Leveraging Content With A Well Built Online Platform

How Your Online Platform Works 

One of the biggest mistakes made by beginning content publishers, musicians, and blogging hopefuls is the "if you write it, they will come mentality."

I understand how it happens because i have personally fallen victim to it…

It took a few years for me to even realize EXACTLY what happened and why.

Why was i putting my energy, time and passion into writing content that was interesting and useful to the people i was writing it for, but not receiving the exposure and attracting the visitors who would surely appreciate and value what i was giving away?

Because i didn't understand that i needed to build a platform in addition to the content i was creating.

Lets take a look at how your online platform works.

This platform is the foundation for the expression, collaboration, and incubation of our ideas in the modern world.

How could i not know that an SEO optimized, strongly built, audience engaging platform was the missing springboard for my genius ideas to flourish?

Well, honestly i'm not so sure they were particularly "genius ideas" at first, but it was all i had to give, and i put all of me into it. I did my research, was inspired doing it, and felt great along the way.

But first, i didn't really know any better, and second i didn't know what else to do. SEO for artists, or content marketing for musicians is difficult to fathom for most of us music makers because it inherently introduces the necessity for a whole new dimension of work, resourcefulness, and area of management.

Naturally, their is resistance to the notion of learning something so foreign with so many moving parts, and overwhelm is typically the straw that broke the camels back - along the process to "figuring this stuff out, and how to ACTUALLY apply it."

Today we are going to dive into one of the most important areas of marketing for musicians, todays lesson is on how to leverage great content.

Here we combine two essential principles…

1. Create GREAT content,

AND

2. intelligently distribute it - through the proper channels.

By using sound principles of how to format the content appropriately for the intended use, and target audience; combined with how to repurpose and market that content effectively, is what its all about.

The same principles apply to content that they do to life.

A quality piece of content is better than a large quantity of mediocre content.

But without the connected channels to market our content, or the skills and ability to utilize all the resources available to us, that picasso you just painted may remain stuck your bedroom wall and exclusively enjoyed by you.

Create Great Content & Leverage It Effectively

This is the name of the game. we want to zero in and create a great piece of content, instead of unthought-fully creating a lackluster and rushed piece of material.

we want to to turn that into linkbait, into articles, break it down into our email autoresponders, publish an audio version of it, have a slideshow created from it, produce a video with it, and create supporting pieces of content that branch out, support, and promote it.

then we want to spread the links as naturally and as wide as we can to get it out the right places where it will end up in front of the people who will be interested in it… appreciate it, tell their friends about it, post on social networks about it, join your email list and develop a relationship with you.

what we don't want to do is… create a blog post and…. thats it!

this is what separates the men from the boys. That separates the few pieces of content and people out of the hundreds of millions that gets posted every single day.

We're talking about CONTENT. Content is content. Its the exact same principle for your songs as it is for an article, a podcast, a video, etc.

this is how we leverage the resources of the web effectively to promote and spread our ideas, attracts fans and followers, build relationships, sell music, create a sustainable community and gain success as an independent artist in the new music business.

Back to Systems...

So just as we need to learn how to use the tools for marketing our content in the modern world and new music business, we need to develop our systems as well.

Our systems are what are going to make or break our productivity. Our systems are what are going to give us EFFICIENCY.

We have to blend the best of all worlds.

1. We have to be able to, and lazer in on passionate areas of focus to deliver great content.

2. We have to know when to use a press release, article vs. blog post, etc.

3. We have to know when and how to spread that content with the appropriate tool like social bookmarking, guest blog posts, article marketing, etc.

4. We have to develop systems for the things that are time consuming, tedious, and although necessary, (or we wouldn't be doing them) something we want to figure out how to be as efficient at as possible, so we CAN focus as close to ALL our time doing JUST the things WE can do.

5. Build a team of internal staff and go to people for specialty work.

So an example could look something like this…

1. We write a great article.

2. We blog about our new article and what its about.

3. We take that blog and submit to our favorite article directory for syndication.

4. We take that content and produce a video and an audio podcast.

5. We social bookmark, and tweet links to our new content.

6. We integrate links that point to each piece of our content, both from within our site and externally.

Voila… This is a great start and should have created an intelligent and wide spread buzz about our content.

Happy music making, Jamie