Ariel Publicity

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So what’s makes Presskit.to so awesome? Let’s take a look at 7 key features and why they’re cool.

1. Design – First and foremost, the design of Presskit.to is extremely clean, which is important for a digital press kit. It cuts straight to the point with one photo, band name, location, genre, links and tag line. The whole press kit is contained in one page, which means the user never has to click through pages to find what they want.

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1. Cover Photo – The most noticeable change is the giant cover photo bands can now implement. This was a cool feature for personal profiles and allowed users to show off their creativity (or that amazing photo you took of the sunset on vacation), but it is a really powerful branding tool for bands. Loading up an eye catching photo will help draw fans into your page and solidify your image. Branding has always been a little tricky on Facebook fan pages as you had to use certain apps to effectively do this, but this left the wall essentially “unbranded.” Cover photo solves this issue and brings a whole new life to the “wall.”

2. Pinning – Facebook now allows you to “pin” certain posts to the top of your Timeline. I’m particularly fond of this feature because it allows bands to keep promotional posts at the top of their page instead of endlessly posting the same promotion over and over again. Instead of continuing to post updates about an upcoming show, bands can focus on providing more interesting and engage-able content to pull fans towards their page. Keeping the show promotion pinned to the top of the page ensures all visitors will see that post and will be reminded of the show. It’s a beautiful thing.

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Just when Last.fm seemed to be losing the battle to Pandora, Spotify announced their app store, which included a Last.fm app. The power of Last.fm has always been based on their scrobbling technology, which allows Last.fm to monitor their users’ listening patterns and make musical recommendations accordingly. With the built in Spotify app, Last.fm can now scrobble all the music you play on Spotify. This move was a huge win win for both companies. Last.fm provides a fantastic music recommendation system that integrates directly with Spotify, and the raising popularity of Spotify gives Last.fm new traffic and a whole new life.

Obviously, this is a great for users trying to discover new music, but how does this help musician’s gain more exposure (that is what this post is about, right?)? Here are 4 quick steps to leveraging Last.fm.

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Viddy, like Instagram, is simply an app that allows you to take videos and share them with the world directly from your mobile device. Obviously, there is one tiny little company that is built completely around the sharing of videos (YouTube, I’ll write about them when they get big enough). But Viddy sets itself apart in so much as it’s designed specifically to be mobile.

The main issue with mobile video sharing is upload time involved. To solve this issue (and further set themselves apart from other video services) Viddy has limited the length of all videos to 15 seconds. That’s right, 15 seconds is all you get to put together whatever funny, quirky little video you want to share with the world.

At first, I thought this was a huge problem. What is anyone supposed to do with 15 seconds?! But when you get down to it, given the average attention span these days, 15 seconds is all you need. This, of course, makes the content harder to curate, but every creative musician should love a little challenge.

There are two ways to load up a video. You can take a 15 second video with the Viddy app, or you can select 15 seconds of a pre-existing video you have on your phone. In either event, once you have the video selected, next comes the fun part. Viddy provides some stock visual effects you can add to your video, but if you don’t find what you like there, they have a whole store of other effects available for free and for purchase. Viddy has also added in an audio element as well, allowing you to add in clips from songs or pre-recorded special effects. The store has these available as audio/visual bundles. At the moment, their ‘Marketplace’ isn’t overly expansive, but I imagine this will grow as the app grows in popularity.

Similar to Instagram, Viddy has a built in social network. When you create your account you’ll be able to follow other users and, in turn, be followed by those who like your videos. But even without following you, users can like the videos you post and leave comments for you. Viddy’s easy to use interface makes it simple for users to find new videos to watch, find new friends and manage all their contacts.

But Viddy was smart enough to know that no matter how large their social network grows, it will never rival the size and power of the social media power houses like Facebook. So they’ve built in a sharing function that allows you to simultaneously post your videos to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr when you post to Viddy.

Viddy can be a great way for artists to share quick videos of new song ideas, in-studio recording experiences, snippets of live performances or just back stage shenanigans. And the user base on Viddy seems to be ready and eager to consume new content. I posted a test video of my band before writing this article and within 15 minutes I had two likes and a comment. I have followed 1 person and have nobody following me and I’ve done nothing to engage anyone. If I actually spent the time to use the platform effectively (instead the bare bones set up I did to learn how it works) I can only imagine the engagement I’d receive.

Viddy is a great way to create some additional content and share it across all your social media profiles. And if you get in while it’s still early, the user base on the Viddy social network will be highly engage-able. If you tag your videos properly and use links intelligently in your descriptions, this could be a great way to find new fans and help direct traffic to your other sites. As always, I’m much more concerned with what you all think. Has anyone used this app yet? Do you think it has potential to reach the level of Instagram? What kind of videos would you make in just 15 seconds? I look forward to your thoughts in the comments section!

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The most noticeable change is the giant cover photo bands can now implement. This was a cool feature for personal profiles and allowed users to show off their creativity (or that amazing photo you took of the sunset on vacation), but it is a really powerful branding tool for bands. Loading up an eye catching photo will help draw fans into your page and solidify your image. Branding has always been a little tricky on Facebook fan pages as you had to use certain apps to effectively do this, but this left the wall essentially “unbranded.” Cover photo solves this issue and brings a whole new life to the “wall.”

Click to continue...