Guest Posting For Musicians – A Marketing Strategy To Get In Front Of Targeted Music Fans

Guest posting, one of the top online marketing strategies that many musicians still haven't caught on to. If you make music, you should be guest posting. It's a free way to get yourself out there among your target audience.

Today I'm going to look at what guest posting is, what it involves, why you should be doing it and most importantly how to get started. You should be using this music marketing strategy at least twice a month, so be sure to learn how asap.

What Is Guest Posting?

Guest posting is another form of marketing, one that's closely related to content marketing. Instead of posting all your content on your own website however, when you guest post, you post it on someone else's. Hence you're content is a guest of that other site.

It's the process of adding your content on someone else's platform. Traditionally this is on people's websites, so in this guide we'll focus on that platform.

As a musician, the content you post could be your songs, but will more likely be blogs about your experiences and things related to you, exclusive music videos, your view on other things in your genre, and anything else readers of that other site will find interesting or useful. I'll expand more on this later.

You should aim to guest post on established websites and blogs in your genre, and to a lesser extent on other musician’s websites. As long as your target audience reads that site, it could be worth trying to get a guest post on.

How Can Guest Posting On Other Music Sites Help You?

So why would you want to guest post? Wouldn't it be better to keep all your songs, videos and writing on your own website? Well, not really.

While it's important you fill your site with content and make it the best place to go for information about you, without proper promotion, that can only get you so far. It's great for keeping existing fans entertained and to get more of your pages potentially ranked in search engines, but it's not the best thing for drawing in new potential fans.

Guest posting is a way to reach fans of your music genre and get your music in front of them. If they like what you do, some of them will then go on to become fans.

As well as this, there are two other benefits:

1. You'll establish yourself as a influential part of the scene. If you're out there posting on various relevant sites, people are going to start looking to you as someone to listen to and who's authoritative in your area. This will of course mean more exposure and having people more willing to listen to what you have to say.
2. Guest posting is good for SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. As I've covered before, this is the process of getting more pages on your website ranked for good search terms in Google. The more you're highly ranked for terms people search for, the more visitors you'll get to your website. Having other websites relevant to yours linking to you is a good way to increase your rankings in search engines. And you'll be linking back to your site in your guest post.

Those are three reasons you should be incorporating guest posting into your music marketing plan. The key take aways should be it increases the authority you have in your genre, and it gets you in front of potential new fans. Both are a good thing.

Why Would Music Websites And Other Musicians Let You Post On Their Site?

So guest posting for musicians is all about getting either your music, your opinions, or something related to your genre on someone else's website. But why would anyone let you post on their site?

Well let me start by saying that not all places you'll want to guest post on will let you do that. Some people only like to publish content they've made on their website. Others may accept guest posts, but might not want to post what you have to offer. So it's not a fool proof strategy where you tell someone you want to post on their platform and they'll let you.

That said, there are a number of sites which will be happy for you to do this. Here's why:

They'll Get Free Content On Their Website

Having regular updates for your readers is important if you want your site to have regular visitors. That said, content creation can be time consuming, and not everyone has as much time as they need for this.

If then you come along ready to provide the website with content it's reader base will like, this is an attractive offer to the owner. As long as they admit they need help with their content and you're providing something useful or entertaining, chances are they'll let you guest post.

P.S. Remember though, not all website publishers are in this position. Some don't realize they need help with content or aren't ready to give up full control. Others simply don't need additional help.

It Could Lead To Them Getting More Traffic Too

While guest posting can get you more traffic and exposure, the same can happen to the platform you guest post on. Not only will they have more content to be found, but if you also promote your guest post to your audience, the place you're posting on will get themselves out there more.

If you have an existing fanbase and you want to approach someone for a guest post, you should let them know you'll share it with your audience too. This can be a strong incentive to securing the partnership.

What Should You Guest Post About?

Now you know what guest posting is and why you should do it, next let's look at what you should be guest posting about. I briefly touched on it above, but here's some more details.

First of all, whatever content you provide has to be valuable. Don't expect to just ask websites if they want to post one of the songs in your back catalog, as chances are they won't. After all, they have access to lots of songs from all different artists whenever they want. What you're offering won't be valuable enough to them unless you've got a big name and are offering them an exclusive.

Types of content that do work include:

1. An exclusive first look at your good quality new video. They'll like to show their readers they can get exclusives.
2. A written blog with you talking about something (or someone) in your industry.
3. If writing isn't your thing, you could always do a video blog instead.
4. A competition with prizes supplied by you. Whether that's something you made or bought.
5. A giveaway of your music or merch, again exclusive to the readers of the site it's going on.
6. And the like.

As long as you have something to talk about which is valuable to the site and it's readers, share it. Just be sure you're not being self centered as it'll show and you won't get guest posts. As long as you can leave a link to your website asking people to check you out after, that's enough.

How To Find Places To Guest Post

Lastly, how do you find places to guest post? Well hopefully you already know the popular sites in your genre. If not, go ahead and find out. You should target these places for your content as you know your audience definitely hangs out here.

Email people who run the site and ask them if they want a free contributor. A lot of people know the term ‘guest posting' now, so tell them you're willing to do a guest post.

Connect with them on social sites so they're more familiar with who you are, and keep out reaching until you get your first couple of slots. From there you can use these achievements as leverage to get you some more.

Conclusion

Guest posting is a good marketing strategy for you to add to your collection. You should be doing at least two guest posts a month, more if you find places which sends good traffic and can up-scale.