Butterfly Boucher

Here is a short piece of a very long list…

A DIGITAL CAMERA
New content is the key. Are you taking pictures or having someone take pictures for you? Take pictures of your band in action, videos of your performances, pics with “fans”, footage of behind-the-scenes stuff…etc. Butterfly Boucher tapes these random, comical pieces called “Blah Blah Blah”.  They are hardly edited and extremely low budget videos, but funny and give her web visitors an accurate idea of whoe she is when she’s not behind her guitar.  New content on your websites keeps people coming back repeatedly. For more on this, visit the “Drawing Traffic to Your Website” post.

REGULAR INTERNET ACCESS
Ok, perhaps I’m attached at the hip to the internet.  Not so healthy.  But how often are you online? Specifically, how often do you check your email? If you’re an artist actively pursuing music, you need to check your email at least once a day, not once a week or every three days. Bookers and reviewers crave immediacy.  If you’ve been asked to do a show, get back with a response ASAP!  The longer you wait to respond, the less likely you are to get the gig.

PHOTOSHOP & HTML KNOWLEDGE
This is a big topic and I’m only going to briefly scratch the surface.  Photoshop & Html, in my opinion, are a musicians best friend.  With Photoshop you can make your own artwork (posters, website designs, photo editing).  With html you can post the artwork you create without help from html generators and/or alter code on myspace (and anywhere) for a more unique, simple, personalized feel.

• Editing possibilities with photoshop are endless.  Here’s an awesome, hilarious video tutorial: You Suck At Photoshop. Plenty of short 5 minute videos, quick easy lessons, very effective.  (p.s. some people prefer Illustrator to Photoshop.)
• Likewise, html opens the door for so many options on your website(s).  Tomas Vera has some great, easy-to-follow instructions for creating hyperlinks and changing fonts (look, size, color, etc).  This is simple stuff that I use every day and its pays to know.  If you want to learn more, do a google search for “basic html.”

If you have any other great sites, please suggest them.
Its always great when you have someone doing all this stuff for you, but knowledge is power…and the more you know how to do for yourself, the better you are at promoting yourself.