I’m currently promoting a Christmas-themed song that I’m selling for charity. I’ve primarily been marketing it through social media, instead of a more formal website/press release approach, but I did want to share the information here, because it may also be helpful to you, if you are interested in marketing through social media too, or recording and releasing your own digital music.
“Made It Through Christmas Again” cover art
The song is called “Made It Through Christmas Again” and it’s a somewhat s
ardonic take on the stresses that come with the holidays. I first wrote the song around the holidays in 2010, and largely forgot about it ’til the next year’s holidays. I was writing some ebooks
on Garage Band for iPhone and iPad and, while I was setting up musical arrangements, to make screenshots, it occurred to me that I could kill two birds with one stone, by de
moing the song. The demo came out so well, I decided to release it. To spur myself to get it done, I decided to donate all my profits to the Make A Wish Foundation.
That’s where things got complex. There are an array of music services pout the
re, which all have unique individual submissions procedures. It can be quite a web to find your way through. Many people choose to pay a service to handle all of that for them. I cho
se CD Baby, and so far, they have done a fine job. There are serious arguments for their main competitor, TuneCore, but I haven’t had a chance to try them yet.
I also created a Facebook page to promote the song. So that I could use that same page to promote more than just one project, I named it “the manhattan project,” which is
a catchall name I’ve used for years, as an umbrella for creative projects. I also used my Facebook page and personal Twitter and Google+ accounts.
Frequent posts are required to keep your topic fresh, in the impermanent world
of social media, and this quickly became stressful. To manage my social media presence
better, I turned to HootSuite, a web-based app just for managing your social m
edia brands.
There’s much more to the effort than this, of course. However, there’s two much to go into in one blog post. So here’s an overview of my recent activity, and I’ll be going into more detail about some of these applications and services, as well as analyzing my successes and failures. Please check the song out. You can listen for free at a variety of places, you can find mentioned on my Facebook page. If you like it, please consider buying a copy, and supporting a great cause. It’s available at most major music “e-railers.” The best choice is probably my CD Baby store.
Christopher Hord's Blog 