Step 1. Choose Your Artist Name

Do you have an artist name?

Is your artist name established?

If it is, is it consistent across the platforms you’re on?

Your artist name is the basis of your online presence.

It’s a major element in how people identify the “artist you.”

To the people who hear about you,
look you up in Google,
check you out in YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook …
your artist name is the entry point into getting to know the “artist you”:
your story
your values
your styles
your achievements
your experience
what you stand for.

It’s your artist ID.

It’s the place where, if handled well, can help hook people to you,
become loyal to you, and make them want to support
and promote you and everything you’re about.

Since your artist name is an essential aspect of your online presence,
then you should do the following actions to make sure
that it’s in a good position to develop upon:

1.1. Run a Google Search for Your Artist Name

What you want to see in the search results
is that there is
no or little competition on your artist name.

What you want to find
is that there are
no search results for your name,
except for pages you already setup and agree with.

The meaning = you have no competition

…when you set out to develop your online presence based on your artist name.

If this is what you found with your search,
then you can already move to
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your ID in the Trademark Search Engines.”

Other possible scenarios:

The Good Scenario

There are some other pages in the results
with your artist name, but they are insignificant.
That is, the name appears only somewhere
in the text of the page.
It doesn’t appear in any headlines.
Also, there are no results where
the name is used in the domain name
or in any of the social media IDs.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you can move onto
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your Artist Name in the Trademark Search Engines.”

The Okay Scenario

There are other pages with your artist name
in the page’s headline, but they’re old.
Also, there are not too many of them.
You can see that if you owned a lot of
social media and a domain with that ID, and updated actively,
then you would soon push the other results lower down the ranks.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you can move onto
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your ID in the Trademark Search Engines.”

The Not So Okay Scenario

There are other people using your artist name on social networks.
The .com domain of your ID is taken.
However, it’s a website that hasn’t been updated in a long time.
There are also a lot of search results that came up for your search.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you should contact the owners of those pages and domains.
Try finding their email or phone number,
and if not, then try
contacting them through private messaging.
If you can’t find it on the sites themselves,
then try Google searches with the following search strings:

your artist name + email
your artist name + contact

Likewise, if there is a domain taken,
search on www.whois.com to find the domain owner.
Ask the owner to transfer the domain at a reasonable cost.
You can run a value check on www.siteprice.org to find out
how much the domain is worth, and accordingly
you can make them an offer.
If you don’t have much money, then see if you can get an alternative domain
like a .org or .net version of your artist name.

The following steps will illustrate the importance of owning a domain with your
artist name.

The Bad Scenario

Your artist name is in use.

The .com .org and .net domains of your artist name are all taken.
A person or business is using it to base their own online presence.

If this is your situation, then you really need to revise your artist name.

For example, let’s say for whatever reason you chose
“Virgin,” or “Coke,” or “Starbucks” as your artist name.
Then, you’ve not only gone into direct competition with
multi-million dollar companies from the get go.
Eventually, the more you develop, the more you
risk having your online properties removed
due to copyright infringements.

You would then need to check
what you can do about your artist name.
If you haven’t got much output in terms of
albums, mixtapes, songs, merchandise or contest wins
connected to your artist name,
then you should have no problem in creating a new one.

Then, you can either delete your current artist name or leave it dormant.
If you have any products connected to your artist name,
then contact the relevant people on the sites
you have items published on to see if you
could transfer your artist name’s value over to another artist name.

1.2. Search for Your Artist Name in the Trademark Search Engines

Run a trademark search to make sure your artist name
doesn’t infringe on any trademarks.

In a world of rapidly growing Internet population,
you might not be only one wanting to use your artist name.

Also, you might later want to own
your own business named after your artist name.
So don’t limit yourself from the beginning.
Make sure that there is a place for you to be able
to do that in the future without risking
trademark infringement or having to make any name changes.

Marcaria.com International Trademark Search Engine
lets you run searches in various countries.
At least in your own country of residence
and the country you will be owning online properties,
check that you are in good standing to use your artist name
without infringing on any trademarks.

Marcaria.com International Trademark Search Engine
trademark-search.marcaria.com

If you find a business operating under your artist name,
most chances are that
you can still use it.
It might only be a problem if it is a
business involved in music,
but if it is for different products and services,
then it is likely that you are still
good to go.
If you do find
that there is a similar business name
located where you are and
related to the music industry,
then you would need to take
that into consideration if you
make future steps to develop
your artist name into a business name.
If that is already a clear goal
to you, then it’s worthwhile
to review whether you can change
your artist name
(see the end part of “Bad Scenario” in Step 1.1.)

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The Internet Guide for Rappers – 10 Steps to Establish Your Artist’s Online Presence and Branding [eBook]

Get PDF Version  Get Kindle Edition 

 

Contents

Introduction

What is The Internet Guide for Rappers, and what will it give you?

Step 1. Choose Your Artist Name

A step-by-step process of scrutiny on your artist name: its strengths, weaknesses, what you can change, and what you can’t.

Step 2. Get Your Artist Name on All the Web Property You Can

A one-time task that will set the foundation of your artist name’s online real estate.

Step 3. Characterize Your Artist Profile

An essential process that will guide you to find what will make people want to become your loyal advocates.

Step 4. Write Your Artist Profile Statement

Frame the perception you want others to have of you as an artist in a 1-2 sentence zipped format.

Step 5. Write Your Artist Bio

How to put together a snapshot of your strengths, motivations and uniqueness as a rapper, including examples.

Step 6. Make Your Artist Photos

What kinds of photos you need to have of yourself, and tips for how to make yourself more photogenic.

Step 7. Create a Communication Plan

A guide for how to plan your networking in the upcoming 12 months in order to help you realize your goals, and also to open you up to new opportunities.

Step 8. Implement Your Communication Plan

A checklist for you to apply across all your communication channels to maximize the impression you make.

Step 9. Setup Your Artist Profile as an Extension of Your Personal Brand

The importance of differentiating your artist profile and your personal brand from the very beginning, and how to setup your artist profile as an extension of your personal brand.

Template 1: Artist Characterization Template

A guide to fill out your artist characterization, as described in “Step 3. Characterize Your Artist Profile.”

Template 2: Artist Bio Template

The must-have parts of every artist’s bio to help you write your bio comprehensively and quickly, as described in “Step 5. Write Your Artist Bio.”

Template 3: Communication Plan Example Template

One example of how a 12 month communication plan looks like, for you to apply to your own networking actions over the next 12 months, as described in “Step 7. Create a Communication Plan.”

Template 4: Communication Plan Checklist

Template of the communication plan checklist described in “Step 8. Implement Your Communication Plan” for you to apply across all your communication channels, to maximize the impression you make.