Scott Dylan is urging independent musicians hoping to hit the big time, to learn the meaning of the word ‘metrics’, to increase their online reach and broaden their fan base in 2014.
Online distribution and social media outreach should be one of the main goals for many musicians, but in order to track their success in these areas, they need to be able to understand metrics and what they should be measuring in order to gauge how successful they’ve been.
Every musician or band will have different opinions on what they want to track, from page views and track plays to ‘Likes’ or ‘RTs’ on Facebook and Twitter, but the key aim of 2014 for all those hoping to gain an online fan base should be to understand firstly how to measure their metrics and secondly how to improve each aspect.
The beauty of understanding metrics for musicians is that there is no limit to what they can measure and how they choose to measure their success. They can track anything from the number of subscribers they have on their mailing list, how many YouTube plays they have, how many YouTube cover versions of their song there are, how many blog reviews there are on a new release or how many individual track downloads there have been. Once they understand which metrics they are tracking and keeping note of, they can start to work on improving them and broadening their reach.
For example, if a band is tracking how many plays they have on Last.fm as a measure of how successful they are, they can encourage friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter to listen to an exclusive track there, with the idea that they go to listen to an acoustic cove, a live recording or a brand new track, and stay to listen to the full album.
If a band wants to measure their success by tracking how many reviews they get on music blogs, they could launch a competition, encouraging those who have attended a recent gig to post a review online, with the most original review receiving free tickets to the next show or a special edition LP.
Once musicians begin to understand metrics, it is easier for them to start to improve their reach on social media, working on target areas and reaching new demographics.
Understanding success is no longer simply about record sales or gig attendance; the internet has unlocked a whole new world of measuring success and for bands that may feel like they are relatively unknown, tracking their metrics could pleasantly surprise them.
Scott Dylan is a UK-based digital marketing and social media specialist.
