed up your time online delegate as much of your grunt work in updating as possible. This involves finding a friend, fan, manager or ‘web guy’ to take the responsibility of preparing content such as resizing photos, uploading tracks to Soundcloud, changing banners on MySpace etc. These sorts of tasks are simple but time-consuming and don’t need to be done by the artist. This frees up time online for you to use communicating.
3 – Use different media.
Visitors to an artist’s social networks and website are looking for new information and content. This is the main reason that they come back regularly to your pages. By using photos, video, drawings, blog posts, top 10s, interviews, press coverage, music recommendations, competitions and questions it’s much easier to keep excited and interested in the content you are making. Rather than sitting down and doing written blog post after blog post, consider mixing things up more and you’ll find it much more interesting and ultimately easier to do updates.
4 – Plan out content from bulk.
Getting time and access to a computer can be difficult for touring artists or musicians who also hold down jobs in amongst rehearsals and writing and all the other tasks that have to be done. As in points 1 and 3, there are various ways to come up with content and differing types to use. When you do have time to create content , try to plan out when it is going to be used rather than posting as soon as its created. Look at using a scheduling tool in a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress or social network tools like Socialoomph to spread out the content you create over a period of a few weeks. This decreases the amount of times you need to access the internet and also reduces the stress of constantly coming up with and posting new content.
5 – Take tips from professional bloggers.
Blogging is a profession and income generator for many people across the world, spending their time creating engaging content that brings people to their site regularly. Namely but not limited to the following:
Guest Posts – Asking other musicians, members of your team, fans and journalists to write a guest post for your website or facebook page. This could be opinion pieces, fan history of your music, a ‘day in the life of’ your roadie or manager, the band you recently toured with’s memories of some gigs, etc.
Encourage readers to share – use a service like addthis.com to quickly add the ability to share the content on the reader’s own social network profile or blog.
Comment and engage with other blogs – Posting comments on other blogs and engaging within communities such as drownedinsound.com or last.fm to eventually generate interest in your own content.
