Q & A from the Bandzoogle Webinar

I want to thank everyone who attended the free Bandzoogle "website building" webinar on September 29th. Sadly, when (host) Melanie's connection dropped, everything was lost including the archived video and the transcript. I was able to copy some of the questions, presented them to Melanie, which she answered below. If you are interested in the presentation slides, just contact me here and I'll put you in touch with her.

Can BandZoogle facilitate websites for record labels? Can your music file shopping cart scale for sales for multiple artists?

Yes, we have lots of record labels using our services. The shopping cart can accommodate multiple artists or purchases across different artist pages.

Security? Current website using Wordpress has been hacked several times even with some prophylactic software?

Bandzoogle uses secure servers and has not been hacked. We have developers dedicated to constantly monitoring and updating our servers just for this reason.

What if you have a site on another platform? Is there a risk in transferring? Benefits?

No risk—build your site for 30 days and if you like it, you can switch. The benefits include in-house features and support to help you make the most of your website!

It seems like you might need to know a little about HTML (e.g. alt text or H1) for SEO. Is that true?

If you maintain a site outside of Bandzoogle you may—however we help with H1 under the hood. It's generally your artist name. Alt text refers to captions you can add to your images at Bandzoogle—just typing will do it!

Here is the SEO checklist resource I mentioned: Complete SEO checklist for musicians.

If i blog post to my site, can it also automatically post on Facebook too? Also, are SSL, web security, back-up, etc included in price?

We do not include automatic Facebook posting. It's difficult to support as they change things on their end regularly, but have found that musicians posting links with an image and caption tend to perform better and doesn't take too much time. Yes, we issue SSL certificates, security/ back-ups are important to us and are included.

Does Bandzoogle create your sitemap automatically? What is the process of submitting your sitemap to Google.

Creating a sitemap is done for you, and there are a couple of steps to submit it. we've tried to make this as easy as possible. More details here: Google Verification and Sitemap submission.

How often should a musician update his/her page?

Once a month, unless something big happens. Take the opportunity to communicate with your mailing list subscribers once a month as well (unless, again, there is something noteworthy to update sooner).

How does the fan funding portion of Bandzoogle work? Is it similar to GoFundMe?

You would set up rewards at a certain price, or a pay-what-you want option. You can read a bit more about how to go about this here: Crowdfunding templates and here: Creating a Crowdfunding page We are currently updating some of our Crowdfunding options, but you can use the built-in tools and features to run a successful campaign from your website directly.

How does Bandzoogle share events?

You can share events from your Calendar feature in the dashboard of your Bandzoogle website. It will generate a link to send to Facebook, Twitter, or by email. Here's a resource from our Help section: Sharing Events.

Jazz musicians are teachers. Is there a best location to add teaching information?

You can create a page on your website, or a full teacher website! Some ideas here: How to build a music teacher website.

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Posted to Publisher's Desk IN THE All About Jazz GROUP
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