As an independent musician, it’s easy to focus entirely on your music and forget about your public and online presence. But if you haven’t done a “vanity search” in a while (Google yourself or your band name), now’s the time. Your online identity is a major part of your public image; both of which play a very important role in your success as an artist.

If you haven’t already, Google yourself. See what comes up. See what’s missing and claim pages with vanity URLs. (For example: Facebook.com/TheBestBand). This includes nabbing a website with your band name, as well as pages on:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Amazon Artist Profile
• Register your band/company name with Google.com/profiles
• Any other social media platform you can imagine
• Note: SongCast can help you set up a Ping profile account

All of these websites will help potential fans find you, while also eliminating the chance of someone else taking a website or a page that you want, with your name.

Social media pages are one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website and further solidify your online presence. As we’ve mentioned several times, starting a blog is also a good way to gain attention online and to direct potential fans to your other online assets. WordPress.com and Tumblr.com are great blogging sites that offer simple and easy to use platforms for you to get the word out about your music, your shows, share photos, and more.

You can also monitor your online reputation and easily pick up on what people are saying about you by using tools like Google Alerts, RSS feeds like Google Reader and using keyword searches on Twitter. Knowing what people are saying – and where they’re saying it—will help you manage your online presence and solidify your identity, in the right places.

Your online presence is a major aspect of your career. It’s important to obtain pages in all the high profile social media outlets and monitor what’s being said about you or your band online in order to manage your image appropriately.

Tell us what you think! Have you worked on your online identity? Do you have vanity URLs on social media sites? How do you monitor what’s being said about you?

The SongCast Crew