Search Marketing Guru Aaron Wall On Music, Marketing, & More
Aaron Wall is one of THE most well respected minds in the world of search and internet marketing, and has helped us all learn a lot about ranking in Google through his blog, tools, and premium services over at SeoBook.com. It is a pleasure to have him here discussing the impact of the web and online marketing on the music industry. Listen up!
Aaron, I spend quite a bit of time teaching artists about how blogging can help drive traffic to their site, and assist them in brainstorming content ideas in the hopes that they’ll grab traffic from long tail keywords in search. What are your thoughts on blogging? Do you agree that it’s important?
In Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulance he stated something along the lines that economic activity was a type of communication. There are millions of blogs and other website online. If you want to create something worth paying for (and something that people trust enough to want to pay for) it helps to regularly share value.
Cory Doctorow, a leading blogger, once wrote this:
“Today there’s the explosion of choice brought on by the Internet. All entertainments are approximately one click away. The search-cost of finding another artist whose music or books or movies are as interesting as yours is dropping through the floor, thanks to recommendation systems, search engines, and innumerable fan-recommendation sites like blogs and MySpaces. Your virtuosity is matched by someone else’s, somewhere, and if you’re to compete successfully with her, you need something more than charisma and virtuosity.
You need conversation. In practically every field of artistic endeavor, we see success stories grounded in artists who engage in some form of conversation with their audience. JMS kept Babylon 5 alive by hanging out on fan newsgroups. Neil Gaiman’s blog is built almost entirely on conversing simultaneously with thousands of readers. All the indie bands who’ve found success on the Internet through their message-boards and mailing lists, all the independent documentarians like Jason Scott, comics authors like Warren Ellis with his LiveJournal, blog, mailing list, etc. “
And then look at it from this perspective…I like Radiohead, they are pretty well known, have toured the world for over a decade, and they put their songs on MySpace and host their own blog. And on their blog they link to coverage from the BBC with their videos online and someone writing on Twitter about the experience. How can you compete with that? You need a way for fans to connect with you online. Every artist who wants exposure is either a promoter or a failure.
You’re a very well known figure in the search marketing industry, and have seen it develop over the past 5 or so years. In that time, I have noticed more and more traditional marketing and branding concepts become an integral part of SEM. Can you discuss any personal experience in the evolution of search engine marketing?
I think I have been pragmatic in my approach, but was quite naive when I started learning about search about 5 years ago. Since that point in time my understanding of media and marketing have drastically increased. Unfortunately for the link hunter and gather part of me so has Google’s sophistication level and resources, so the value of gaming a few easy links keeps dropping. At the same time the value of getting high quality citations in active well read channels keeps going up. So it is becoming a game of public relations and relationship building. SEO tools are nice, but they will only get you so far. You can either work against the general trends of the web or let them work for you.
A lot of my time is wasted explaining the pros of having a optimized website versus a real flashy one (which many, many bands and acts have). The flash heads always argue that you have to be “interactive”, and they do so with all kinds of moving objects, sounds, and other nonsense. Could you elaborate on what YOU think works on a website as far as interaction is concerned?
If you are marketing art or music you at least need to have some static links to text pages on the site if you want to use text to connect with readers. The homepage can still be mostly flash but it helps to have at least a few text rich pages so people can buy your concert tickets on your site, buy posters from you, buy cds from you, and subscribe to your newsletter as well.
I’ve spent a lot of time as a “link ninja”, and in that time have come to the realization that knowing how to connect with other webmasters and bloggers is very crucial to anyone’s marketing efforts. Getting a link from another blogger or getting them to listen to your new album are essentially the same process – it’s PR at the core. What kind of advice can you offer to musicians that are looking to attract the attention of bloggers or the “linkerati”?
I think it is hard to get attention directly – especially in a field as crowded as music. I would read up on cumulative advantage to further appreciate how winners are picked in music. But I don’t think you can take random people and turn them into fans. The key is to turn your fans into super-fans and get them to share you with their friends. And hopefully they become fans who recommend their friends to you. Many of the people who start out as your fans just accidentally stumble into you at a festival or something and then they talk about you and spread your energy…after
Try viral marketing ideas, reach out to your fans, make sure you put some of your music online and make it easy to share. Rather than selling CDs at festivals consider giving away 2 to everybody willing to take them. Try to create 1,000 true fans.
So enough marketing talk, let’s get personal. Being a web guy, you’re probably on the same level as me as far as using the web to discover new things (like music) outside of traditional media influence. Can you discuss how you use the web to find new acts (if you do at all), how you consume it (P2P, iTunes, etc.)? Do you use social sharing or tagging to hear something new? Is their any new bands that you have discovered using the web alone?
I am still using iTunes. Most of my favorite musicians have been picks made by my old roommate (his best pick ever was unpoc.com/ ), and my wife is starting to influence me a lot with music stuff. I honestly have been doing so much work that I have not hunted much for music online, but I occasionally do like using sites like Pandora, and to a lesser extent Musicovery. I went to a lot of festivals and always find a few cool new bands on their music samples that they stream online.
A huge thanks to Aaron Wall for taking the time to share some insights. Don’t forget to check out SeoBook.com if you haven’t already done so, and be sure to subscribe to his RSS feed!
