When it comes to being a successful musician, at least some content marketing is essential, and while much of this comes with a hefty price tag, starting a blog can be done for almost no money, and provides a lot of scope for marketing opportunities.
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Guest post by Joan Selby
You may be a great musician, but are you a marketing expert? State-of-the-art marketing is what stands behind all those stars we admire. Maybe you can’t afford a manager and an entire marketing team right now, but you can afford some content marketing. Blogging, in particular, is free. It might require a minimal investment in design and content development, but that will be money worth spending.
You don’t even have to be a musician to have a great music blog. Do you love music? Then you can be a critic and influencer who supports rising musicians. How cool is that?
So how do you start your own music blog and make it successful? That’s what we’re here for today. We’ll offer practical tips you can follow.
Start By Analyzing
What exactly are you trying to develop here? You’ll know if you first take a look at some of the most successful music blogs, regardless of their genre.
Here are few suggestions for blogs you can explore:
- HipHopDX – This blog provides news and reviews for hip-hop music. The content is fun, and it’s extremely focused on a specific target audience. In addition to blog posts, the website also features a playlist. See? We already learned a lot – you can focus on providing news and suggesting tracks for your audience. If you’re a musician, you can throw some of your work into that mix.
- Idolator – Simplicity, clarity, and new content on a daily basis. Maybe this is not the most impressive music blog out there, but it reached popularity thanks to those factors.
- Popjustice – This is one of the most popular pop music blogs. If you go through the content, you’ll notice that it’s highly relevant to the tastes of people who like this type of music.
- A & R Factory – This blog promotes new artists. The reviews are great, and you can easily see that the writers know what they are talking about.
Choose Your Niche and Set Your Goals
If you take a look at all blogs we suggested above, you’ll notice that each of them is focused on a specific genre. Let’s be honest: you can’t be an expert in all genres of music. You have your own preference, and that’s what you should focus on.
The content you develop must be relevant to the audience that prefers this genre. It should educate them, share news, and provide reviews on artists and tracks. Those are the main goals a music blog has. However, you’ll have to get into specifics when setting the goals for your own blog. What will its focus be?
Although you’ll find several other blogs that focus on the same genre, you can still rise to fame. You have to develop unique content for that purpose. Remember: you must not copy other blogs.
Polish Out Your Writing
This is the most important part. If you intend to develop a successful blog, you have to improve your writing skills. You can do that with a lot of practice. Here are few tools to help with that:
- Ideaflip – a tool that helps you brainstorm and get great ideas for upcoming posts;
- Superior Papers – a platform where you can hire writers and editors to help with the content development;
- WhiteSmoke – proofreading software that will not only help you fix simple spelling mistakes, but will also focus on grammar, style, and word choice;
- FocusWriter – a distraction-free writing environment that keeps you safe from wasting time on social media;
- Readable.io – a tool that helps you check and improve the readability of your content.
Develop a Posting Schedule
Consistency is crucial! If you don’t share posts on regular basis, your audience will simply forget about you. You can use a simple tool like Google Calendar to plan the release dates of your posts, as well as their development. If, for example, you plan to share a post twice per week, you’ll plan what those posts will be about, and you’ll arrange your schedule in a way that allows you to complete them.
Here are few ideas that help you fill that calendar in:
- Interviews with musicians
- Interviews with industry professionals
- News from your genre
- Fun facts about popular musicians
- Opinion pieces and reviews
- Prompts that trigger your audience to discussions
Did you get all inspired? The best part is that you can start a blog for free and start sharing your content with the world. When you gain a solid base of the audience (you’ll need tons of social media promotion for that purpose), you may invest in the design and content development, so you’ll elevate your project to the next level.
Joan Selby is a creative writer interested in digital marketing and tech. In her free time, Joan enjoys playing the guitar and songwriting. Drop her a line on Facebook or Twitter.