1. Go to the Profile page within which you wish to embedded the blog.
2. Slightly down the page is a row of approximately ten tabs. Select the one entitled ‘BLOG/BUZZ’.
3. On the upper right of the BLOG/BUZZ tab is a button entitled ‘Blog Preferences’. Click it!
4. Select the Blog radio button for Default View.
5. In the Blog section, select the radio button entitled “I would like to show a blog I maintain on another site.”
6. In the text box entitled “The URL for the blog RSS feed is “, enter the URL of the blog RSS feed*!
7. Click the ‘Save’ button.
8. Watch your RN blog populate itself with the source blog’s contents! Cool!

*Bonus section – what is the URL of the RSS feed of the blog in which I am interested?

There are several correct answers to this question. Perhaps an example would help to illustrate. In my case, I just wanted to use the entire blog contents, and I did not care in which specific format it was published. My blog is located at http://www.joebear.net/blog/.  In this case, the proper feed to be typed into the text box for Blog Preferences was http://www.joebear.net/blog/feed .  Simple, hunh?

To see how it looks, compare this blog with its RN representation at this link.

Essentially, the default format just appends a ?p=index_number to the directory and calls it good. That works, but gives nothing for search engines to hang onto. The search engines especially like to see keywords in the URL. In order to give something for them to chew on, that simple integer has to go.

Upon some googling, I have arrived at this custom format: /%postname%/ . This will use the slug version of the title as the generated URL. Done.

Have a listen!

If you like what you hear, sign up for the mailing list – I promise it’ll be a very low-volume mailing, and you can always unsubscribe later:

There are just so many social media outlets available that a person could spend their entire life updating them all and getting nowhere fast.

One possible tool for musicians to cut down on the duplication is ReverbNation (RN). This tool provides a handy control panel that tracks and even guides all aspects of marketing for a musician or band. At least it seems to guide the marketing activities — I do not have a background in marketing, and RN seems to prompt me as to what I should do as a next step, based upon what I already have in place.

As such a marketing control panel, RN is useful in and of itself. However, it also contains hooks to MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites. As a consequence, one can enter (e.g.) a new scheduled show on RN, and have their (e.g.) MySpace page instantly updated with the new info. Or so it appears to me at this moment.

I’m still stumbling about in the interface, but I think I am getting a handle on the tools available therein. So far, I have just been expanding one of my bands’ presence there. This would be the Lee Thomas Band. Here is the Lee Thomas Band RN Profile.

As an example of the tools available, I’ll talk about the mailing lists. RN provides a mailing list utility, which maintains a database of contacts for the band. This is linked to an editor and mass mailer, for distribution of newsletters and such. This is similar to the functionality one would find at Aweber or Constant Contact.

Also provided are one-step HTML generators, that create Widgets for posting on any arbitrary site. I used this to embed a signup for the LTB RN mailing list on each page of the Lee Thomas Band website.

Once I figure out how to modify this blog’s layout, I should be able to embed that widget (and others) right here. Further, there is a Widget Widget, which allows anyone to generate and embed a Lee Thomas Band mailing list widget in any site of their own. This is intended for the use of fans in viral marketing campaigns.

More to come…