In any line of work, it is usually a good practice to stay up on the latest developments and trends in a particular industry. My industry – digital marketing – could not require a deeper necessity for keeping up with the Joneses. There are many heros in the digital space. One of them happens to be Chris Brogan.
Brogan recently wrote a blog post about a band called Spirit of the Stairs and he noted that the band did not have a web home. It is worth the read for the takeaway message. In Brogan’s post, he basically suggests that the band should have its own website. This digital marketer agrees wholeheartedly.
I am going to take it a step further and give reasons for why bands should invest in having a stand-alone website for your music.
- Autonomy – Control your domain. If MySpace, Facebook, ReverbNation or [insert free band website resource here] went belly-up and shut down, you would have nowhere to go. A self-hosted site is like owning a home. Sure, it can be somewhat of a hassle, but having your own place is definitely an ego-boost, right?
- Analytics – Sure, some of the social media sites offer analytics or “Insights,” if you’re Facebook, but the charts and graphs they offer are limited. Say you wanted to know when a person was on your site to see when it might be good to post new content for them to see, only applications like Woopra offer such information. You cannot reliably add Woopra to your MySpace page though (yell at me if I’m wrong). Analytics is where the big boys play when they are looking to increase their bottom line. How can you know if you are successful in your pushing your new single if you do not know when your traffic changes?
- Legitimacy – Having your own self-hosted site let’s people know you are serious. Go on GoDaddy, buy your domain for 3+ years and see how Google treats your site.
- Options – Feel restrained with your Facebook “Like” Page? Do you know many people that can program in FBML? Heh, you can easily switch gears if you have your own space. There are many options out there for building websites – WordPress, Joomla, Squarehost… heck, you can even just trick out a Tumblr page. Endless options lead to endless potential. Potential equals growth, so there. GROW UP.
Do you believe bands need stand-alone websites? No? Tell me why in the comments. Yes? Is there anything I missed in my bulleted reasoning?