D2FU Part Four:  Improving Your Online Presence

A successful online presence takes a lot of planning, a lot of strategy, and a decent amount of time.  But if you do it right, the benefits to your career are huge.  Here are some basic D2F-U (Direct to Fan University) ideas to keep in mind:

Make Your Online Presence Manageable

You should provide the minimal amount of content that needs constant updating, and always lead traffic back to your website where the “official” source of information is located.  The less places and items you need to update, the easier you’ll find keeping things current.   At every turn, don’t take on more than you can properly maintain.  It doesn’t help to have 10 lackluster profiles all over the place, but 2 or 3 that’re quality could make a big difference.  Keep lesser profiles simple, and refer traffic to the more impressive sites.

What Do You Put Where?

Ask yourself – how are people finding me, and what content are they looking for?  For example, if you know that bookers and promoters are the primary visitors to your MySpace page, make sure the content is relevant to them (gig calendar, stage plot, etc.), and provide the contact information to book you.

Keep a List of Logins and Passwords!

Everybody forgets something sometime.  GoogleDocs make it very easy to keep an updated list of where your profiles/pages are and how to update them.  Share the doc with everyone on your team, and nobody will be asking for that password you’ve already forgotten.

Measure and React

Now that you’ve taken the time to create websites and profile pages, you need to know if they’re working for you.  Figure out what the key metric is, and check to see how you’re doing.  If you’re tracking number of fans on Facebook, see if those numbers are growing – and if not, what’re you going to do differently?  GoogleAnalytics is a fantastic tool for measuring all aspects of website traffic and visitors, and it’s free.  It will become your best friend.  Running different promotional campaigns on different channels to see which resonates is very useful.  For example, we’ve found that a free track given away on Facebook is 10x more effective in creating a sale than one given away on MySpace.  Be sure to measure the effectiveness of a promotion on different sites – and act/react accordingly.

Create Work For Your Fans – Not For You!

Instead of blogging every minute and answering every question, elicit fans to comment on a particular song, and let them read each other’s comments instead of asking you questions.  Give away a free track and encourage fans to share it – let them do the work instead of you needing to be involved in every single transaction.

Place a Facebook Store Link Wherever You Can

As a sample strategy, Facebook is a great platform for fan engagement.  So driving traffic to one centralized location can be an effective way to build your fanbase.  Anytime someone purchases your music or redeems a free track, you’ll receive their contact info.  That info is priceless to you as your career grows.

But if they make that purchase on your Facebook store, you’ll also gain them as a “friend” where you can engage with them and build a direct-to-fan relationship.  As an example, Chase Coy was discovered by a LOT of fans on MySpace, but he directed them to his Facebook store where they could purchase and engage with him.

You should always be thinking about where fans discover you, but also where you want them to go and why.  Which platform offers you the best options for sales/engagement/discovery?  The answer is different for everyone, but it’s all part of developing an effective online presence.