WordCast Conversations 7: WordPress and Blogging for Musicians and Bands

Kym Huynh, vocal­ist for electro/pop band sSalvia.

Many of you might not know that WordCast’s own Kym Huynh is quite a pro­lific musi­cian, not only by him­self but in his band: sSalvia — a dance/electronica project. This week on Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions, we turn the tables as Dave Moyer inter­views Kym about how Word­Press, blog­ging and social media can be used for musi­cians and bands.

Kym’s Musi­cal Projects

• Kym’s older solo work can be found at www.kymhuynh.com
• sSalvia is a dance/electronica project
• sSalvia runs on Word­Press, and com­pared to sta­tic HTML sites, Kym says there’s no rea­son to not be on WordPress

Essen­tial Ele­ments of a Band’s Website

• About pages are needed!
• Like our friend Rox­anne Dar­ling rec­om­mends, con­tact pages are essential.
• Gigs cal­en­dar: When are you performing?
• Sam­ples of music
• RSS feeds are impor­tant to mar­ket to return visitors

Gig Cal­en­dar Plugins

• Gig Cal­en­dar
• Gig­Press

What to Write

• Don’t just post the extremely big news! Bring the audi­ence into the process.
• On the sSalvia web­site, the blog’s con­tent is aimed at bring­ing fans into the music mak­ing process.

Social Media for Musicians

• Even if you have a web­site, you need to tie in all these services.
• sSalvia’s Twit­ter is used to update peo­ple about lit­tle behind the scenes bits.
• Face­book is a land­ing page for reach­ing out to new listeners
• MySpace has always been a big part of music online. Kym uses it specif­i­cally for net­work­ing, but less as his “offi­cial presence”
• Con­nect your blog to Twit­ter with the Twit­ter Tools Word­Press plugin
• KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID! Don’t make too much work for yourself.

We’d love to hear your feed­back about what we can change, fea­tures to add, and guests and top­ics for future episodes! Con­tact the show by email­ing con­ver­sa­tions [at] wordcastnet.com, or call (toll free) 1–888-525-BLOG (2564). You can also dis­cuss the show in the Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions forum.

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On This Day

• Word­Cast Cho­sen as One of the 100 Best Small Busi­ness Pod­casts of 2010 — 2010
• Plu­gin Picks 1: Audio Player — 2010
• Excited and Rear­ing to Go — 2008
• Per­for­mance at The Rotary Club’s Char­ity Din­ner — 2008
• Live Per­for­mance of “You Raise Me Up” at The Rotary Club’s Char­ity Din­ner — 2008
• Behind the Scenes Look Into the Record­ing of “I’m Com­ing Home” — 2008