Blogging is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to promote yourself and your music. A blog gives you an online presence and serves several purposes. It acquaints you with the public, it allows you to establish yourself as a credible expert and it allows you to easily get feedback from your fans.

Your blog gives you a direct line to the public. People can access your blog and find out about your play dates, venues, band information and anything else that you want to share.

If you are an indie musician with a narrow niche, your blog may become a life line for other indie musicians within that same niche as well as fans of your genre of music. A good blog should be a part of a solid marketing campaign for your music. These ten tips will help you create a blog that will get your name out there and get you noticed.

1. Choose the right blog platform

Hosted or stand alone, free or paid, blogs come in all shapes and sizes. You need to decide what you want your blog to do and figure your budget. You can find some pretty good blog services that are free and it might be a good place to start. Check out sites like WordPress, Blogger, MSN Spaces and TypePad. Of course, there are many others, these just happen to be the most popular at the moment.

2. Choose a killer domain name for your blog

When you decide on a domain name for your blog, keep the search engines in mind. When people are looking for your information, most likely, they will type in your band name, or if you are an independent musician, they will type in your name. Try to keep your domain as close to your name or band name as possible.

3. Get a great blog design

You want your blog design to be flexible but easy to use. Decide on the things that you would like for your blog to be able to do. Work on your design so that it serves your needs and your readers needs.

4. Use content that is relevant and useful

You can set up a great blog but if you do not have good, relevant content, then no one will ever come to it. If your blog is about your music, then offer content that is related to music.

5. Make your titles work for you

Use keywords in the titles for your blog entries so that search engines can find your blog easily. Research keywords to find the ones that are searched most often and incorporate them into your blog titles.

6. Link your blog to your website

Link your blog to your website, your MySpace profile and any other presence that you have on the web. Also, post your MySpace profile address on your blog.

7. Add video

Videos will get you noticed. Add video to your blog and put the video on YouTube. This way, visitors who check out your video on YouTube will have a link to your blog - and to you.

8. Tag your blog for optimum exposure

Tagging your blog can give you great exposure. Make sure that you choose your tags wisely and use keywords that are popular and that relate to your blog. Search engines do not like blogs that have random or irrelevant tags.

9. Get powerful backlinks

Get your blog linked on high ranking pages. You can do this by placing your blog link in your signature when you post to forums. You can also get links or pages with similar content.

10. Promote your blog everywhere you can

Put your blog link in your email signature. The more you get your address out there, the more likely people will see it and the more traffic you will get.