As I round out week four exercises and launch into week five of Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks Blogging challenge I can’t help but reflect on the personal growth and progress I’ve made.
First I’ve begun to blog on more of a regular basis. I’ve now up the ante from one post a week to at least three or more.
I’ve always been an avid movie fan and have wanted to find a way to incorporate my love of movies and
music. Not that this is the perfect platform or necessarily the best fit. However it does speak to me.
So I’ve started a new blogging feature “Addictions and other vices” which will be a way for me to share
my love of movies,games,music you name it. Not as a promotional tool for my band but more of a personal
challenge and catharsis.
That’s one of the great things I’ve discovered through these exercises is these are all guidelines and not everything is in the form of cookie cutter answers. There’s a lot of self discovery to be found. Depending on the type of person you are and to some degree the type of audience you intend to reach . Some of the recommendations are trial and error. And you have to be willing to take a leap of faith and maybe fail a few times.
I signed my band parker up to the Podsafe Music Network and that night we we’re played on Michael Angel’s Cosmic Grab Bag podcast. So that definitely felt instantly rewarding. I’d never heard of Podsafe and now I’m thinking I may set up my own podcast there.
I’ve added about 70 blogging sites I feel would be a good fit for our band. I plan to become an avid reader and comment on posts I find interest in. The one problem I’ve encountered is a lot of the blogs that I had made contact with previous to this challenge our sadly writing their final post. So this will take a little more time to fully immerse myself in and feel comfortable with.
I recently added an email sign up and a street team option widget to our website. Sent parker’s Street team on their first mission and have had some success there. I realize I need to rethink my prize option though. I was offering a physical copy and download of our CD “Bombshell.” The problem is I have now been informed from emails from some of our members that they have already purchased a copy of our CD. Which is actually a good thing. My next mission will now involve T-shirts and more goodies. As they say learning curve.
This pretty much brings me up to speed. Next week we’re back in the studio. So it’s all thankfully moving at a quick pace.
And with this book It feels like there’s a GPS in the car and if I need to I won’t be too proud to ask for directions.
Tom McNeil
