Time for Stats on Marketing Essential Chords, April

Ok I have been working hard on the marketing of my new Essential Chords Book for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, sales are up on Amazon.com, page rank is up, progress all around. I have also been very busy putting together the different materials I will need such as images and videos. I have loaded up some author videos on my Amazon author page, and I need to finish the text for the YouTube video and I will get them up.

Ok Stats on Essential Chords and the older book Notebook Music Chords,
Amazon sales of Essential Chords for March, 3 copies
Amazon sales of Notebook Music Chords for March 4 copies, marketing one book has sparked the other, sales are about 1 a week, the goal is to get them to 1 a day.

Sales rank on Amazon for Essential Chords went from 1,175,775 to 1,273,564 on March 31, and then today to 300,000, in the last two weeks it jumped as high as 185,000, I guess these move around a lot
Notebook Music Chords went from 871,112 to 713,168
Sales on Lulu.com for Notebook Music is 6 books and 1 pdf sold, little confused but I think it is for the year. Need to move Essential Chords to Lulu.com also

CafePress sold 5 music items, increasing the traffic on AcousticMusicTV increases sales on all the items.
Traffic on AcousticMusicTV.com our main site has jumped from 95 a day to 159 a day
on this blog, it has gone down a little 43 down to 35, bounce rates are in the 50s%

Tasks complete, videos shot and edited, need to be put up on YouTube, page images made and loaded on the Facebook page, Flickr and Google Picassa, weblinks on all, keyworded captions on all.

To do: write video copy and upload book videos, then cross link to all sites, update email list graphics and fix the AWeber account and the autoresponder emails, add graphics and more post to blog, get new sheet music books on AcousticMusicTV.com and the blog, make graphics for sheet music books.

Building a Marketing Plan for Essential Chords Book

I looked up Marketing Plan on Wikipedia to see what officially makes one up. And they wrote this,

"Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, a marketing plan without a sound strategic foundation is of little use." 

Not really sure just what that means, I think my strategy is to sell my book. I am not sure what I wrote in the Marketing Plan post yesterday is really a marketing plan but it will have to do. I have been online since 1996 doing all kinds of activities. I have tried all kinds of methods to get people to come to my websites and buy my stuff. Some works, most doesn't. I know that if you want the best chance of success you need to write good content, make it clear, and give readers clear paths to your products, and be in lots of places, do this and you at least have a chance of selling something if it is something that they want. So that is what I will be doing as I push my book out into the world.

Yesterday was crazy with getting everything set up and loading up images and such on a bunch of different sites. Today I loaded up Essential Chord promo images on my Google Picassa account. I also set up an excel spread sheet of all the tracking and visitor numbers so that I can watch what is going on. If you don't track it you have no clue.

I don't have a clear step 1, 2, 3 kind of thing, I know that I will jump around the Plan but having a written plan will differently help keep me on track and give me a list of tasks. Let me know how you market your books and music, it is a journey.

Ok off to do more stuff.

Marketing Plan for Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo

We have started the marketing for our latest book, Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, and thought it might make for an interesting study. I have been using the web and social media for quite a while now in all kinds of areas but this will be the first for promoting my own book.  Our book is up on Amazon.com and starting to sell, I have just built a Facebook page, we have a website, this blog and several other sites. So below are the notes from the Marketing plan. Going public like this help keep me on track and see what we can do.
 

Task List for the Marketing Plan for Essential Chords Book

Goal

To increase the sales of Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo Book on Amazon and other sites.
Goal to get the sales rank under 500,000 and ultimately under 100,000

Essential Chords  Current sales are about 1 book a week, with a sale rank of 1,175,775

Notebook Music Chords  Current sales are about 1 book every 2 to 3 weeks, with a sales rank of 871,112

Method/Plan

Build a wagon wheel of promotional sites, images and video that bring traffic into AcousticMusicTV.com and out to Amazon. Show the features and benefits of the book. Mostly updating and adjusting current set of sites for the new book and adding promotional material out on the web. Try to add in additional books into the stream.

Promotion will be for Essential Chords book, which is an updated and renaming of the previous book Notebook Music Chords, I won't be taking Notebook Music down but will watch it and see what happens to it.

Baselines for Measuring Progress

Establish the current base line visitors numbers for, you have to know where you start to see if anything works, here are the current stats as of March 19.
  Sales on Amazon of Essential Chords in March, 1 book a week,
   Sales rank on Amazon for Essential Chords March 19, #1,175,775

   Sales on Amazon of Notebook Music Chords in March, 1 book every 2 weeks or so
   Sales rank on Amazon for Notebook Music Chords, March 19, #871,112

   Sales on AcousticMusicTV for Cafepress music items, Jan-March, 3 items per/month, $6 average, watch for increase traffic to boost gift sales.

   Sales on Lulu for Notebook Music Chords in March, 3 units since mid February

   Sales of Guitar and Mandolin sheet music books on Lulu, 0 sales

   Scribd, 40 reads/month
  
Basic Google Analytics as of March 19
   AcousticMusicTV.com, 95 visits/day, visit 3 pages, bounce rate 52%, Top Keyword- Mandolin Chords, Google
   AcousticMusicTV blog, 43 visits/day, visit 1.73 pages, bounce rate 57%, Top Keyword-Banjo Chords, Google
   NotebookMusicChords Blog, 15 visits/day, visit 1.8 pages, bounce rate 59%, Top Keyword-2 finger mandolin chord, Google
  

Marketing Materials

Make a basic set of graphics for Essential Chords, cover, couple of interior, some instruments, etc
Shoot some basic book promo pictures
Pull together the basic book description
Create picture files of pages and book for Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, blog

Finish Essential Chords Major Chords sampler book for promo

Make up book graphics for the website

Edit customer quotes that have come in for Notebook for use as needed

Websites

Set up Facebook page for acousticmusictv, what name should the page be?
Update AcousticMusicTV.com with Essential Chords Book
Take down current AMTVWeb site and replace with new sampler, replace cover on email sign up boxes

Set up a book page on blog, AcousticMusicTV.blogspot,com and NotebookMusicChords.com
Set up Hub Page, Squidoo Pages

Email List

Fix the signup on web site and the 2 blogs
Take down current autoresponer series and update with new book and links
Develop some email blast to list

Video

Make promo videos for all three books, the chord book and the 2 blank sheet music books, put on YouTube, websites and blogs

Other Stuff

Reconfigure and upload Essential Chords to lulu.com, paper bound and spiral bound, connect to bookstore
Take down the Notebook Chord book on scribd, put up the Essential sampler book
Set up a free pdf version for anyone who buys a physical version of the book

Social Media

Post about the process
Post on Facebook different pages, videos, lessons,
Post on Twitter different stages of the process and other posts
Cross link everything

Track the Analytics, Amazon, Lulu and Facebook visitors and sales.

Promoting Your Music Gigs Across the Web

I follow Joan Stewart and her Publicity Hound newsletter and blog on tips, trick and tools for free publicity. She mentioned this site for musicans in this week's newsletter.

Artistdata.com, it is a free service for musicians that automatically updates your show, newss or blog updates across MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and many more music related sites

A free ArtistData account gives you unlimited synchronization to all of their partner sites! You can post as many shows, blogs news, and status updates as you want and watch them magically appear across our network. It's a powerful platform that will save you an enormous amount of time. They support sites lit Artist Direct, Bandloop, eventful, Fan Bridge, Live Music Machine, Songkick, JamBase and many more.

As they say, "That's given them more time to write music, meet fans, and be creative. Which is why they're musicians, right?"

You can learn more about artistdata at http://www.artistdata.com/us/

And to follow Joan Stewart and learn more about PR, http://www.publicityhound.com/

 Music Marketing (amazon affiliate link)

Marketing with Video, Mike Delaney

In following up with our Marketing Your Music 101 articles on of my singer song writer friends, Mike Delaney, took the info and applied it to his video on Youtube, "Drill Baby Drill"

Note all the things he did:
• Good title with web address in it back to his site.
• He recorded the song with enough vocal volume so that the CC transcription feature of YouTube could get a clear Close Caption, watch it scroll by, very good
• A link first in the description, with a copyright, and then the lyrics of the song, he even went one step further and added in the chords so that others can play. Very cool
• Lots of keyworded relevant text, and then good keywords

Follow up:
What else could Mike do, he could put in the links to his store page, or a link to CDBaby so people could buy, Here is the store link, http://www.mikedelaney.org/CD.html
You can also put links to the his other videos in the descriptions or use the annotation feature of YouTube and drop a link in there.  Next steps would be to put this video on a Hubpage or a Squidoo page with some oil drilling related info. He could also put in contact info, but you can do that through YouTube.

What else, post your video on a blog or website using the embed code from YouTube. I just wrote a post about this and dropped the video into my AcousticMusicTV.com blog, this create a backlink for Mikes video and helps promote it. Also now my readers will see it and maybe come on over. Remember viewing off the YouTube platform counts just as much as watching it on the YouTube platform, Huge amounts of traffic are generated off of these video links. You can create a series of these blogs or have friends with blogs and cross promote each others videos, it really helps

All of this is important in promoting your music.

Great job Mike

Marketing Your Music with Video 101

A discussion was going on the SAMW(WUMB Summer Acoustic Music Week) list serve on an article in the Boston Globe on the shrinking venues, coffee houses, etc. for independent and folk singers to play at because of the BMI, ASCAP and others efforts to demand performance license fees. Very few of these places can afford these fees and are just closing their doors, and cutting off places to get exposure and play music.

Here is the article  http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/06/09/pay_to_play/

It just got me started thinking about all the new ways that we can promote ourselves these days and this was my response.

This is all the more reason to start recording your own songs on video and put them on YouTube, make sure you put your copyright  info in the description or YouTube will assume you took it from someone else and pull your account (this happen to me with AcousticMusicTV, I had to tell them they were all original songs and I had signed releases, they put the account back up), and blast them out to the world. You will have a global audience, put links back to your website or CDbaby or ITunes and don't worry about the shrinking venues, who cares, it is a global world. Play to the world.

It is easy to do, stand in a room with decent light, turn on the camera and play your music. Almost any camera will work, just make it clear and the sound decent. Most of the mikes on most of the cameras will do fine if the room isn't to big. You will only get better and as you learn you will get better equipment, but you can start with that camera in your pocket. If you have a Mac, you have iMovie, if you have a PC you have MovieMaker, they come included, they work great for just taking the footage from your camera, a little editing (cutting off the front and back where we see you pushing the button), drop in a title, your web address along the bottom a couple of times and a call to action at the end.  "Visit our site ####, buy our songs at CDBaby, to see more of our music" You can also annotate the videos and link them together right in YouTube with messages like, "see our other songs"


3 Tips on How to Make Your Videos Get Noticed

Most people who put up videos don't do any of the things below, if you tag and label and put in descriptions and or lyrics it is very easy to rank very high if not #1 in YouTube on your subject matter. Also if you have 2 videos on YouTube you are 51xTimes more likely to be found in Google Organic Search. Remember Google owns YouTube, they love em. By March of 2011 YouTube Video Search will be passing Google Search for the most searches, and this is all about text. YouTube is currently 25% of all traffic on the web, and it is GLOBAL, within the next couple of years it is forcasted to be 90% of all traffic. And 25% of all web video traffic are music videos. YouTube is built for music. You can sing to the entire world for free.


Ok you have finished your video and you have it loaded up on YouTube or some of the other video hosting platform. Will anyone see it? Well usually no, so what can we do to help it along. There are a lot of very easy steps that most people just never do.

1. The most important part of any video is the title. Google indexes all the text around videos with the title being the number one. Titles should be descriptive, and key worded along with your web address right in the title at the end. The title might be the only thing that attracts a viewer, is yours attracting. Make the song titles descriptive

2. Your video description, located on the right or now below is vital for attracting Google and educating your viewer with information and resources or lyrics. The first part of the description should be your web site address starting with http:// . . . ., this is a live link to your site. Then fill in with a description of the song or whatever the video is about along with contact information, phone number and links. YouTube lets you put in a ton of text, how about typing in the lyrics of your song right into the description. Other video hosting platforms allow for short descriptions but YouTube lets you write a book.

3. Your Tags, vital, vital, vital, can't say this enough. This area contains the key words that viewers will be putting into Google and other search engines. If you don't fill it in viewers will have a much harder time finding your videos. Use Google External Keyword Tool to figure out what to put, the sweet spot words that get 100 to 300 searches a day. Another great tip is to search on similar videos and see what the successful videos are using for their tags, copy or modify them for yours.

EXTRA TIPS
4. I know you will be doing songs with music but Google now does transcriptions of every video that gets loaded up, all videos are now closed captioned with subtitles. Just an idea, maybe do your songs acoustic with the music kind of low and the vocals up so that Google can transcribe them. if not  then make sure the lyrics are in the description. In fact put in the chords along with the lyrics and see if you can get people to play your music.

5. Sneaky trick, search on your song subject matter in YouTube, see who comes up, look at their title, description and keyword/tags and copy them, you don't have to be word for word, but it gives you a real good idea of what videos come up first with what words, just duplicate it.

6. go to http://www.tubemogul.com/ sign up and blast your videos to 10, 20, 30 other video platforms, (it is FREE, and they are all GLOBAL)

7. Every time you put up a video, Facebook it, twitter it, blog it, Stumble it, DIGG it, etc.  Submit it to ITunes for Podcasting.

8. If you don't want to be seen on video, how about using some pictures or your CD cover or the lyrics going by from a powerpoint presentation, PowerPoint has a make movie mode, just look under the File pull down menu, it creates a .MOV file, perfect for YouTube,


Ok that is enough for now, the  point is it is super easy to get yourself out into the world using YouTube, remember there are 3 billion pcs out there with web access, that is 3 billion potential customers for your music, and mobil is 5.5 billion and a huge chunk of them are equipped with web ability. People love music, give them what they love.

Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)

A must see video by Mike Masnick of TechDirt for musicians large and small and the music industry on how Trent Resnor and Nine Inch Nails markets their music using the Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$). By following this model and connecting with your fans and letting go to get, success will follow.