evanstoudtDec-07-2008 12:39pm
Artists House Vault: Publicity Tips
Publicity is a big slice of the marketing pie. When trying to gain an audience, you’ve got to get the word out somehow and while you can’t necessarily guarantee it, you can vastly improve your chances by doing one thing:
Tell a story.
In the video below, Bob Merlis talks about the his role as a publicist in helping to tell John Mellencamp’s story.
Now you might be thinking “yeah but Mellencamp is a huge act, what about me?” The same logic applies.
Back in high school, I played in an indie rock group in New Orleans that actually got great press for the amount of time we were playing together. We got record reviews in a few local and online publications, a three page interview, live show reviews, and more.
What was our story? We were young — not even allowed to play in some of the clubs — full of energy, new to the scene, and trying to make great music. The press bit, and it helped build our fanbase.
What’s your story?
Simple Tips for Success: Follow your Fans on Twitter
This week’s Simple Tips for Success is aimed to help you maximize Twitter using TweetFeed.
If you’re doing something right and gaining some traction, chances are that your band, product, name or service is going to get mentioned on the Twittersphere.
So what should you do?
Find and follow those users that are talking about you!
Those are the people you want to connect with. Those are “the few” that Andrew suggested you focus on in last week’s Simple Tips for Success. Those are the people that care about you enough to share you with their friends, and you should do your best to add them to your network.
What’s the simplest way to do that? Follow them on Twitter.
Following people is as easy as a clicking the mouse, but the real challenge is finding out if and when people are talking about you. What is the best way to find if people are talking about you? Use TweetFeed.
TweetFeed is a simple, easy to use service that allows you to create ‘feeds’ for terms mentioned on Twitter. Basically it is Google for Twitter. Want to see it in action?
Check out the Artists House tweetfeed.
So the process works like this. Sign up for an account with Tweetfeed (takes less than five seconds), set up a feed you’d like — say ‘your band’s name’ or ‘your name’ or anything else you’re interested in, and you’re good to go. Then you can check on it periodically — once a day — once a week — and click through to twitter to follow the people that mentioned you.
This is a great way to show your fans that you truly care about them, and want to connect. After you follow them, you could send them a direct message, get them to follow you, and create mutually beneficial two-way communication.
Anecdotally, this could also be a great way to get people talking about you. I have specifically seen occurrences where friends tweeted out about Hulu, got followed by Hulu a few hours later, then re-tweeted their excitement about what happened.
I even blogged about McDonalds when it happened to me.
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What do yall think? Any other ways to do this? Comments?
Do you know of any bands that are doing this?
Reader Profiles: Artists and Songs
I just posted a note over on our Facebook page about a new feature we’ve started up here at the Artists House blog.
Reader Profiles: Aritsts and Songs
What we need from you are a couple of submissions — your best song, one you’d like to work on, etc… anything really. Then we’ll take some of our favorites and try to give some feedback and help to spread the word around about them. You can send us an email attachment with the song with a link to your website / myspace, or use the song dropbox on the right side of this page and post a comment with some more information about your band.
Email: ArtistsHouseM @ Gmail.com
or Twitter @artistshouse
Also, go ahead and use the Facebook group we’ve set up to interact with our other readers and get involved in the Artists House community. You might be amazed at the amount of passion, skill, and initiative of some of our group members.
Business Cards
Wired has a great How-To wiki on Sprucing up Your Business Card. But what happens if you don’t already have one?
Get on it and make one.
These days, you MUST put in extra effort to stand out from the crowd, and business cards can help you do that. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and the fact that you’re a student, musician, artist, or barista shouldn’t prevent you from getting one printed.
You can use the tips on the Wired wiki for creating a stand-out card and test out a near-free option online.
Send an us email with a copy of your card and we’ll give you some feedback.
AC/DC recently released a music video animated entirely in Microsoft Excel.
This is a GREAT example of what to do if you’re an artist of any age looking to get some publicity and attention.
Although music videos used to be a primary means of driving sales and publicity of a single or album, those days are long gone. We had TRL, VH1, and The Box (real throwback there) that blasted music videos all day long. These days, music videos don’t seem to be in much demand and tend not to get as much attention to begin with.
When you go against the norm — say, like AC/DC creating a video in Excel or Radiohead filming a video with 3D lasers (what?) — you tend to command more attention then average.
Now, I know those are both examples of mainstream, well established artists with big budgets, but that doesn’t mean the philosophy behind the video cannot be mimicked…
Innovate and Differentiate.
BONO to write for the NYT
Bono has inked an OP-ED deal with the New York Times. Apparently, he will write between 6 and 11 pieces for the NYT next year.
This is a great example of alternative revenue streams.
I know, I know… there can only be ONE Bono, but if you’re a musician or artist, you should consider using your expertise and experience to contribute to the community via a local paper or magazine.
Not only could you get paid, but you can increase your network, connections, and personal brand. People could grow to know you not only as a person, but as a musician.
Evan Stoudt
Via
PS — should “he” be capitalized when referring to Bono?
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