Guest post by James Shotwell. This article originally appeared on Haulix

Building and retaining your audience begins with understanding who is clicking on your site.

Search the name of virtually any artist or group on social media, and you are bound to find people discussing that act. Opinions on music are a dime a dozen, and when it comes to bands, everyone already knows their value is worth even less that. Young music writers around the globe cut corners on a daily basis to be among the first to cover the latest news about the biggest acts in their area of interest. It doesn’t matter if their site has few to no visitors or if much larger publications beat them to the punch, they want to ensure that their readers learn the latest breaking news directly from them.

But who is the audience for the average blog, and who visits websites for news before scrolling social media?

Music publications, especially those lacking funding, rarely build their audience through coverage of talent that is covered by every other zine, blog, or Twitter feed in the world. Music publications gain readers by delivering the stories no one else can. They earn trust through curating a profoundly entertaining and highly engaging conversation around music that they believe deserves recognition.

Covering everything that is popular in music will satisfy people, but it won’t captivate them. If you want people to continue coming back, you need to seek out the stories no one is telling about the musicians that everyone will want to know six months from now. Your job is to hook people with music made by others. There is a finite amount of people who read music sites, and the vast majority are using the same hook to lure readers. Why do that when you can stand out? Why offer what everyone else offers when you can be the alternative?

When you align yourself with artists on the rise, you align yourself with dreamers, and that is – in many ways – your audience. You want people who listen to music and dream of lives not yet lead. You want to provide the soundtrack to their next great escape, and you want to tell them why it’s going to change their lives before they even realize what is happening to them. You want to be a source of discovery, not regurgitation, which continually introduces new sounds and ideas into someone’s life. If you can accomplish one or both of those things, you can make a reader for life. Better yet, you’ll create an ambassador for your work that helps carry word of your writing to places you’ve yet to reach.

So, who reads music blogs? People just like you. People who think the radio is dead and the music they hear everyone else enjoying is stupid, dull, or just plain awful. Be yourself and readers will find you. Do what everyone else is doing, and they will pass you by in search of a more authentic voice.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

The heart of a musician is to make music.

From jazz to pop, punk to metal, and everything in between, a true musician is focused on their craft as often as possible. 

However, the pressures of surviving as a musician is difficult. Monetizing a passion can be frustrating and distract from the creative mindset that we’re always trying to maintain. That’s where having a good website can be critical to help with promotion while saving time for what really matters.

A website gives the world access to our music in ways that couldn’t be dreamed of a few decades ago. Anyone with a few hundred bucks (or even less) can pull together a site fit for a king, but just because you can build a site easily doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to be a good one.

There are obvious elements that you’ll want on your site, like a music player or contact info for booking gigs, but a good music site has quite a bit more going for it than a schedule calendar and samples of your songs.

Here are some tips that can turn a run-of-the-mill music website into an eye-popping wonderland that stands out just as much as that three-minute drum solo that blows everyone’s socks off at every concert.

King Content

While good websites have a lot of different things going for them, when you boil it all down, the most important thing of all is that you have good content.

Now, this doesn’t automatically translate to a lot of content. On the contrary, people on your site are likely to be looking for short bios, lyrics, information about a song, contact info, and so on. Rather than focusing on quantity, make sure that you have an eye towards quality. Each and every part of your website should have purposeful, meaningful information crafted with the reader in mind. 

Even if you master things like SEO and social media and can get a flow of visitors arriving on your site, they’ll duck out on you before you can say “Bob’s your uncle” if it doesn’t have good, relevant info for them.

Layout and Design

Once you’ve got your quality information ready, you’re going to want to lay it out in a way that is both attractive and user friendly.

One of the top trends heading into 2019 was minimalist website designs. Don’t clutter up your space with gobs of distractions. Keep things streamlined and purposeful. When you go to choose a color palette for your site, make careful, conscious decisions on what colors you use, from your logo to your background. 

Studies have shown that color is critical in conveying information in marketing. It’s one of the first things a visitor will see, and it comprises the majority of that utterly crucial first impression.

It’s also important to have good images on your site. Consider hiring a photographer with the express purpose of getting website pics at your next show, or if you can’t afford a professional, look into classes to create some quality images. 

In general, make sure that a site’s colors, pictures, and information are clean, purposeful, and in line with your personal style and genre. Remember, the key here is to make it something that fans will want to experience.

Merch

Another critical, and often complicated, part of a good band site is merch. 

Merch is one of those things that helps keep us afloat. But trusting to everyone making a purchase at a show is hardly capitalizing on all of the work that goes into creating those shirts, sweaters, posters, and bumper stickers. 

That’s why you’re going to want to look into setting up an online shop on your website. If you’re dealing with a large volume of sales, you may want to consider a larger e-commerce solution like Shopify or BigCommerce. However, there are also many different options for online shops that are affordable and can help keep the costs of monetizing your site to a minimum.

Make It Your Hub

Finally, remember that your website is your hub. It’s easy to lean on things like social media in order to create quick and easy ways to have an online presence, but the truth is, anything that is out of your control is risky business.

And this isn’t just a potential issue, either. When Facebook radically changed their algorithms in early 2018, it had a dramatic effect on many business websites that were overly dependent on the social media platform for their online marketing. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you should leave social media in the dust. On the contrary, it’s a critical component to reaching your fans (and potential new ones!) online. However, rather than leaning on it too much, use your website to house critical information.

Collect emails for an email list, post scheduling and contact info, make announcements via a blog, and so on. Then use things like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and so on to push that information out in front of your fans where they can see it.

Taking the Time

It’s critical in this day and age that an indie musician takes the time to create a stable and attractive website. This gives them access to an entire world of listeners who are ready to throw their support behind any artist that seems worth their time.

It may not be the heart and soul of your craft, but a good website is one of the first impressions that can convey your love and care for what you do. It houses your message, your feel, your vision, and most importantly, your music.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now