A complete approach to mobile music marketing takes into account all avenues for maintaining a mobile presence. So, whether you are looking for alternatives to maintaining a mobile site or want to complete your strategy, here are 5 channels for mobile music marketing without a mobile site or app.
Just as I feel every artist should have a website, I also feel every artist should, at the very least, have a simple mobile site. However, with increasing numbers of mobile users accessing the web and text messaging, there are numerous channels for reaching your fans online.
1. Text Messaging
A recent study of cellphone usage in the U.S. showed that text messaging far outranked most other mobile activities. Developing an opt-in phone list, limiting frequency and always sending text messages worth receiving are key to text message marketing success.
2. YouTube
YouTube video commands "52 percent of all global mobile video streaming". Having a strong YouTube presence is one of the few truly core necessities and that's true for mobile marketing as well.
3. Facebook
Facebook is a huge source of referral traffic and, of their 750 million actives users, there are "more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices". Making sure you're in the newsfeed, in part by building EdgeRank, is key to having a mobile Facebook presence.
4. StumbleUpon
Though referral traffic stats are a point of contention, StumbleUpon is a strong contender with Facebook, for site traffic referral. If you're targetting campaigns for sites like StumbleUpon, such as Digg or Reddit, be sure you're sending them to something they can view comfortably via a mobile device.
5. File Sharing
File sharing and download activity is also a significant mobile activity. Marketing via P2P networks and via services such as RapidShare is worth investigating regardless of your mobile interests.
Most artists will already have a presence in some of the above channels. So start from where you're active, consider the strength of your mobile presence and build from there.
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He is currently relaunching Flux Research to pursue his long-standing obsession with web business models. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
