A couple days ago I was asked why I became part of the team behind the “Tweet #metal Chart“. Well to be honest my entire purpose was selfish. I wanted a way to find my target audience. I have found that the best way to find a ton of people that are in a very small niche group is to provide a free service for that group of people. Give them something that they will really want and they will come in droves. It always works and almost always works well. So I continue to provide tools for the hard rock and metal community. Why? Because it is the best way to find the highest quality people within that category. Now of course they are using me as well. That’s the whole point. If I always do my best to make sure they get the most out of what I do, I get what I want. The Tweet #metal chart can of course be used by anyone who wants to find these high quality people just as well as it can be used by me, but it would not have been as useful of a tool if I kept it all to myself. Helping others helps me more than being totally selfish.

Now there are some that are always trying for the quick and easy. The local bands that are happy to play the same clubs, screw the same local groupies, get paid the same crap door money, drink the same crap beer, and somehow expect a record company to somehow find out about them and hand them the world. There are the promoters that will book bands, put up a couple flyers in a few windows, draw the same crowd, and pretty much go no where. Everywhere in every part of life you will find the status quo. You will find that the majority of people will either just be really lazy or they will go for the quick scam. All it takes is one out of every few million to gain from this line of thinking to keep people buying into it. Look at the lottery. My wife and I call it “The idiot tax” because you are being an idiot if you think you are going to win. We still play, but we at least joke about it being the “Idiot Tax”. So even we are guilty of this small minded way of thinking at times. Almost everyone is, but what can we learn from that and when should we go the extra mile to get out of this rut? How do we get out of this rut?

Well, I have found that just about anything you can do will put you above the majority. Take a look at how far everyone else is willing to go. Then go twice as far to win. If the standard local bands are putting up a few flyers and updating their MySpace page, then you should do that and then some. Buy radio and newspaper ads in the local area. A few thousand dollars investments will put you way above the pack. If your band members are all spending their hard earned vacation time from work to do a mini tour, advertise! You are on a national tour, so advertise as such. 3 grand at FixionMedia.com will kick things in high gear for an entire month. Two weeks before the tour starts and for the two weeks during you will be impressing local clubs around the country. Labels will start to wonder why they keep hearing your name. If you can afford a few thousand to toss at IndieClick.com as well you are getting close to pro level marketing for a tour.

In fact I will make a deal with any band out there. First UNSIGNED band to follow the following directions exactly wins a full year of advertising on all three of the sites I am connected to. These sites are MarkCarras.com, RockMyMonkey.com, and HeavyAsHell.com. I will give said band a banner at the bottom of all three sites (pretty much every page and at least the highest traffic pages) for the term of one year. They can change the graphic of the link connected to the graffic once per month.

Here is what you need to do to win:
1. Buy $3,000 of advertising from Fixion Media, $5,000 of advertising from IndieClick, and $2,000 from Blast Beat with all campaigns starting on the same day.
2. Have this all connected to a two week tour with two weeks of advertising before the tour starts.
3.Contact me before the ad campaign starts so I can track it.
4. Do this before June 1st of 2010 because after that this deal has to die.

Deal? Why am I doing this? Honestly it serves me if a band “makes it” because they followed things from this blog doesn’t it? What would happen to my traffic if some band makes it big and they go around telling people they made it because of advice from this blog? My traffic goes through the roof and my word is then respected. Now I could just go around ripping bands off, getting them to sign shady 360 deals, and probably make a quick buck and get out of town before anyone knew what hit them. This is how the music industry is done most of the time. But that is short term thinking and I would rather do what I love for a very long time. To do that I have to keep it honest. I have to actually help bands. That is the long tail vs the short tail. Call my bluff. I dare ya!

This weekend CNN posted one great article about the over blown hysteria over swine flu (along with probably 50 very irresponsible articles fueling the insanity). We have all seen people go nuts over this for very little reason. The World Health Organization said that as of the writing this article there have only been 20 deaths world wide! There are probably more people that die from a smack upside the head every day. This is proof that people have zero interest in facts. We have become so addicted to being controlled by fear that we will latch on to anything hyped at all. It’s as pathetic as a worst case heroin addict.

So how can bands use the knowledge on this to benefit their band? Well, like most lessons, it is something anyone paying attention would have learned many times before. It’s always about hype. When advertising something it is never really about just letting people know about the event. You can have millions of people know about your show and still have an empty nightclub. Why? Because if it doesn’t seem like an out of control hype of hysteria people just don’t care. People always want to be part of something big. On Twitter people are going nuts posting articles supporting the paranoia over the swine flu. Why? Because they want to be part of the big party of everyone over reacting to the swine flu hysteria. When you have a show you want to create as much hype about the event as you can. You want to make it look like it is the event of the year and the club will be packed.

I stopped reading press releases many years ago, because the press agents pile on the B.S. a mile high. It’s like the bands that keep talking about their livers going on strike because they are such wild party maniacs. The truth is that most of them barely drink at all. Not too mention that that line has been over used to pathetic level. The press agents for metal go on and on about how the cd they are promoting is the most brutal thing to be recorded since the dawn of time. They find several ways to repeat the same thing Ad Nauseam. They are trying to hype the band to the point of hysteria because they know what that is worth. So even the pros do it, so why don’t you?

Now of course the press agents do several press releases a day and get so bored with the project that it comes off with zero integrity. You have way more time and can put more passion into your campaign. This is also why you should not play a city more than once every three months. Part of making the event hyped as much as possible is to make it special. How is it special if you are playing the same clubs, in the same city, every weekend? In fact, I have seen bands do very well if they don’t play within an hours drive per season. Starve your local scene! The other thing you do is to save up as much money as you can so that you can advertise on radio, print, flyers, internet, and whatever else is available. Bands that spend their own money to promote a show end up with opening slots with the majors.

Like anything else, you will get out of it what you put into it. Expect things to just fall into your lap will get you no where. Work your royal ass off every second you can and you will see a difference. If you don’t see a difference you should have worked harder. Or maybe your band just sucks? That’s ok. I hear we will all die of swine flu within the week anyways if the media hype is to be believed.

1. Fixion Media
Focused on hard rock and metal. Best if you can only afford one network and need to get to your band’s specific audience on a budget.

2. Indie Click
They cover metal, rock, punk, goth, and even horror movie fans. Great place if you get a hold of a good chunk of ad budget.

3. Blast Beat
If your band has a style that can be described as metal elitist, this is an ad network you really should check out.

4. Ultimate Metal
Just one site, but they are cheap and will give you more than your money’s worth.

5. KNAC
Another site that is not part of a network. They are a bit over priced, but they do have a following you could use if you can afford it.

6. Google Ad Words
Sure it is the largest ad network, but not at all what I would call target audience.

7. Microsoft Ad Center
This is a brand new one, but I hear great things. I hope Microsoft will challenge Google to be as good as they should have been this whole time.

8. YouTube
Yes I know they are owned by Goolge. However, I am not talking about the text ads. I am talking about that little link that says “Promote” next to videos you submit. Ever think about paying a little extra to get more eyeballs on your bands YouTube videos?

9. Stumble Upon
Did you know that you can pay to have people “stumble” on to your band’s website? The bad news is that this will burn ad dollars so quick it will make your head spin.

10. Buzz Net
I have checked out this site and it makes no sense to me. A few websites I go to claim that their ads are done by Buzz Net, but yet Buzznet seems to be it’s own webzine. So try as I might I could not figure out anything about this one. Of course I’m sure I could do some research, but I feel that if you have to contact the people to find out info then they have some issues that need to be dealt with.

So there you have it. This is the best info I have right now. Over time I will try to tweak the info I have so this can be a great resource for everyone. Ok, to be honest I really don’t care about any of you. I will keep this updated for my own purposes and if you benefit from that I really don’t care.

Just to be clear, the only ones I have used myself are most of the top 6. However, top 6 lists don’t seem to get any attention. So I added the others. I may try the others if I’m ever in a situation where I have a regular ad budget. Until then feel free to talk smack about this info in the comments.

Why does music suck now?
I think one of the most interesting questions to ask people is “What do you think is killing the music industry?” You can guess a persons answer by what category they fit into. Your standard person will almost always say that it is because music sucks now and there is only one or two good songs and a bunch of filler. But the question is why does music suck now?

Musicians have Stockholm syndrome
Why is there only one “good song” per cd anymore? The music industry falling apart is something they have been working on for a very long time. Musicians have a bad case of Stockholm syndrome and have been told that they think it’s the downloading. When I interview bands and ask this question they are unable to think beyond “you gotta stop the downloading”. Try to tell them that the cats already out of the bag and they get very flustered. Of course the music industry says the same thing since they are the ones brainwashing the artists. Internet geeks will tell you that it’s simply that video games are taking those sales. I say all of you are right, but at the same time wrong.

Greed and business vs artist development
The music industry is a business and so it is fueled by greed. You can’t blame them for this because they do this for a living and that new baby is going to need diapers. However, it is that greed that lead them to bad business decisions. Why? Because what we are talking about is art and art and business never go well together. The record companies very quickly created a formula. This was a good thing at first. This formula was to find out how to get the most sales out of the talent pool. When something was proven, they add it to the formula. This formula kept getting better and better until it was perfected. Around the 90′s this formula peaked. This formula is something I could write and entire book about so I won’t go into the details. It’s a combination of many things, but part of it is looking into the future just enough to sign an artist before that artists style becomes “the next big thing”. Soundgarden for example. They were not ready to be hit machines on that first major label cd, but the record company didn’t care. It’s called artist development. Soundgarden was given that ever important time to grow as artists.

Less artistic integrity let video games take over
Artists no longer are allowed that time to develop their craft. Even before the 360 deals started being forced on new artists, they were expected to have a hit on the first cd. This rush of the hit machine is one of the things that has cheapened the music. This has caused people to care less about music in general. This has caused music to be less of a priority for people. In about 25 years this has caused a situation where the video game industry is the bigger priority to the age group that has always been the most obsessed about music. So video games are a big part of it, but how the video games took the crown is very important to the big picture.

Artists never made a penny from cd sales
Part of what made people embrace downloading so much in the first place was the horrid percentages artists made from their work. A band can have a career of a couple decades before their first release even makes them a penny. This happens more often than not. A great majority of artists never see a penny from any of their cds. So many fans hear this and start downloading because they know their favorite band isn’t going to get any of the money anyways. Sure we can debate why this line of thinking is wrong, but the fact is that it is the perception. Their greed has lead to them losing control of the perception their customers have of them and the product they are trying to sell. That’s bad marketing and no opinion of the facts matters after that.

Your paranoia was your downfall
You also have to look at the music industries reaction to the downloading they blame for their downfall. When Napster was the hottest thing on the internet, they tried to make deals with the record companies. These deals would have been way more profitable than the ones they are currently making with iTunes, Amazon, and Wal-Mart. All they could do was freak out and shut them down. Thus training the fans to adopt it. Not because they wanted to steal, but because they obviously wanted to have their music digitally. What if your local bar only served Budwiser quality and the majority made it clear they wanted Sierra Nevada? People would find a way to get that better beer and the local bar would be screwed. People will always find a way to get what they want. Get it to them and you can take their money. Ignore their desires and your business will be dead! Now about a decade later the music industry starts making deals to sell music online. Problem is that it is full of DRM that doesn’t allow people to play the music they buy on any device they want. People are quick to notice that the illegal version is a better product. It can be played on any device. So the great majority keeps downloading illegally. This cheapens the overall image of music even more. They now have an entire generation that they have trained to dismiss music as a totally disposable thing that should just be downloaded. Even as recent as this month they have tried to shut down The Pirate Bay. Have they ever stopped to ask how this will help them? Will it stop downloading? No, it only fuels innovation to find better ways to not get caught. Instead of wasting so many resources they should be trying to find a way to use this free marketing platform to their benefit. If you work for a label, now is the time to smack yourself in the forehead and say ‘DOH’ Homer Simpson style.

It’s not your fault
Now not all the reasons for the downfall of the music industry are the fault of the music industry. Have you noticed that each generations rock stars are a little less famous. When The Beatles came out there was only rock. Pretty much every ‘young person’ listened to that one style. No metal, no punk, no industrial, just rock. Then Led Zeppelin came around and we had a couple more options. There was “hard rock” people could grab on to! The next decade gave us the beginning of metal and punk. Now we had true sub-genres. Now we have so many sub-genres of sub-genres that a band can be the undisputed kings of an entire style of music and still not be able to fill a 500 seater club. So many record sales are not even big enough to be registered by the RIAA. It’s out of vans, mail order, and tiny record companies that are too small to be members of the great overlord known as the RIAA. So when they keep releasing lower and lower numbers, the numbers that are not accurate!

Anyone can have international distro in seconds
As part of music being so spread out with sub-genres of sub-genres is the growth of technology. I can belch into a microphone on this same laptop I am typing this article out on, upload the mp3 recording of that to a service like CD BABY, buy some adds through Ad Words, and give that “CD” international distribution and marketing. I can do all this within an hour! My sales figures will not be recorded by the RIAA. So the numbers they announce are starting to look totally worthless, right? Bands with half a braincell no longer need a label at all. This is also part of what is killing the industry. Now the artists can focus on art and not have business breathing down their neck. Think this is only previously established artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead? Think again! There are new artists like Jonathon Colton that give everything away without a thought but yet still make tons of cash. This kills music industry folks both figuratively and literally.

Now I could go on and on about this, but this article is already longer than 99% of my readers attention spans will tolerate. I haven’t even touched on the whole “loudness war” issue! Someday I can write a book on this and give more detail. But let me close with this. Please do your part in spreading the word. Downloading is only a tiny part of what is killing the music industry and misses the point of what the suits should be focusing on in the first place. If we do enough to get the word out maybe we can save the music industry? Or maybe we should just let them die and laugh at their ignorance?

When you have been doing this as long as I have, you start to notice why bands stay local. It has less to do with talent and more to do with paranoia. Sure there are very talented bands that do everything right and still end up nobodies (Forced Entry), but this is very rare. Most of the time it seems to be a case of “Big fish in a little pond”. In their local town they are the heroes. The local bar has their new cd in a glass case like they it went multi-platinum. However, in the big bad scary world they are no more cool than the bum on the street begging for change. It’s a brave step to totally put your self out there. The world is a cruel harsh mistress and she will eat you up and spit you out (again, see Forced Entry). So what should you do? I say stop being such a wussy and grow a damn spine!

Many of these bands will dip just a toe in the water, not become world wide famous, and then give up and go back to becoming nothing more than local heroes. They say, “Well, we tried.” They really didn’t but they tell themselves that. You have to try everything and everything every chance you get or you might as well not try at all. You can’t keep playing the same gigs at the same local clubs and expect someone to walk in one day and hand you everything on a silver platter. Sure that happens to 2-3 bands a freakin’ decade, but the odds on that are worse than the state lottery. Walk outside in the sunshine this summer and see if you get hit by lightning. If not, then you don’t have that kind of luck. Do the old school “get in the van” style tours when all the band members save up a couple weeks vacation from their real jobs. However, promote the living hell out of it too.

A band will think nothing of it to spend thousands upon thousands on all their equipment, but when it comes to promoting the band they spend nothing at all. Maybe they might make up a few hundred flyers and pass them around if they happen to be going to another metal show a couple days before their own show. What about putting an ad on Blabbermouth for your little mini tour? What about assigning one band member to find out what the local music rags are for the town you will be playing. Then buy ads from them as well. Another band member should be in charge of finding out what the local college stations are and if they have a metal show. If so see if you can schedule a phone interview a week before hand. Don’t just email them links to mp3 files and call it good either. Send a full cd with a cover and everything. Toss in a XX-shirt as well. I know all this costs money, but is your music worth it? How much has your drummer invested in his set? How much are all your practice amps worth? Did your guitarist pay more than $100 for that Marshal amp? How much do you all spend on beer and Denny’s every month? You spend all this money on buying the right equipment to get the sound just right, but nothing on getting people to hear that sound? You blow the money you make on playing shows with piss beer and crap food.

So here is how a band can get the money needed to do all this stuff. What if instead of splitting the money you make from shows all the time you created a band fund. Then on top of that you all paid dues. Not a ton, but enough so that when you had a new cd you could actually promote it. If each band member put in $100 a month for two years, you would have enough for a very strong campaign with Blabbermouth, Brave Words, and all the websites in the FixionMedia ad network.

So be a brave little toaster and jump out of your small little pond. You can do it! Your strong enough, your good enough, and gosh darn it…people like you! Right?

The hardest rocking music industry Twitter users & why you should follow them!

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

So when I set out to make this list my original goal was to rank the top 100 people in the heavy music industry. I wanted to list the people that were most likely to help a struggling metal or hard rock band. I recently saw some really lame list of several hundred so called rock bands and to be honest it pissed me off! The band’s on that list wouldn’t know rock if Lemmy from Motorhead kicked it up their backside with the end of his boot! Just like Digg is filed with nothing but a bunch of 3 piece suit band fanboys, Twitter was being made out to be the same thing. I knew there were some metal lovin’ geek out in Twitter land and they needed to be ranked. So I tried my best to find the top 100 of real rock and metal people on Twitter. The small problem was I couldn’t find 100. So for this list I rounded it down to the top 50, but in a few months I plan to try this again.

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

Please know that there are some that didn’t make the list because they hadn’t updated in about a year. Some very high profile metal industry companies that have left their Twitter accounts lay dead. This is also how I ranked this list. Does the person follow people back? Do they respond to fans or unsigned bands in a reasonable manner? Do they have the power to help unknown bands and will they? Don’t like it? Make your own list! Send me the link and I will send it out to everyone on my list.

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

If you have someone (including yourself) that should be on the list when I do make it the top 100, please send me the link on Twitter! I didn’t put myself on this list because you all probably already follow me. Plus I’m not sure I am as powerful as these people. Enjoy!

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

50. http://twitter.com/eveofdoom
Editor of Geeks of Doom, heavy metal-lovin’, headbanging, bass-playing, vegan chick

49. http://twitter.com/recsoftheflesh
An unknown band that is using technology to push themselves to the next level at all times.

48. http://twitter.com/plugola
PLUGOLA is a social music community & digital marketplace, for independent musicians AND their fans.

47. http://twitter.com/XTRMPromotions
He may not be too tech savvy, but he is learning and is the go to guy for “get in the van” tours for bands on a budget.

46. http://twitter.com/RocmanUSA
Video editor extraordinaire! May not be the cheapest, but he is one of the best.

45. http://twitter.com/Mick_Shrimpton
Claims to be the former drummer of Spinal Tap. Legit or not he has a very comedic way of looking at the music industry.

44. http://twitter.com/Stickam
Ever thought of streaming your concert live for the world to see? This contact can set you up with no charge at all!

43. http://twitter.com/unsect
The official band channel. They play Hard rock with electronic elements and ambient textures.

42. http://twitter.com/metalextremo
Online Metal fanzine from Brazil. Very passionate!

41. http://twitter.com/HeavyAsHell
Official Twitter account for the hardest rocking social news site on the net!

40. http://twitter.com/nicefishfilms
He does a podcast that combines music and tech as well as blogs about music industry news a lot.

39. http://twitter.com/FTWM
Feed the world with a song! Altruism is great PR.

38. http://twitter.com/gladhandermusic
Great band using tech to get the word out on their music.

37. http://twitter.com/decepticrat
Not sure he wants it out why he is important to metal, but he is very powerful in social news circles.

36. http://twitter.com/MusicGoat
Podcaster, blogger, and music fan…a great part of which is metal!

35. http://twitter.com/polymath22
His major passion is a site called Ning. He is a heavy music fan.

34. http://twitter.com/Mortalwind
Very well known in social news circles. If you can get him into your music he might use his power to help you.

33. http://twitter.com/DarkNemesis618
Programmer for both RockMyMonkey.com & HeavyAsHell.com

32. http://twitter.com/SilentJay74
One of the top users of Mixx.com and a total heavy music fan. Part of the social news podcast Social Blend. Total smartass!

31. http://twitter.com/cGt2099
Another key member of the Social Blend crew as well as a top user of Mixx.com

30. http://twitter.com/metalsucks
The number one metal loving Word Press blog.

29. http://twitter.com/aversionline
Webzine

28. http://twitter.com/robinjection
Robert Pasbani of Metal Injection fame.

27. http://twitter.com/Sleazegrinder
Sleaze Grinder webzine.

26. http://twitter.com/deathisgain713
Death Is Gain webzine

25. http://twitter.com/metaledgeblog
Although not the Metal Edge magazine in the U.S. that recently went under, this one still seems to be active. Not sure what country they are from though.

24. http://twitter.com/censoredmetal
A Metal Webzine/Blog

23. http://twitter.com/MetalMartyr
Webzine

22. http://twitter.com/apeshit
APESHIT is an extreme metal webzine.

21. http://twitter.com/ThrashHits
Webzine

20. http://twitter.com/HallOfMetal
webzine

19. http://twitter.com/metalinjection
Watch br00tal videos or upload your own. Get your fix!

18. http://twitter.com/rnrgeek
Live podcaster

17. http://twitter.com/chriscornell
Ex-singer for Soundgarden not too metal anymore, but still worth a mention.

16. http://twitter.com/bumblefoot
Guitarist for the current Guns And Roses

15. http://twitter.com/sebastianbach
Ex-lead singer of Skid Row. Current band are the same guy Rob Halford from Judas Priest uses on his solo stuff. Amazing stuff!

14. http://twitter.com/victoryrecords
It’s a record label. Look ‘em up!

13. http://twitter.com/dillingerescpln
The band Dillinger Escape Plan

12. http://twitter.com/Download2009
The legendary music festival. Line up is always the best Rock, heavy metal, & punk of that year.

11. http://twitter.com/vurnt22
Remember the band Living Color? They had a few pop rock singles, but most of their stuff is closer to the Bad Brains. Check ‘em out!

10. http://twitter.com/HeadbangersBlog
The blog version of Headbangers Ball

9. http://twitter.com/Revolvermag
One of the few metal magazines still in print.

8. http://twitter.com/kerrangmagazine
One of the longest running print metal magazines in the world.

7. http://twitter.com/EaracheRecords
If I have to explain who Earache Records are I’m gonna have to smack you upside your head!

6. http://twitter.com/digearache
Head guy at Earache Records

5. http://twitter.com/ChrisSteffen
Writer from Rolling Stone magazine. Writes about metal often for them.

4. http://twitter.com/thatmetalshow
Talk show on VH1 about metal

3. http://twitter.com/ianchriste
Author of the best metal encyclopedia Sounds Of The Beast, SiriusXM Satellite Radio dj, his band appears on the soundtrack to the cult film Gummo.

2. http://twitter.com/talkingmetal
One of the leading metal podcasts.

1. http://twitter.com/CotterCity
Not only does he run the most powerful ad network for metal websites, but he also started Blistering.com

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

Well there it is. What do you think? Please feel free to let the people on this list know about it, because it would look kind of strange if I sent 50 individual messages out myself. That would be bad etiquette. However, if everyone that reads this sends it to one person that would be a good thing. As always, if you need something sent out just let me know. Thanks.

This list has been moved, updated, and automated!

CLICK HERE for the current version!

So what bog should you use for your band updates? Well, this site is done with Word Press and it is very search engine friendly. Google owns Blogger, so you know that is going to be logged into their search engine. Those are the two best for what a band needs. Now I must mention some advice I currently do not follow yet myself. I was recently informed by Pamela Weir that I was not using “search engine friendly urls”. At first I didn’t get it to be honest. It seems that in the control panel of Word Press you have the option of having either nice short url’s or search engine friendly urls. I picked the wrong one when setting this thing up, so now when I switch I have to set up a bunch of re-directs so links back to these articles work. So I will be fixing that this weekend I hope. So make sure you have search engine friendly urls. This would mean that the headline is part of the web address.

Now how often to post? Well, this is all about new people finding your band. Post often. In fact post as often as you can. If you can get into the habit of posting at least once a day it would be a good habit. Why? Because Google loves blogs. The more pages, the more words for the Google bot to log in. The more words Google has loggged into their search engine that are connected to your site the better the chances a search result will link to your bands website.

So it can do amazing things for your search engine results to run a daily blog. I know you think most will not care that the band didn’t practice today but instead just hit the local Taco Bell, grabbed some brews, and hung out and watched the football game together. However, think of all the key words I had in that one sentence alone! If you can post 300-400 words a day it will get your band a ton more traffic. More trafic means more fans. More fans equals pure awesomeness…right? So get blogging already!

I'm a Google Poser!

Why is Google calling me a poser? Well actually what happened is more my fault. On this site you can search for articles with specific “tags”. Each tag basically is given it’s own page. I was lazy on one article and only gave it one tag. That tag was “poser“. Google works by sending a bot around the web to collect data to base it’s searches on. That bot found the page of results on the tag poser for this site. So a search engine found a results page for the internal search feature for MarkCarras.com. Yes, that makes it a search result of a search result.

So why is this important to your band? Well, if you use modern website software (known as CMS or content management system) you will be asked to give tags to each update your band does on your site. Don’t be lazy about your tags like I was for this article or Google might start calling you names. Worse yet, people might not find your band’s website when they are looking for something your band sings about, does, or cares about. New people finding your band is important right? Your tags should be just as important.

The best way to find the music people you want is to first find just one legit music type. Then go through their friend list and grab the ones that look like they might be able to help get the word out on your band. As I have pointed out before, you want to follow back every legit person that follows you. It’s just good Internet etiquette. However, you should be careful about not following back the low life scum. These people will follow several thousand people in hopes they get followed back. They prey on your guilty conscience. You are better off without them in your circle because they are not your target audience. The band that has 100,000 followers on Twitter can get way less reaction than the band with 100 quality followers because if you have thousands of followers most of them really don’t care about your music. In fact it may be less than 1%. It’s like spending a few thousand dollars on a specific metal ad network like Fixion Media or spending thousands advertising on the Today show. Just as middle age housewives won’t care about your band, neither will SEO spammers. It’s all about target audience!

Now we’ve talked about reaching music industry people like the music specific bloggers, booking agents, record labels, and other music industry people your band should network with, but what about actual fans? Well you need to make sure and use the embeddable widgets on every website the band is part of. Both MySpace and Facebook have ways to do this. Put it on your main official website as well. Put it everywhere you can. This way your fans can follow you on all these social networks. Then they will bring in their friends and your fan base can grow. This is better because it gets you your target audience. Plus because of this you will end up with way more followers than people you are following. This makes you look more legit. Remember that a social networking profile that has way less followers than people they are following shouldn’t be trusted.

Of course a good start to finding that target audience is to follow me on both Twitter & Plurk. If always plug the music profiles I think deserve more followers.

Now I know I am going to ruffle a lot of feathers with this one, but it needs to be said. Many will try to tell you that viral marketing is all you need. I have had people tell me that a campaign to promote a site was failing because I wasn’t using viral marketing. The funny thing about this was that the campaign was made specifically to be a viral marketing campaign. So not only do most not have a clue what viral marketing is, but they really don’t know what it can and can’t do. Now I am not saying that you should stay clear of all viral marketing. It does have it’s place. It just needs some old fashioned marketing along side of it.

Banner ads do work if it’s not a tech site:

Now you will hear all kinds of garbage about how banner ads don’t work anymore. The problem is that all the info is highly contaminated. There are tons of tech related sites that have only tech savvy readers. Those sites fail with banner ads it is true. The reason is that all those tech savvy users are using every kind of ad blocker they can to never see ads. This is killing their favorite sites, but they don’t seem to care. Now the great majority of people do not use these ad blockers and will never be able to keep ahead of the ad networks, so banner ads work for music sites. So when trying to pour some fuel onto your band’s viral marketing fire, a banner ad will work.

An example of viral marketing failure:

A few months ago I sent the word out to all the social networks I belong to that I would shave off my five foot ponytail if a certain amount of stories hit the front page of social music news site HeavyAsHell.com. The campaign was about as vial as you can get. But it never actually went “viral”. Now I’m sure that there will be “Internet Marketers” that can (and maybe will) nit pick apart the campaign and say in hind sight why it didn’t work. It’s real easy to sit on your high horse after the fact. The fact is that this was something that was helping kids with cancer and no one jumped on it. If that doesn’t work, what will? Now in full disclosure the campaign was saved last minute by an SEO friend of the site NowSourcing.com. Without Brian’s help it would have been a total failure. Would have been nice if it kick started the site the way it should have though. We still got to help the charity though, so half the goal was met. The point I want to make though is that the viral marketing alone failed.

Less than your band paid for all it’s equipment:

Now I am not talking insane amounts of money here. $2,000 for a month long campaign at FixionMedia would do amazing things for an unsigned band if done right (See my recent article on Pirate Bay for info). If you really want to kick it into full stream spend another $3,000 at IndieClick.com at the same time. This should be plenty enough to kick start your band’s next viral campaign.

If you are already famous you have the power to go viral:

Now some will give examples of how major things were done using services like Twitter. Well, those people are already celebrities of some level. Recently Mashable‘s Pete Cashmore crashed a few servers because he posted something on Twitter. The story tried to spin it as if it was a sign of how powerful Twitter was. The truth is that it was a sign of how powerful Pete Cashmore was. Leo Laporte may have grown his Twit Network “organically”, but he says all the time that he is riding the coattails of being on Tech Tv half a decade ago. Same with Digg. Would Digg be what it is today if it wasn’t for “The Dark Tipper” plugging the site on Tech TV? I’m willing to bet my left nut that HeavyAsHell.com would instantly explode if I was able to do a five minute class on Headbangers Ball showing people how to use it and why it’s so important to the scene. Kevin Rose did just that and it got him enough users instantly to let the site grow from there. Every business plan that has been able to use viral marketing had some old fashioned angle behind it.

In closing:

So save your pennies before trying to use viral marketing. It only works with an old fashioned marketing budget behind it. Don’t believe me? Check out the contest currently going at HeavyAsHell.com and see what we can’t even give away!