One could argue that finding moderate success for a musician in this age is relatively easier than in the past. While the basic tenants of promotion still hold true – creating good music and playing exciting shows – the low-cost options made available by online platforms give today’s artists huge marketing advantages over methods from decades ago.

Here are a list of great tools for promoting your music online. If you’re a musician, get to know them well and you can save your time and money on more important things… like your fourth delay pedal.

ArtistData
Upload a show to ArtistData and they’ll automatically send it out to huge number of sites and calendars.

Bandcamp
A powerful distribution and sharing site that gives you ultimate control.

Band Metrics
Measure your engagements and the spread of your music.

Facebook
Obviously. Also, since Facebook holds so much personal user info, site ads can be specifically targeted to specific demographics for maximum cost-effectiveness.

Fanbridge
A feature-rich mailing list system that works incredibly well.

MySpace
During the Musician & Promoter Workshop in San Francisco. an attendee commented that MySpace was dead and thus not worthy of attention. However, as someone who reviews music for an established publication, I can safely say that it is worth the small amount of effort it takes to set up a page. People still expect you to have one, so it’s important to have.

ReverbNation
Quite possibly the most robust social media platform for musicians. Tools include mailing lists, widgets and influence metrics across multiple online sites. Integration with Facebook makes the utilization of their services seamless.

The Sixty One
A slick site that allows listeners to randomly stumble onto new music, rate songs and recommend similar artists. As a songwriter, it’s an amazing way to share your material while seeing which of your tracks stimulate listeners the most.

Twitter
Obviously.

Sure beats the old MP3.com days, no?

The Conversation Prism (Brian Solis and JESS3)

Age Distribution of Social Sites (Pingdom)

The World Map of Social Networks (Vincos.it)

Social Web Involvement (Global Web Index)

Social Media Demographics (Ethan Bloch)

The Web Trend (Information Architects, Inc.)

The Social Media Effect (Social Reflexion)

Sharing on Social Networks (AddToAny)

Twitter Territory (HubSpot)

And of course, any collection of tech pics wouldn’t be complete without the Nerd Venn Diagram (Matthew Mason)

If you’re starting your own business or are in charge of marketing efforts for an established organization, you’re probably more than aware of the importance and cost-effectiveness of “social media marketing.” I place quotes around that phrase because marketing in social media really isn’t marketing in the traditional sense. It’s about building relationships, creating value and being a contributing member of the industry you’re in.

Blah, blah, blah. If you read tech blogs or follow any of the “SM specialists” who Tweet about this stuff 24/7, you’ve heard these statements ad nauseam.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. And until companies start to embrace these values, it will continue to be repeated if only to be hammered into heads. For the new company, there are certain checklist points that I feel are not only expected but required:

1.) Establish an active presence on Twitter and Facebook

Create a Twitter profile and a Facebook Page for your organization. If possible, try and keep the profile names as simple and consistent to your brand as possible. For example, for RedCandle Research, we have the following:

Main: www.redcandleresearch.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/redcandleresearch
Twitter: www.twitter.com/redcandlelight (@redcandle – taken; @redcandleresearch – too long)

For my band, Festizio, we had to accommodate for unavailable usernames as well:

Main: www.festizio.net
Facebook: www.facebook.com/festizio
Twitter: www.twitter.com/festizioband (@festizio – taken)
MySpace: www.myspace.com/festizioband
YouTube: www.youtube.com/festizioband

Once you’ve got that covered, you can explore the more industry specific platforms that may appeal to your sharing your message (YouTube for videos, Flickr for photos, ReverbNation for music, etc.). But get Twitter and Facebook covered first. It’s where everyone is and, thus, it’s where you need to be.

2.) Realize that different platforms are different mediums and have different audiences

Online communities are not all the same, and each require a different voice and posting style than another. Twitter is more friendly for periodic posts of short ideas throughout the day, and the platform makes it easier for these posts to be shared via Retweets or organized by hashtags. Facebook enables embedded multimedia posting, making it easier for the reader to see what you’re sharing (video, image, etc.) without having to visit an external link. But for both platforms, it’s important to resist over sharing, as you would risk annoying the customers that follow you.

3.) Start a blog and share your ideas in depth

When thoughts must jump from 140 character posts into more detailed analysis, it’s time to write a blog post. This is your opportunity to show that you have insightful ideas to contribute. It’s your opportunity to prove your expertise to those within your industry. Where a company website might be cold with product info, a blog allows you to humanize your business. You show that there is a thinking human with (hopefully) a warm beating heart in your chest.

4.) Connect with others in your industry

When your presence is set and you’re ready to explore, look for other voices in your industry. Using free tools like Technorati or TweepSearch, you can find blogs and Twitter users by readership levels. For a more detailed analysis on who’s talking and what they’re saying, you could also work with an online analytics reporting firm like us. Wink, wink.

5.) Be interesting or, at the very least, be useful

No one likes to be bored to death.

…

(Image via Toothpaste For Dinner)

OK Go, a rock band widely known for its music video for their hit song, “Here It Goes Again,” recently released a follow-up video that many are hailing as greater than the original. Their YouTube video for “This Too Shall Pass” received 4,168 Diggs to date and is already an internet sensation.

It’s the dream of any marketer for its video to go viral. But this is the entertainment of the every-person, and thus demands a certain level of authenticity. Being quirky for quirkiness’ sake may inspire a few laughs, but it’s the true moments of weird that really inspire the views.

So what are some traits of a successful viral vid? Here are five common characteristics:

1.) They’re more than just stories, they’re experiences – Whether it’s cute kittens or a peaceful aquarium, the video offers something captivating to watch from beginning to end.

2.) They’re easy to digest – Simple concepts that don’t require too much thought. Seriously, what could be less complicated than “Numa Numa” or “Star Wars Kid“?

3.) They’re uplifting in some way – Point: Christian the Lion.

4.) They offer an innovative or unique view of life that’s different from our own – We find escape through entertainment, so it’s no wonder that fun videos from other cultures and viewpoints become so popular. Check out “Little Superstar” or “Tunak Tunak Tun” to see what I mean.

5.) They’re easily shared – Perhaps the most obvious trait is that sharing isn’t restricted (at least not until after the virility has taken effect.)

A recent TechCrunch article analyzed the actual increase in Twitter usage over 2009. While use on Twitter.com itself remained relatively flat, usage of third-party sites and applications utilizing the Twitter API had grown significantly:

For example, the rate at which bit.ly links are being clicked on is growing at a steep ramp, with more than 500 million clicks (or bit.ly “decodes”) per week. [John Borthwick, betaworks/bit.ly CEO] writes that “last week was the largest week ever for clicks on bit.ly links. 564m were clicked on in total. On the Jan 6th there were a record of 98m decodes.” On January 8, 2009, TweetDeck surpassed 4 million updates in a single day. And Twitterfeed now supports more than 800,000 feeds from more than 400,000 publishers.

Throughout human history, technology has made living more convenient. But it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the influx of innovation permeated every facet of everyday life. This phenomenon is as relevant now as it was then, with Twitter-related technologies tracking and describing our very movements.

For example, the recent announcement of the Yelp.com iPhone upgrade allowing for location check-ins was widely discussed over the past few days. While tech bloggers discussed its direct threat to Foursquare, another popular location check-in application for the iPhone, one couldn’t help but wonder how the market became so saturated with just this one type of service (we still have Loopt, Gowalla for Android users, and already bade farewell to Google’s Dodgeball earlier last year).

It’s valuable market data that consumers are more than willing to freely provide. And this is just a small segment of the vast network of Twitter-related technologies available. Businesses (and friends) are now more able to track a number of our explicit preferences in realtime. Hopefully this proliferation of personal information means they’re listening, and more willing to provide relevant products and services.