Great social networks will come and go, and they are all important. You should be active on as many as possible. They are all great places to extend your website, extend your brand and presence. But everything should come back to your website.

It’s 2011 and you would think it is obvious why you need your own website. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had where the other party says “I have a MySpace page, or I have a Facebook page or I have a Reverbnation page… I don’t need a website.” Or how many people have their own website, but spend all their efforts driving everyone to Facebook. All they seem to care about is how many Likes they can get. You should care about how many visits you get to your website. Some people don’t look at a website as a significant part of their business or brand. They may see it as a afterthought, something they guess they should do. If you were to open your own restrauant is the building and location that last thing you would think about? It is your future, everything you hope to achieve depends on it. Your website is your bit of real estate on the internet and it will be yours potentially forever. Make sure you treat your online presence with all the seriousness you can.

Here are some important items to keep in mind.

1. Own your domain and site

Easier said than done, but you should make every effort to retain ownership of your domain name and website. Don’t change the Administrative Contact for your domain over to someone else unless you absolutely must. Try to avoid signing contracts that when they are terminated leave your domain and website under the ownership and control of another party. If that occurs you will have no control over what happens and you won’t see any revenue from a website with your name on it. During a contract you can let someone else manage and operate your website, but do not let them own it.

2. Do not redirect your domain to MySpace or Facebook

You should be using Facebook, Twitter, Reverbnation or any of a dozen other social network sites to generate traffic to your website. To redirect your domain to a social page is to give your traffic to somebody else, for them to monetize and you to not share in the revenue. Traffic on the internet is money. When you are finally ready to launch your own website how do you plan to get everyone who is going to Facebook or MySpace back to your site? You have already conditioned them to just visit Facebook or MySpace.

3. It is your brand which you own and control.

Your domain and website is your brand and you have full control over it. You decide how you are going to be presented. Use MySpace or Facebook and you are not the brand, they are. You will never be more important than their own brand. They will always come first over your brand and your desire to promote your brand. Don’t let someone else control what you can do with your brand.

4. What is the future of MySpace, Facebook?

Ok this will date myself, but I remember when AOL was “it”. When everyone was trying to establish their business on AOL. Everyone was advertising their AOL Keyword. Where is AOL now? Ok, how about Geocities? Everyone was building their website on Geocities for free. Nobody wants to invest any money in their website and Geocities let them get online for free. Where is Geocities now? And just how good were all those free websites? Or what about MySpace? Everyone knows about MySpace. Just five years ago they were “it”. Everyone had to be one MySpace. Everyone was growing their friends list on MySpace. We were all spending time customizing our MySpace page, blogging on MySpace. Where is MySpace now? MySpace recently announced a partnership with Facebook in hopes of breathing some life into the ghost town. What is the point of all this you ask? Do you know where Facebook is going to be in five years? I don’t think they will disappear, but they sure could change. Don’t put your future, your brand, your money into the hands of another website. Tomorrow they could be the latest fade or worse sold to someone who has different plans. In the case of Facebook, why would you send your traffic to a website that requires registration for any sort of interaction. You don’t get to gather that registration information, Facebook owns it. You are sending your fans to Facebook, for Facebook to market and make money from.

5. TOS, Terms of Service – you want to define them, not the lawyer from another website.

This is directly related to #4. Don’t set yourself up on a site that the Terms of Service, TOS, clearly state they do not support content you might wish to post. Anything of a adult or sexual nature is going to get deleted by Facebook. Nikki Sixx recently tried to post a image from the new Sixx AM album and Facebook kept deleting it. Even in rock n roll you might have something that Facebook feels is too sexual. MySpace and Facebook are clear examples. You spend your time and money establishing yourself and sending your traffic to Facebook or MySpace and then one day you log in and your account is deleted. What happened? Your content was most likely reported by someone and without any notice your account and work is gone. Build a website where you decide what is appropriate and what is not. Don’t let the lawyer at some other company decide if they like what you are doing. I am not saying to not use Facebook or MySpace, I am saying DO NOT make them your primary website. Use them as traffic sources to your website.

6. Sales – you can keep a bigger piece of the pie.

You want your own website so you can sell whatever you want, and keep a bigger piece of the pie. Although selling on other sites is possible there are usually hoops you need to jump through, and back to #5, what you are selling might be against the TOS and be cause for your account to be deleted.

7. SEO

Good luck trying to manage the SEO on a Facebook or MySpace page. If you have your own website you have full control over your SEO, over how the search engines will see you and what your target keywords are for your brand. If you have a strong presence on the various social network sites with links back to your website, Google will see those links and give you some SEO juice.

8. Stay on the cutting edge

With your own website you can experiment with all of the new internet technologies and tools when they are released. You are not at the mercy of a corporate giant who will decided when and if they want to adopt a new technology. If you build a WordPress based website you can play around with 1000s of plugins that add new functionality to your website. One click and you are streaming audio, one click you have a podcast being served through Apple iTunes. One click you have a events calendar.

Your website should be the center of your online universe, with all the various social networks revolving around it. Use the social networks to send traffic to your official website. Use them to be social, to interact with your fans and customers. Don’t spend your time and money to build up another website, spend it on your brand… spend it on yourself!

Article originally appeared on Music Think Tank (http://www.musicthinktank.com/) and was written by Michael Brandvold.

Make it easy for your fans to find you online.

Choosing a band or artist name that is search engine optimized (also known as SEO) can help your career down the road.

Yes, many bands have managed to achieve success in spite of unsearchable band names (the band Girls come to mind), but why not make it easy on your fans and choose a name that is easy to search for and find?

Many musicians have discovered (the hard way) that an unsearchable band name can hurt sales, reduce concert attendance, and frustrate fans.

And it’s not just major search engines like Google and Bing that you should be concerned about. A poorly chosen band name can make it hard for fans to find your music on iTunes, your videos on YouTube, and your band profiles on social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Below are some dos and don’ts for choosing an SEO friendly band name. Just remember, these are only suggestions. The real keys to musical success will always be rooted in hard work and great music with mass appeal.

SEO DON’Ts

Don’t use common names, words or phrases

Common names and phrases are often searched for. So it’s difficult to place at the top of search results for these terms. Avoid band names like Blue, Harmony, Hot and Cold, or El Nino. These sorts of everyday names and phrases present an uphill battle for good search results.

Don’t get too creative with spelling

Using creative spelling will actually increase your search engine ranking, but only if your fans spell your name correctly. Take the band Gorillaz. Gorillaz fans know how the band name is spelled and therefore don’t have a problem finding the band online. But if I heard of Gorillaz from a friend, and didn’t know they used an “z” instead of an “s,” I might search for “gorillas” with an “s” and find myself knee deep in articles about big hairy monkeys.

Don’t use special symbols %@#!

Do you know how to put an umlaut over a ü when you type it into a search engine? Chances are, a good portion of your fans don’t. Many special characters will be unrecognized or ignored by search engines. Also some special characters can be misinterpreted by computer programs as code and it can cause errors. Keep this in mind before you name your band: <Bl@st%>

Don’t piggy back

If you name your band The Katy Perry Experience you may get some traffic from Katy Perry fans who stumble upon your site, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to buy your music. Collateral traffic isn’t always the best quality. Also, popular news about Katy Perry may often supplant your good rankings and there’s always the possibility you get suedor the world gets tired of Katy Perry.

SEO DOs

Use more than one word

A single word band name will only be easily searchable if your band name is very unique such as Jamiroquai of Fugazi. But a unique band name can be hard to spell. Why not use a cool juxtaposition of a few common words such as Arcade Fire, Daft Punk or Kings of Leon. This way you can have a unique name that almost anybody can spell and easily find.

Test your band name in Google

Let’s say I’d like to call my band Unicorn Bluff. Let’s search for that name in Google. For a more accurate result, I’ll put “Unicorn Bluff” in quotes so that Google only searches for those two words strung together. In this case, there are only 307 results for “Unicorn Bluff.” The top results are related to a unicorn poster. This looks promising. There are no Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, or music related results on Google’s first page of results. My only concern with this band name is that “unicorn” has been a popular word in recent years for band names. So I might also do a search for “unicorn band” to see what my competition looks like.

Research Your Domain Name

A good domain name that is close to your actual band name will make it easier for people to find you online. If my band name is Unicorn Bluff, my ideal website is www.unicornbluff.com. Unicornb-forever.net would be less than ideal because it does not contain both keywords of my band name and it may be hard for my fans to remember.

If my first choice wasn’t available, I might go with:

www.unicornbluff.net

www.unicornbluff.co

or

www.unicornbluffmusic.com

Make sure to check on the availability of domain names while you do your research. A good domain name will make it much easier for your fans to find you.

Trademark Your Band Name

Once you’ve found the perfect SEO friendly band name, you should trademark it so nobody else can lay claim to it.

Article originally appeared on Music Think Tank (http://www.musicthinktank.com/) and was written by Chris Bolton.

If you keep an eye out for the latest research on music consumption habits, you can use these statistics to help guide you in creating an effective sales and marketing plan for your music releases.

After all, that’s how the marketing department of a major record company would operate - basing their plans on the latest market research.

If you’re despairing at the idea of having to add market research to your “to do” list, don’t worry - there’s an easy way. Just google for Google Alerts, and set up a few alerts such as “music consumption research”, “music consumer survey”, or “music market research”. The latest research will just appear in your email inbox.

Then, all you have to do is choose the studies and surveys relevant to your own music market, and ask yourself how these statistics could shape your music sales and marketing plan.

You don’t have to go into too much detail here - taking note of the general trends will guide your strategy quite effectively.

Take the following example of worldwide music consumption statistics in 2010, courtesy of Midem.com:

A global survey of music consumers by Nielsen (Sept. 2010)

Nielsen (one of the most highly regarded market research firms) conducted a global survey of 26,644 people in September 2010 on their music purchasing and listening habits. It surveyed people’s music consumption for the previous 3 months.

What can we musicians learn from this research? 

• We need multiple ways to reach music consumers worldwide: The survey found that there is considerable diversity in music consumption habits globally, and that no single channel dominates.

• We need to make videos: Watching music on video is the most popular way to consume music. 57% of those surveyed had watched music videos on computers in the preceding 3 months. 44% watch internet videos several times a week.

• Giving away some of our music as free downloads is likely to be a good promotional strategy: Downloading a song without paying for it was the second most popular form of music consumption. The survey did not distinguish between “legal” (free downloads - often promotional) or “illegal” downloads (pirate copies), so many of these free downloads could have been obtained legitimately. Obviously there is still a great deal of interest in downloading music, and people like to get it for free … legally or otherwise.

• People aged between 21 and 34 are the “core digital music audience”: People in this age range have a generally higher level of music-related activity. They watch the most music videos (on computer or TV), download more songs (both paid and free), and stream more music.

• It’s worth selling digital downloads; particularly if aimed at a younger audience: The survey found that just over 20% of people under the age of 34 had paid to download a music track to their computer in the preceding 3 months.

• We need our own artist website, with our music readily accessible for streaming and buying: About 18% of people surveyed had accessed music from an artist’s own website in the preceding 3 months.

• A Facebook fan page is worth having: 35% consume music via social networking sites. Check out the usual suspects - but also keep an eye out for niche social networks that relate to you and your music, for a more targeted audience.

• Streaming services are worth factoring into our promotional strategy: 36% stream music via a computer. The survey doesn’t go into details about this streaming figure, so it’s an amalgamation of all the different ways someone could stream music these days. However, it tells us that services such as Spotify, Pandora, Last fm, Jango, etc, are a viable option for getting our music heard.

• We should look into the sales and marketing potential of creating our own music apps: 30% listen to music via their mobile phone, and 20% of respondents had downloaded or used music apps on their mobile.

• We should promote our music on internet radio: Just over 30% of those surveyed say they listen to music on web radio several times a week. The vast array of genres and sub-genres catered for by specialist radio shows online means that, if we take the time to investigate, we are likely to find the perfect audience for our own music.

Creating a realistic music sales and marketing plan

You can see that, just through interpreting the statistics of this one study, we can lay out the basis of a sales and marketing plan that is rooted in the realities of the here and now.

It would be best to take note of a number of different studies, of course, for the greatest accuracy. And it is important to update your information regularly. But thanks to Google Alerts, this is not the time-consuming chore it used to be.

I hope this is helpful to those of you who are confused about which of the countless marketing strategies to adopt, and who have precious little time available for trying to figure it all out.

Article originally appeared on Music Think Tank (http://www.musicthinktank.com/) and written by Catherine Hol.