Feed the google spider your Topspin buy page
Open a new tab or browser and go to google. Search the name of an album or if you get lucky and search an album from a band with good seo – try the example for this exercise enter this into google:
Neal Young Decade
For me the two first Google results are Wikipedia and the Amazon page selling this album.
I’m a fan of Neal Young but I also wanted to pick that album because Neal has been around a while and Decade is a pretty ordinary word. So to me, the reason these two sites have shown up at the top of Google instead of all those other many sites that have Neal Young and or the word Decade somewhere in the text is SEO pure and simple.
Search Engine Optimization is a good way to get some marketing done on the cheap. Here are some basic things that make SEO work:
Keywords in the URL – check out how both Wikipedia and Amazon have Neal Young and Decade in the URL and are right after the root domain name: amazon.com/start-some-keywords-to-improve-seo.com
So when you are thinking about putting your album out on your site using Topspin, you should put the name of your album into the URL, and if possible have it be not in a sub folder.
Google and other search engines think that the deeper something is in your site, the less important. So www.you.com/blog/category/2009/albums/favorite/albums/albumname is telling google “albumname” is less important then everything that came before it in the url.
www.you.com/albumname says that albumname is really important. That is most likely why Amazon has set their URL’s up this way – probably took them some serious tinkering to do it since they have a massive database that uses numbers and non-human readable stuff in the URL to let you search for anything and everything in their site. If Amazon thinks it’s worth putting design resources to turn computer URLs into human readable ones, you should think about just making your URLs human readable. Important to all you blog using people out there!
Search bots think the are human but they are not. They are trying to impersonate humans. That’s why having “human readable” URL’s matters. The fact that these are not humans also means that text you have in an image is NOT viewable and readable by a search engine bot.
I bet a lot of the most important links on your site use graphics so that they are pretty instead of lame looking text in one of the web’s defaults. SEO is a balancing act. You don’t necessarily want your site to be all text and data like wikipedia, but you may want to consider having your buttons be graphics with links as text sitting on top of your graphics.
Text matters then. Google thinks that people think that content that is BIG and is at the TOP of the page is more important that content that is small at the bottom of a page.
So if possible, have some text at the top of your page that communicates what is important to you! This text is also likely to get auto scraped by Google and shown in the text underneath the link in Google. As I search around on Google, there are clearly some tricks to forcing the text you want to be under the link but for the most part Google will take the top text on your page.
See the link to my site:
and of course text is spider food. Plain old text, text that is linked, image “alt” tags (tells the spider what that image is of) are all read by the search bot and the search bot then makes assumptions based on what the text is, where it is on your site, how big the font is, what URL it links to and so on.
Books have been written on SEO so that’s it for now – to sum up:
- Human readable URLS – just because your band name is top in a search doesn’t mean your new album page with direct to fan buy buttons from Topspin is top of the search
- Text as your navigation menu and other links whenever possible
- Use the alt tags! <src =”some url here” alt=”put your alt tag in” >
- Get some text up top on your page
- Check what text Google has under the link to your site
And stay on top of it. SEO is a constant process.
What is Topspin?
Kadlec Consulting is Topspin Certified. If you don’t know what Topspin is, please check out the Topspin site at:
http://www.topspinmedia.com.
The quick run down is this. Topspin is a professional level tool set for:
- marketing your band
- interacting with fans
- selling art (aka product, merch, downloads etc)
- providing data so you can optimize your performance
Here are a few specific things I think make Topspin the top choice for accomplishing the goal of making direct to fan a part of your web presence and a part of your business.
Scale:
Topspin has delivered for Eminem, The Arcade Fire, Paul McCartney and many other artists who have had a lot of fans all downloading big, high quality audio files all at the same time….without crashing or slowing down.
Having massive scale may not matter to you now but should you be so lucky to blow up in a major way like a great review on pitchfork or slash/dot and a traffic onslaught starts interacting with your media- you don’t want to miss your big chance. You want the fan’s tweets to be of the “awesome I love it” variatey not the “Fail. I couldn’t download it.” sort.
Widgets:
Templates don’t allow you to do exactly what you want, but building it all yourself can get really expensive and time consuming. And even if you could would you want to? Topspin is right in the middle of these two options. It’s ALOT better than a template, though it may take longer to set up, BUT it’s also ALOT faster than trying to build something like this from the ground up or hack in some Paypal enabled almost there solution.
Not to mention that Topspin works on a revenue share so while you may have some overhead to get the widgets plugged into your site or build a site using the widgets, it is nothing compared to what Topspin spent making these widgets and the backend to deliver the functionality! Kadlec Consulting also provides *very* reasonable rates for the web development step of deploying Topspin.
Consolidated workflow
The widgets enable marketing and commerce. Using different platforms for media players, email collection, email marketing and sales is a waste of valuable time.
Topspin’s widgets help you engage your audience and grow your email database, market to that fan base and then make the sale. You then “own” the customer. Kind of a crass thing to say, but it means that fan can now get your “new music” email instead of whatever marketing emails iTunes/Amazon etc. will send.
Google Analytics
While Topspin provides a great set of data, Google Analytics can add an additional layer of valuable information. Topspin communicates some key data to your Google Analytics account.
Instant gratification for fans
It’s such a small but important thing. Yes you could sell that CD via Paypal, then email a link to download it (keeping track of links on a spreadsheet or something?) Forget it. That won’t scale. Sell your digital or digital+physical product and get your customer something instantly.
Topspin sells some T-shirts and delivers a screen saver as the instant gratification. How cool is that? Which leads to my last reason:
Topspin is smart
If you don’t RSS the Topspin Blog I recommend it. Or head there now and check out some of CEO Ian Rogers’ posts/interviews. The Topspin team gets the challenge and opportunity of re-inventing this part of the music business. They are constantly taking a great product and making even better.
Working with Kadlec Consulting includes getting an account on Topspin.
Note that Kadlec Consulting does not negotiate the terms of the agreement you must sign before getting your Topspin account activated.
Drop a line for more information.
Twitter and Bands
“A lot of people fail on Twitter right away because they start out posting links to products and start selling right away.” — or something close to that.
I’m listening to Joel Comm’s presentation on Twitter via MarketingProfs. Anyone who has worked with me knows I love analogies. I liked Joel’s analogy here, I paraphrase– popping out on Twitter and hitting the sell button first is like that anecdotal door to door vacuum cleaner salesman who says as soon as you open the door “Do you want to buy a vacuum?”
Um. SLAM! no thanks. I’ve been saying the same thing in this way – in order to get fans to spend money, they first need to pay attention, then they have to spend time.
But what content creates attention currency? Joel and just about every online seminar on social media hammers home the same point — deliver value to your audience.
For musicians, that means entertainment and information. I’m using social media to stay informed, but I also hope (often in vain) to be entertained. An interesting/funny picture, quip or link to something funny, cool, exciting etc. You’re a band…you make art so put that creativity into Twitter. It may not come easy at first, but stay on it and I think you’ll find your groove.
Here are some other quick tips from Joel’s seminar that can also help you out.
- Use photos vs. brands (um I better change by Twitter icon!)–for bands this begs the question does the “band” tweet.. the “front-person” or every person in the band? Probably depends on the band but if you are a solo musician, or most of your “band” is really hired musicians then go for your front person. If you really are a band, try and get a pic of all of you and if that’s not possible go with the logo.
- Get custom profile image. Yep you skinned your myspace, got a website design, better get that on your twitter.
- Asking questions/provide answers – if Twitter is about relationships and value…why not ask/answer a question.
“How do I –> insert your key words here”
Bands / artists would have to get creative on this one.
Here is a random tweet I found:
shoeguru14 not a happy camper. how do i injure myself in the craziest of ways. . . . stupid foot. 1 minute ago from web
Band could tweet
“we don’t know…but we hope this song makes your foot feel better http://bit.ly/yourlink”
- Dole out compliments
- Link to other people
- Have a contest — www.tweetaways.com will help you randomly select a winner.
- RT (retweet…keep up now!)
- Customer Support — if you have some followers why not ask for feedback. How was the sound at the last show?
Trent Reznor talks often on his blog about having respect for your fans. Giving love to your fans off stage as well as on stage will win you the “internet applause” of follows, friend requests…and hopefully re-tweets of your marketing messages when they do come out, and eventually credit card transactions to buy your art.
- Tweetbeep Sends you an email when keywords you entered are Tweeted. Topspin – this would be a great embedded feature!
- Pics- after a show- post your pic with a # tag any of your fans may then take the cue and do the same. Instant community around the show.
I like to go to shows that I think my friends will go to/will want to go to. So anything you can do to connect your fans or make your fans feel more connected to each other the better IMO.
And now time to tweet about blogging about tweeting. Thanks for reading, commenting and throwing this up on your Twitter.
The Crystal Method X-Games Contest
This is a really beautifully conceived promotion. The Crystal Method have supplied the soundtrack to the new X-Games 3D movie. ESPN and The Crystal Method’s management Three Artist Mangement put together this contest to fly a winner out to LA to see the movie and go to the X-Games. The video trailer for the movie was then spliced in with The Crystal Method’s new hit song/video “Drown in the Now.”
Topspin is providing the engine to take it viral, and to take the entries via email AND via delivering the hit song to those who enter. Everyone wins!
This video is hot!
What are you waiting for? Click that Enter button – get the free song and enter to go see the first 3D sports movie ever!
The contest is over but the X-Games premier is / was August 21
Is PR ready for Topspin?
I think so. Check out this excellent placement of John Forté’s free download on AOL Music controlled page called The Boombox:
John Forté on Boombox
Click Here to check it out and get the free track!
The real question will be….are people reading the Boombox? AOL claims multiple millions of viewers every month. Can those viewers be converted to fans?
Perhaps if permission is granted by John Forté’s team I will share that answer in a future case study.
For now, let’s be content that this artist (if you don’t know about John Forté’s story google it) that was just released from prison back into the world is already Tweeting, blogging, Topspinning and of course making amazing music.
Remember that there isn’t interwebs in prison like there are interwebs out here. So learning curve? Tackled a hell of a lot faster than most people who have NOT been in prison. John and his team are setting a great example of how to do it.
Client Joe Purdy in a cause commercial
This is a great example of a brand, an artist and a cause all coming together to make us all feel warm and fuzzy.
I’m extremely excited about what looks to me like a revolution happening to the consumer products industry. Doing the right thing for the planet helps sales, and hey it helps the planet. Why not use some great music too? Check it out: