(and thank you, Paige.)

I’m not suggesting you pimp your site out and be like the thousands of annoying people who drop into random discussions only so they can hype (spam) links to their site. I am suggesting that to achieve a sense of community, you need to statistically make it more likely by 1) attracting NEW listeners/visitors who are more vocal and thought provoking. 2) making it as easy as possible for the converted fans to find you and come back. Ultimately though, only two things really drive discussions online. That would be “news” and “controversy”. Discussions fizzle quickly unless you are bringing information that means something to the reader.

If you say “Joe Smith is going to be a guest musician at our next show”, chances are that people will put that on their calendar and not come back. If you say “We are going to have a mystery guest musician at out next show”, people have a reason to come back and talk.

I’m not sure how and when you post content updates, but I wouldn’t do like another band and post a full album up for streaming. I would post maybe a few popular ones and maybe rotating songs every three weeks so people have a reason to bookmark your page and come back. I know that sounds manipulative, but it’s also adds a sense of mystery and revelation. It’s no different than the reason people read a book. They don’t necessarily want the ending revealed, they want the roller coaster ride.

I think an email list is a very bad idea. With spam being a multi-billion dollar problem worldwide, I think everyone should avoid using it as a mass communication method. RSS solves every problem that email lists had. The problem is that most people don’t understand the power of how to use it or what it even is. If you have an RSS link I can plug the link into Thunderbird (the email program I use) and every time you update the feed on your site (or your site can do it automatically), I will get an update just like an email. In other words, I can opt in and opt out on my own. Your fans don’t have to worry about some trojan app hijacking your software and turning your computer into a spambot sending out spam to everyone.

I haven’t really looked at MailChimp before. I used FanBridge and was relatively happy with it (though I found it when I didn’t really have a big need for it). My main curiosity is which one is best for sending Facebook visitors, etc. over to the list. I don’t know if you’ve got a specific opinion about that, though it’d probably be easiest if I just went and saw what you were already using.

There’s a middle line, somewhere… I know maybe a little too much about the optimization side of things, actually, and I get what you’re saying. I try to do a little of that but at the same time I don’t want to spend much time being beholden to it. I’m not so much concerned with driving visitors as I am in doing something that’s interesting and has even a little sense of community to it. So what I’m asking wasn’t so much about “how do I get more people to find me” as it was “how do I make the connection feel like something more than just repetitive show announcements.” But I appreciate the other advice and understand how much it could damage your status as an online curmudgeon.

(Unless this is a different David, in which case disregard that)

For example though, people who’ve liked you on Facebook won’t necessarily see your posts if they haven’t commented or liked your posts regularly. They are even less likely to see a Twitter post unless they are reading when you post it.

Twitter works best when used as an RSS feed. It’s better as a “Hey, I updated my blog” announcement. Most MySpace pages I have seen are giving people links to elsewhere. It’s dead. Google+ has an uphill battle despite a seemingly successful start. I post on messageboards and put a link in my sig file back to my web page. Google ranks a web page higher if you have a lot of cross domain links back to your site. Your chances of grabbing stray web hits increases if your posts include both common and uncommon words mixed.

If you talk about Spider-man and chances are your posts won’t get in the top 10,000 search results. Talk about Spider-man and Rocket Racer and you’ll get a top twenty search engine result from people doing very specific searches.

Think about what topics people are going to search for and post blogs about that. Pay particular attention to the noun combinations you use. You can still be candid and write blog posts that will get noticed on Google.

BTW, not sure if you intended on your Supertramp cover tune to be downloadable, but it is. I suggest you use a service with better security.