Tags for video and blogs. Oh and Twitter. And . . . yeah

Just wanted to say a word about tags.

As you may know I use several blogging platforms and I’ve also been doing videos this year.

Whenever you post a new blog or video it’s fundamental to post associated tags!

Like for this post I’ll tag it:

 Tags, youtube promotion, blog promotion, online promotion, videos, twitter 

And that should probably do, it’s not like this is a killer post or anything but when you are posting essential “flagship” material and you want people to see it

 You know I love to cut corners and optimize my promotional activity. But because I’m running so many blogs, I’ve really noticed the ones that are tagged properly are the ones that are bringing in random search traffic!

ALSO: Last night I went out with a friend and shot and edited a fun video for youtube and added some music. Did it in windows moviemaker. Took about 6 hours, all up.

I’ve only been learning to shoot and make videos this year. 

I work 60+ hours a week. Blogging and posting videos should be part of your weekly routine.

This nonsense about needing $5k to do a video that takes months or weeks . . .  thats just ridiculous now.

This is the new music industry. It is actually all within your power. 

 I should really join Twitter, it’s so hot right now. Except I know what the principle is, it’s like micro social networking and in a big way its foreshadowing the fact we’ll all be surfing on our phones pretty soon.

Basically you’re using txt message sized posts to update your network.

This is the thing. If your promotion style is very network focused, working in a team or bouncing off others and you’re on the move a lot, this could – should – be a go for you.

Myself, I work from home and don’t travel very much at all and my promotion style is very much more content focused.

To me I’m not sure I need to know what my colleagues are doing or thinking at multiple points in the day.
 AND It’s also getting to that point again where I need to watch the work load I’m taking on so it gets hard to respond to the more casual enquiries.

Cheers.

 

Blogs vs. Websites – from the best. Darren the Problogger

Darren the Problogger at www.problogger.com is the friendly australian who makes like half a mil a year from writing blogs most days and putting little ads down the side of them.

He also has a hip hop theme song which I think is hilarious. Not the song itself, just that he has one.

But what if darren didn’t give all of his writing away free? What if he charged? What if you could only get Darren’s writing by buying his book?

(I dont think he has a book. He doesn’t need a book)

Do you think he’d be making all that money?

Do you think they’d fly him around the world and pay him grands to do speaking and appearances?

Now because musicians dont just write lyrics and have exciting lives because they’re muso’s, and they ALSO actually make music and videos AS WELL it’s not too much of a stretch to consider
HERE’S A CHANCE NOT JUST TO COMPARE WEB DESIGN TO BLOGGING BUT FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT WHY BLOGGING IS IMPORTANT NOW FOR MUSO’S AND . . . . ANYBODY!
6 Reasons to Consider a Blog

Much has been written on the topic of why blogs are a medium to consider for your website but here’s some that I’m particularly attracted to:

1. Blogs give Individuals, Companies and Brands ‘Voice’ – 5 years ago I was a guy with a ‘voice’ that reached a few hundred people on any given week – today what I write and say is sneezed out to hundreds of thousands of people on any given week. My blogs are the vehicle for this.

2. Blogs are Conversational – both in the style of writing, the way they interact with one another and the way that they are designed with comments at their heart blogs are all about the conversation.

3. Blogs build Trust – as a result of being a relational/conversational medium a blogger can build trust with their audience (something that most businesses would kill for).

4. Blogs build Profile – looking to become an ‘expert’ (or at least be perceived as an expert) in your field. Blogs have the ability to showcase your expertise and help you become the ‘go to’ person in your field. Just today my blog brought me the opportunity to appear in Australia’s national newspaper – the result has been numerous other opportunities.

5. Blogs are Immediate – blogs are a great way to communicate with people because they are so quick to use. Have a thought, write it down, hit publish and within minutes it can be being read and commented upon by your readers.

6. Blogs are a doorway to Search Engines and Social Media – one of the great things about blogs is that they are indexed so well by search engines which love sites that are focused upon a topic, updated regularly etc. Social media sites (particularly bookmarking ones) also love blogs.

(THIS REASON ALONE WAS WHY I GOT INTO BLOGGING – THE OTHER STUFF HERE COMES WITH TIME, AFTER THE FIRST 6 MONTHS OR SO)

The list of reasons to blog goes on and on. Of course everything I’ve mentioned above can also be achieved with other types of websites and just because you have a blog doesn’t mean the above all falls in your lap (it takes work – see below) – however these are some of the attractive aspects of having a blog.

5 Reasons why a Blog May Not be for You

Some bloggers tend to build blogging up to be the answer to every problem you might have online without giving a full picture. Let me shed a little light on the flip-side of blogging and why it might not be the right medium for you.

1. Blogs Take Time to Mature – one of the misconceptions that many new or ‘PreBloggers’ come to blogging with is that they just need to set one up and people will come reading it in their thousands. This is rarely the case. Unless you get extremely lucky or have some existing profile or traffic source to leverage a new blog takes considerable time to build up when it comes to readership. When I surveyed Technorati’s Top 100 blogs last year I found that on average they’d been running for over 3 years to achieve their prominence (it’d be more now).

2. Blogs Take Daily Work – the key to successful blogging is to post quality content on a regular basis. Most bloggers post on a daily basis, many of the top blogs post numerous times per day. Combine this fact with the last point (ie that it takes years for a blog to mature) and you have this question to ask yourself:

“Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years?”

That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years – 1560 if you post twice each weekday…..

3. Blogs Take More than Writing – I’m not trying to depress you but there’s more to successful blogs than writing posts. Bloggers face a lot of other practical challenges on their way to success. These include moderating comments (blogs are the targets of spammers and occasionally ‘trolls’ (trouble makers), design (making your blog look unique can be an important element in it’s success), marketing (new readers don’t just appear – it takes networking, self promotion etc) and more. The list of jobs that a blogger needs to do can be overwhelming to a new blogger. Of course a lot of these skills develop over time and become a natural part of your working rhythm – but it’s worth counting the cost of this before you get into blogging.

4. Bloggers Can be Anti-Trust/Profile Building – I mentioned above that a blog can be a wonderful tool for building your voice, profile and trust. However the flip-side is that you can actually hurt your reputation in your niche if you don’t use your blog well. Everything that you do on your blog has the potential to either build or destroy your reputation in some way. Remember that what you ‘publish’ online is permanent. While you might delete it from your actual blog there will be a record of it somewhere online. So publishing untruths, writing while angry, being manipulative or not being transparent on your blog can actually come back to bite you and hurt your reputation. The vast majority of bloggers have positive experiences from blogging but do enter into it with a little caution and care – the blogosphere can be a very unforgiving place if you give it reason to turn on you.

5. Blogs Rely Upon YOU as a Conversation Starter – I was chatting with a new blogger recently about their experience of starting a blog and they reflected back to me that they didn’t realize how draining it could be to be the instigator of conversation. They’d come from a background of using online forums previously – a medium where the community kicks off conversation. Blogs are similar to forums in that they are conversational, but where anyone can start a conversation on a forum a blog relies upon you to do it. This takes time, energy, creativity and a certain skill.

Once again, this list could go on (and on) but I’ll leave it at that and invite others to add their thoughts in comments.

My hope in exploring some of these themes is that those with established websites might have a better picture of some of the pros and cons of switching from their current website to a blog.

Blog or Website OR Blog and Website

The last question that I’d pose to those considering the switch from a website to a blog is that it’s possible to do both.

My challenge to most people who ask me the question about making the change is to think about whether they really need to replace their current site with a blog or whether they could just add a blog to their established site. In some cases the established site is fairly poor and deleting and replacing it can be the best move – but if you have a site with some level of presence in search engines, traffic and reputation then it can sometimes be better to simply add a blog to it and let what you’ve already developed remain.

The thing is that we’re now seeing many bloggers add other types of websites to their blogs (forums, social networks, static pages etc). Bloggers are realizing that blogs are not the best medium for every situation and that there are opportunities to reach different people with different types of sites – so keep your mind open to the possibilities of keeping what you’ve already established and adding to it rather than replacing it.
(OBVIOUSLY FOR ME MY BLOG IS A PLATFORM FOR IDEAS WHEREAS MY WEBSITE IS A PLACE FOR BUSINESS WHERE I WILL TRY AND SELL YOU STUFF.

FOR MUSO’s . . . I’VE ALREADY SAID IT. JUST LIKE MYSPACE YOUR BLOG IS DESIGNED TO LEAD A TRAIL THAT CAN BE FOUND EASILY BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE . . . WHERE YOU CAN TREAT YOUR VALUED GUESTS WITH GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY . . . AND IF YOU’RE REALLY NICE, MAYBE THEY WILL BUY SOMETHING.)

The entrepreneurial mind: Musicians as artisans

There are bloggers everywhere interested in whats happening to the music industry.

I think a lot of it is about recognising what happens to an industry once technology allows it to go fully digital, because everything thats happening to CD’s . . . well the DVD is right behind it . . . and who knows what we’ll be able to fit down the phone line in 10 years . . .

 This from Professor Cornwall’s “Entrepreneurial mind” blog.

The music industry is facing an interesting puzzle these days How do you run a business where customers do not want to pay and they do not want advertising? From today’s Tennessean:

Efforts to sell music by subscription have mainly failed.Yahoo recently gave up on its Music Unlimited subscription service and sent its customers to Rhapsody, another struggling music provider.

But traditional radio’s offer of free music surrounded by audio advertising also is being rejected by a generation that resents undesirable interruptions.

“They want to be the program director, and they insist that the program be free,” says Jerry Del Colliano, a professor of music industry at the University of Southern California and a former executive at Top 40 WIBG in Philadelphia.

The big boys in the industry do what big boys do in any industry undergoing fundamental change — they try to get the government to protect their interests. From TechCrunch (via Andy Tabar):

Warner Music, fully aware that the days of charging for recorded music are coming to an end, is now pushing for a music tax.This isn’t the first time someone has called for a music tax. Peter Jenner argued for it in Europe in 2006. Trent Reznor said the same thing last year (as did the Songwriters Association of Canada)….

But Warner Music is doing more than just talking about a music tax. They’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity that would create a pool of money from user fees to be distributed to artists and copyright holders.

We may be witnessing the end of the structure of the music industry as we know it. The mass produced, mass marketed music is becoming a relic of the past. And what does the future hold?

The predictions from the Institutue for the Future about the future of small business might offer a glimpse into the future of music:

Today, there are 26 million small businesses in the U.S. that generate roughly $5 trillion in annual sales. If they were a country that would make them the 2nd largest economy in the world! Those numbers will continue to grow over the next decade as small businesses re-emerge as artisans with even more economic force.

Artisans, historically defined as skilled craftsmen who fashioned goods by hand, will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade. These next-gen artisans will craft their goods and shape the economy — through upswings and downturns — with an effect reaching far beyond their neighborhoods, or even their nations. They’ll work differently than their medieval counterparts, combining brain with brawn as advances in technology and the reaches of globalization give them greater opportunities to succeed.

What would a musical artisan look like? Probably a lot like James Lee Stanley.

My wife and I first heard James Lee Stanley at a “coffee house” in the 1970s when we were attending the University of Wisconsin — Stevens Point (WAY up north!!). James Lee was one of many songwriters who made the circuit performing on college campuses at coffee house events. (As a note of Entrepreneurial Mind trivia, I played in a couple of coffee house sessions myself). The songwriters/musicians got a small payment from the school and were allowed to sell their record albums (for the younger generation — that is what we used to call “vinyl”).

Fast forward to 2008. One of my winter projects was to convert many of our old vinyl albums into digital. When I got to our collection of records from our coffee house days, I decided to “Google” the songwriters to see what happened to them. Many had faded into obscurity before the Internet was able to immortalize them in digital splendor.

James Lee Stanley on the other hand was alive and well and still making the circuit. He had survived as an artisan in the music industry. He’s got a website. And he has a blog offering “tips, hints, clues and info for the artist in us all.” His blog chronicles the life of a musical artisan offering his thoughts on touring, performing, writing, studio work, contracts, stringing guitars, and so forth. He still writes music, still records and still tours.

Why does he continue to perform for well over thirty years? Not for possible fame and not for financial wealth.

What I know is that following your bliss is more rewarding than making a bunch of money at something you absolutely hate doing. I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my life or that I could have been more successful at something else. I love what I do and I love trying to get better at it and I love it that at my stage of life I still have so much passion for what I do and I love how vibrant and alive it keeps me.

So what is the future of the music industry? I hope it is not an industry propped up by government intervention as Warner Music would have it.

Instead, I hope that it is an industry sustained by talented artists — and successful artisans — who help us understand love, heart ache, happiness, sadness, joy, despair. I hope it is full of people like James Lee Stanley, whose view of success in his career is one we all can learn something from, be we musicians or be we entrepreneurs.