If you're into music and writing, you might want to get serious about starting your own music blog. However, setting up a blog and spamming words on it is not going to guarantee you an audience. As with everything in life, you need to invest time and effort into carrying out a plan of action in order to gain some success. Music blogging has changed a lot over the years. Many have even moved on to podcasts and video reviews on Youtube. The following tips are going to guide you through the climate of music blogging and how you can start your own blog with success.
Do your Research
Before jumping right into blogging, the first thing that you should do is to take a look at some of the most successful online blogs or music journals. Find what makes each of them unique and take inspiration from it. The goal is not to copy their strategies, but to gain an idea of what you might want to do with your own blog.
Do pay attention to how they advertise their brand and to which audience they are targeting. While browsing these blogs online, you might want to ask yourself some of these questions.
How do they engage with their followers?
What kind of style do they write in?
What kind of content are they producing?
What do you dislike about the blog?
What are their viewers' opinion on them?
You also might want to consider what other strategies they use to reach out to more people. It could be vlogging, podcasting or even sharing their online playlists. For example, Anthony Fantano is a well-known and successful online music critic who launched TheNeedleDrop in the form of written reviews, which eventually became his Youtube channel as he starts vlogging his music reviews.
Other music blogs you might want to check out :
2. Find Your Niche
The next step in starting your blogging journey is to come up with a unique name and brand for your website. While you're choosing a name, it is recommended that it be related to the genre of your music blog. For example, YourEDM focuses on EDM while MetalInjection focuses on metal music.
Once you've found a name and a genre for your blog, consider the goals you want to achieve in this music blog. Ask yourself questions such as :
Who is your target audience?
What is your niche?
Are you focusing on local of global artists?
What kind of content are you going to produce?
How are you going to answers and responses from these musicians?
Developing your brand is an important step in starting your music blog. What is the main content that you are going to put out there? It could be written reviews and criticisms of songs and albums. It could also be updating fans of upcoming events, promotions and albums. Or, it could just be you celebrating your love for music. Think about how you are going discuss music and use it to connect to your audience.
3. Consider Your Content
Once you've found your niche, let's move forward to expanding your content. Other than music reviews and event updates, you could also blog about the following:
Interviews with musicians
Interviews with touring crew
Evolution of music
To state an example, Allkpop is a music blog and news source for K-pop fans. Not only do they provide updates on K-pop for fans, but they also blog about the latest gossip on the industry stars. This attracts a lot of readers as fans speculate and question of what might have happened.
4. Be Different
Of course, to be successful, you have to stand out among the hundreds and thousands of online music blogs. One way to do this is to be engaging with your audience and be consistent with your output of content. Find out what your audience wants from you, and figure out your next goal from there. You could set up other forms of social media accounts such as Instagram and Twitter to connect with your readers and hear their feedback. You could also set up a discussion forum for your readers to come together as a community.
Make sure when you are working on your music blog, have a solid schedule in action. Aim for 3-4 posts each week and maintain it til you are more established. Then, you might want to consider producing more content from there onwards.
5. Build a team
Managing a blog all on your own is no easy task. If you find yourself struggling, find a group of like-minded friends or hire the relevant people to join you on your gig. You could also collaborate with other bloggers or even encourage your readers to generate content for you. For example, you might want to gain various opinions from your readers and compile them into one article. This not only helps to produce more content with less effort, but it also helps to engage with your audience!
Zoe is an avid fan of all kinds of music. Her primary instrument is the guitar but she is always passionately learning how to play other instruments such as the drums and keyboard. She is currently playing the bass guitar in a band and has been routinely involved in music since she was a child.