A few months I wrote this blog on the progress of CackBlabbath in its first 5 months of life. Well the site has now been in existence for a whole 8 months so I thought I’d give out a few lessons I have learned about setting up a music site, and hopefully point out some of the pitfalls I blundered blindly into.
1) Come up with a decent name
Sounds obvious eh ? The problem is that almost everything you can think of has probably been taken. You have to be original and preferably inventive. It’s also important to come up with something that people will remember after you shout it drunkenly at them in the pub. (At this point I must point out that the CackBlabbath name was suggested by Dom Lawson, so credit where credit is due). Another thing is make sure that the name you want is available in EXACTLY the same format on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc. It’s also worth checking you can get a mail address too, so check you can sign up to GMail.
2) Have a distinctive look
Another obvious one you’d think. When I first put CB together the logo was inspired by the cover of Sabbath’s Vol. 4. Now I’m no graphic artist but after far too long hacking about with the text from the album cover (it’s not a font you can find anywhere) I came up with the logo you see (apart from the dude with the mic, that was added later after a happy accident while editing some photos). The original site was all black and white and I thought it looked pretty good (at the time, not so sure now) but there were a couple of fairly major drawbacks with this approach, mainly involving updating and navigating the pages SO ….
3) Keep the site easy to update
The biggest mistake I made, looking back, was originally deciding to hand-code all of the pages. When there were only a couple of updates per week it wasn’t too much of an issue and it allowed me to have a totally unique and distinctive look as opposed to the conformity of WordPress.
The old site is still about, lurking in the background. If you never saw it click here to be transported back in time.
After a few months of manual updates, where the code for the pages had to be individually edited, I decided to take the plunge and move the whole thing over to WordPress. Now this is a powerful blogging engine that has evolved into a rather fine content management system which is used by, well, pretty much everyone. This can make achieving point 2) difficult…
4) Keep navigation simple
WordPress improved on my original attempt as it has a well proven menu structure, but even then there is a lot you can do to help by not having too many options. I soon ditched one of the WordPress menu bars anyway as I found that most of the traffic within the site comes from people clicking on pictures and not many actually used the menu bar at the top of the page.
Oh, but if you are going to use WordPress…
5) Steer clear of common themes
The problem with WordPress is that two sites which use the same theme will look VERY similar, and remember point 2). Now the elements within a theme can be configured to a certain extent but it’s difficult to change the fundamentals unless you’re happy getting into the guts of the thing. If you use the same theme as someone else they “may” accuse you of copying them and that’s not nice.
There are literally thousands of themes available (some are admittedly bloody awful) so if you hunt around you should be able to find one that is less common which will, in turn, make your site look more distinctive. Looking at sites like OneMetal shows you how WordPress CAN look if you know what you’re doing.
Still as there is nothing to stop someone else using the same theme as you it’s a good idea to customise some elements of it to keep your site looking different. Oh, and don’t overdo the widgets….
6) Have a decent search facility
Once upon a time CB had a small site search box
that to one ever used, until I made it bigger and stuck it in a prominent position at the page. Now a sizeable proportion of the visitors who move about within the site do so from there. Oh, and there’s no point having the search box at the VERY top of the page beside your site name or logo, people spend their time on the content so the box needs to be there.
7) Content is king
It’s an old cliche, but it’s totally true. It’s all very well having a great looking site but if there’s nothing there to read then people aren’t going to stick around, and more importantly they aren’t going to come back. OK, you probably won’t think everything you ever write is brilliant but you have to keep things ticking along with decent quality original words.
Spread the word
Use the tools that are available to publicise your site’s existence to the world. A Facebook fan page and a Twitter account are essentials, a re-tweet from someone with loads of followers will drive a decent amount of traffic to your site. Another thing to do is to sign up for some of the bigger music forums on the web and include your web address in your sig. This has two advantages, firstly people see the name and secondly search engines see it as another site linking to yours. DO NOT spam these though or you WILL make yourself very unpopular.
Finally make sure that Google knows about your site. Once you’re submitted you should see your pages start to appear on search results and see some traffic arriving from there.
9) Let PR and promo companies know you exist
A quick web search will turn up the email addresses of loads of PR companies, and these are the people who want to use your spiffy new site to publicise whatever bands, gigs or releases they have on their books. Now the bigger PR companies will ignore you completely, as will almost all record companies but you have to start somewhere and the smaller outfits will be happy to include you on their EMail distribution lists. They may also send you promo CDs and links to download new music (and it’s all about the freebies).
As your site gets bigger you’ll get more attention from these people, which means more stuff to review, which means more content. (Remember point 7). It is important to try and review as much of the stuff you are sent as possible. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the PR company and the reviewer so if you stop writing they’ll stop sending.
10) Keep it original
This is more difficult than it sounds. In your early days the fear of being accused of plagiarism will be there, to be honest I try not to look at other peoples reviews of stuff I know I’ll be covering for CB as it may, even subconsciously, taint my opinions. Also avoid of cliches like the plague (Boom Boom). If you describe hardcore as “Balls-Out”, for example, you won’t be the first.
Another thing to remember in the quest for original content is that there is lots of perfectly legal free music available. If you’re not being sent promo material to review get yourself over to Bandcamp where there is loads of stuff you can download and hone your writing skills on. I reviewed Break by One Eyed Doll from there and it’s been one my most read articles.
11) Research your facts
As the site expands you will be coming across more and more stuff you’re not familiar with, but sure as hell other people are. With tools like MySpace and Google there’s no excuse for getting the basics wrong. It was mistakes like this that planted the original embryonic seeds for CackBlabbath a year ago when reputable music sites couldn’t even get band names or song titles right (I wrote this ranty blog about it). And yes, I’ve fallen into the “get caught not knowing what I’m talking about” trap twice now. The first time it happened I never noticed, luckily I had Ewen from the excellent LeaveTheHall to point my mistake out to me…. and all of Twitter.
12) Enjoy It
It’s supposed to be fun. You’ll get new music, you’ll get into gigs and you’ll get to write stuff that increasing numbers of people will read. And as an added bonus most of the people you will meet are genuinely ace.
No related posts.
