Shawna

When talking about marketing music online, there’s one element that’s often overlooked. Because internet campaigns involve creating a comprehensive online image, they can increase your chances of falling victim to attack simply due to the rise in traffic.

Falling victim to a hack or contracting malware via any online marketing scheme is sure to be a disaster. There’s a very real chance of financial loss, and alongside this, it can be detrimental to your online reputation. Suffering a cyberattack renders the months of work you’ve put into your project irrelevant, so while taking the steps to protect yourself may seem time-consuming and complicated now, it will save you in the long run.

Protecting Your Website

Having a website is essential for all musicians; it’s a central hub that all other promotional materials can link back to. However, this means that if it becomes apparently infected, even with harmless malvertising code, then it’s going to hurt your credibility seriously. Once fans see an infected domain, they’ll do all in their power to avoid it for fear of their own online security.
Because of this, it’s essential to make sure your website is always in good working order. This can be done by creating strong and unique passwords, to prevent malicious hackers gaining easy access to your admin panel, as well as security-specific plug-ins. If you host your blog via WordPress, there are numerous fantastic add-ons to help keep you safe.

If you want to get serious about your online safety, having a Secure Socket Layer will protect all traffic running between the server and browser. It’s also a world-renowned seal of strong security, so will immediately improve your fans’ faith in you!

Networking & Email Promotion

A similar concept exists for all emails you send. Often malicious code can piggy-back your emails, or an account infiltration can cause you to send out spam unknowingly. As musicians need to be constantly liaising with labels, radio promotion teams, venues and other artists, as well as sending out promotional material to fans, if your inbox becomes compromised, then it will be terrible for your reputation.
Similarly, a breach of this type can cause sensitive personal data—such as the bank details of you or any of the people you work with—to be intercepted, and if a client or customer suffers financial theft at your hands, then it will be a disaster.

The biggest risk of email infiltration comes when working on the go and connecting to public WiFi. This is because these networks are notoriously insecure, as they leave your data flying around unprotected. To overcome this, it’s wise to use a good VPN, which will encrypt all your information and allow you to connect completely securely and anonymously.

Social Media Campaigns

Social media is becoming the go-too platform for creating buzz. The culture of “sharing” and “liking” means that it’s a fantastic way to increase the reach of new releases. Similarly, it allows you to interact with fans and create a more personal relationship with them.
However, social media also comes with its own privacy problems. Facebook offers a feature that shows you how many times you account has been hacked over time, and the numbers are scary.

As with all accounts, strong passwords are a key to security and regularly updating them is essential for social media. Similarly, it’s important to be stringent about what you click on and avoid links from people you don’t know and trust.

Online Consultations

All good marketing services offer consultations. If you’re serious about getting your music out there, then speaking to these kinds of professionals is an incredibly handy tool. However, it’s very likely that these consultations will take place via Skype or other VOIP services, and, of course, these kinds of programs bring their own problems.

Unfortunately, these types of peer-to-peer communication applications are often affected by running firewalls, so sometimes security has to take a back seat. Because of this, it’s wise to be stringent about the amount of calls you make and cut out any extra connection time. Other than this, Skype provides a detailed list of how you can increase your security during use.

Protecting Your Content Strategy

A lot of the time, the work that goes into online marketing campaigns happens more offline than it does on; content strategy is often pre-planned and stored before released onto the web. In fact, this part of your advertising scheme is almost as essential to protect as the music itself.

While taking the steps to stay safe online will take you a long way to staying secure, it is, unfortunately, never completely foolproof. The ever-changing face of the cybersecurity landscape means that new threats are always popping up. Because of this, it’s wise to perform regular and complete backups of all your files. Keeping copies both in cloud storage and on a physical hard drive means no matter what happens you’ll always be able to access your critical content strategy documents and continue your campaign even if your entire computer is written off.

While tips about online security should never sound like scare-mongering, it is important to be aware of the necessary steps to take to ensure the success of your marketing campaign. These five points are a great place to start, but if you have any other tricks that you feel should be included, then be sure to leave a comment below!