Music Publicity: Social Media Tips

Music Publicity involves more than press kits and new releases. Social media plays a critical role in music promotion and should be taken very seriously. Social media, whether it’s Facebook, ReverbNation, Google+, Myspace, Twitter, BandCamp, SoundCloud, etc. – is an essential part of building your band’s following and bringing people out for gigs. It’s safe to assume that you’re already one of the 800 million Facebook users so you’re pretty familiar with the mechanics of the site, or at least social media in general. You should know, however, that there are certain approaches to music publicity strategy that will make a difference.

Number of Users: Target Your Audience for Music Publicity Success

Don’t put all your eggs in one social media basket. Is anyone truly using MySpace anymore? Why spend your time trying to communicate to an empty room? Choose your social media platform for efficiency and maximum reach. After all, music publicity is about spreading information about your band to the largest audience possible.

Linked Platforms for Simplified Music Publicity

Make it easier on yourself and locate an app – there’s dozens of them – that will link your social media accounts so you can post once and – click – it propagates through the rest of your platforms. ReverbNation is well designed for this and will automatically re-post your updates to Facebook and Twitter as well as do automatic show reminders. Music Publicity Group will be writing a post dedicated to this very topic in the near future!

Timing Your Updates: Maximize Your Music Publicity

The interaction statistics for Facebook are interesting. The lowest number of posts happen on weekends and off-peak hours (2pm – 5am), but those return the highest number of click-throughs. The day with the highest number of posts is Thursday, which also has the lowest number of click-throughs. Time your updates so you don’t get lost in the clutter of everyone else your fans are friends with. The timing of your music publicity is as important as the information itself.

Consistent Updates: Successful Music Publicity

People will forget who you are if you’re not reminding them daily. Several times a day, in fact. They might not see the first post, so be sure to repost again later in the day. It’s been shown that 90% of interaction will occur within the first nine hours of a posting.

Content is Critical in Music Publicity

Studies show that the most popular content interactions are with photos. Which is good news for you, because pics are simple, and you have lots of them, hopefully. Think about all the opportunities for a band photo – at the gig, in the green room, on tour, etc. – anything that lets your fans feel like part of the band is going to help you tremendously. After photos, the most popular content is video, music and then links. Make sure your music publicity is a success by making your content interesting and consistent!

Music Publicity: Music PR Basics

Why are you trying to do music publicity anyway? That’s an existential philosophical question, but one that you need to ask yourself, because settling on some goals will help keep you from getting disappointed and also from pursuing a path that may not be the right one for your goals.

Music Publicity: Bringing Out A Crowd

Just know that a great review in your city’s alt-weekly publication may not necessarily bring out a crowd. Options for entertainment and means to find it have exploded in the past five years. It used to be that when you were looking for a show to see, you’d pick up the weekly and see what was happening. Now with social media, the show listings come to you. Social media is getting to be more consistent at bringing people to your gigs than the newspaper – and of course, as anyone in journalism can tell you – newspapers are hurting because of it. Sad to say, there are less and less advertising dollars to support the publications.

Music Publicity: Driving Online Sales

Links to your sales site, whether its CD Baby or Bandcamp or whichever place someone can click and pay for a download. That means getting written up in blogs and driving traffic to your downloads.

Music Publicity: Increasing Your Google Presence

A really simple test is to simply Google your band name. Are you getting several pages of hits? Are there mentions of past shows, upcoming shows, some reviews, links to your online videos, to your social media pages? If so, you’re doing your job – you “exist” – but if not, then you know you definitely need some more music PR efforts.

Music Publicity: Why Do It?

The simple answer is that music publicity feeds more publicity, which is good. Journalists will naturally take more notice of you when other journalists have covered you. If you’re on tour and you’ve had some reviews in your local paper, then you’ve got a mark of quality and you’ll be more likely to get a mention in the towns along your tour. Consider it all a box that you gradually fill to capacity. You can’t afford NOT to do publicity, but you also can’t have your expectations for the results of PR so high that you’re disappointed in the results. Remember – the competition for press is very high. Take any mention you might get as encouragement that you’re on the right path creatively. Bask in the brief attention, and then get right back to work writing songs and booking gigs.

Music Publicity: Assets

Music publicity “assets” are the tools for communicating about your band and include things like a bio, photos, video and music. They’re essential to have, but there’s also a chance that your assets could work against you if they’re not the highest quality possible. The people you’re trying to reach – whether it’s a booking agent, journalist, DJ or fan – each have different needs and expectations and it’s your job to deliver on their expectations. The competition is fierce with bands, and you need every advantage possible, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by misrepresenting yourself with poorly-produced assets. Whether they admit to it or not, everyone makes a psychological judgment about you based on things other than your music. The small, grainy pics on your website? “Amateur”… The video with only three people in the audience? “Amateur”…

Music Publicity Mistakes: Photos

One big mistake many bands make is in not paying attention to photo resolution. A print publication (magazine, newspaper) needs to have print-quality pics, which means 300-dpi or greater. It’s depressing to find out that your favorite pic isn’t high enough quality to run with a story, so make sure you always shoot photos in high-res. There are also other considerations with the photos. Is the background too busy, does it distract from the subject? If the photo were reproduced in black & white, would it be distinct or messy? Always think about the quality of the photo and have several options available to send to press.

Music Publicity: Videos

Live performance video is one of your most valuable tools. When booking gigs, a good video will be a huge help versus just sending a recorded CD or audio links. Bookers want to know what you’re like live, not what you sound like with hours of editing and production. There’s so many factors that go into a video and what it communicates that there are many was to go wrong. How often have you seen some bad video – too dark to see clearly, or maybe the room is almost empty, or the sound muddy. What kind of impression is being made? The good news is the technology is rapidly improving to where even a small handheld device can shoot pretty good video and deliver decent sound with a built-in condenser mic. If you own one or have a friend who does, get in the habit of shooting video at all your gigs – you’ll be really happy to have options so you can choose the best 3-minutes to send to a booker.

Music Publicity: Band Bro

Let’s say upfront – it’s practically impossible to write your own bio, so if you can, get someone to write it for you. You’re simply too close to your subject – you – to sell yourself effectively. If you do try to tackle writing a bio, stay away from all clichés like “influences” and how “unique” you are. And unless there’s some really amazing story like meeting in the Amazon rain forest, how your band formed is probably not that interesting or remarkable.

Music Publicity: CDs

Always remove the shrink wrap when you send out a CD! This seems silly and petty but you want to eliminate any obstacle between your music and the ears of whoever you’ve sent it to. People really will judge you or will procrastinate on listening to your music if it ends up in the “listen today” stack but it’s still shrink-wrapped. It’s human nature.

Music Publicity almost always requires some sort of press release. Consider these tips when creating and distributing your band press release.

The press release is your basic mode of communication to journalists.  A press release is to communicate news, so ask yourself, “is this newsworthy”?  A newsworthy angle is something like a CD release or an upcoming show.  Don’t use a press release to simply talk about your band, save that for your bio and your social media.

Press Release Tips

You need to keep in mind two facts about journalists:

They’re overworked, they’re underpaid, their colleagues have probably just been laid off and they’re worried who’s next.  It might be them next.  They’re bombarded every day with literally hundreds of emails.  They’re on deadline.  They have towers of presskits and CDs on their desk threatening to topple over and crush their bodies.  Make their life easier, please.

They speak their own language, and need to see things presented most efficiently (see Rule #1 about overwork) so you also need to speak their language and present your information in a standardized way.  Your music is where you can be creative, not the press release format.  Which is not to say you shouldn’t be a clever WRITER.  A well-written, attention-grabbing press release is fantastic.  Journalists are writers – they appreciate good words, a clever phrase.  Now you’re speaking their language.

Remember – your job is to make it as EASY as possible for a journalist to cover you.  Ideally, they could (and if it’s good, they will) cut/paste directly from your press release, but to do that you need to write like a journalist.

Press Release Writing

The inverted pyramid. (wide part on top, narrow point on the bottom)

What that means is that if someone were to systematically delete paragraphs from the bottom up, the whole story (who-what-when-where-why-how) would still be completely communicated in the first paragraph.

It’s ideal but not “mandatory” that a press release be one page, but never, ever go over two pages.  There’s simply never a reason to have more than that, and if your release is longer than two pages, you’re rambling and you’ve just annoyed the overworked journalist (see Rule #1).  Cut it!  If a Fortune 500 company can communicate its news in less than two pages, so can your band.

Stick with the standard press release layout.  For a good template, check out -  http://www.publicityinsider.com/release.asp

Press Release Writing Strategy

For the body of the press release, consider these guidelines:

Paragraph #1 – A catchy sentence or two about your band as an introduction, but this is not the time to talk up the band.  Get the basic nuts & bolts info into it.  The date, time, location, address, over-21 or not, cover price, door time/show time, opening acts.

Paragraph #2 – Use this space for links to your online media, website, videos, etc.  Letting it stand alone as a single paragraph will let a reader’s eyes focus on it clearly.  (See Rule #1)

Paragraph #3 and beyond – Now you can get into details about your band, your sound, your past CDs, etc.

Press release samples and templates coming soon from Music Publicity Group!

Music Publicity encompasses much more than sending a press release to the media. In fact, ther are a number of things you should do to prepare before you distribute your story. First and foremost, you should set up a cohesive web-presence across social media outlets, and create a web page as a hub for your band.

In this blog post, Music Publicity Group will detail the exact steps to create a professional website for your band, WITHOUT any HTML coding. Best of all, a website for your band can be up in running in less than an hour, for under $150.

How to Build a Website For Your Band

1.  Purchase a domain name and hosting package through BlueHost

BlueHost offers EXCEPTIONAL domain and hosting services that are ideal for bands and musicians. Not only is BlueHost one of the most affordable hosting options on the web, they also support one-click WordPress installation, include UNLIMITED storage (great for songs and videos), and have great customer service.

Total cost for 1 year of hosting is $83.40 (6.95/mo), and includes a FREE domain. I have seen BlueHost run sales for as low as $3.95/mo, but these promotions do not last long.

If you already have your domain name registered, you can still use Bluehost to host your website. Bluehost will give you exact instuctions on how to transfer your domain to a new account.

2.  Install WordPress for your band website

After you have set up your account with BlueHost, login to your C-Panel account. Scroll down to ‘

Software/Services’ (near the bottom of the C-Panel) and click ‘WordPress.’ Install WordPress for the domain for your band.

WordPress is the ideal platform for your band’s website for many reasons. First off, you do not need to understand programming AT ALL to create a great website. There are hundreds of pre-designed templates that can be downloaded and installed for your site. While you can find quality WordPress templates that are free, Music Publicity Group suggests using a paid template for increased functionality and support.

3.  Choose a design for your website on ElegantThemes or WooThemes

ElegantThemes and WooThemes provide clean, professional designs for a fraction of the cost of hiring a programmer. Both allow you to customize the page however you like.

At ElegantThemes, you can get access to ALL of the templates for only $39.00 (1 year subscription). During that year, you can download as many designs as you want. This allows you to change the design of your website as much as you like until you are satisfied.

WooThemes is another great option for website designs.

4.  Install your theme (design)

Once you have chosen a theme you like, download it to your hard drive. Login to your WordPress dashboard and click ‘Appearance’ –> ‘Themes’ –> ‘Install Theme’

Next click ‘Choose File’ and locate the theme.zip file on your hard drive. Lastly, click ‘Upload’ to install your theme.

5.  Activate your theme

Click the ‘Activate’ button for the theme you just installed.

6.  Customize your theme and publish content!

Upload images for your band and create ‘posts’

There are a variety of WordPress Plugins and Widgets that will allow you to customize your page even more! For the sake of simplicity, these will be explained in detail in a future MPG post!

Music Publicity Group: Facebook TIP

A Facebook username gives you a custom web address that leads directly to your facebook page. This makes it much easier to promote your music on Facebook, and thus helps your music publicity efforts.

When Facebook first introduced custom URLs (usernames), a fan page had to have 25 fans (or likes) to get a custom name. While this number of ‘likes’ may be easy for the established band, a fledgling Facebook page was not eligible for a custom name.

Recently, Facebook has changed their requirements for a custom URL. You may now set a custom username regardless of how many ‘likes’ your page has. Whether you are creating a new band page from the ground up, or giving a face-lift to an established Facebook page, make sure you set your custom username to help with your publicity efforts!

To set your custom Facebook URL, go to http://www.facebook.com/username

WARNING: Once you set your custom Facebook username, you CANNOT CHANGE IT! Make sure you get a username that you want forever!

Once you have set you username, you can direct your fans to www.facebook.com/YourUserName.  This is especially helpful during publicity campaigns because it makes for a much easier media plug. It also helps fans discover your page just by searching for your band name.