Your band has a website – great! No one new is visiting it – NOT so great! With so many websites out there on the Internet, what are the chances that someone who hasn’t heard of you will discover your site? Here’s one way you can get random music lovers to find your website.
StumbleUpon.com is a website (and an accompanying web browser toolbar) that people use to find random websites on topics that they are interested in.
1. Go to www.StumbleUpon.com and set up an account.
2. You will be asked what sort of things you are interested in – check the “music” category and anything else you are into.
3. Download the StumbleUpon toolbar to your computer. After downloading it, the toolbar will appear at the top of your web browser.
4. On the far left of the toolbar you will see three important buttons, one that says “Stumble”, and two others that give you the option of liking a site or not liking a site.
5. Go to your own website, and click “I Like It!”
6. If no one else has already stumbled upon your site, you will be asked to describe the site, tag it with the word “music” and any other words that describe what you are all about (i.e. jazz, funk, folk) and submit it – you are done.
Other people all over the world who are into music can now “Stumble Upon” your site.
Here are a few tips before you get started:
- Make sure that the page you list on StumbleUpon is easy to understand and gets to the point. The people who use this tool would rather go to another site than dig around yours if it is not clear what the site is all about.
- Give away something for free – and make it very clear how they can get it. Create text that says something like “Download Free MP3″ and have a big button that says “Click Here.”
- Make sure your site is fresh and updated. If you still have shows listed from 2006 or links that don’t work, no one is going to stick around very long.
I hope this free method works as a catalyst for you to sell MP3’s or encourages more people to sign up for your mailing list. This is just one of the many ways to use the web to bolster your buzz and to get discovered.
