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 ArtistServer  Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005 10:02:34 AM
20 Ways to Maximize Your Exposure on ArtistServer - Pt. 2 of 4 Back for more? If you didn't already read items 1-5, please see the first post in this series. If you want to increase your exposure as an artist, get heard more, increase your downloads and streams, the please read on for the next five ArtistServer tips. Feel free to ask questions or post comments. 6) Use the 'content areas' on your artist sites – When you login to the “My Account” area of ArtistServer – which is where you manage your account and content, you will see an option in the menu called “Site Designer” - if you click on this – then scroll down, you'll see three larger text-area boxes for you to enter content into. Each one has a title which explains where the content gets displayed. The first, “Main Section” appears on your artist homepage – above your songs and below your name and menu. Many artists use this space to announce new CDs or shows they'll be performing at or simply as a place to display some artwork. A few creative artists have found that they can integrate an image in this space and have it sit close to their logo and creating a fluid look. If you want to try this out, make your image 770 pixels wide. The next content area is called “Right Side Bar – On Homepage.” This section is displayed, as it states, on the right side of the homepage. Keep in mind that the maximum width for this space is 270 pixels wide. I've seen many artists use this space to display bulleted lists of shows, news or even to point out new songs. As a bonus tip... try viewing the source of your artist homepage and take note of the StyleSheet titles used for the tables – you too can use these in your own HTML! Keep in mind though, the tools do not verify your HTML – so if you enter bad code, you could render your page unreadable. Make sure you view your artist page after adding any new HTML (hold down shift and refresh to make sure the page is reloaded). 7)Fill out your 'similar artists' on the artist profile – In your artist profile, there are a series of questions which are meant to help 'define' you as an artist. While I know that seems silly, there is some value here. You as an artists may consider yourself as an individual, that your music is unique – and that may very well be true – but we need to build bridges for people – for the music fans – for those people that don't have quite the 'ear' that some of us have. You have to remember – as an artist, you aren't normal, you aren't statistically average, and you listen to music differently than other people. Ok – now back to our bridge and the artist profile in your My Account area... The benefit of listing artists in your “similar artists” field, is that it allows music fans to make connections – it gives them a ground to stand on so they can make a choice - “is this something I may want to listen to? Ah – it's like Band_A and Band_B, but they add a bit of Genre_A in... ok... that sounds cool” Help build that bridge for them. And really – the whole “I'm a unique Artist – my music is unique” doesn't do much for you as an artist, and it doesn't impress the music fans. They'll judge you instantly – as soon as your music starts, their minds will comb though their mental playlists – locate something similar – turn to their friend, and say, “Hey... this sounds like Band_A, or Band_B a bit.” If this process will happen no matter what, why not guide it? Our minds are built for finding similar attributes between what we find and what we know – the system works – work with it. PLUS – we do provide an option for people to search by “Similar Artists” - and next year, the content you enter in this box will have even more use, as I plan to develop a suggestion engine based on user's browsing history, posted reviews, tag use, downloads, streams and profile. The suggestion engine would provide members with a new means of content discovery based on one's own likes, interests, actions and creations. 8)Offer/create a store item – First, let me explain how the store works into ArtistServer before I discuss the benefits of offering something for sale. Store items can be sold anywhere on the Web – or even from your own home. ArtistServer provides you with a set of tools to publish information and links to whatever it is you are selling (must be music/art related). The site does not take any money from sales – nor does it provide a shipping service. ArtistServer only provides a place on the site where you publish information about your CDs, vinyl, shirts, stickers, etc. Ok – now that we have that down, what if you don't have a product – what can you sell? Actually, you do have a product if you already have some music created – you just need to take it to the next level. Using a service like www.CafePress.com – you can create and offer CDs, t-shirts, stickers and more, all you need are mp3s and some graphic skills to create your CD artwork and t-shirt design. You can also work with a service like www.Mixonic.com – these people have an excellent CD and DVD on demand service – plus, their wizard for building your CD on their site just can't be beat. I believe that with both services, you can mail them a Cdr master. You now have a product – so let's add it to ArtistServer! Once you add the item, it can show up in on your artist homepage (controlled by the artist settings in the My Account area), on your new “Store” page, on the site's store page and on the genre page for the genre you assigned the CD to (you'll see this option in the store tools). As you can see, by adding a store item, you now have your artist name in more locations on the site – and you didn't even have to buy an ad – just create a store item. Store items can also have a preview song attached to them – so when your store item displays, your song will too. As you might guess, the songs that artists attach to their store items tend to get a LOT of listens. And lastly, having some items to sell on your site not only looks good, it shows you are establishing yourself as an artist, that you are producing, and that you value your art. Don't get me wrong though, by all means, give away a lot of your music – I for one have around 100 songs for free online, and making people pay for all of them would just keep the music out of their ears – and that's no fun! 9)Add your artist image, icon and all song icons – It's strange how many artists skip over one of the most basic aspects of promotion on the site, and that's their “image.” And by “image” I not only mean their projected image to the world, but also the actual 'images' artists can control on the site – which for this discussion, are one in the same. These images can be photos, a logo, some type of design, or even some text – anything – just don't skip these options when adding yourself and your content to the site. In all cases, you can always go back and change each of these, switching them around as often as you like. If you don't set these images, you'll either have nothing displayed or the ArtistServer default icon – either way, you won't leave an impression on the site visitor. Before you dive into making your icons – keep in mind that they MUST be JPG. The reason we do not accept GIF as a format is due to GIF animations. You 'can' set your artist image as an animated GIF – the difference here, is that your artist image is only displayed on your site. While we're talking about images here, I'd like to point out how images are managed in the My Account area – just in case you didn't already notice this. All of your icons, the artist images, etc are all stored and managed like a library. Once you add the image, you can then 'assign' it to several songs. This way, you don't have to upload the same file multiple times – only once. This means you could do a 'global' replace on your icons with a few clicks, if you were using the same icon for all your songs. Slick! 10)Customize your contact form – We have a few unique tools on ArtistServer, one of which is the custom contact form tool. This easy to use wizard helps you customize your form in three steps – giving you up to four questions each with up to four available options and the ability to set a default option. Each of the four questions on your form can either be a: text box, text area, radio button, drop-down list, or a check box. While this may not increase your exposure, it does give you yet another place to have fun with your artist site. Make up some fun questions – or ask something 'deep' – or ask about your music – whatever! ===== As a side note, the 'custom contact form' is actually part of a Web service I launched called www.ContactForms.com. The site provides free contact forms to nearly 3,000 sites since 2001. So if you like the contact form on your artist site, you can visit ContactForms.com and create something similar for your own site. 
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