Last week we announced a cool partnership with Bandzoogle to help emerging artists build a strong website and online presence without having to code anything or hire a designer. This partnership makes it easy for artists to create their own unique web presence by transferring their EPK content: with the transfer, members can have a functional site ready in, literally, 30 seconds! Here's what David Dufresne, CEO of Bandzoogle, has to say about the partnership, while offering some helpful tips about using your official website. (And if you want, you can read more about what Yours Truly thinks about the partnership over on the Bandzoogle Blog!)
Why have you decided to partner with Sonicbids?
The first obvious reason is that Sonicbids has 300,000+ independent bands and artists as members. Those folks are serious enough about their music to use the platform to build an EPK and to connect with gigs and opportunities. That is exactly the type of artist that can benefit from building a full pro website quickly and affordably on Bandzoogle.
The second reason is that, after meeting and talking to some key Sonicbids team members (Panos, Tess, Jeff, Josh... just to name a few), we realized that they are awesome people, as obsessed as we are with music and with building web tools for musicians. It was a natural fit to discuss how we could work together.
How important do you think an artist's website is for their online strategy?
Chris Vinson, Bandzoogle's founder, loves to describe the ideal online presence as a "hub and spokes" strategy. The spokes are your Facebook profile, Twitter feed, Youtube page, Sonicbids EPK, e-mail newsletter, etc. You use those channels to engage with fans, promoters, media, etc. and keep a constant stream of information, content and both-ways communication going. But as soon as you get the chance, you bring your fans back to your hub; your own website. Your full ".com" website is your home on the Web and where:
- You completely control the design and the narrative, and where your fans can sample your music in the right context.
- You can convince fans to sign-up for your mailing list. Capturing that e-mail is 10x more valuable in the long term than having a new "friend" or "follower".
- You can sell your music, merch, etc. directly to your fans, at no commission (on Bandzoogle) or very little commission.
So I am convinced that your website is the most important part of your online strategy. Too many bands still use their old Myspace profile as their main contact address, or they use a blogging format or social media profile, where it's hard for the fan to navigate to the information he or she is looking for and where it's often impossible to buy the music.
How does an effective online strategy help a band offline specifically how can it help bands get gigs?
Top of my head:
- A full, well designed website makes you appear motivated and professional.
- Your website, in conjunction with your EPK, makes it easy for promoters, journalists and bloggers to find your bio, all the info they need, high resolution pictures, etc.
- By looking at the analytics on your site, you can see where your traffic comes from, so you'll know if you have groups of fans in certain cities for example, and then focus in getting gigs there. You can also see if certain blogs, or websites send you more traffic. It could be because you got nice reviews there, and that is always helpful in trying to impress promoters and connect with potential fans.
- By using your site to build your mailing list you can send regular newsletters announcing when you have new material, when you're leaving on tour, etc. You can also geo-target your e-mail blasts to promote specific gigs, and ask your fans to help promote them. Bringing lots of fans and supporters to gigs is the best way to get offered more gigs.
- You can have a blog on your website to keep a tour diary, post pictures, update your social networks, etc. This will delight fans, but also impress promoters and venues.
- By selling your music and merch on your site, you make your merch table "permanent", for the fan that couldn't make it to the gig, or didn't have cash at the time, etc.
What are the primary benefits for an artist having an account with Bandzoogle and the major differences between the 3 levels?
By using Bandzoogle you have full control over the design and content of your site, without having to code anything, or hire an expensive designer. There are some free site building platforms out there, but none have all the music-specific features all integrated like Bandzoogle does, and when you estimate all the time spent on those platforms, plus hosting, plus domain name registration, plus signing up for different widgets to manage your mailing list, sell you music, etc. you realize that having it all-in-one on Bandzoogle is truly a great value.
The Lite plan is super basic... fine for someone that is just getting started, doesn't have an album out yet, for example, if you're on a very tight budget, or if you just want to test out Bandzoogle over a certain period of time. The Standard plan works for the majority of bands, where you have generous storage space and can grow your mailing list up to 1,000 members. The Pro plan is for the ambitious or successful, (or, hopefully, both). It gives you pretty much unlimited flexibility, deeper analytics, and you can use our download codes infrastructure. And at that price point that kind of value is hard to find elsewhere.
What are some of the biggest mistakes bands make when building and maintaining a website?
- They use a designer and can't update the site themselves. Probably the most common mistake.
- They design an "artsy" website, vs. a simple website that works.
- They don't update it often.
- They build it using Flash, or a Flash based platform, which means it won't work for people on iPhones and iPads, it's often slow to load for users and it doesn't play well with the search engines.
- They design it on a blogging platform, which means some good content all gets pushed down by the newest "posts" and it becomes a nightmare to browse. I always say "your website should have a blog, but your website should NOT be a blog".
- They make it all about "the music" and not enough about the band, about the artist and the vision behind the music.
- We often post website reviews on our blog, a good way to learn about some website best practices. See an example here.
In what ways is Bandzoogle looking to improve in the future?
The main thing we are doing now is rebuilding our code base (from ColdFusion to Ruby on Rails, for the geeks out there...) to make it more flexible and easier for to upgrade. After that we have a good roadmap of new features and updates we want to work on, including more lay-out options, posting tracks to Facebook, more mailing list tools, etc.
Our research and development department is actually our community of 10,000+ members, so we listen to them and we decide what to prioritize based on what they request the most often.
Sonicbids artist members can login to their account and signup for Bandzoogle easily via the App section of their account. Questions? Contact the Sonicbids Community Team at http://sonicbids.com/support
