BAND PRIMER

AUGUST 2010

TIPS FOR PROMOTING ONLINE-PART 1

-Before I begin this month’s Band Primer, I just want to say thanks to all the people out there who are in support of this & thanks to 4th Coast for letting me do this. It’s very much appreciated.

-This month I’m going to write about some tips I’ve learned thru out the years about band promotion online. Some of this stuff will seem pretty basic, but you won’t believe how many bands don’t know and/or ignore these tips. I’m going to be concentrating on email, My Space & Facebook for all this.

-Unless, you have a ton of money & time, you’re better off w/ an email mailing list than a list via regular (“snail”) mail. Some bands use postcards and, while not as expense as reg. mailings, will still add up. Email lists are free-hence why almost everyone uses them. A good rule of thumb is to use an email service like what’s on Reverbnation to coordinate your lists. With them you can track your mailings and see how effective they are. They’re also great in organizing the people you have on your list into categories. There’s no use sending a show invite that’s in Syracuse,NY to someone in Australia for example.

-One very important thing w/ email mailing lists-make sure you have an “unsubscribe” button on each mailing that you send & that is easy to use. If someone does use it-don’t get offended. You can’t please everyone. I know a number of bands that just grab email addys from anywhere they can and send out their stuff-and then won’t remove you off their lists when you ask them. Not good. Now you have someone who doesn’t like you and word of mouth is still pretty effective.

-On My Space many bands use what’s called “bulletins” to send messages out. While that’s great, many of them get ridiculous with them. Sending out 25 bulletins (or more) in a 30 minute time span is not only going to annoy people, but chances are, will get you deleted. It’s one of the reasons why many people migrated to Facebook-they got tired of being hit by so much band stuff everyday. If you’re going to do the bulletin thing, do it once per day. If you have to do more (on the same thing) do it up to 3/day, but make sure to erase the previous bulletin you put up. If it’s different subjects, make sure it’s only 2-3-maybe 4 per day. People get annoyed real quick when they look at their bulletin page and all they see is page after page of bulletins from your band-especially if it’s the same damn one.

-On Facebook-when you want to tell people of an event, use the “create an event” page. Do NOT send a message out with everyone you know on it. Why? Because when people reply back to the person who posted it-you will get it too-as well as everyone else. Nice to get 20 messages in your inbox that have nothing to do w/ you right?

-More tips next month!

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