The document outlines an online course on online promotion and marketing for musicians. It provides details on upcoming webinar topics, dates and associated blog post assignments. Attendees are asked to post a comment on the blog describing one improvement they will make to their website based on what they learned in the webinar on improving areas like search engine optimization, fan incentives or other areas.

1. Online Promotion and Marketing Course Your Web Presence: 7/11/07, 7:30pm Blog Postings: 7/11/07-7/20/07 Online Digital and CD Sales : 7/24/07, 7:30pm Blog Postings: 7/24/07-8/3/07 Social Media and Virtual Worlds: 8/7/07, 7:30pm Blog Postings: 8/7/07-8/17/07 Made possible by a grant grant from The New York State Music Fund ("The Fund")

2. Assignment: Based on the learnings from the webinar, describe one tangible improvement you will make to your website. It could be in the area of search engine optimization, fan incentives, or any other area. Post as a comment on the blog! Let’s look at the blog and how to do that.

3. Conference Logistics You can mute your phone with *6 You can unmute your phone with *7 If you have a question, type it into the chat Questions will be answered throughout the Webinar at various points

4. Webinar #1 Your Web Presence: Dos and Don’ts Presented by Jay Moonah BOOTSTRAP MUSIC SERIES Summer 2007 Internet?!? Is that thing still around?

5. My Experience… … as a musician Playing in Toronto clubs since the late 80s Member of Uncle Seth (musicface.com/uncleseth) & The McFlies (mcflies.com) Created first band website in 1995

6. My Experience… … as an Internet professional More than 10 years experience consulting and teaching Previously worked full-time at Ryerson U. , University of Toronto , Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) & CANOE.ca Now at 58Ninety, online advertising & media development agency with clients including Molson Coors, Dove, CHUM Radio Network and others

7. Topics What’s On Your Website? Features every artist website needs Search Engine Optimization Appearing properly in Google and other search engines Common Mistakes Things to avoid with on website

8. What’s On Your Website? The things you need…

9. What Fans Want Fans (or potential fans) coming to your site want to… … know who you are … listen to your music … buy your music and merchandise … find out when & where you are playing … get in touch with you … interact with other fans

10. Example: Jonathan Coulton 36 year-old ex-computer programmer Became a full-time musician in 2005 Lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter Doesn’t tour (at least in the usual sense) Gives away most of his songs on his website Makes a living as a musician

11. Jonathan’s website

12. Fans want to know who you are.. … but keep it simple and to the point Provide extra info for those who are interested, including outside links, reviews, etc.

13. Fans want to hear (and hopefully buy) your music Provide option to preview whenever possible Can be a stream or downloadable sample Give fans an easy option to buy it if they like it

14. Fans want to see you live

15. Fans can even TELL you where and when to play!

16. Fans (and other important folks) want to get in touch with you

17. Fans want to interact with other fans

18. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) They can’t love you if they can’t find you.

19. Brass Dogs – SEO in action In mid-2004, Uncle Seth decided to form a cover-band side project called “ Brass Dogs ” Created a site with: carefully written titles & text , links placed on a few sites Brass Dogs soon placed number one in Google for “ toronto cover band ” and high on other searches Has translated directly to two gigs and a dozen inquires in about 8 months

20. All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated Search Engine Page Traffic

21. Traffic from External Sites Most traffic (~80 – 90%) on websites is : “ direct” (typed URLs, bookmarks, etc.) “ internal” (from pages on the same site) Page traffic from external links: Search Engines * 72% Other Sites 28% * Therefore, Google brought in 55% of external page traffic All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated

22. Google Indexing Principles Indexed sites have to be linked FROM an already indexed site The more pages that point to you, the better your rank Google copies COMPLETE TEXT of page Google indexes based where and how often text appears in the page

23. Title Tags What you put in <title> </title> very important Main page title tag should contain band name & brief description Make sure every page has a unique title tag : Uncle Seth: A Toronto-area Independent Band Uncle Seth Bio Uncle Seth Contact Information Uncle Seth: 03/05/2005 set list Approximately 50 characters max

24. What’s in a name? New bands: check Google and other searches first Existing bands: be extra sure to include key words like: “ music ” “ band ” genre(s) of music your location (city, country, region, whatever is applicable)

25. Keywords are Key Most engines read the text on the page Google either ignores metadata &quot;keywords&quot; or uses them to re-enforce text However, other search engines do still use them Use variations on terms on one page use &quot; 80s cover band ” on another use &quot; eighties cover band &quot; Use heading (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) tags and proper HTML formatting

26. Don’t overdo your keywords! If you repeat one word or phrase too many times , Google and other search engines will assume they're being “spammed” and may reject your page. Use your common sense – if it reads fine, search engines are unlikely to reject it

27. The Importance of Being Linked Google doesn’t index anything that isn't linked! Find directories and other sites where you can submit links Create link pages and exchange links with bands, clubs, etc. also helps findability - people searching for a club might look at bands that have played there, etc A trick: when your page gets linked from a site, submit that site to Google Submission linked from “About Google” page

28. Examples from musicface.com All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated

29. Graphics are Good, but Letters are Better Make sure there is regular text on your site, not just graphics, Flash or PDFs Flash and PDFs can be read by some engines, but things are often missed Very important to include HTML “alt” (alternative) text for any graphics or other non-text elements, particularly graphic headers

30. How are we doing so far? Use googlerankings.com to check your rating on certain keywords

31. Google Fight! For comparison to other sites (and fun) try googlefight.com

32. So remember... Make sure your site is linked from sites already in the index Make sure the terms your want to be searched by are in your titles and text

33. Common Mistakes Things to avoid 

34. Autoplay Music —

35. Overdoing it with Flash

36. Not Linking to Other Sites Do you think your site is the only site on the web? (Yeah, I didn’t think so) Give some “link-love” to other bands Clubs Labels Fans Reviewers, bloggers, podcasters

37. Not having your OWN website Just ask Bones – the Baton Rouge band who lost their myspace page Register a URL tonight ! GoDaddy DotEasy Dreamhost other providers

38. My Blog & Podcast onlinemusicmarketing.com

39. Final Thoughts Give fans what they want quickly and easily Make your site easy to find in search engines Make sure you have your own site that is simple to use MARGE What exactly is it your company does again? HOMER This industry moves so fast it's really hard to tell.

40. Assignment: Based on the learnings from the webinar, describe one tangible improvement you will make to your website. It could be in the area of search engine optimization, fan incentives, or any other area. Post as a comment on the blog! Let’s look at the blog and how to do that.

41. Thanks! NEXT TIME: Online Digital and CD Sales Tuesday 7/24/07, 7:30pm