Feature: How to promote your Leicester band nationally

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Leicester bands should be promoting themselves, both locally and at national level. In this article we put forward some ideas about how to do that.

These days, an awful lot of promotion is done on the Internet. By promotion we mean publicity, marketing and exposure (not as in putting on gigs). a.k.a. publicity.

Whilst nearly all bands have a presence on Facebook and use it on a daily basis, there are a number of other sites that are equally important. We suggest what we think these are.

Myspace

Myspace has dropped in the rankings of importance where fans are concerned. Bands that used to update their Myspace every day, now seem to have abandoned it.

This is a mistake. Facebook has taken over from Myspace as a way of publishing gigs to fans. Myspace, however, is still widely used by the music industry as a first port of call for getting basic information about a band.

We say to bands:

You should maintain your gig dates on Myspace - it's an important indicator to industry reps such as venues, promoters and record labels.
Keep your forthcoming show dates listed
You should still post to your Myspace blog regularly if there is something important happening like an album release or tour
You should keep adding new friends but concentrate on industry contacts rather than fans
You should keep encouraging fans to listen to your tracks on Myspace. Industry reps take notice of the number of times your tracks have been played.

Facebook is great for marshalling your fans; it has taken over from Myspace as the main platform for fan management but Myspace is still fairly important for getting links into the music industry and putting out what your band is doing.

Finding dates when your band is playing, where your band is based and what genre of music you play is often very difficult on Facebook.

It's often easier to make a link to your Myspace page than it is to get people to see your Facebook group or page. Myspace presents information and image in a better way that most Facebook pages.

Facebook

Nearly every band, singer and act has something on Facebook. We use it every day to look up artists.

Our tips on making Facebook work for you

If you are a band set up a Band Page or profile Example: The Stiggz
Make sure your Info Page has all the right information, including a telephone number of person who takes your bookings, the names of each of the band members, your genre of music, your hometown, a brief biography and links to your other web sites. Example: Charlie & The Martyrs
It's important that you make it clear when your next gigs are taking place. This can be difficult on Facebook. If you are playing a gig set up an Events Page for it and paste the link to it on your wall. Example: Midnight Wire.
Upload Photos of the band playing live. Promoters and press like to see pictures the band, especially playing live. if individual band members have FB profiles, tag them in the photos.
If you have videos of the band playing live (on YouTube) link to them. Promoters and agents love this. Example: The Boobytraps.
If you have tracks, link to them. Example: I Am In Love.
If you have a Musician/Band page, get people to Like it: Example: The Screening.

Finally, what not to do.

It's easy to get carried away with the fun of Facebook. If yours in a serious band or act, however, you need to manage your online accounts in a way that appears to be professional. It's cool to post naked pictures of yourself on your band page and tell the world how pissed you got last night and that you've just split with your girlfriend.

But, how does this look to agents that are thinking of booking you? If you are chasing press and media coverage, how does this look to them? Does it make your band look like a serious outfit?

By all means get yourself a personal page on FB but when it comes to publicizing your band or act, think serious, think professional. If you want more bookings, mean business.

Reverb Nation

We think Reverb Nation is the second most important national site for bands, from an industry point of view. We would encourage all bands to set up a profile on it and upload key tracks.

We will be adding some practical tips about how you can get the best out of a profile on Reverb.

Artsin has an account on ReverbNation.

We look for Leicester bands and become their fans. We look for their show dates.

We play the songs they have uploaded. This gives the tracks exposure, not just on Reverb but also on our linked social networking sites.

Bands can create a mailing list on their page. Use this to advertise your gigs and tracks.

You can collect fans in the areas in which you are playing and keep them informed about forthcoming shows. Fans can also opt to act as street team members for your band. Your band can enter its tracks into the charts.

You can share your Reverb Nation profile with Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

Promoters and venues can select the "Book this band" button on a profile page and enter a booking enquiry.

Twitter

Twitter has really taken off. It's facilities are limited to posting 140 character messages. Artsin uses it to put out shouts for bands, gigs and local news. We have some serious followers but it's helpful if we can reference a band in our messages via the @, which then enables readers to go and check out that band's profile on Twitter.

If your band has a Twitter account we can encourage people to follow you via the #ff - which is 'Follow Friday' . For example, we can tweet "#ff New track out from @SuperEvolver ..." and can also include a link to a web page.

We recommend bands to have an account on Twitter. Once you have a Twitter page it is then a question of acquiring followers. The power of the Tweet rests wholly on the number and quality of those who are following you.

One way to attract followers is to follow others who are important to your band, and then invite them to follow back. It is one way of getting your new account noticed.

You can also ask your fans who have twitter accounts to follow you. You can then tweet them about your gigs and tracks.

You can also follow other bands - particularly those you might want to get support slots with. By reading their tweets you might get a clue as to a show they are doing or an opportunity to play with them.

Bear in mind that a lot of people connect their Twitter account to their mobile phone, so that, for example, if anyone includes @artsin in their tweets, that will send a text message to our mobile phone within seconds.

You can also tweet from your mobile phone, once you have set up a mobile connection.

You should send out a Tweet at least once a week. Over tweeting wastes time. Think through what you need to say about your band or its gigs or its track releases. There are some seriously big bands on Twitter and most of the record labels, venues and promoters are on it. Getting them to follow your band will not be easy but if they do, then it's a really great way of getting messages across to them.

Did you know that a tweet has a life span of about 22 seconds. People do not often scroll back through their tweets; tweeting is very immediate. The best time to tweet for fans is in the evening when people are most likely to be online or at weekends.

YouTube

Apart from delivering videos, YouTube also acts as a search engine. Videos of live performances can make the difference in cases, especially where out of town venues are considering whether or not to hire a band for a gig. If they can see a live performance of the band, then that is a great way of convincing them how good you are.

A picture is worth a thousand words! A video is worth tens of thousands of words.

We have made videos of bands playing at live gigs and posted them to YouTube, using just a mobile phone. Ok the quality is not brilliant but somehow it almost works.

We have a page where we feature YouTube Videos for Leicester bands.

The Future of the Music Business

We recommend this book

Press releases

If you're ready for it and you have a busy time ahead, send out press releases to the media. Find out more about how to do this from our arts promotion page, where we have written about how to issue press releases.

Also, read the section below on writing publicity material.

Writing press releases does require some knowledge of how to do it and who to send them to. Artsin sends out press releases on behalf of bands and we have posted copies of them to our press page. We might also place links to the press releases sent out by bands and promoters, as this page picks up in the search engines. We also send a link to this page, when ever we email a press release to anyone in the media.

Radio DJs

Getting your tracks played on the radio is still the holy grail for bands. Fortunately, Leicester's local radio stations are very good at giving exposure to local bands and artists.

It is a really good thing to listen to these local stations to see which bands are getting air time, how long for and which presents or DJs are playing them.

If you know a DJ who plays local original music, cultivate that person's interest. We will be bringing you a list of local stations and how to get on them very soon so come back here for more information.

Our favourite local radio stations are

How to get your tracks played on Leicester Sound.

EAVA FM - Multicultural station with Deven (ex The Truth) on his own programme.

Read what radio DJ Tom Robinson has to say about radio pluggers.

Mailing lists

Try BandCentral. Easy to use tools to help you organise fans and gigs including an automated mailing list system.

A word of caution

Before you launch out on anything other than Internet promotion, ask yourself whether your band is ready for national exposure (or even local, for that matter.)

Young bands and new bands are particularly vulnerable to rushing out and shouting about how good they are before they are really ready. If your band has been playing for two years or more (in Leicester) and you think you have served your apprenticeship as a live, original band, seek some qualified professional advice from people who know what they are talking about.

Ask them if they think your band is up to the standard, where you can realistically expect to get somewhere at national level.

By way of a quick checklist, we suggest that your band should have

At least two years experience of playing regular gigs locally
At least five recently recorded songs, recorded in a studio to broadcast quality
A portfolio of promotional photos
A properly written biography that includes a detailed record of the gigs you have played in at least the past 12 months

If your Leicester/shire band has played at least twice out of town (e.g. London or Birmingham) with successful results, you should be able to demonstrate that through your biography and that will be an added advantage.

If you have done three or more radio broadcasts then that will certainly help.

Some that even bad publicity is good publicity. This can be confusing. What bands really look for is publicity for their music, not their personal exploits!

Writing publicity material

Originally published as a posting on the Get Your Band On Blog.

This was our experience but we know it is broadly the same for many other people dealing with bands in the music industry.)

It’s a shame when a good band sends us a promo pack that is complete crap. It happens a lot. Some bands are good at playing music but when it comes to producing printed, promotional stuff, they fail to do themselves justice.

Here are some horror stories about promotional packs received at the GYBO office.

Blank CDs sent in without even the band name being written on the CD – so now we have a collection of blank CDs and have no idea which band's tracks are on them. In a busy office with loads of stuff to deal with, CDs can easily get separated from their cases and this is true for most DJs and record labels.

No date on the CD to tell us when the tracks were recorded.

No song titles – so if we want to discuss a song we don’t know what it is called ("track 5" is not enough - we need a song title.)

Info sheets without any contacts details on them – a two page closely typed essay about the band’s history and no contact details — not even a phone number.

Hand written letters in spidery writing which we have difficulty in reading

Failure to understand the difference between a website address and an email address – email addresses beginning with www.

Band info sheets that tell us that the band is based on the UK but not where exactly. At an industry level, cities and towns are important but not regions. Telling us that your band is based in the Midlands, tells nothing we need to know. If your band is based in Birmingham, tell us. It's important.

Photos of the band that are so poorly reproduced you can't make out what they are. It's good to see a photo of a band but we would rather see a photo of the band playing live than a posed shot of the band members.

Biog sheets with masses of irrelevant information – we havn’t got time to read all these minor details about how to the band members met each other and really don't need to know all that stuff anyway.

Photos with no explanatory captions, so we can't understand much about what the photo shows us.

Photos that are blurred images that are meant to represent the feeling and mood of the music. No good. We need precise, sharp images that convey information not moody creative artworks. Save that for the sleeves if you must.

Biog sheets that fail to explain what type of music the band plays – are they heavy metal, punk, pop rock or rootsy folk rock – it doesn't say but it matters a lot.

Sometimes we are unsure as to why this stuff has been sent in. What is the band asking us to do with it?

Large amounts of material, CDs and even DVDs but no covering letter asking us what the band wants done with it.

What do these guys want? Show bookings? Album promotions? Management services? A review? They forgot to say. Maybe, they were not sure anyway.

A one line letter or note asking “please consider this band for a show booking” or “Please write a review of our latest album” would at least tell us what they want.

So if bands are sending out this stuff to venues or record labels, it is hardly surprising that they are not getting any bookings or interest back.

We now have a large collection of band press and promo packs and 100s of sampler CDs.

This rather poor collection of material helps us to figure out how to make an effective pack that will actually be worth the postage and get the band results.

Merchandise

Designing your own merchandise and seeing that first t-shirt in print is an exciting experience, but making sure to get the most out of your merchandise can be tricky.

Here Joel and Rowena from Check Mine Out.co.uk Merchandise Services give you the low-down on merchandising: "So recently we've found we've been giving the same advice to a number of up-and-coming bands, so we thought we'd share it with everyone.

A lot of this is common sense, we figured seeing it spelt out can help you remember to do it at your next show.

EVERY PIECE OF MERCHANDISE SOLD IS AN ADVERTISEMENT PLACED

We feel one of the things that independent bands can most benefit from is advertising and exposure. Each time you sell a t-shirt, you get paid to have someone else promote your band for you! If you are a supporter, you get to show your support for your favourite band.

The human body is the most valuable piece of advertising real estate we have, and every fan that wears an artist's t-shirt is actually advertising for them for FREE and with PASSION.

GIVE THEM AN INCENTIVE TO GO! - ANNOUNCE DURING YOUR GIG THAT YOU'LL BE AT THE MERCH STAND AFTER YOUR SHOW

Tell your fans that you'll be there to chat after the gig! It's far better than just announcing that you have items for sale. Offering the chance to speak to band members will generally give you a few extra sales per show, which could be crucial.

If you're planning on giving out free CDs at your show, hand some out to those in the front row and announce that people that missed out should come to the merch stand.

SELL THEM THE EXPERIENCE

Music is all about connecting with people and touching them. Most people are careful who they let touch them, so you should be mindful about the image you are projecting. What I'm trying to say is that although it's tough being in a band, it's better to talk to your fans about your music rather than your mortgage.

It might not always feel like it, but as far as most people are concerned you're living the dream. Give them an experience they can buy into, make them feel that even though you are going to be 'the next biggest thing,' they can still get close to you at this early stage of your career.

CONSIDER 'SPECIAL DEALS'

Everybody likes a deal. If a CD is £5 and a cap is £5, why not offer both for £6? That way whoever is buying your CD is tempted to buy the cap aswell and then becomes a walking advertisement for your band.

USE TECHNOLOGY TO HELP CAPTURE THEIR DATA

I do love seeing bands that make the effort to try and collect email addresses, but I was recently informed of easier ways of doing this. The problem with leaving out a clipboard is that you end up giving yourself extra work by having to add each name individually, trying to decipher people's hand writing. Use your technology! I use Mail Chimp as my mailing list provider, and they have an iPhone app that lets you add email addresses wherever you are.

I'm looking forward to the day I see someone collecting email addresses on an iPad, I think that would look so slick!

Right, that's it for the moment. You can find more thoughts and tips on merchandising as well as tutorials on how to design your own t-shirts on the CheckMineOut.co.uk blog

(Reproduced with permission from Surface Festival)

Tell us about your success stories

If your band has done some successful promotion at national level, tell us about it! Send us the details