If you’re a musician, you probably agree that having a fresh, informative band website is important for promoting your songs and updating fans with your latest tour information and releases. Even if you’re already posting this information on social media, you can use your website as the hub for your online activity: a one-stop shop for listeners to connect with you.
Today, we’ll explore how you can use Jetpack tools to design your band’s site, promote your concerts, showcase photos and videos, and connect with fans over social media.
1. Pick a music-friendly theme
Among many others, bands like Dada Life and Tritonal use WordPress themes designed to amplify music websites.
To make your band’s website stand out from the crowd, consider using one of Jetpack’s many musician-friendly themes. For example, the recently launched Twenty Nineteen is a great choice for band websites, as it allows you to highlight your band’s logo and add widgets that display upcoming concert dates.
If you’re a Professional plan user, you’ll have access to more than 100 free themes (available with all plans), plus 200 premium themes to choose from. You can upload any theme you choose to your WordPress site, but Jetpack themes come with many built-in selections for a faster, streamlined setup.
2. Promote concerts and events
Want to share your tour dates online or let fans know about album release parties, pop-up shows, or other appearances? You can use the Upcoming Events widget and shortcode to display events directly from your Google calendar.
Here’s an example of what the Events shortcode looks like, placed inside a shortcode block within the WordPress Editor. Note the calendar link and the number of events to be displayed — in this case, three.
After you publish your post, the shortcode automatically turns into an event listing.
The beauty of syncing with your Google calendar is that after you set up the shortcode (or widget) to display events on your band’s website, you won’t need to update it again. Your Upcoming Events will automatically refresh to show the events on your Google calendar.
3. Showcase concert photos
Fans love seeing exclusive band photos. In addition to promotional album shoots and live concert images, listeners want to see what goes on behind the scenes. On your band’s website, you might want to share candid shots from recording sessions, goofy poses after late-night practices, and even the chaos taking place just before showtime. It’s these peek-behind-the-curtain moments that deepen the emotional connection fans have with your music.
With Jetpack, you can add captivating galleries to your band website. Go to a post or page, add a gallery block, and select the images that you want to include.
You can create as many galleries as you want, and edit existing ones as well.
4. Share high-quality videos
Not everyone can make it to your live shows, but you can still share videos from your concerts online so that anyone, anywhere, can experience them from wherever they are.
With Jetpack, you have the ability to upload and display videos from your media library, YouTube, and a variety of other video hosting services directly on your site. You can also embed a live video or entire YouTube playlists. There’s no extra coding knowledge required; in most cases, you’ll just need to insert the web address of the video into a post or page or select them from your existing videos.
5. Get social
You’re most likely using at least one social media platform to promote your band online. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or another channel, you can connect your social accounts back to your website using the Social Icons Widget. This tool adds icons that link directly to your social pages. That way, visitors of your band website can easily find you across their favorite social platforms, and are more likely to share your music with new fans.
Social feeds
If you’re already investing time and energy into posting content to your social channels, you might as well get extra mileage out of your efforts. In many themes, you can display social media feeds directly on your website — for example, integrate your Twitter feed into your sidebar with the Twitter Timeline Widget.
Social sharing
Social feeds let you post content published elsewhere directly on your band website. Alternatively, you have the ability to share content from your website straight to your social channels with Publicize and automated social sharing.
Whenever you publish a new post, you can automatically share it across your configured social media channels. This will keep every one of your channels updated, allowing for followers and fans to stay in the know about album release dates, public appearances, and impromptu concerts.
If you have a Premium or Professional plan, you’ll also have the option to re-share previously published content to your social platforms. This comes in handy on days when you want to revisit a particularly successful song, or reminisce about your very first concert.
It’s your turn to take the stage
Whether you want to share videos, embed music files, publish tour dates, or otherwise connect with your fans, Jetpack tools can empower your WordPress site to do so.
