272 – Spiderweb Marketing Essentials for Musicians

0 Shares

What is the most effective but underrated online strategy for creating results in your music career? How can you use it to grow your fan base, get your gig on, and earn an income from your passion?

That’s what we’re going to be looking at in this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast.

Table of Contents

Podcast Highlights:

00:30 – An update on Spiderweb Marketing
01:07 – Creating a singular strategic focus
02:27 – Email vs. SMS / text messaging vs. personal connections
04:04 – Content syndication and distribution may not be the best use of your time
05:51 – Every social network has a pathway
07:10 – Episode summary
09:02 – Closing thoughts

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Transcription:

Hey, it’s David Andrew Wiebe.

And in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share an update on spiderweb marketing, a topic I originally covered way back in episode 182 of the podcast and offered up as a free mini course.

It’s kind of funny to me that I can even say “way back” because it doesn’t feel all that long ago. But true enough, it has been over two years since we published that episode.

The strategy is still relevant and viable today. But we have learned a few things in the last couple of years.

So, let’s talking about fine-tuning the strategy to get the best results possible.

1. Set Goals & Create a Singular Focus for Your Spiderweb Marketing Strategy

At the center of the spiderweb is the beastly creature himself, the spider.

So far as this marketing strategy is concerned, the spider represents your website. The web represents the various channels you acquire traffic from. Getting people to your website is the entire goal of the strategy.

But more than ever, we need to be clear on what we want to get people to do once they’ve landed on our website.

More than ever, we need to be clear on what we want to get people to do once they’ve landed on our website. Click To Tweet

Do you want them to sign up for your email list? Listen to your music? Watch a video? Buy your merch?

It’s going to be tough to get people to buy your merch or sign up for your fan club upon first contact. So, I recommend getting them to take one of the other actions just mentioned, something low pressure.

Since getting email signups is key to the strategy, you could potentially combine these goals. For instance, you could have the visitor enter their email address to receive a video, and upon signing up, take them to another page on your site to view that video. Boom! Now you’ve gotten more video views and have earned the right to contact the visitor about future offers.

At Music Entrepreneur HQ, our singular focus is to get newcomers to sign up for the PDF Vault. This is reflected on our homepage, and soon, it will be reflected across the entire site.

2. Getting Your Content Seen / Your Spider Web Content Marketing Strategy

ShortStack says only 10% of your followers see your new post on Instagram.

Across the entire spectrum of social networks, that number is much closer to 3 to 6%.

Meanwhile, email campaigns are generally seen by an average of 28 to 33% of your entire list.

There’s a reason we suggest prioritizing email list growth. If all your hopes and dreams rest on social media success, you’re probably going to be disappointed with the results.

But there’s more.

RedEye says the average open rate of a text message is roughly 99%, with 97% of messages being read within 15 minutes of their delivery.

So, if you haven’t started building your SMS contact list, that might be worth a try. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s superior to growing an email list, because different things work for different folks. But if you haven’t experimented with text message marketing yet, you might want to give it a try.

Beyond that, we still find that personal relationships should be valued above and beyond all else. This doesn’t mean that you’re immediately going to see immediate business results from networking and building connections, but there’s huge potential value long-term.

You may uncover gig opportunities, get referrals, or find an investor. And I’m not talking about anything I haven’t done!

So, never underestimate the value of personal connections – phone calls, video conferences, meeting in person and more.

Never underestimate the value of personal connections. Click To Tweet

We recently found a new affiliate partner on Twitter, and that would have never happened if we weren’t dedicated to networking and outreach.

3. Content Distribution & Syndication May be Overrated

And while I stress “may” be overrated…

This is something I hate to admit, because I’ve gone deep into the topic and have invested a lot of time, energy, and income into repurposing and putting our content in more places where it had the opportunity to be seen.

But what we’ve been finding is that when we make content for YouTube, it does best on YouTube versus Facebook, Instagram, or Odysee.

When we make content that’s intended to be read, it does better on our blogs and sometimes on Medium or Tealfeed. Though, to be fair, if we do have a high performing blog piece, and we make a video based on it, it does tend to do quite well.

Again, though, doing a straight read of the blog piece wouldn’t be as valuable as creating a video centered on the topic, accompanied by appropriate visual media.

Podcast episodes do exponentially better on destinations where people are already subscribed to them – like Apple Podcasts or Stitcher – versus on Facebook, Instagram, Odysee, or anywhere else we might be inclined to send it.

Does this mean you shouldn’t distribute or syndicate at all? No. But understand that if you were to 80/20 the whole thing, you’d much better off developing content specifically aimed at the platforms you’re targeting.

Which is another great reason to determine your platform focus because you simply can’t be everywhere. I’m on Twitter, BitClout, Tealfeed, Medium, and YouTube, and besides that, I simply don’t have the bandwidth to pursue.

But note that auto-posting is not out of the equation. I still auto-post new blog posts to Facebook, various Twitter accounts, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. And our Tumblr following continues to grow without much effort on our part.

4. There’s Pathway on Every Social Network

Of course, there are always new platforms that reward you with a lot of traffic and views with less effort. Right now, that’s TikTok. But in the not-too-distant future, that’s guaranteed to change.

If you’re willing to jump from platform to platform, or to stick with a platform until it’s a sinking ship, then give this no further thought.

But if you want to build a solid following on long-standing, legacy platforms, understand that there’s a specific pathway to getting there.

If you want to build a solid following on long-standing, legacy platforms, there’s a specific pathway to getting there. Click To Tweet

And when I say pathway, I mean a steady, reliable, consistent way to grow on that platform. Which, to be fair, is always a moving target.

But I recently published a YouTube video on this very subject, covering how I found a pathway on Twitter.

Finding your pathway on any social network could take a year or more of experimentation, learning, and seeking answers. If you’re unwilling to stick around for that, your time would be best allocated elsewhere.

I say all this with the core of the strategy in mind – your goal with spiderweb marketing is still to direct people to your own ecosystem, where you control the experience.

When you’re using social media, you want to be thinking strategically about how posting and creating a following is going to capture email subscribers, listeners, buyers, and so on.

You want to be thinking strategically about how posting and creating a following is going to capture email subscribers, listeners, buyers, and so on. Click To Tweet

Episode Summary

In summary, here are a few things we’ve discovered about the spiderweb marketing strategy in the last couple of years:

There is far too much noise out there to compete with. So, don’t try to do everything. Create a singular focus for your website. What do you want visitors to do once they’re on your site? Guide them in the right direction.
Social media is useful, but inferior to email marketing. And while SMS / text message marketing isn’t superior to email marketing in every way, it has a ridiculously high open rate compared to email. Also, never underestimate the value of personal connections. You might even consider experimenting with putting a phone number on your site and test to see whether it helps you get more bookings, more opportunities, and so on.
Don’t put all your time into content syndication and distribution. This is something to do when you have a bit of spare time, or when you’ve exhausted your marketing to-do list. But it’s not the highest priority, because content that was created specifically for a specific platform always does better than generalized or repurposed content, whether it’s TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or otherwise. If you’ve got the budget for it, though, content repurposing is something you could delegate to a virtual assistant.
If you have limited resources, be it income, time, personnel, or otherwise, there’s simply no way to be successful on every social media platform. I’m focused on five platforms myself, but I’ve got a solid pathway for two, a workable pathway for two others, and I’m still working on the fifth. There’s no point in me adding another network until I’ve at least determined a strategy for the fifth. Yes, with spiderweb marketing, the idea is to branch out into a variety of channels and lure traffic back to your own ecosystem. But if, for instance, you’re still trying to figure out Instagram, don’t worry about adding TikTok to your repertoire. Dive deeper into Instagram until you’ve found your pathway.

Closing Segment

Would you like to access our eBook on Spiderweb Marketing that lays out all the steps for you? Then you’ll want to sign up to access the free PDF Vault, where we’ve got countless other great eBooks, transcripts, cheat sheets, and other resources waiting for you. Simply go to MusicEntrepreneurHQ.com/PDFVault to gain access now.

This has been episode 272 of The New Music Industry Podcast. I’m David Andrew Wiebe, and I look forward to seeing you on the stages of the world.

Upgrade to Members Only Audios for more exciting, exclusive training.

Author
Recent Posts

David Andrew Wiebe

Founder & CEO at Music Entrepreneur HQ

Award-winning composer, best-selling author, professional musician coach, and podcaster of over 10 years. Wiebe helps musicians like you unlock your full potential. If you'd like to be notified whenever the blog is updated, click here to subscribe.

Latest posts by David Andrew Wiebe (see all)