Logos, colors, and uniform designs

After you have your band’s logo and font, you get to choose your colors. Using a consistent color scheme for your website as well as every social media page you have gives you the most uniform impression and promotes fan recognition.

Recognition is everything. The similarity in look, design, and feel on your website and everywhere else you have your band name font, logo, colors and information allows for people to recognize you that much more and that much faster.

Remember, many people need to see and hear about you before they click through and spend the time looking into you. The more uniform your online appearance, the better the chance that potential new fans will become band supporters in no time.

Aligning primary images across all sites

As your audience grows and gets to know and recognize you, be sure to have the same images running across all your online sites. If you choose a primary band picture or artist picture, make it the avatar across every site.

An avatar is the photo you see next to each of your online posts. From Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIn to YouTube, that little photo is a key part of your marketing. It shows up for every post and comment you make. Better yet, it shows up when you make comments or posts on pages other than yours. Keep your avatar uniform across all social media sites; and when you change the avatar on one site be sure to change them all to stay consistent.

This consistency allows for a better online familiarity. This also enables people to feel that much more confident when they click through to another page to download a song, buy a product, or connect with you elsewhere. When they recognize that image, it reinforces to the visitor that they’re in the right place.

Showcasing your font and color the same way

Keep that font the same for every graphic and page. Just as you share the logo and the color scheme across all sites, make sure that your font stays exactly the same, too. Think of fonts and typesets like Coca Cola. You recognize that familiar cursive even from a distance. Same goes for McDonald’s, Subway, Ford, Starbucks, and hundreds of others that can have the same effect for you online.

Think about the last time you were driving down a dark highway looking for a sub sandwich and you saw a sign for Subway far off in the distance. You knew that there was a Subway shop there before you could even make out the words. That’s the effectiveness of a uniform font and color scheme.

Approaching header graphics

On many social media sites you have the option to upload a header graphic. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube are four of the primary sites where headers are used. They also have different requirements for what can be uploaded, the type of content allowed on those headers, and the sizes that best fit each page.

Visit each social media website and search on the size requirements for the headers. Then when you or your graphic designer create your website, create the headers for Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Twitter at the same time. Keep the same idea, theme, and color of your website header, but adjust it to each of the required specs so your images don’t look stretched, pulled, or cut off. Here are the size requirements for each:

• Twitter: 1500 x 500 pixels
• Google+: 2120 x 1192 maximum size or 480 x 270 minimum size

• Facebook: 851 x 315 pixels

  When designing for Facebook, your header will be blocked on the lower left side for the Facebook photo, which displays at 160 x 160 pixels.

• YouTube – 2650 x 1440 pixels

  This one is very important to get right. It’s not just about the desktop display on a computer. When you upload the right-sized image for YouTube, it look professional on a tablet, a mobile, and TV display.

Aligning your header graphics with your main website graphic and including your font, logo, tagline, website address, and color scheme helps to connect and draw in that many more people who recognize and want to connect with you.

Promotional graphic download page

You want to be able to get your logo and other promotional materials to your fans as well as to promoters and venue owners as quickly and easily as possible. One way to do this is to add a promotional graphic download page to your website, or have a page that links to a Dropbox account or place where visitors can easily download key images. The following list shows what materials you should freely make available:

• Logo
• Font
• Logo and font
• Logo, font, tagline
• Logo, font, tagline, web address
• Blank booking poster
• Album poster
• Promotional 8 x 10 photo

Have each of these items in a high-quality format for printing as well as a low-quality format for web use. Having versions in JPG, PDF, and Photoshop formats enables easy access to those who may be promoting a show, doing a story on you, or helping to market you.

The easier you make it for others to promote you, the better the marketing you receive.

Using your content in a uniform manner

Just as you keep the consistency with your graphics, the same goes for your content. Different sites allow for different amounts of content but add all you can everywhere you can; just keep it uniform. While Twitter offers a shorter amount of characters in a bio than Facebook does, make sure to add the key information first and then the extras where allowed.

For example, on Twitter, you may only be able to add your tagline and some of your one liner as well as a single website and location. While on your Google+ Profile, you can add a bio as long as you like, location and previous locations, work info, skill sets, influences, bragging rights (yes, that is an option on Google+), other names and as many links as you want to your website, your social media sites, sales sites, and anywhere else.

Fill in every space you can with every piece of information allowed. Don’t leave any stone unturned or any field blank. The more information you have, the more you can optimize. To make it easier, have a template spreadsheet for all your content, so you can copy and paste the information to any site as well as new sites that pop up.

Using your call to action

After you have set up all the graphics, headers and content across all your sites, don’t forget to add the call to action in your posts — that short summary that covers who you are and where people can find more information out about you; that fast summary that starts with your one liner, then your tagline, and then is followed by a few other social media sites and the main site where they can find you. Here is the call to action for Kitty Likes Avocado:

Clawing at the alternative funk genre woven in to a scratching post of rock and blues, Kitty Likes Avocado serves up a smooth pop infused sound with the attitude of a kitten on catnip. Kitty Likes Avocado is Fruity Funk Scratching at the Drapes of Rock and Roll. For more info about Kitty Likes Avocado, their shows, music, merchandise, videos, news and updates, visit:

http://kittylikesavocado.com/

https://facebook.com/kittylikesavocado/

https://instagram.com/kitylikesavocado/

https://twitter.com/kittylikesavoca

Using this as the signature and sign off for a blog on WordPress, for a video on YouTube, for an audio on SoundCloud or a picture on Instagram identifies who delivered the content that came before it and tells the reader, listener, or viewer exactly where to go to get more.

Cross-marketing each social media site

As you sign up for each social media site, market the other sites as you draw everyone back to your primary website or your stores. Think of social media sites like different items on a menu. The more you have, the more chances you get to draw someone into you, your music, and your shows.

Signing up for a lot of different sites doesn’t mean you have to post individually on each one. It is more about spreading your graphics, your message and your content in a consistent and uniform way to more and more places to draw in more and more people.

The more sites you cross-reference with your graphics, your information, and your call to action, the more you are cross-marketing and reaching across that many more markets to come across that many more people. Keep the message, the image, and the look uniform and it will allow you to form a much bigger reach.

Directing people where to go

Think of a map, all its roads and points of interest. Your website becomes the same type of legend for everywhere you are online. Similar to a map, your website is a map to lead people to social media sites, video sites, store pages, and other links about you. And like a well-organized and helpful map, your website should present the basic details and directions for where your fans can go to find out more about you as well as have the right information for industry professionals, reviewers, and booking agents.

The website also enables people to come back from one social media site and be able to find all the other social media sites you are on. This way they can choose where they prefer to connect with you.

Whereas you might think Facebook is where you want everyone to be, a fan that primarily uses Tumblr could click through on a Facebook post they came across to your website and find your Tumblr link clearly accessible and visible on the home page of your website, which they could then choose to click on and stay connected with you there by subscribing to updates or following you.

Don’t force fans to follow you on one specific site. Give them the opportunity and the option to connect where they want.

Populating your website

There are books and more books about website layout and requirements with a great deal of different ideas and options. In fact, many people make their living at designing and populating websites. To get started, though, a good rule of thumb is to make sure the fundamentals are in place. This enables the easiest website to build and delivers the best results. The following lists the basics that are required for an easy-to-use website. (To learn how to create an efficient and eye-catching website, check out Building Websites All-in-One For Dummies, by David Karlins and Doug Sahlin [John Wiley and Sons, Inc.])

Home	Equipment/ endorsement links
Bio	Promotional/ booking info/downloads
Pictures	Copyright notice
Videos	Privacy policy
Music	Contact information
Blog	Email list signup
Schedule	Subscribe/unsubscribe
Products	Store links
Reviews and testimonials	Social media

Many artists are moving to the scrolling one-page format, as you can see at http://kittylikesavocado.com/. This is where the main information is placed on one scrolling page with links to other subsidiary pages while still sharing the core information. This format also looks clean on mobile phones and tablet devices.

Many of these requirements are able to come from your social media pages and updated automatically in to your website. For example, the YouTube plug-in called TubePress (if you’re using WordPress for your website … and you should as it gives you the easiest options to update, edit, and alter your website) automatically updates your video page on your website with the videos you post on YouTube. More about WordPress plugins can be found in WordPress Web Design For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson (John Wiley and Sons, Inc.).

The same plug-ins pull pictures from Instagram, audio samples from SoundCloud, and blogs from your blogging page. This gives you the ability to consistently update your website without needing to even visit your site. Still, it’s important to create new content on a weekly basis that’s put directly on your website to help with your SEO.

The top of your website or the first page (called a home page) that shows up on computers or mobile devices should immediately give everyone a strong sense of who you are. Your logo, font, color scheme, and tagline should be present.

Have links visible and immediately available to direct visitors to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram for social media. Also provide clear tabs for people to get to your music, bio, and your contact info.

Attention spans are short these days. By presenting your core elements you’re able to engage people and make them stay longer to learn and hear more of you.

Don’t make people sign up to see your website or force them to like a page to enable them to get more information. Many up-and-coming artists follow this method from more established artists, and it turns people away. You can have exclusive content that people have to sign up for, but don’t make your first appearance be met with forcing a website visitor to sign up for an email list or like a page before they get a chance to decide if they like you.

Letting professionals do it right

Although you can easily build a free website, I recommend using a professional web designer to design your site the right way. A well-designed site coupled with a content management system ends up saving you thousands along with giving you the ability to change the site yourself without having to pay someone every time your content needs to be updated. Although WordPress is a free blog and website option, have a professional designer create a WordPress site so that you have lots of options for visitors.

Hiring the right web designer to layout your website and then give you instructions to update each section is a much better option than building a site on Wix or some other free website platforms. It’s worth the investment, and the results are so much better. You don’t need to spend tens of thousands on a website, but you may find yourself in a range of a few thousand.

Subscribing to email lists more from your website

Email lists and enabling someone to subscribe to your website allows people to get the updates they want. Keep in mind that many of these people already are connected with you on social media sites, so as you might recap and share some previous social media posts as part of your email to fans, make sure to deliver something exclusive to this list that can be seen only if they’re part of the list.

Your content cheat sheet

All your branding information placed in a simple content sheet allows you to copy and paste everything you need onto every new site you have. As you make changes, that sheet allows you to know where you need to update too.

In this sheet have the following elements listed out in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet to allow you to make sure that every keyword, phrase, sentence, and paragraph is being used the same way across all pages. You don’t need to rewrite all your information over and over. Work from the sheet that includes the elements shown in Figure 10-1.

This long list makes your life easier. It also makes it easier for those who help market and promote you. Having these all in one place as well as knowing what links go where showcases a higher level of professionalism.

Linking your promotionals with Dropbox

Whether you have your template form and all the graphic images hosted on your website or not, also add them to your Dropbox. Dropbox is a file hosting service that has cloud storage and file synchronization. It enables you to store your content list as well as all the items shown in Figure 10-1 and share them as links.

Dropbox can be set up where anyone can access your files, you can set time limits for access, and you can even set up passwords for people to access only certain links. Visit www.dropbox.com and sign up for 5GB for free; larger accounts are available for nominal costs.

Sending links to people for download is faster and easier than sending files. Don’t choke other people’s emails with large attachments; simply send a link and description of the link. This way, you save megabytes and bring up your level of professionalism.

Put that photo in Dropbox and name it correctly: KittyLikesAvocado8x10Promo.JPG

Add it to Dropbox, which gives it an address like this one:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uuga7o64m0a3z9/KittyLikesAvocado8x10Promo.JPG

Ask your webmaster to set up a redirect so you can give it a vanity name such as: http://kittylikesavocado.com/8x10promo/

This enables you to send a simple link in an email that looks like this:

Kitty Likes Avocado 8x10 Band Promo Photo – For Download at Dropbox at http://kittylikesavocado.com/8x10promo/

You now have a streamlined and professional look. And you have clear links as well as a description of what they contain.

You can easily access and share links directly from Dropbox on your phone or have the links to all the different files in Dropbox saved in your content cheat sheet to easily remember them. Think of it like an online promotional kit that is at your fingertips at all times.

With the cheat sheet, the links to all your key materials, graphics, all information for and from your website and social media pages are that much more accessible and make it that much easier to update, change, and share.

Links for fans

The links you share with fans online in posts and email newsletters as well as on your website should be clear and descriptive.

“Click here:” is not descriptive. Instead of directing a fan to click on a link, give them a description of the link and where you are sending them.

For example, instead of posting:

Click here for new video - Video Link

post this:

Click this link to see our new video for “Kitty Kitty Bang Bang” on YouTube at https://youtube.com/watch?v=quetdyr1324r3

or with a redirect of a vanity URL:

Click this link to see our new video for “Kitty Kitty Bang Bang” on YouTube at http://kittylikesavocado.com/kittykittybangbangyoutube

In the first example, you tell someone to click for a new video and give them a hyperlink. They don’t know where they’re going, what they’re going to see, or if they can tell if they land on the right page or not. Some viruses can automatically affect links on someone’s computer and send them to spam or worse … a virus.

In the second example, you cover all the issues. Your readers know what the video is titled — Kitty Kitty Bang Bang — and they know where it’s hosted — on YouTube. They can see the link clearly listed and hyperlinked to know that they are heading to the right place.

In the third example, the vanity URL makes things look a little nicer and cleaner. That redirect sends them to YouTube and just like the second example, it’s clear where they’re going.

This also means if something weird pops up on their screen, they know they’re in the wrong place.

Always look at the lower corner of your screen when clicking on a hyperlink, vanity link, — actually on any link, now that I think of it. A small address should display and tell you where you’re going. Some links are affiliate links (you learn more about them a little later in this chapter in the “Affiliated links” section), and they either track where the click through is coming from or send you to the exact country’s page for that link like GeoRiot (which I also touch on in the “Country translating links and GeoRiot” later in this chapter).

With any type of link, give people a clear description of what the link is, where you’re sending them, and what they’ll see, hear, read, or watch when they get there. Your clarity builds security and trust with friends and fans alike.

Before you send an email with a link, post an online update with the link, or add the link to a web page, double-check that the link actually goes where you want it to go. It’s easy to accidently mess up a link or copy it wrong. Make sure that link’s directing people in the intended direction.

Affiliate links

Affiliate links lead people to the pages where you want them to go but can also become a small revenue stream as people click on them for you. For example, if someone clicks an affiliate link from a post or one of your web pages and is sent to Amazon, you can make a small affiliate referral percentage from that click-through and purchase if you have an Amazon Affiliate account.

You can also ask fans to help by spreading the word on their pages about your affiliate links, which you can spin to help fund a recording or tour. On the other side of the coin, you can entice fans to set up their own affiliate accounts to help promote you while they take a small percentage for themselves. Both options can help spread the word that much better.

Country translating links and GeoRiot

If you have a link on your website or on a post that sends someone to Amazon or iTunes, you’re actually sending them to one specific country out of the massive worldwide storefronts each has. Amazon has 14 different stores around the world, and iTunes has a whopping 155. The problem lies in if someone in India clicks your Amazon.com link, they end up in the U.S. storefront instead of their own, which means they’re much less likely to be able to listen to (and purchase) your music. This is because links that aren’t globalized provide a poor user experience since fans can’t purchase in a foreign storefront due to language, currency, shipping, and distribution problems. End result, the possible loss of a sale or download.

With GeoRiot (which I recommend everyone to have), your links are automatically globalized and can make your Amazon and iTunes links go directly to the store from which each listener is most likely to purchase. So for a single GeoRiot affiliate link for a download or product, every fan from around the world is able to quickly and effortlessly download or purchase your music. For example, if you go to http://geni.us/fordummies. it takes you directly to “Music Business For Dummies” on Amazon for whatever country you’re in.

On top of all this, GeoRiot also acts as an affiliate link where you can connect an Amazon or iTunes affiliate account and make money from those clicks and purchases.

Any link that goes to Amazon or iTunes should have a GeoRiot link. You can find GeoRiot at http://georiot.com/ and set up your affiliate accounts for Amazon and iTunes through their respective sites.

By setting up affiliate accounts for free on other Amazon sites, aside from the country you are in, you can also see those affiliate percentages come in from around the world. It’s a small amount, but it still creates an additional revenue stream.

As an additional bonus, if someone clicks through your GeoRiot link to Amazon and then ends up buying other items, such as a TV, a couch, or a larger-scale and more-expensive item, you get an affiliate percentage of that, too. Pretty cool!

Your fair sharing of content

Quality over quantity is going to win every time, and it’s the best approach to take. Whereas it’s key to produce regular content on a daily basis, an excess of too many posts every day will come off as spamming and annoying.

If someone who follows you on Twitter isn’t following that many people, and you post 20 times a day, you’re clogging up their feed because they see way too many posts from you.

Just because someone likes you, is friends with you, or is connected with you, doesn’t mean they’re following you. Many social media sites allow for the passive-aggressive un-follow. They are still connected with you as a number, but they don’t see a single thing from you.

Posting for quality connects that much better than posting for quantity. Formatting a post to be effective as a whole, but then working for a number of different sites is the best approach to take. Posting a photo on Instagram that’s shared to Twitter and then added to Facebook as well as Flickr and Tumblr is a great example of sharing content over numerous sites.

Dueling dualities of your posts and engagement

Every post has a three-fold purpose. If you keep that in mind before you post, it enables that much better conversion and engagement with each post you put on social media. Here are the three fundamental pieces and actions:

1. Engage and draw interest from new fans.
2. Maintain interest and engagement with existing fans.
3. Convert new and existing fans to purchases, shares, and promoting to others.

It really is that simple, and unfortunately it’s forgotten all too often. If you’re only building your new audience and ignoring the engagement with your current audience, you end up losing them. It becomes a vicious circle.

Pushing to connect only with more fans and new fans leaves the existing or older fans out of the loop and feeling as though you’re only selling and marketing to reach others online. No fan wants to feel like they’re forgotten.

Engaging directly with each fan

Although it’s a challenge to connect with each and every single fan online, your sense of engagement can make a fan feel like you’re talking directly to them. This is a powerful tool for your social media toolbox and why each post should be delivered in a way that makes the reader feel like it’s connecting with both the existing and new fans simultaneously.

You do this by creating content that entices everyone and then ends with the call to action or directing where you want them to go to purchase music, merchandise, or share other links.

Posting content versus posting the sell

The content comes first and then the sell comes next in order to engage and maintain new and existing fans both. For example, if Kitty Likes Avocado posts on Facebook for people to go to iTunes to download an album that’s been out for more than a year with a link to the iTunes store and nothing else, that’s just a flat sell. It also falls flat with people who have been connected with the band for months and months. These folks have already either purchased the recording, or they haven’t purchased it yet, but the incessant push comes off as redundant and spammy.

Imagine that you post about a new album some friends just released. You give the link and ask your fans to check out the new music and leave a short review. At the end of your post, you can add your call to action so they can find out more about you … and voilá. You’ve just offered something fun for new and existing fans, that being a new band and a place to go for new fans to find out more about you.

This creates a connection and a desire to engage from fans new and old. It allows someone to not feel spammed or pressured whereas it makes those existing fans search for your band in their feeds because you spend more time with fresh content over continually pushing the old sell.

It’s okay to have certain posts that are just for the sell, too. Just make sure you’re on a 1:9 ratio for that sell. One complete add for an item, download or product, and nine others that start with other content that sends viewers to you for more information on the sell. Content first, sales pitch second. Nine out of ten doctors recommend it!

Automating messages can be trouble

At one point, an automated message was sent when a fan starting following you. This feature had a great conversion rate … for a while, at least.

The bad side is that these autoreplies can come off as impersonal and turn off fans. Be careful if you add an automated message on Twitter. Give it a sense of personalization, but keep it professional and make it something that’s giving and not asking for more. Go with something like “I’m so glad you’re here!” rather than “Thanks for the follow, now go add us on Facebook at this address.” You can see the difference between personal and impersonal, exciting rather than stale.

Also avoid having music start to play as soon as someone arrives at your website. Some might be at work, in a library, in class, or other quiet places, and not only will it be annoying, it can slow the connection and loading time for others. Allow people visiting to choose to play the music instead of forcing it on them.

Other options include adding a message about a free download, or inviting fans to check out a new song sample. You can also add a link to a video — or better yet, to a video that welcomes a fan and gives them an introduction that is not available as a public video.

Once a week, take a look at the people or companies that add you on different social media sites. If you send an automated message to someone that might be able to help you, whether it be through a service, booking, or media opportunity, your automated message might turn them away. Try sending personal messages when you can to acknowledge the individual and/or company that’s connected with you. It can open up that many more doors.

Respecting the fan, not the fan number

Identifying that you just hit a milestone of 500, 5,000, or 50,000 fans is something for you or for industry professionals to know, not your fan base itself. By posting updates about how humbled, excited, or amazed you are to hit a certain number of fans, followers, views, likes, friends and so on, while cool for you, disrespects those who have been with you for a long time.

Maintaining the respect for every single fan from the oldest to the newest is crucial in keeping engagement and conversion strong. Respect your fan base for your fans, not for the number of fans. This is one of the biggest and best practices to implement online and off.

Marketing to fans outside of music

You might not be the biggest soccer fan and couldn’t care less about the World Cup. Football season and the Super Bowl might be too rough for you, or the World Series and baseball is may be too boring for you. Still, these types of sporting events, along with big movies and other pop culture-style happenings, could be important to many of your fans.

You don’t need to become a fan of sports, films, and cultural events, but respect what your fans are into. Adding posts on social media like “the last thing I will do is watch the stupid Super Bowl” could offend a fan who’s a big football fan and turn them off to you.

Instead, try to tie into some of the larger events with a post about a song, a Super Bowl discount you’re offering fans, or something that enables that much more engagement with those who are already engaged with the event.

Desi Serna, the author of Music Theory For Dummies (John Wiley and Sons), offered a Super Bowl discount for his book and added the hashtag #Superbowl. In this instance, Serna showcased respect for those who were into it, grabbed the trending hashtag to potentially be seen by those who may not already be connected with him, and offered a special/discount on his products.

Your effort to practice consideration for others’ interests brings that much more interest to you in a vicarious manner.

Political or religious posting

There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t talk about politics, religion, or sex at the dinner table. While sex in many ways is much more common talk these days both online and off, still be careful when it comes to political and religious postings.

Overly personal and private posting

Engaging with your fans is a wonderful thing. Giving them pieces of you outside of music is also great for a vicarious connection to elements they might have in common with you. Still, leave some of the details private, and let your personal and private life be just that — personal for those you choose to directly share it with and private from those who don’t need that much information.

Keeping your personal life private is for your safety, too. Artists need to be careful when they state where they’re going along with talking about break-ups online or sharing too much romantic information. This can encourage stalkers or people who could become obsessed with you in an unhealthy fashion.

When shooting videos for social media, avoid having your bed or an excess of personal effects in the background. Shoot with flat backgrounds or backgrounds that don’t identify your home, room, or location.

News jacking posts and comment jacking

While it’s good to cross-market and tie into certain mainstream events, draw the line at news jacking. News jacking is where you take a news-related or trending post that has absolutely nothing to do with you and use it in an exploitive manner.

News jacking works two ways. You might share news about the death of a celebrity and then create a post that puts the focus on you or your music. Or someone posts about a topic that has nothing to do with you and your music; a topic-related thread goes on but then you post something about your new song or a concert date.

Think before you post or add your comments to something. There are times where it’s not about you, not about marketing you, and just not the right time to promote. Keep that practice in mind when you’re planning a post or commenting on someone else’s.

Repeating posts over and over and over

With the lack of creativity or the desire to promote a certain song, video, link, or whatever, many musicians post the same exact thing over and over with the mindset that it’ll be seen by more and more people.

In a sense, this breaks all the good-practice posting rules by being redundant and not considering the audience that’s already seen the post.

I was on a Twitter page for a band that added me and saw that their last 20 posts were the exact same post. Same content, same hashtag, same link to their iTunes page to buy a song. This is a perfect example of what you don’t want to do.

If you want to bring continued attention to a purchase link, video, social media site, and so on, reset the headline and revamp the content to reinforce the interest in fans both old and new.

New content can close with an older link, but always keep the headlines new and fresh. Think like a paperboy in one of those old black-and-white movies: “Extra, extra, read all about it!” Capture your fans and followers with fresh content and then draw them to where you want them to go!

Try to keep repetitive posts to a minimum, but when you are repeating, change the headline to maintain the overall interest from the person who has already read it before to the person seeing it for the first time.

Keeping an eye on the walls

If a new fan comes across one of your social media pages for the first time, do they get a sense of you, your music, and your brand or are they inundated with “@soandso thanks for the add” or “@soandso that’s too funny” type messages along with way too many retweets that have nothing to do with you?

Keep those walls clean and remember that this is the first visit and first impression for a new fan. From your Facebook page to your Twitter feed, from the YouTube videos you share to your Google+ page, make sure that people know about you and don’t have to dig in or scroll down too far to get that information.

Keep your walls clean and check them every few days to see how they look from the standpoint of a first-time visiting fan. Make sure you’re presenting yourself in a way that draws people in immediately over making them have to search and scroll for information.

Download Google Chrome, and when opening a page to see how a website, social media page, or blog appears for a first-time viewer or for someone not already connected, click the three horizontal bars in the upper-right corner of a Google Chrome window. The third option down is the New Incognito window. By clicking that and then going to your different social media sites, you can get a good quick look at what an unconnected person sees.

When it comes to eyeing your walls, check the comments now and then. Certain social media sites may not alert you when someone leaves a comment. It’s not a bad thing to leave negative comments up; however, certain comments can border and cross the line of disrespect and good taste and even be very creepy and just wrong. Check in once a week or once a month across your pages to make sure nothing is disrespectful or abusive. Blocking or preventing those posters from posting can ensure it doesn’t occur again, at least not from them.

Another way to handle comments is to simply not enable commenting on certain pages. Some find it easier to deliver content on certain sites without engagement. If you find that too many people are posting disrespectful posts or spamming your walls, blocking all comments can work well to prevent that.

Engaging and tolerating the critics and the haters

Not everyone is going to like your music, and there are a lot of people on social media who are more than happy to share that fact with you. Take it all in stride and don’t worry about trying to defend your music, look, show, or anything else. The more lit up and defensive you get, the more these people keep on keeping on and digging in deeper.

Think of that whole bully concept from grade school, and apply it to social media. Then think about how art is subjective, and you can’t please everyone. No one is right; no one is wrong, It’s all opinion, and everyone has a different one.

The cooler you can be, the better the long-term results. Engage, but play nice, even when they aren’t. This works well for your appearance with other fans, but also with how you’re seen by the industry.

It’s not just good practice tips for your social media for your fans. Labels, managers, investors, and other industry professionals don’t look only at what you post, but also at how you engage, react, and respond to the good and the bad. You’re showcasing your content on social media, but you’re also showcasing your professionalism.

Long-term effect of good posting

Every post should be something that’s helpful for your branding, marketing, and promotion a week, month, or year down the line. When you start with fresh content and then close with your call to action, that content can serve to promote you, even if the call to action or close is announcing a single gig or an event.

Tracking your posting plan and maintaining an editorial calendar for how and when you post helps organize ideas, get ahead of schedule, and plan better. Plan your attack from blogs to photos to reviews to audios and everywhere in between.