I opened Ghostswelcome.com not that long time ago. The main purpose of this blog was to open a platform for the music I create but also to document my journey with the songwriting and music in general with help of this music blog. I’ve been thinking of starting a music blog for a while but it required some work and thinking to do before the launch.
There are few things to consider when thinking of starting a music blog. Or at least I had to deal with these thoughts first. They were:
1) Time management
For me starting a music blog required some thinking before I decided to launch it here in Ghostswelcome.com. I’ve been very active in social media with Ghosts Welcome for some time now and I’ve been posting my music and other content regularly there.
Being active on social media requires some time and dedication now and then. Even though it’s not that time consuming all the time, every thing is still a little away from the main thing I do this after all – songwriting and playing music.
Before I started this music blog I continuosly felt that there aren’t sometimes enough time for me to do the most important thing in Ghosts Welcome – The music. So starting a music blog would be another time eater, but also same time very important thing for an indie artist and songwriter like me.
There are several good reasons for starting a music blog. Firstly, it’s your own platform. You can modify it as much as you want. You cannot do too much customization for you pages in Facebook or Instagram. You can even start your own ecommerce store inside of it if you wish.
And the most imporant thing is – remember what happened to indie musicians that were trending in Myspace before people abandoned the platform? Yeah, me neither. We’ll never know when Facebook popularity goes down like MySpace and people decide to use some other platform. And when that happens you want to engage your audience in some different platform before and your own music blog is the best option for that.
But running a music blog takes time. Make sure you can commit before you start. It will take some time every week to keep it running.
2) Technical stuff
If you want to start your music blog you need to do some technical stuff before you can go live. I strongly suggest to get your own domain instead of wordpress.com or blogger.com for example. Using those ready to go blog platforms are easy to start with but you don’t want to be tied to them later.
It’s especially important when it comes to search engine optimization. Just pick a name for your music blog and buy a domain for it from Namecheap.com or GoDaddy.com for example. Domains ending .com are pretty safe options.
When you have you domain ready you need a hosting for you music blog. There are many different easy and cheap options for you to decide. I suggest you prefer the easy one before cheapeast one. I personally use Siteground.com with this website.
After you have a domain and hosting you can start working with the actual music blog. You can build the actual website by yourself if you know how to do it. One popular option, which is also use, is to use content management systems like WordPress. Wordpress is a really easy way to build a music blog and modify it in a way you want. There are lots of free templates for a WordPress music blog. With this music blog I use WordPress and a premium theme called Divi.
3) Share your blog and distribute it relentlessly
Usually the hardest part of building a music blog, or any blog, is the part when you’re figuring out how to get readers for your blog. There are several ways to do marketing for your blog but in general it’s about how actively and effectively you can distribute it. Make sure you know at least the basics from these topics:
* Search engine optimization – SEO means optimizing your blog in a way that it can be found from Google’s top search results when people are googling about the stuff you write about in your blog. It’s hard and requires lots of time but it’s definitely worth it in a long run.
For example this blog doesn’t rank that well in Google yet because ghostswelcome.com is still a quite new website and the domain doesn’t have that much of links from other websites or have a lots of content in general. But we’re getting there.
* Social media marketing – It’s always a wise move to be visible there where people spend their time. Nowadays it’s in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or in some other social media platforms. Kids love Snapchat – I don’t know anything about that, maybe you do?
* Email lists subscribers – When you launch your own music blog you should definitely start building an email list. That means you encourage people subscribing to your email list and you make your best to send them the best content you can via email once in a while. People are loyal followers when you treat them well.
You’re good to go after you’ve done the basics right. After that you can just enjoy of what you want to do – creating content for your own music blog.
Extra point – Pick your niche
Think what kind of music blog you’re going to have? Are you going to distribute your own music, review music videos or blog about gigs and the local music scene?
In my opinion you don’t really need to pick a one niche because of your audience but mainly because of yourself. It’s so much easier to stay with the content plan when you actually are having one. Have fun!
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I create music and blog about the process. It usually also involves thoughts about life and art in general. I’d like to send you a message via email when there’s new music or posts published.