Video: http://www.tommydarker.com/music-talks/archive/konstantinos-varsis-reputation-management-for-musicians-online/

1. “Reputation Management for Musicians
Online”
By Konstantinos Varsis
Great Online Reputation Ltd
www.greatonlinereputation.com

2. What is your online reputation
(in practical terms)
• Whatever shows up in the search results
• What people say about you on Facebook, Twitter
and other social media sites
• Any reviews of your brand, band, music work,
albums, track, business
• Anything published on mainstream press
• Any photos or videos tagged with your name
• Public records connected to you or your business

3. Statistics
Google results
For any given search term in
Google:
- 53% of users do not go past
the first two results
- 89% of users do not go past
page 1 of results
- 99% of users do not go past
page 2 of results
You are judged primarily by
the first page of the results
What is on the first page
• 1 out of 4 people who
appear online have no
positive content at all
on their first page
• 15% have at least one
negative result
on the first page
that damages
their reputation

4. First steps (1)
• Have a strategy and decide who you want to be online
• Be prepared to do a lot of work
• Have a professional written resume that looks
impressive
• Have professional recorded samples of your work and
professionally edited show reel
• Have some very good quality pictures
• Make sure your music is ready for the world
• Discover your brand
• Know your target audience

5. First Steps (2)
• Interact with other artists and arrange joint
gigs or events with them
• Get reviews of your work
• Have a great press kit with band’s bio, fact
sheet, brochure, positive press, song demos
and contact info
• Protect your copyright by registering it

6. How to promote yourself online (1)
• Get your own domain and own website (online central
hub, quality depends on budget)
• Stream your music across different online channels
• Distribute your presence
• Allow fans to download free music from your website
• Build good relationship with your audience – engage
them in more than one way
• Find blogs related to your niche (Hypermachine etc)
• Give promotional tools to your fans
• Encourage fan contributions

7. How to promote yourself online (2)
• Create videos (17% of users will spend less than four
seconds on any given website, but will spend an
average of 2.7 minutes watching a video on the
internet)
• Prefer quality over quantity
• Buy limited vanity metrics exchange tracks for likes
• Create a relevant blog with genuine useful content
• Convince other webmasters to place a link to your
website
• Place your most important news to all your online
resources and link between your online profiles

8. How to promote yourself online (3)
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Take advantage of Wikipedia
Try localised results for more chances of inclusion
Engage your audience and encourage your brand defenders
Do not respond to negative criticism or defamation without
thinking much first
Multi task with Hoot Suite
Take a look at specialist music distributors who will take a set fee to
encode your music and place it on major digital music stores
i.e. Ditto where you keep all royalties
Monitor mentions to your name and brand (i.e. Google alerts)
Ask moderators to remove unfair or defamatory content on their
websites for you.

9. Why your Music Self – Promotion is
not working (1)
• You are waiting in line
Sending your music to industry professionals, festivals, magazines and radio
promoters like Music X-ray is good but chances to get a fair listen are limited and
you have to pay a fee. Be creative in your song writing and outsource duties by
getting freelancers or companies on your side. Utilise blogs, micro-job sites.
• Only promoting on social media
They are a good means of promotion but most music marketing publications tend
to focus on the exclusively. Not everyone is involved with social media,
communicate by email, make phone calls. Music industry companies (record
labels, artist managers, booking agents, etc.) are far more interested in the
popularity of YOUR website
• You use automated services
Beatwire and Musicsubmit look attractive as you get your music is sent to
journalists, radio hosts, industry pros and charge a flat rate which is less than
publicists charges. But how much attention do these communications get? Do you
get respect with the easy way out?

10. Why your Music Self-Promotion is not
working (2)
• Not showing value
When you send a submission to magazine or blog most of them will be quick to forward you their rates for online or
print advertising. Sales and editorial consideration are separate. There may be freelancers interested.
• The do not know you and do not care
Many music blogs featured in directories encourage submission to increase the visibility, popularity but never consider
any submission apart from their personal favourites.
• You did not appeal to their ego
Some want personal messages while others would blacklist you for attempting to do so.
• No time and no differentiation
In an attempt to be heard by the masses you become part of a generic package
• Neglect Reciprocation
• Focusing on increasing the 'quantity' of fans instead of the
'intensity' of your fans
• Not investing enough time into building your music career
• Having merely mediocre live performing skills. Do not put off
developing your live performing and stage presence skills

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Where to publish and promote your
music (1)
Spotify
Bandcamp (good for independent artists, allows selling)
Reddit Music (community for content sharing)
LastFM (knows how to match your music to the audience tastes – receive
targeted audience – royalty programme)
Earbits (high quality – encourages through social media currency users to
listen – not too crowded yet
Soundcloud (very big, 200 million listeners)
Twitter mobile (relatively new, works with other players Spotify, iTunes …)
The new MySpace (rebranded)
Instagram videos (15 sec to show your talent)
iLike (leading social media music service, 45 million users, Universal Artist
Dashboard can be used to reach fans and spread their music virally while
managing their presence across multiple channels)

12. Where to publish and promote your
music (2)
• Ourstage (popularity contest , win prizes)
• Mp3.com (very good traffic)
• iTunes (not for emerging musicians, takes a while to
approve, high commission)
• Pure Volume (free profile downloading, interactive)
• Facebook (reach wider audience, dedicated page)
• Garageband (have tracks reviewed by fans, climb the
charts)
• Ourwave (alternates promotion of different musicians
over time)

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Where else to get involved
Professional : LinkedIn , Plaxo
Personal
: Facebook, Twitter, Google+
Education :Classmates, Reunion
Review
:Yelp, Amazon
Media sites :Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo
Resume sites :Emurse , Rezume
Bookmarking :Stumble Upon, Reddit,
Digg,
• Industry specific blogs, forums, groups
and social networks
• Local social networks, forums and groups
• Special interest or lifestyle social
networks, forums and groups

14. Questions?
• Great Online Reputation Ltd
14 Basil Street, London, SW3 1AJ
020 3714 5238
www.greatonlinereputation.com
contact@greatonlinereputation.com