Despite all my blabbing here, my band hasn’t been doing much online promotion. Instead, we’ve been concentrating on getting our music written as well as being able to play live. Now, we’re getting close to being able to record and start playing shows. So we need to start promoting and building our online presence.
In this post, I’m going to cover my band’s initial online promotion strategy. I’ll discuss how we’ll use Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere to get our name out there and engage with potential fans.
The band meeting
Kai, our drummer, and I conversed over Skype since our rehearsal was cancelled for the day. We spent quite a long time discussing the various details of how we’re going to promote our band.
Kai seems to come from a similar background to me. He knows what doesn’t work. Like me, he’s been in bands that didn’t do it right. So now, he wants to research and plan to get it right this time.
We were a bit scattered during our conversation, but we got a general plan going. At least a starter plan that we can expand on later.
Jimmy, our guitarist, already has the job of posting to Twitter once a day. We’re going to bump up his level of engagement to interact more closely with local papers, bloggers, and radio stations having to do with local music and, more specifically, metal.
If you want to learn how we’re going to use Twitter, I can do no better explanation than Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson. For only $9.99 (cheap!), you can see how to use Twitter to build a powerful list of influential followers. Watch it here!
Basically, we’re going to build a Twitter list of influencers in our field. We’ll monitor this list and retweet their posts. The point of this is to get on their radar without being spammy.
In addition to the influencers, we’ll have an additional lists of bands that we like. We’ll help promote their shows and share their album releases. The point of this is to build a community with our fellow musicians. The side benefit of promoting another band is they might think of you if they need another band to help fill a bill.
The general, daily plan is this: one original, entertaining post, two to three retweets of our influencer and band lists, and daily replies to any of our @mentions. So, a minimum of 3 posts a day on Twitter.
I took the job of posting to my band’s Facebook page on a daily basis. Despite my disgust with Facebook’s Events, Facebook is still a valuable tool to market with. My Facebook strategy isn’t set in stone, yet. Here’s a few of the ideas Kai and I put together to try out.
- Questions and polls every now and then
- Casual observations
- Random pictures uploaded. The funnier and weirder the better.
- Share other bloggers’ and bands’ posts to help create community
I will be posting once a day something personal and non-promotional. I’ll then share other content from other pages that I find relevant or entertaining. So, bare minimum, 3 posts a day.
I’ll measure the response and the impressions after each post to see what works best.
Music Blogs
Kai is going to tackle commenting on music blogs. However, I think we’ll all end up participating in commenting at least once a day. With every comment on relevant blog posts, we’ll add a link back to our site.
The point of commenting on blogs is to get the attention of music bloggers, music papers and ezines, and even radio stations. Commenting, without being self promotional, is very powerful. Bloggers love comments and interaction with their blogs.
Just with the small amount of commenting I experimented with, I got offered shows and offers to showcase my music on both internet radio stations as well as blogs. And my band hasn’t even played our first show or recorded our first song, yet. That’s the power of commenting and sharing and building community.
By not being self-promotional, you can get the very best in self-promotion. Counter-intuitive, but it works.
Even if we don’t get these offers or even get recognized by the bloggers, we still get hits back to our website. Just about every blog comment gives you a field to add your website. This is your one spot to be self-promotional. From this, people can click and find all about your band.
Just make sure your comments relate to the post and NOT to promoting yourself or your show. Always be adding to the conversation in a meaningful way.
YouTube
We ran out of time before really getting our YouTube strategy down. But we did agree to, at the very least, post from our cell phones if nothing else. Record a quick and quirky video.
I’m sure we’ll figure out a better strategy in the future. Right now, our strategy is to just do something! Just start! We’ll leave perfection for tomorrow.
And we’ve been slacking on our popular “Thank You” videos. We’ll need to kick these back up because people really loved them. If your fans love something you do, keep giving it to them!
Our own blog
I will be posting something once a week to our personal blog. I wrestled a bit with what exactly I’m going to write about. Odd considering I write this blog. But a band blog is a different beast than a “how to” or “music marketing” type of blog.
I’ve decided, to begin with, to just be personal. I’ll keep it to be more of a band diary. What are we up to this week. What are we working on now. Something hilarious that happened. Our plans or goals. Just lay it out on the table and keep our fans involved.
I do, however, have a different experiment entirely for blog posts. But that will be a different post. You’ll love it, I swear! It’s a bit geeky, but I see a ton of opportunity. Basically, the plan will be to take over Google’s search engine for whenever someone looks for metal in Seattle. Or Seattle music, free mp3s, or free downloads.
But, as I said, that will be another post and will be on the very experimental side!
Just the beginning
That’s the beginning of our general promotional strategy. I want to do more, but I know there’s only so many hours in the day. I want to start small and get good at what we’re doing. Biting off more than we can chew is not a good strategy. Especially when it comes time to book shows, record, get artwork done, and all the other things we’ll need to do for our band.
From observation, though, even this minimalist strategy is more effort than I see most other bands doing. The key is consistency. If my band members all work together on this, our online promotions will be monumental and extremely fun for our fans.
What’s the strategy for your band? Let me know in the comments!
Those all sound like great ideas I’m going to try some of these things for my promotion and let you know the results as well! Great post!
Thanks, Angel B! Please let me know how this works out. Good or bad, I’d love to share the results here if you’d like.
I’m planning to get off my butt and keep a daily track of my promotion using a spreadsheet. I’ve been meaning to do this but kept slacking. It’s really time to put my talk into action and share the results.
Hey man, great post (as usual). Picked up a lot of great tips and can’t wait to implement them. I may be more folk then metal but all you say applies across any genre. Thanks again for the tips and great reading!
James
Thank you, James! I’m a fan of folk and traditional (and gypsy cabaret) as well, and head out to see bands from those genres. Definitely some of the same tactics are necessary. The only difference, for traditional bands at least, is there is a demand for the music because of its uniqueness. For folk, it’s also way easier to do coffee shops, busking, and living room shows. Way more opportunities!
Oh, and for solo or duet folk acts, live streaming is way easier. StageIt is a great opportunity to combine a coffee shop show with a live streaming concert to create additional revenue.
After my band gets their metal, electric version off the ground, we’re going to work on an acoustic version so we can have more options for playing anywhere and everywhere. My last band which was punk had great results doing that, so I definitely want to try it again!
i try to keep the postings on the band website more formal, but facebook and twitter posts will be pretty loose and free.
We’re still trying to find our voice, so I’ll be experimenting with how we’ll present ourselves on our blogs. Amanda Palmer’s blog posts seem extremely conversational and invite fans to talk with her. So, I’m going to try conversational and fun on my blog. I want my band to be really accessible across all our mediums.
Of course, it’s all an experiment. It depends on what type of band you are and who your audience is. Basically, whatever gets the best response, do more of that! Experiment, Measure, Learn! Then rinse and repeat. :)
Great post! My issue is getting the other band members involved. Doing all of this on your own can be a lot of work.
I’d say 3 fb posts a day might be too many, but with the new newsfeed it might be the way to go. I’d like to have a bit of a schedule of sharing I.e pics Monday, old/new vid share tues, share blog about band wed, share another bands vid thurs, blog about someone else Friday, share pics from gig sat, post up links to buy songs Sunday.
Not necessarily that order but have something a bit different each day to mix up that updates. Should have mentioned ask about fans in there as well :).
Yeah, getting everyone on board to help out can be an uphill battle. Also, some band members just aren’t cut out for it. It really depends on the strengths of your band members. Not everyone is cut out for social media.
I was doing much of the social media and online work myself with my last band, and, combined with booking, became extremely overwhelming. Plus, I was inconsistent. With my new project, I want to start slower and get all the pieces in place for success. I want everyone in the band to find their strength in the band to help out. Otherwise, I got kinda bitter when it was just me spending hours doing all the stuff.
Regarding three posts a day to Facebook. I’ve read quite a few different articles on the optimal frequency of communication on FB. The general consensus is around 3 posts a day. Because of FB’s algorithms, any single post isn’t gauranteed to hit people’s news feed.
But I love your daily strategy! That sounds like a great bit of interaction!! Do you have something that occassionally leads people to sign up for your email list? If not, I would add that into the mix at least once every two weeks.
Just found your blog! Such a great conversation going on!
All really great ideas. Consistency is definitely a struggle for us (me). I should definitely develop a plan like this. I especially like your ideas for engaging with influential entities through twitter and blogs. It would also give you good content to post besides just band content. Love it!
Consistency is the hardest part for me, as well. Especially since I’ve been dumb enough to take on writing this blog as well as being in a band!
I agree about the content with the influencers. I’d love my general social message to be about creating a community. Being in a band, I have more insight into cool local music that my fans might not be aware of. I’d love to have a great community of bands, mp3 bloggers, and internet radio stations all working together to bring great music to people.
Being part of a fun community is way better than hoofing it alone, in my opinion. Even if my band doesn’t pan out, just being part of something greater than just my band is worth it. And hopefully turn some people on to either great bands or great resources for local music.
That’s the dream at least!
solid post. there’s a lot of good stuff in there, even if it’s just a skeleton of what i’m sure will become your more fleshed out plan. (a lot of inadvertant Halloween imagery in there.)
i’m really bad at actually writing down plans. i think that’s the most important thing that struck me reading the post. keeping the plan in a physical form somewhere where you can see it is really important.
Great set of ideas and general blueprint for online promotion. I’ll be sharing this with my band & musician clients moving forward. ~Russ
Dang. It seems like common sense stuff that I never thought about! Thanks for the great info!