Sales and Marketing Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Debra Russell

Social Media Marketing – Part 1

2 Comments/in Articles, Internet and Social Media Marketing

This past week has been all about Social Media Marketing for me. On Tuesday, I interviewed the fabulous Ariel Hyatt from Cyberpr for the Artist’s EDGE Membership “Interview With an Expert” Series. She answered very clearly the question:

Social Media Marketing – Why?

And then on Thursday, I attended an in depth seminar with Ann Evanston from Warrior-Preneur.com called Twitter Technology Training (or T3 for short!). In this event Ann answered very clearly the question:

Twitter Marketing – How?

How serendipitous to do these to trainings back to back. Because now, I’m completely fired up about doing the social media thing the right way – and I no longer feel completely overwhelmed by it. And so, of course, I want to help you feel the same way.

Around the turn of our new century it became clear to most small business owners that they were going to have to have a web presence if they wanted to create success doing what they loved. I believe that we are experiencing a similar tipping point around social media marketing. You’re just going to have to have a presence in the social media world in order to create a successful business doing what you love. Not doing it means leaving a lot of money on the table and giving your competition, who is using social media, a huge edge.

So the question then becomes – how do you build this into your marketing strategy in a way that makes sense for your business and for your sanity?

The short answer is to choose the top three social media sites to focus on and then create a system using the tools and techniques to make the most powerful impact with your presence and best use of your time.

Ariel gave us her top 5 and I have to agree. They are:

If you are in the music industry, you absolutely must have a presence on MySpace. If you’re not in the music industry, I recommend against it. I think everybody should be on Twitter and Linkedin. Twitter will help you build a relationship with your clients/customers as well as your colleagues. Twitter is also amazing at increasing your presence across the search engines.

Linkedin will help you build relationships with your colleagues and can be a great source of joint venture opportunities, and an opportunity to build credibility and buzz about who you are and what you do.

I believe the jury’s still out on Facebook and the best way to do business on what is for most people, primarily a social medium. I see a lot of people making some major mistakes on Facebook – such as inviting people to a local event 3000 miles away from where they live. Event invites are becoming the scourge of Facebook – and I think you can do a lot more harm than good there. But I believe, if used correctly, Facebook can be a great way to deepen your relationship with your fans, clients and customers – Step 7 in the Multiple Streams of Business Income concept.

The power of YouTube has been well established – just take the brilliant “Will It Blend?” campaign created by Blendtec®. The best piece of advice I’ve heard about YouTube is to worry less about the quality of the video and more about the quality of the message.

If it’s too slick, it won’t stick on YouTube!

In addition, there may be other social media sites unique to your target market. There are tons of sites and new ones being added by the day. I recommend picking your top 3 and get things up and running there, before adding more or you will just get overwhelmed. In order for Social Media Marketing to work for you, you must create a winning strategy and work it consistently over time. Remember the old marketing adage 7-15 touches before you exist in a new customer’s mind. You can’t do that if you start something and don’t maintain it with consistency. And with 17,148 new messages/minute on Twitter (according to Tweetspeed.com (resource no longer available) – a number that changes depending on the day and time of day – but you get the point), consistency is going to be key to your marketing effectiveness.

In Part 2, I’ll talk about the culture and mindset of the social media world as well as some really cool tools that I’ve discovered.

Social Media – An Interview With Ariel Hyatt, CyberPR

1 Comment/in ArtistsMBA Track 4A – Internet & Social Media, Internet and Social Media Marketing

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, oh my!

Social Media is everywhere – but what is it really?

And how do you incorporate it into your smart marketing plan, efficiently and effectively?

Debra interviews Ariel Hyatt from Cyber PR, who enlightens us with:

An overview of Social Media
The top 3 mistakes people make with social media
Specifically how to use social media to expand your fanbase and make more money!

Additional Resources for this Interview:

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge
Music Success in Nine Weeks by Ariel Hyatt
Time Magazine Article on Twitter
MySpace
FaceBook
Twitter
Flickr
LinkedIn
Plaxo
Technorati
Hypem
Live365
ShoutCast
Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR
Ariel’s YouTube channel

Additional ArtistsMBA Classes on this Topic:

Listen to the Interview:

Thank you for your interest. This content is visible to ArtistsMBA Professional, Mastery Program members only. Click here to login.

Read the Interview Transcript

Thank you for your interest. This content is visible to ArtistsMBA Mastery Program members only. Click here to login.

Enroll in the Artists Marketing & Business Academy Mastery Lab to access the transcript of this class today

Thank you for your interest. This content is visible to ArtistsMBA Foundation, Professional Program members only. Click here to login.

Ariel Hyatt

From left, Dean Krippaehne, Vikki Flawith, Ariel Hyatt, Derek Sivers, Debra Russell, TAXI Panel

Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR a New York based digital PR firm that connects artists, authors and filmmakers to blogs, podcasts, internet radio stations and social media sites. Over the past 13 years her firm has represented over 1,400 musicians of all genres.

Educating musicians is her passion and her philosophy is: combine social media with Internet marketing to help artists grow their fanbase and increase their income.

Several times a year, she leads sold-out workshops to musicians and music industry professionals looking to learn about Social media and online marketing. Her bi-weekly ezine and YouTube series “Sound Advice” has over 10,000 subscribers and she is a contributing blogger to Music Think Tank.

Ariel has written dozens of articles on how to navigate the “new” music business and her book: Music Success in Nine Weeks is available at Amazon.

Debra Recommends Bob Baker – The Buzz Factor

1 Comment/in Sales and Marketing

Bob Baker is an author, musician, and workshop leader who is dedicated to helping musicians, authors, and creative people of all kinds get exposure, connect with fans, and increase their incomes through their artistic passions. Bob’s books include “Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook,” “Unleash the Artist Within,” “Branding Yourself Online,” “Self-Publishing Success Secrets,” and more.

I was thrilled to interview Bob for the Artist’s EDGE Membership awhile back and everyone was very impressed with his knowledge of Marketing and how to apply it to the world of the Arts and Entertainment Industry. He made what can be a scary subject both understandable and approachable.

For hundreds of music marketing tips, visit Bob’s Website – The Buzz Factor

Save

Niche Marketing

0 Comments/in Articles, Sales and Marketing

Last week I delivered:

Niche Marketing – How Thinking Small Can Payoff BIG

At Sandbox Suites for the Co-Working Meetup Group.

Here’s a YouTube highlights video:

Thanks to Ian Griffin at http://exec-comms.com for the videography and posting

Save

Debra Recommends Ariel Publicity and Cyber PR

1 Comment/in Internet and Social Media Marketing

Since meeting Ariel Hyatt from Cyber PR in 2009, we have become good friends. I was honored to participate on a Panel at the TAXI Road Rally that she moderated. (Pictured left to right, Dean Krippaehne, Vikki Flawith, Ariel Hyatt, Derek Sivers, and me, Debra Russell)

I was very impressed by her knowledge and presence and the more I learn about her, the more impressed I become. She’s hosted me as a speaker in NYC and I’ve interviewed Ariel for the Artists Marketing & Business Academy.

Here’s some information from the Cyber PR Website:

Ariel Hyatt, author of Music Success in Nine Weeks, is the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR a New York based digital firm that connects artists to blogs, podcasts, Internet radio stations and social media sites. Over the past 13 years her firm has represented over 1,400 musicians of all genres.

Ariel Publicity started out as a traditional PR firm and for 9 years Ariel pitched bands to newspapers, magazines TV and radio. Five years ago she noticed a dramatic downturn in effectiveness of traditional PR for her clients. It was harder and harder to even secure a calendar listing in newspapers that once gave her artists cover stories and feature interviews.

At the same time she noticed that online portals were covering her artists extensively and much faster than their traditional media counterparts. 2005 was the year of the podcast and 2006 the year of the blog (The TIME Magazine person of the year was YOU) and 2006 was the year Ariel Publicity abandoned all traditional media pitching and went digital.

Teaching and educating musicians is an integral part of the Cyber PR platform and the philosophy is: combine social networking with Internet marketing to help artists grow their fanbases and increase their income.

Save

Debra Recommends ifanz

0 Comments/in Contact Management, Sales and Marketing

ifanz is a very cool resource originally developed for musicians, but really applicable for creative professionals in all walks of life who are building their career by building their relationship with their fans. More than just a database and newsletter management tool, it also offers one-stop shopping for many of the needs of the small business owner!

As I teach in Multiple Streams of Art Income, Step 7 is “Strengthen Relationship”, communicating to your fans is critical for this step and ifanz can help. This one-stop-shop can also help with steps 4 and 6.

From the ifanz.com website:

Invented by Musicians – For Musicians

Ruth McCartney, our CEO, grew up in Liverpool, England in the 60’s. She heard her step-brother Paul and his partner John Lennon lamenting the business side of the Beatles and grew up knowing that “the suits” as John affectionately called them were basically accountants who cared little for the future of music.

When the awesome task of sorting literally tens of thousands of pieces of fan mail fell to her Mother Angie, she made her pocket money by helping to catalog and answer some of the mail. She soon learned that a relationship with the fans is the second most important thing a musician can have – apart from great song material that is!

With the advent of the internet in 1995, Ruth and husband / business partner Martin Nethercutt decided to build a system to collect names and send out newsletters. Today, nearly 10 years later, iFanz now allows thousands of folks just like you to:

Collect names >> develop a relationship and a dialog >> get guidance from your peers >> blast out gig calendars >> download your data to see where your Fanz are geographically >> send a personalized automated birthday greeting to each fan on their big day>> send newsletters by State or Zip >> and much much more.

In addition to communication and database management, iFanz also offers NetShop, a turnkey online store that comes complete with credit card processing and order fulfillment. We offer CD burns on demand and over 30 items of merchandise all available with your custom imagery. One fan, one order, one royalty check. Never again worry about creating huge inventories that might not sell. NetShop products (100% cotton t-shirts, mousepads, mugs, caps, totes and more) are made to order using your design (or we can create one for you) so there’s never any over-stock. And never any upfront costs to you.

The bottom line: if your Fanz have a relationship with you, they are much less likely to steal your music. Who knows, 3 years from know you might be selling them cookbooks, paintings, photography or guitars. iFanz. Because your fanz ARE your future.

Save

Debra Russell Recommends Indie Band Manager

0 Comments/in Administrative, Sales and Marketing

My friend, Charlie Cheney, designed this system based on filemaker Pro for his own career in music. But when he saw how many musicians, agents and other professionals in the music industry needed this product, he made it available to the public.

This program is a comprehensive contact management, booking and tour management system.

And I have used it for my own Contact Management System – it’s great for both my Speaking Business and my Private Coaching! I’m honored to be his first affiliate.

Here’s what his website says:

More and more musicians are proving they only need 1000 true fans to make a living playing music. Indie Band Manager is the complete and affordable database management system for musicians, freelancers, agents, labels, publicists and managers alike to cultivate those 1000+ (up to 5 million) true fans. Over 3000 people in 21 countries and all 50 states have purchased it (and raved about it btw) because it’s the most complete and affordable solution anywhere. Take your career, business, or hobby to the next level. Try it for free right now!

NoCover Magazine calls it “an incredible way to stay organized”; Performing Songwriter says it’s “fabulous and will have you up and running in no time”; and American Songwriter Magazine raves “it works because it was made by someone who knows what it’s like out here on the independent scene.”

Check out Indie Band Manager

Save

Debra Russell Recommends ReverbNation

0 Comments/in Fulfillment, Internet and Social Media Marketing

I’ve been hearing nothing but great buzz about ReverbNation as a one stop shop for contact management and social networking for your music business. Here’s what they say on their website:

ReverbNation.com is a Music 2.0 company that is responding to the changing music business paradigm.

We provide innovative marketing solutions that musicians need to compete, cooperate, and differentiate in an increasingly noisy online environment. Unlike typical “closed” communities, artists use ReverbNation as their home base for approaching marketing and promotion across the Internet as a whole — be it via social networks, blogs, or the artist’s homepage. Tools like TunePaks, FanReach, and Widgets give the artist the power to spread their music and information virtually anywhere. Real-time stats then provide a 360-degree view of how the music is spreading, who is listening, and which fans are actually passing it on to their friends and posting it on their pages. For more information on what ReverbNation can do for artists, click here.

Save