social media – Fiona Z – The Musician’s Five Star Assistant

This blog post is interrupted by…[Social Media updates]

I was ready to share with you all about a task I’ve been tackling for my clients especially this year, but two new updates for all of our social media profiles happened this week that I wanted to make sure you knew about!

What were they? Can you guess? Okay, I’ll tell you!

1) Twitter Verification is now open to everyone. That little blue badge let’s followers know that your account of public interest is authentic.

You’ll need to confirm your email, phone, and make sure all the details are there. In addition, you will have to send them 2-5 links, plus a paragraph on why you should be verified.

Click here to get started on the verification process and join the blue badge club! It’s about time, Twitter!

2) Facebook Pages got a new look. Have you noticed? Here’s a shot of my favorite musician’s page with the new layout:

What to notice? First off, the banner image is no longer (unnecessarily) covered up by the profile picture. Second, the call to action button is shining through in Facebook blue and larger on the page. Overall, things have shifted around on the page, giving us something new to get used to.

What this means for you? You can get more creative with your branding on Facebook with the more visible banner. With the larger call to action button, that gives you more leverage to whatever you need to promote – mailing list, album, video, etc. so make sure it’s set to something you want your followers to be aware of.

I for one am enjoying this update and I think everyone else will too.

Social Media - 08/04/2016

6 Ways to Amp Up Your YouTube Channel

YouTube is one of the most important social media platforms you could have as an artist – almost 5 billion videos are watched every single day, so you know you can’t miss out on your fanbase there!

While we all know to update our channel banners, utilize ads for your videos and include YouTube cards to promote your album, there are even more things you can do to make sure your YouTube channel is to the max in its ability to be found by your fans and shared with the world. Let’s get to it!

1) Make a channel trailer (2 min or less):
This can either be a direct call to action for new users to subscribe to your channel or a compilation of videos from your channel. Most artists starting out do the direct call to action asking viewers to subscribe to their channel. Once you make a channel trailer you’ll be able to effectively use the channel ad feature! This can automatically play whenever anyone who hasn’t already subscribed to your channel goes to your channel, and you can also make it eligible for free advertising from YouTube!

Example 1 and Example 2

It can take some time to make a really effective channel trailer, so in the meantime you can apply the “other five”…

2) Channel Keywords – utilize and really think about what keywords you want to describe your channel. Include similar artists and/or interests that you followers are into.

3) Branding Watermark – you can make sure every video has your logo. Get your logo with white and transparent background, and upload it as your watermark. Voila! Every video is branded – don’t worry, it’s subtle!

4) Associated Website – link your website to your channel! If you have a website you’d like to use for cards and annotations, this will also help your legitimacy in search results both on Google and YouTube.

5) Connected Accounts – right under your banner, you may notice small icons to your other accounts like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Make sure all the important links are there, including where people can buy your music!

6) Subscribe to other channels – yes, you must give to receive. Add similar artist’s channels to your featured artist channels. With users spending on average 40 minutes on YouTube, they could use that time to find your channel through a similar artist!

That’s it! See, I told you they were small…yet very important in order to utilize your YouTube channel as best you can, especially if you are heavy on promoting your music there. I hope you use them and be on your way to see your channel grow!

Social Media - 06/21/2016

Are you verified? Easy to follow instructions on how to get verified today.

Happy May! Can you believe it we’re already 5 months into 2015? Just..wow! I hope it has been fruitful and rewarding year for you this far. I never thought I’d be where I am today and I’m truly thankful for every opportunity and move I’ve taken. So here’s to keeping that momentum going!

Being a musician, you are essentially a public figure putting yourself, your story and your name out in the world, including on the internet and social media profiles. Protecting your name should be important to you – no public figure is immune to the possibility of someone posing as them, in person or online. While maybe you don’t feel that this won’t happen to you when you have a handful of followers, there is a reason they are following you and you mean something to them, as they should mean something to you!

A good start to protecting your name and brand is to authenticate and verify your social media profiles online. Some sites have to grace you with verification (Twitter, Instagram) while others you can put in a request (Facebook, Youtube).

Here’s the breakdown on how verification on the top social media outlets work

FACEBOOK
There are a couple steps to verifying your Facebook page.
1) Link your Facebook page or profile to your official website, and vice versa.
2) Complete your About section of your profile accurately. And I mean, complete it. Don’t skip sections that you can fill out.
3) Once those two steps are completed, click here to request a verified badge. You will need a photo of your ID.

TWITTER
Unfortunately, you cannot request verification for your account. It seems that Twitter is the most difficult to be verified on. According to their site, they simply “encourage you to continue using Twitter in a meaningful way, and you may be verified in the future. Please note that follower count is not a factor in determining whether an account meets our criteria for verification.”

What you can do to show your account is authentic is linking your Twitter profile from your official website by including Twitter’s follow button on your website.

YOUTUBE
Good news. Youtube is very easy to verify your account, it takes one simply step. This video tutorial on how to verify your account shows clearly how.

PINTEREST
To get that pretty little checkmark by your website on your Pinterest account, you need to be able to edit your website’s HTML code. There are two ways to verify: with a meta tag or by uploading an HTML file.

Pinterest shares a step-by-step post on how to do this, plus instructions on how to edit your website HTML based on providers, including WordPress, Tumblr, etc. Click here to view and learn how.

INSTAGRAM
Similar to Twitter, right now only some public figures, celebrities and brands have verified badges. It currently is not possible to request a verified badge. Like Twitter, you can let people know your authentic by linking your Instagram profile from your official website (and vise versa) as well as Facebook page and Twitter account.Overall, it’s the best idea to link your social media sites every time to your website, and link your social media accounts directly on your website.

SPOTIFY
For Spotify, you will need 250 followers in order to verify your account, so if you don’t have that, definitely ask friends and fans to start following you. Once you have 250 followers, click here to complete the verification form. They also provide instructions on their site here to help you become verified.

The time you take to authenticate and verify your accounts will be a step in the right direction to protect your name and brand. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Cheers to authenticating!

Blog / Social Media - 05/02/2015

Where Youtube could be headed and where you can go instead (for Indie Musicians)

I hope all is well in your world and that you had a wonderful holiday weekend last week. I had a great weekend with my newly adopted dog and friends, making the trek to Prospect Park and spending the day BBQ’ing. Summer is in high gear and I’m loving it.I’m also going to be taking a trip soon to visit my 90 year old grandfather in Germany! This year for me has been about taking the time to see the ones I love, so I’m very excited to be able to go and see a part of my family that I haven’t seen in about 5 or 6 years.

Okay, back to business and why I’m here writing to you today. If you’ve been following the news, you know that YouTube recently announced they are going to be rolling out a new paid service – said to be called YouTube Music Pass – and be fully launched by the end of the year. For music videos, labels (both major and indie) will have to agree to licensing terms which apparently are not in the independent musician’s favor.

Ever since that announcement and their decision to ultimately force all labels to sign this deal, there’s been a hugh uproar and controversy to what YouTube is doing. Indie labels and the like have spoken against the move, and as a result, YouTube has postponed the move, but as this article says, I’m only wondering: for how long?

Every advancement in the music industry has been an uphill struggle with everyone (the advancement of radio, recordings, mp3s, streaming, all of it!), so I think yes, let’s let YouTube know that it’s unfair and that indie musicians aren’t getting the good end of the deal, but realize that we have alternatives – they may not be run by Google, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to put your music videos out there for discovery or enjoyment.

I’m on the side of the conclusion of this article in Buzzfeed, stating:

So far, the streaming services that have been the most widely adopted and long-lasting are the ones that have treated all copyright owners fairly. And until better data is available on who is streaming what and how often, any service that plays favorites based on an old paradigm is gambling with its own life. For once, the great equalizer here may just be the free market.

“If you look at the services that are really making an impact, they haven’t pushed independents off to the side of the business,” said Caldas. “They’re putting independent artists right next to any other type of artist and letting people listen to and discover them based on the merits. That’s the future.”

While we can’t predict the future, I think it’s important to remember that there are alternative and an audience on other platforms that you can start building right now.

What are your alternatives? View below:

Vimeo
Free to register, can opt for paid account, third largest video site in the world. The Pro account allows you to choose pay per view option.

DailyMotion
Free to register, familiar layout, second largest video site in the world. You can earn money by signing up for their OpenVOD program.

Vube
Completely free to register and upload. Just launched last year and quickly grew to the top 100 visited sites. I see that they are building contests on the site to encourage higher quality contenct and no pay per view options are available (yet). Could be the one to watch.

What are your thoughts? What do you think the best alternative is? I’d love to hear from you, comment below!

Business Tips / Social Media - 07/12/2014

Twitter rolls out a fresh new look.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful week and the start to your weekend is going great. I’m so happy spring is FINALLY here. I’ve had quite a week with events kicking off the spring and summer season, so I’m happy to be enjoying a little down time to balance out the festivities.

To add to the excitement, Twitter has rolled out a whole new look for its users. Part of my position as assistant is to keep my clients updated on social media – if there is a new feature, a new rule, or in this case, an entirely new look. As you know, this happens quite often.

First things first, have you seen it? (You have to – I love it!) Check out the first two featured musicians who switched over: John Legend and Weezer.

Here’s what you need to know to keep your profile updated with Twitter’s new look.

Larger, customizable header photo – You will notice on the two examples that now the header is larger and more prominent, and they got rid of the background image. John Legend uses the space to promote his latest album and makes his profile picture a photo of him, while Weezer, a more established brand, focuses on featuring their band members in the large banner and their infamous logo as their profile photo. Either looks great, but you will want to figure out what you want to feature.

If you have a new album that you really want to push, you might want to have a header featuring the release. Or if you have an upcoming tour, you can highlight the band and dates on your header.

The size of the new template is 1500×500. TWELVESKIP offers great advice on the dimensions as well as a really good template to help you build your best looking header, which includes invisible vs visible space. Check it out here.

Filtered Tweets – Social media platforms are all about featuring only the best of what they have, so it makes sense for Twitter to start filtering, pinning and featuring tweets. Your best tweets (ones that have received more engagement) will appear larger than the others. You can now pin tweets, so if you want to make sure everyone sees your tweet on your new concert date, or what you had for lunch, you can pin it to the top. Lastly, you can choose from different timelines when looking at profiles. Select from these options: Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies.

If you haven’t seen the option to switch over yet, don’t worry, it is coming. You can prep ahead and have your team design a new header photo while you wait!

Are you ready to make the switch? Log into Twitter, then visit this site. Scroll all the way down and click ‘Get it now’. The change will be instant!

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!

Social Media - 05/02/2014

You don’t need social media. (How a Twitter chatroom changed my mind.)

Hey there,

I hope you are having a great day and gearing up for some serious turkey eating this week! I’ll be heading out to New Jersey for a Friendsgiving since home sweet home (Tyler, Texas) is just too far away.

Before the holiday, I wanted to share with you a recent personal discovery of mine that will really boost your Twitter presence and also might shift your mentality on social media, as it definitely did for me.

I recently became a BIG fan of joining in chat rooms, more specifically, Twitter chatrooms. To be honest, I always felt as if I don’t need to be THAT involved in social media; that somehow followers would come to me just because I was posting articles or sharing my tips.

Last week, I participated in my first Twitter chat room, hosted by GoGirlsMusic‘s Madelyn Sklar. And it proved me wrong.

How did it work?

For this particular chat, it lasted one hour on Thursday night, starting at 9PM EST, and you simply tweet with the hashtag #ggchat. If you follow this hashtag, others will be joining in the conversation and BAM, there’s instantly people to connect with!

There is typically a moderator who welcomes everyone (and you can welcome others who ‘join’ the chat) and brings up topics to start conversation – such as common questions or recent trending articles pertaining to the chat rooms purpose. In my case, #ggchat brings musicians and music industry pros together to discuss the latest topics and issues in the industry! This past Thursday we discussed which is better, releasing singles one by one or just waiting to drop the album.

Why Participate?

It’s exciting because you have access to a group of people you might not have been able to connected to otherwise. It’s a friendly environment to say “Hello” and an open invitation to network! The pressure is off!

From just doing a chatroom twice, I’ve already connected with a referral partner, setting up a call with a potential client AND grew my mailing list by 10%! Also, now I’m more established on Twitter, more people know about me, and I’m gaining more trust with my followers, which is so crucial!

Think what it could do for you! You could meet a person looking for your type of music to perform at their venue. You could ask advice on how you should promote your next single. And always, at least most of the time, the chatroom will allow you to share your latest projects (shameless plug) giving you the opportunity to target what you want to boost – whether it be Twitter followers, Facebook likes, newsletter sign ups or song listens!

Pro Tip before you join a Twitter Chatroom

Twitter chatrooms can be intense. Without the right tools, it will feel overwhelming and impossible to keep up with all these tweets coming in every less than a second. What I use for participating in chatrooms is Hootsuite. It’s free and you can create streams of both people tweeting with a certain hashtag, so you can follow a conversation, and also create streams of tweets at you, so you can answer anyone reaching out to you. It’s super helpful and highly recommended.

So, I hope you will take action and participate in a chatroom this week! Join us this next Thursday if you’re around for #ggchat chatroom! Who knows where it will take you!

Social Media - 11/25/2013