5 Tips from IndieHipHop.net On Why Musicians Should Be Blogging

While it's true that I think that every musician should have their own website at their own domain, I also think that such sites should either have a blog or be a blog. No, not a microblog, like most Tumblr blogs, but an honest-to-goodness old school weblog for a variety of reasons including those articulated by FuNkwoRm at IndieHipHop.net.

Though I've mostly exited the world of hip hop blogging, I do follow the Twitter account of a man known as FuNkwoRm because it's a great source of links to music industry resources, including posts at his blog IndieHipHop.net

FuNkwoRm is doing a series of posts about blogging for musicians that began with "5 Reasons Why You Should Be Blogging", a post that sums up some key points.

5 Reasons Musicians Should Be Blogging

1. SEO benefits

2. You're putting too much faith in social media networks

3. Earning potential

4. Ease of use

5. Archived history for your fans

Blogs are an awesome way to get into web publishing and to learn how to catch the Cluetrain. They are easy to use in many ways but also can effectively lead you as deeply into social media and content creation as you wish to go.

Blogs give you a way to communicate news in your own space. That means that when you have news that really interests people, there's a good chance they'll link to your announcement rather than to another site summing up and spinning your news, whether they link from the open web or within such platforms as Facebook.  The content remains available to fans and press under your control.

Though search engine behavior is changing in many ways, blogs can still be a great way to bring the attention of search engines to you and your music while offering ways to monetize music and related content.

The rise of 50 Cent's social network that is essentially built around a blog, ThisIs50.com, is an excellent example of pushing the concept to an extreme and, in the process, creating a platform that not only pushes his crew's music but puts him in a tastemaker position while earning income.

FuNkwoRm gets more into such issues in his follow-up post, "Artists: How to Blog, Make Money, and Expand Your Audience".  I could go on and on about this topic given that I'm close to reaching a decade of blogging and have found it an excellent way to achieve so much of what people want to achieve on the web, from getting attention to making money. I did it writing about music but there's no reason musicians can't take advantage of blogging as well and I encourage you to do so for the above reasons and so many more.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He blogs about web business models at Flux Research and the world of dance at All World Dance. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.