Ariel Publicity

Getting butts in seats. The age old problem that only seems to get harder. You send out Facebook invites that get largely ignored, post tweets that get lost in a sea of tweets, write newsletters to only have your fans forget to come the day of the show and put up flyers that nobody even reads. While, all of these steps are important (being a digital guy, I debate the continued effectiveness of physical flyers, but we won’t go there now) the main issue with all of them is they lack immediacy. And immediacy is absolutely vital in a world where attention spans are shrinking by the second.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve RSVP’d ‘Attending’ on a Facebook event and then completely missed the event because I just plain forgot (for those of you who know me, my terrible memory does not play in to this, so don’t bring it up). And I know I’m not the only one who does this. Most people I know ignore Facebook events all together. Conversely, most people don’t ignore their text messages, and most of my weekend hangs are organized spontaneously via texting (my dad hates this about my generation). Which, at long last (is it just me, or are my intros getting longer?), brings me to Broadtexter!

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Pictures. We all know they’re worth a thousand words, but despite this immense value, we still find ourselves trying to figure out how we can use pictures to further our digital promotional efforts more effectively. Tagging photos in Facebook and using social picture applications like Instagram have brought us a long way in this regard, but the topic of this weeks post has launched us into a new world. When I first heard about and looked at Thinglink, I didn’t really get it and quickly forgot about it. But so many people kept talking about it, I figured I’d better take another look and find out what I was missing.

Turns out Thinglink is actually quite incredible. Thinglink provides an interactive experience previously unheard of with pictures. The idea behind Thinglink is to connect ‘things’ in photos to ‘links’. At first, it may not sound that exciting, but this really does open a whole world of possibilities.

Let’s say your band just got done playing a great show for your CD release party, and as your walking off the stage the photographer snaps a killer group shot. You, of course, put this picture up on your website for all your fans too see and enjoy. But Thinglink allows you to take that experience even further.

To use Thinglink with this picture, you’ll first upload the image to your Thinglink account. Once uploaded, you select particular regions of the photo you want to tag. For example, can put a tag anywhere on the photo and link that tag to a video clip from the show. You can tag the broken sticks the drummer is holding in the picture to a video clip of him actually breaking the stick during the show. The brand new CD the singer is holding can be linked to iTunes so your fans can buy the new CD. The guitar player’s guitar can be linked to the blog post where he talks about how the guitar was handed down from his father, and this show just so happened to be on his dad’s birthday. You can go on and on until this one photo becomes a whole interactive experience that shares more insight and story than the photo could ever hope to on it’s own.

Thinglink has a number of integrations that really make it exciting. Thinglink has SoundCloud integration so you build links in to your photos to specific SoundCloud tracks. TopSpin integration allows you to put E4M (email for media) widgets in a tag. You can also collect email addresses with FanBridge and Mailchimp integration. You can even link to your songs on Spotify.

What makes these integrations even better is Thinglink has a ridiculously awesome help section. They explain (with very easy to understand step-by-step instructions) exactly how to integrate with your website and how to use each of the integrations. Some of them, like TopSpin, are slightly complicated, but Thinglink takes all the trouble out of the process. Well done, Thinglink.

As I said at the beginning, Thinglink opens a whole world of possibilities. Never have we been able to do so much with photos so easily. And Thinglink has not ignored the social aspect. These newly tagged photos are embedable and shareable so your fans can spread their favorite photos with all your tags included. Thinglink also tracks the analytics for your photos so you can see what pictures and tags are most effective.

The photos I’ve attached in this post are mostly of different ways others have started using Thinglink, and they’re some pretty cool and creative ideas. But I want to know how you would (or do) use Thinglink. The true power in Thinglink lies with the creativity of the user. If you haven’t already, sign up to Thinglink (they have a free version!) and share some of your tagged photos in the comment sections. How do you think artists can best use Thinglink? Do you find it valuable? What some creative ways you are using Thinglink pictures?

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When setting up a Facebook fanpage most artists realize they need to have songs, videos, concert dates, etc. readily available on their page (if you don’t realize this, it’s true, you need it). There are a few big players in this space that most people default to, ReverbNation, Rootmuisc and Fanbridge. CD Baby and Bandcamp also have some pretty nice players, although these two are more focused on selling the music, so they don’t have added features like video players and concert dates. But there’s one app that I feel is often over looked, despite it’s slick layout and ease of use; BandRx. Before I go any further on this post, I’d like to take a moment to say I’m not picking favorites here, we love Fanbridge, Rootmusic and ReverbNation and have used them all extensively. Here at Ariel Publicity we adamantly maintain our neutral status (at least until you catch me with a few drinks down the hatch).

On to BandRx. I’ve seen this app in passing on different fan pages, but didn’t really pay too much attention until the newest Ariel Publicity team member, Jon Ostrow, came in raving about it. Turns out, one of Jon’s favorite bands, The Black Keys (up and coming group, you may have heard of them), uses this app and so we spent half the day just playing with it.

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I first wrote about Onesheet last July back when it was still new and exciting and seemed like a good place holder until you could build a ‘real’ website. Well in the meantime, creator Brenden Mulligan has not been sitting idly by waiting for a competitor to outdo his creation. Instead, Brenden has been busy building in all the features I thought were missing from the original version. With these new features I find my self rethinking my original position from the first blog post; “while I don’t want to give the impression that creating a Onesheet excludes you from needing a website, this is a fantastic option that can take care of your web presence needs while you build a website the right way.”

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Welcome to the first edition of Musician’s Arsenal in 2012. We’re starting off with a brand new app just released on January 17th that looks to make quite the impact in 2012; Artist Growth. A few months back, Jonathan (@jonathansexton) and Jacob (@jacobjones) came into our office to film Ariel (more on that later) and give us a spin around their new app, and I was very impressed. There’s a lot to say about this app, so let’s not waste any time here.

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So you have read and completed the new Suggest To Friends feature Facebook offers and you want to increase your fan base even more to an audience beyond your friends list. Have you ever considered taking out a Facebook ad? Facebook ads have been around for years now and are constantly growing in popularity – because they work! We have been testing some methods here at Cyber PR® with several of our artists and I will be sharing them here with you in this post.

Now with Facebooks upcoming changes (stay tuned for TIMELINE and tons of great new music integrations) There are a couple of great options available to you utilizing Facebook ads that can help boost your fan base even further.

The newest option to increase your fan base is ReverbNation’s Promote It. Now this option is extremely enticing due to its targeted research surrounding your ad and how quick it is to actually set up.  The new ReverbNation Promote It tool utilizes a framework built off of thousands of beta tests by 10,000 artists and 18,000 campaigns. This tool is set up to create an effective ad for you by asking your comparisons, targeting demographically, and more with little effort and allowing ReverbNation to create a stellar campaign for you.

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