How To Start A Top Music Blog Fans Will Stay Interactive With
Your online presence is all important when it comes to progressing in your music career. It's the first place most fans go when they want to hear more of your material, or just find out about you.
If you've followed this guide on how to make a music site, you'll have a good place to showcase all your material. Furthermore, you may have already added your own blog to that website.
A blog is a part of your website where new information is displayed from top to bottom. At the time of writing this, the Music Industry How To homepage is in the form of a blog. This blog format makes it easy for your readers and fans to see all the latest news etc that's going on with you.
That said, it's way too easy to make your blog boring and not read worthy. So I've written up three ways in which you can make yours worth interacting with and checking out regularly. If you're ready to start a music blog, let's move forward.
But first, if it's your aim to do music professionally, you'll want to check out our free ebook while it's still available:
Free eBook: Discover how real independent musicians like you are making $4,077 - $22,573+ monthly via Youtube, let me know where to send the details:
Contents
Make Your Music Blog Attractive And Easy To Use
First things first, it's important you have a good looking site on your hands. If your blog isn’t very attractive, your readers aren't going to want to stay on there for longer then they have to. If it means finding out what you've been up to, fans of your music may be able to largely ignore your blog's design. That said, they shouldn't have to.
It's not hard to have your blog looking good. There are plenty of different themes you can use to instantly make your site look attractive. At the time of writing this, I'm personally using the Eleven40 Pro theme from StudioPress for this site. I say at the time or writing this, as I enjoy changing up my design every now and then. It's easy to do, and it makes a better experience for my readers as technology and design gets better.
You can find a nice look for your blog via Themes Forest if you need a new and attractive one. Those are music based themes, but you can change up the search term once on the site to match whatever you want.
As well as making your site attractive to look at, you want to make it easy to navigate. You could have the best looking blog in the world, but if it's hard for your fans to find what they're looking for, it's not going to count for much; people will get frustrated and leave your blog! So be sure to ask fans for feedback where needed, and get people to test your design for you. See if there was anything they wasn't able to achieve.
Stick To A Posting Schedule
Now that your blog is up and running and looking nice, the next way to encourage regular readers is to stick to a regular posting schedule.
You'll ideally want to post at least a set amount of times a week, as well as on set days. This makes it easy for fans to know when to visit your site, as they'll know you'll have new content up for them to consume. This could be blogs about your new music, how studio sessions went, meetings with fans and the like.
Now, when you're a musician, it's not always easy to stick to a set schedule. You may get some good news on a day where you're not scheduled to post a blog, but want to share it anyway. That's fine. Or you may spontaneously want to post a clip of a new songs you've just recorded. That's also fine.
That said, you should aim to also post at least one new scheduled update a week consistently. Maybe on a Monday. Or two posts; one on Monday, the other on Thursday. It's up to you. Have a look at these blog topics for ideas on what to post.
If you ever slack with this schedule, pick it up as soon as you can. Run things professionally, and people will start to see you that way.
Post Content That's Relevant To Your Target Audience
If you want your blog to be worthy of repeat visits from your fanbase, it's important that you give them what they're after. My guess if you're reading this, is you're either:
- A musicians who wants to use a blog to regularly and easily update their audience, or
- Anyone else who works in the music industry who wants to do the same.
With that in mind, most likely there's no point sharing with your audience the latest gardening techniques you've picked up. It probably won't be the right audience for you to share that knowledge with; they're there for your core product.
If you're a musician, the core product is you, your music, and your lifestyle. If you just so happen to sing or rap about making a good garden, only then might your audience also be interested in your gardening knowledge. If not, steer clear.
If you're starting or have a blog for say your music video channel, give your fans music videos and anything which would appeal to your target audience.
I've previously written about content ideas for your music blog in my course, so check that out.
Now, as well as sharing relevant content on your blog, if you want to expand and further differentiate yourself from the competition, you could also blog on other things which largely go hand in hand with your target audience's wants and needs. So as mentioned above, if all your fans are also into gardening, it could be acceptable to post gardening related content. Or if your fans are into fashion, you may also blog about what you like wearing etc. In this case you could also include affiliate links to these items of clothes and potentially make some additional money from your blog.
I'll be writing a guide on effectively using affiliate links for musicians soon, but for now you can read some more about this in this guide.
Remember though, if it isn't the majority of your fanbase who are into these additional things, you could drive away a lot of your audience by posting outside of your core area (your music). Furthermore, you could be limiting your brand and future target audience by crossing these types of blog content. That said, it does work for some, so it's up to you.
Conclusion
If you want to start a top music blog, be sure to take on board the above pointers. Anyone can start a blog, but you need to be sure it's one that people want to read. If it's not, it won't get very far.
Do you have any additional tips on starting a top music blog? If so, let us know below.
P.S. Remember though, none of what you've learned will matter if you don't know how to get your music out there and earn from it. Want to learn how to do that? Then get our free ‘5 Steps To Profitable Youtube Music Career' ebook emailed directly to you!
An alternative to using a pre-designed theme is to learn to program in php, and html – learn css also – and customise your own theme. You don’t have to start completely from scratch – particularly if you’re using WordPress. A lot of if not most WordPress themes are open-source; which means you can customise an existing theme for your own use. – Make it look totally different from the original and hack it up to suit your needs; to perform functions that you want it to do too. It is in most cases perfectly legal, and makes your design totally unique. (I’ve done that on my blog with a theme that used to be the original TwentyTen theme from the WordPress Team. – I’ve finally got it looking rather good too, after trying many ideas.)
As far as sticking to a schedule with regards to posting is concerned; I’d say yes – ‘good idea if you have something worthwhile to post about at the time. If you haven’t then don’t even go there – because your fans will soon get bored reading about something of nothing. Remember the internet is constantly evolving and still growing. Content is king, and if your posts lacks solid content there are a billion and one other places your readers can go to find better quality material. If there’s nothing to say then don’t be the one who says it. – ‘Better to miss a post than to post crap that turns your audience away.
Very true on both points Sharron. Agreed you shouldn’t just post for the sake of it, only posting where there is something useful to say is a good idea.
Learning code is an option for musicians, but it won’t be for everyone. While knowing a bit of HTML has been useful for me personally, the amount of time spent learning it won’t be worth the rewards for everyone, especially of making music is their main aim. Sometimes it’s better to pay someone to make any changes you need. Or stick to a good WordPress theme which works well out the box. But everyone has their own path. Thanks for sharing your views on music blog making. 🙂