August 26, 2011

Why Musicians Should Consider Google Plus For Online Music Marketing

Marketing music online isn’t an easy job these days. There are many places to be and a gazillion tools to use. With all the learning and managing required your head can start spinning pretty quickly and your precious time can evaporate quicker than Windex on sun-drenched windshield. But I think Google Plus might just help us with that.


At first thought Google+ looked like another take it or leave it ploy by Google to grab some attention away from the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. But after reading Chris Brogan’s Google Plus 50 post, I have changed my mind.

He goes through and points out how Google+ – along with some of the new features like Circles (more on that below) – will bring all of their stand alone tools like Picasa, Gchat, Gmail, etc together for a one stop social party. Which got even more weight a day later when Google announces is will rebrand Picasa and Blogger.

Add that to fact 400,000+ Android phones are being activate per day it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see Google might have something here that is useful for music promotion.


Here is the part of the Chris’s post that really perked my interest:


“How long before we see our first Hangout live music “jam?” That’s one record button away from being supercool. And one “name your price” Google Checkout tweak away from being instant micro content for sale.”

How cool would that be? Monetized (or not) push button live shows – with all the promotion tools included – at your finger tips. Almost makes sites like Ustream and StageIt sound complicated.

Circles
CDBaby also recognized the potential of the Google+ Circles feature in a post.  They bring up a great point:


Basically, you can put your friends into different categories and communicate with each of them separately. For most users, circles would probably include “family,” “close friends,” “acquaintances,” “work associates,” etc. But for musicians, this function could have some added benefits if account holders are allowed to create circles for in-town fans, fellow musicians, booking contacts, studio owners, journalists and bloggers, etc.


That will be pretty slick. How many times do you want to share links, vids or chit chat with other artists about music marketing on various social networks but don’t because you don’t want to share that conversation with your fans and vice-versa?

Being able to segment conversations means you may not have to have two Twitter accounts or multiple fanpages to log in and out of.

The Tip of The Iceberg
And really that is the tip of the iceberg. I can’t get in to try out Google+ at the moment to really poke and prod but you can bet I will be in there playing around the minute I get a chance. Stay tuned In the meantime, go check out Google+ for yourself. And I strongly encourage you to go and read Chris Brogan’s Google Plus 50 post and check out the conversation going on in the comments because he goes into way more depth than I have time or first hand knowledge to here.

Oh and as a side note, Google getting bigger and better is kind of freaky. Hell, between my email, my reader, my phone, etc, the conspiracy theorist in me knows they have a crap load of my information. But [fingers crossed] hopefully it is much ado about nothing and I can reap some time saving and fan finding benefits of pretty innovative thinking on their part.

What about you? Do you know something I don’t? Will you use Google Plus?



By Jennifer Pricci

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