I’ve been trying to focus all my attention lately on producing not only the best possible record I can but also a good marketing strategy for it. I remain convinced that video, audio and ‘making-of’ content is a route that can really help your audience bind with your project.
That being said, I’ve been keeping a video blog on the making of The Flood here – tons of videos, text and photos later I’m hoping that idea pays off. I’ll be releasing the new record on Feb 26th, 2011 with a show that I’m hoping is going to be the hottest ticket in town. But beyond that, I’ve still got an amazing amount of video / audio and other thoughts to share to help get the word out and promote the record.
But what remains to be seen is if having all this content will really make a difference in terms of awareness, sharing of content, and ultimately listeners and sales. I don’t know. One lesson I have seen is that there does appear to be a diminishing return the more videos I put out via social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Though this isn’t universally true – some videos seem to hit harder than others, but I’m wondering if it’s more timing than content. But I have to ask if I’ve know if that’s because I’ve started to promote the project too early, if people are losing interest or if it’s a reflection of the content. Hopefully it’s not a reflection of the songs (which I’ve been doing a good job of keeping under wraps).
Next week will be the start of the bigger announcements for the project, and I’ll be tracking metrics a bit more carefully to see what works, what doesn’t, and ultimately if it impacts interest in the release. There will be a fire hose of content coming and I have to wonder – is there a point when you can put out too much content? I’ll keep you posted.
And of course I’ll be letting you all know how you can pre-order a copy of The Flood and get all sorts of goodies with it.
I love getting the opportunity to talk about social media strategy with lots of great businesses and help them implement ideas and strategies that will not only help them grow their reach but translate that reach and community into real dollars. But regardless of whether your goal is a great sales volume, a larger community or more engagement one of the pillars that a good social media strategy stands on is transparency.
And it’s a lot easier to preach it than to practice it. I get that. There is a lot of vulnerability letting anyone peek behind the curtain.
“What if someone doesn’t like what they see?”
“What if someone steals my ideas?”
“What if my competitors learn about our strategy?”
“What if people think we’re not any good at what we do?”
Right. Transparency is hard. But how many of us are really committed to showing our communities, our friends, our followers, what we’re made of? How many of us REALLY are willing to ‘get naked’ and let people see what goes into making our business run or our art take shape?
It’s scary. But I firmly believe that transparency adds a tremendous amount of trust and more importantly value. 37 Signals has a helluva business with their book Rework- telling people who they are and how they run their businesses. They aim to out-teach their competition.
So I’m going to run a little experiment in the spirit of transparency, and see how many of those fears are realized. As some of you know, I’m a part-time musician and have been writing songs and performing original music for over 10 years now. At present I’m in the middle of making a new solo record in the home studio and I had this idea to just show anyone who cares, a peek behind the curtain.
So, the other day (of course, the day the Tumblr crashes and burns) – I started a quick Tumblr on the project – The Flood Sessions. I’m hoping to document through text, photos, videos, and just random musings, what goes into making a record on the cheap, on your own and doing it really really fast. I’ve been through something similar live-streaming the recording of a single that MODUS, a band I played in, was putting out. But this is a bit different.
I’m hoping to share drafts of songs in the works, unedited lyric sheets, photos, and videos throughout the process, in the hopes that people will do the following:
Give a shit: At the end of the day I’m hoping the music gets heard. Will ‘giving pieces of it away’ before the final product is finished hurt the interest in the final version?
Engage: Will people leave comments, constructive or otherwise on the things I post? I’m particularly interested in what types of content resonates with people and what the threshold for engagement is (ie – how in depth or unique does the content need to be to capture someone’s interest)
Share: Can interest in the record grow outside my existing circle of friends, followers and listeners?
That being said, if you’re curious, I do hope you’ll take a look at the Tumblr page located HERE. I’ve currently got a handful of videos and will be posting content each time I’m able to sit down and work on the record.
If you’re also so inclined, I’d appreciate it if you check out some of my existing music here, and if you like it share it.
I read a good piece over at Sacrilicious Marketing about how over the past few months there’s been a lot of pushback from news organizations (particularly those owned by NewsCorp) against search engines like Google who are linking and indexing their content, making it easier for regular folks like us to find information that is current and relevant to our search queries – and it got me thinking.
NewsCorp threatened to de-index all of its content from Google and Bing unless they were paid for it. Old Rupert (amongst others) is trying to usher out the era of the free web…. and it looks like it worked. Both Google and Bing paid up (how much, I don’t know).
Major labels like EMI have also removed the music videos of their artists and restricted embedding, moving them to their own site Vevo (with the help of Google) instead of having them just run on YouTube. They want to be paid for the views or move to a platform that has a business model in place that works more in their favor, much like the major TV networks did with HULU. There’s a brilliant piece on this from the band OK Go.
Now the New York Times will be putting up a pay-wall in 2011. The details are sketchy as of yet, but it looks like it will be some kind of metered system.
I don’t know how this is going to play out. It does seem like the era of completely free content may be coming to an end, and that sucks because what makes the web so amazing is that free sharing of content and the speed at which FREE can travel. On the other hand, it IS their content and these companies can do whatever they want with it.
But should larger sites be able to demand payment from search engines to index their content? How does that cost then get passed on to users? Will they also demand payments from ISPs next, since that content gets pushed through their data pipes? Isn’t that just cable with text? I get worried that content will become too restricted and that the byproduct of that is a world where MY internet is different from YOUR internet (I know this does already exist to some degree – just ask China).
What do YOU think? Are you willing to pay for content from some of the major news organizations if you consume it online or will you just go somewhere else? What about the implications for net neutrality? Hit me in the comments, if you please.
