Let’s say that I’m sitting in a pub having a nice quiet drink and then you suddenly walk in.
We give each other the musicians nod and after a few minutes the pressure is too much! One of us has to start a conversation…
For a while I would give you my best small talk banter, but pretty soon in a burst of enthusiasm I would break, and start to tell you all about my favorite topic…
The 80/20 Rule
Now I’m not going to explain the whole economic theory behind 80/20 in this post, but as far as we are concerned for music marketing it goes like this.
“You make 80% of progress in your music career from only 20% of the things that you do.”
If you understand the implications of what I just said you must be excited right now!
If you don’t let me explain…
The 80/20 rule states that most of the things you do just fill time, and there is only a very small number of music marketing methods that really matter.
So if you can work out what the 20% is then you can vastly decrease the amount of time you have to work towards your career each day and have even better results than you have ever had in the past.
But just knowing the rule does not mean anything, unless you have a clear path to finding out what the super human 20% is.
The way I do this is to test a whole bunch of stuff and notice the “outliers”.
For example I might post up 20 different blog posts and notice that one of them might get spread around weirdly more than the others. Then I would just look at the post and work out what made it so much more effective than everything else I have written.
You can do this with a whole bunch of stuff like Youtube videos, Twitter posts, Facebook messages, music contacts and fan emails. Pretty much anything in your music career, and your life for that matter.
But the point of this post is not to have you testing like a freak for the next year! I want to give you a short cut or you could say “cheat sheet” to the things that have most impact for any creative person.
Super Human Tasks for Music Marketers
- Writing and recording new music for a set period of time each day.
- Writing uncommonly good blog posts that will get spread far and wide.
- Creating follow up email messages to build a strong relationship with your fans.
- Making viral music videos.
- Putting together albums, DVDs and other merch that you will sell at gigs and online.
- Writing non pushy sales copy for your music.
- Letting the fans know about your new content on Twitter and Facebook.
- Networking with influential people in your music scene via Twitter, Facebook or in person.
When looking for high end tasks in your music marketing you want to look for things that will have an instant impact like putting a new fan on your list, getting a high profile gig or sending a cool email to your album download page. Although some of the things you have to do will be adding to a greater important goal like planing an album release.
The key thing is to set aside time each and every work day for these high impact tasks and never put them off.
Stuff like writing music and blogging is so easy to procrastinate on because often the tasks that are not really important seem like much more of an instant win and less work.
Things That Have Very Little Impact On Your Music Career and Should Be Avoided Like the Plague
- Installing and testing new fancy plugins on your blog.
- Working on your logo.
- Trying to create the perfect website.
- Spending all day chatting on Facebook, Twitter and forums.
- Reading more than 10 blog posts per day.
- Going through more that 4 courses on music marketing.
- Going through your email inbox.
- Looking at google analytics to see who came to your website. Tracking is important but you should do this for no more than 10 minutes per day.
- Researching other bands like a freak.
- Doing boring stuff that is always the same that you could get another band member to do
Yuckie!
Why Do We Get Sucked In To These Unimportant Tasks?
I think there are a couple of big reasons…
- Things like email give a little audio nudge each time they arrive (Turn it off.)
- After researching music marketing for 8 hours your feel like you have really made some progress. But it’s a total illusion.
Don’t worry it’s not your fault, nobody shows you how to be super productive at school.
How to Change The Tide
Simple…
Look for the stuff that has most positive impact on your career and make sure that you work on it for a focused 50 minute period when you get up in the morning..
Then if you don’t get around to doing something like “email checking” no problem. The world is not going to end if you don’t reply to an email within 2 hours.
This stuff is simple…
And to make sure that you commit to it I want to give you a little challenge.
Pick one of the super important things you need to do, and make a commitment to work on it first thing tomorrow.
Then let me know what it is in the comment box below. Making a public statement about your commitment helps to motivate you to action.
Have fun playing with the 80/20 rule, pretty soon you will start to notice it all over the place.
Speak soon,
- Chris
Tags: Music Promotion, Music Promotion guide, Music Promotion Methods
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