March 26th, 2012

How well do you know your fans?

Building an online audience isn’t easy. It’s all about putting the time in and growing your fan base one person at a time. It is even harder if you don’t know who your fans are or where they hang out.  The way most bands audiences grow is via friends, then friends of friends and then word gets out via social media and the press. You need to do as much as you can to get people talking and telling their friends about what you do. To find your audience in the first place you need to know who your fans are and where they hang out, the best way to do this is to ask your first few fans. If you want the audience to grow you need to talk to them.

Here are some ways of getting to know your fans better:

Talk to them at gigs – When you play live don’t just dash off after you have finished your set. Make the effort to hang around and speak to your audience. Tell them about any other gigs coming up (make sure they are listed on your website and on Live Unsigned), ask questions and try and get an email address if possible.

Ask them questions online – Using your social media sites ask your fans questions, people love to talk about themselves. Ask them who their favourite bands are, what their interests are and what they are passionate about. Once you know where your fans are online you can engage with them there. Forums may not be the cutting edge of social media but a lot of really hardcore fans still use them. If you’re engaging with people on forums or elsewhere don’t try and sell to them, talk to them about other subjects and build a relationship first. It takes a lot of time but it does work.

Meet up with them – Using Twitter or Facebook arrange to meet up with your local fans for a beer or a meal. Finding out what they are into and what they like will enable you to work out what other similar fans may be into. With this information you can focus your marketing and promotion to find more of these people. So for example if you discover a lot of your fans read a particular publication this may be a place to really focus on advertising or getting reviews.

Don’t forget your newsletter – Email newsletters are still a great way to talk to fans, always try and include one question for fans to answer within the content, the answers you get may prove to be very useful. Always reply to every fan response!

Say thank you – Saying thank you is a good way of getting fans talking. So if you have a successful gig or a pre order for a new album sells out take the time to say thank you via your social media sites.

Open up – If you really want to get to know your fans let them know about your life, what you believe in, what frustrates you and what you care about. Tell them about who you are, honesty and integrity can take you a long way in terms of building a real relationship with fans. Authenticity is the key here, be yourself.

Over the period of a few years a fan can be worth a lot to you both financially (if they buy your merchandise) and in terms of the other people they will tell about your music. If you don’t engage with them someone else will, you really need to make the effort with your audience if you want them to be loyal to you. The more you know about your existing fans the more chance you will have to find out where more potential fans are and what they are into. Make sure you are listening to what they say carefully.

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March 29th, 2011

How to get print press for your music

One thing that bands are always looking for is positive print press. Magazines, fanzines and newspapers do still have a place in building an audience and positive press gives a lot of credibility to your online activities.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

The conventional way of getting press is either to send off lots of press kits and hope someone happens to read them or hire a PR company who will use their contacts to try and get you press. PR companies are very useful if you don’t have time to build relationships with the press yourself but are expensive. None of this guarantees a review, especially not a positive one.

There is another way, what you need is permission to present your music to the relevant journalists. Many of the freelancers who write the articles in magazines have their own blogs or Twitter feeds. The names of the journalists who write for a magazine you want to be featured in are normally listed at the front of the magazine. Use Google to search online to see if the people you want to contact have a blog or twitter profile. Subscribe to the RSS feed on their blog or start following them on Twitter. Now you are part of a smaller community than the thousands of people who read the print magazine.

Don’t simply send them a generic “check my music out” message, take the time to read their blog and reply with intelligent, relevant comments (not mentioning your music). If you follow them on Twitter reply to their Tweets, re-tweet their links and interact with them on a daily basis. Focus on building a positive relationship, often you’ll find that you forget its about getting press and you’ll find you are just talking to somebody online. The best thing that can happen is that they find your music without being prompted by investigating your Twitter profile or website, but this is very rare. After a few months of talking you can mention your own music and ask permission to submit it to them without being another random spammer. You can even mention your gig listings on Live Unsigned. You’ll still need a good conventional press kit to send to them, but now you’re not just another name, giving you much more chance of getting a review (and hopefully a positive one).

When you hire a PR company all you are doing is paying for access to the relationships they have built with the press, why not build the relationships yourself?  These relationships can have a positive impact on your career for years to come so are certainly worth the investment of time it takes to build them.

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March 1st, 2011

How to use Google Alerts to connect with your fans

Google Alerts allow you to perform a regular automatic search of the web for a specific word or phrase. If something comes up in the search Google will then email you to let you know what it is. You can set them up via the Google Alerts home page here, just fill in the options and enter your email and you are done. They are really easy to set up and will ensure you never miss a potential chance to interact with fans online about subjects that relate to your band. These conversations are a great way to start that vital word of mouth following.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

Some Google Alerts we would recommend setting up would be:

  • Your band name.
  • Your band name and release (EP/Album) name.
  • Similar artists.
  • Artists you play live with often.
  • Topics you often blog about.

You can set the alerts as daily/as it happens or weekly. Daily is recommended as it allows you to get in early on a topic and engage with your fans. You may also want to set some alerts that only search Blogs (you can set this in the options). You will quickly work out which option works best for you.

Once you get the alert email you can go online and engage with your audience or potential audience. Comment on blogs about your band and say thank you for helping to spread the word. Engage with people posting about similar artists and topics you blog about. Start conversations and provide useful links and information, don’t just spam them with links to your music. Treat potential fans with respect, there are a lot of people trying to build an audience, to stand out you need to provide comments of real value. This is not an opportunity to spam!

Once you have set the basic alerts above you can set up some more advanced ones. Perhaps you could search for people writing about a venue you are playing at later in the year and develop a friendship with bloggers in that area. Just go through your upcoming gigs list on Live Unsigned and create alerts for each venue. There are many other potential search opportunities that relate to directly to your band, only you will know what these are.

One interesting thing you will notice that comes up on the alerts is how many sites are torrenting your music, this will increase as your audience grows. If this is the case it at least shows your music is worth sharing and you’re doing something right (try Googling a well know band’s name and the word torrent to put this into perspective).

Alerts don’t find everything (they miss a lot of forum posts) but they are a great chance for you to see how much impact your actions online are having in developing a grass roots following and find potential opportunities to engage with new fans.

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February 17th, 2011

Using an email list to connect with fans

A lot of people will tell you that its all about social networking now but one thing we have learned in the last few years from sites like Bebo and Myspace is that these networks have a limited life span. An email list is still a very important way for bands to stay in touch with their audience and its still going to be there when the social networks change/disappear.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

Services such as Mail Chimp and Fanbridge allow you to manage your list easily and professionally. Some do charge for the service, especially if your email list runs into the thousands. Ensure all the people on your list have actually opted in and want to be on the list, spamming people via email is illegal and bad for your reputation. Its about gaining permission to market to people through great music, not adding to the spam deluge. Be careful.

Building your list takes time. Ask friends and fans if they would like to join the list first, then ensure you collect emails at your gigs (this is a good way to get talking to and making friends with the crowd). Have some kind of email collector on your site, ideally on every page in the form of a widget. Offer free songs (perhaps an entire album/live EP) in exchange for an email address. This act of generosity allows you to open a channel of communication via email. With so many bands out there trying to build an audience this is really important.

Once your have your list set up and have a few people on it you can start to send messages out. Its best not to send emails too often, maybe once or twice a month perhaps, unless you have some really exciting news. Emailing out too often when you have very little happening will just annoy your fans and you will loose people.  Try subscribing to the email lists of bands you like so you can see how it is done, you will notice the number of emails increases as the band head towards major activity such as a tour or an album release. Even if the band is between releases its still worth staying in touch so that you don’t loose that contact with your fans.

Think about how you will structure your emails and ensure the tone is appropriate for your band and genre. Always have one specific “call to action”, this is the one thing you definitely want your audience to do – download your new album, attend a gig listed on Live Unsigned or become a fan on a social network. Make this the first paragraph on the email. Think of what you want your fans to do before you even consider sending an email.

Once you have your specific call to action in place you may want to talk about a few other less important bits of news. I’d always recommend starting by asking how your fans are (its about them, not you) and ensure you say thank you for their support. Other than that don’t try and say too much and don’t be too formal, be yourself. Always ask your fans to tell their friends about your music, word of mouth is a very powerful thing. Perhaps around three different subjects is enough for each email, don’t overload people. Too much text will mean its too much effort to read. Also continue to reward the people on your list by giving them advance access to tickets, downloads, pre-orders etc. Make them feel special.

Used effectively a good email list is a vital part of maintaining your relationship with your audience, as long as you treat your fans with the respect they deserve.

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February 11th, 2011

What should bands blog about?

Everyone tells bands they need a blog, but its not always obvious what to write about. The blog should be your opportunity to engage with the fans and develop your relationship with them.  Keyword your blogs correctly and write about things others are interested in. A great blog post will come up in search results on Google and be shared across social networks.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

Here are a few ideas for things to blog about:

  • Blog about a cause – something you are passionate about, political or silly. As long as its honest and from the heart its all good. Sure you’ll loose some people if you are really passionate about an issue but you are likely to gain people who agree with your world view.  Its far better to stand out.
  • Read what your favorite artists blog about and get some ideas there. What would you like to know about your favorite artist?
  • Write about a long term project and get the audience involved every step of the way. This could include the months of writing and recording an album or preparing a new live show. Get your audience to cheer you on and be part of the process.
  • Talk about your gigs, who you have met, the highs and lows. Share some behind the scenes gossip and try and be funny or interesting (but avoid litigation).
  • Share your photos or videos on your blog (you can use flickr etc to embed the HTML). This is really useful for bands that don’t enjoy writing. If you enjoy expressing yourself visually this a really good way to create blog content. You’re far more likely to keep a blog going if you enjoy writing it.
  • Equipment. I know this sounds dull but if you’re into gear talk about it on your blog.  Often people are searching for gear reviews online and will find your blog (and hopefully your music) through this.
  • Demystify the process. Tell them how you came up with a song, made a video or built a 5 neck guitar. People like “how to” content, that shows how to emulate what you do. Teach, share and be helpful. If you solve a problem for someone through a blog post they are more likely to share it on Twitter etc.
  • Write about other bands. Write about the music that moves you, you are passionate about and enjoy. You’ll often find that fans of that band will find and share your post. This gives you permission to engage and build an non-spammy relationship with a whole other group of fans. You could even do a playlist using Youtube embeds of artists you love to share with the world.
  • Collect links – got something brilliant to recommend? A great guitar, brand of chewing gum or even a live gigs listings site? Tell the world about what cool stuff you’ve found online. This was the original purpose of weblogs.
  • Let your fans into your life. This is difficult to balance, it depends on how much you want to share. For instance Amanda Palmer used to share everything with fans in intimate detail but even she is holding back now after marrying Neil Gaiman who didn’t want to be part of the ongoing dialogue with fans to that extent. Remember to ask questions of your audience so it becomes a conversation (remember its called social media for a reason). How much you share is up to you but please be aware there are lots of strange people out there, don’t give out where you live or times you are going to be in certain places unless you want people to come find you. Be careful.

A blog audience can take a while to build, but once it is there its a brilliant way to connect with your audience.

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January 21st, 2011

Twitter for musicians part 2

In the second part of our post on the benefits of using Twitter we look at some ideas for more experienced users.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

  • Manage your time. Twitter isn’t your marketing campaign, its just part of it. If you spend all day on Twitter you won’t have anything interesting to tell people about, go out into the world and do something interesting (and tweet about it on your mobile phone).
  • Reply to all your @ messages. If someone has made the effort to message you, make sure you respond (and not just with a link to buy your music). Building relationships gives you permission to market your music, not the other way round. Ideally people will find your music organically via your profile after talking to you on Twitter.
  • Use the hashtag #followfriday to recommend friends and fans amongst your followers each week. Its a way of thanking your followers and its in your interest for them to follow each other and grow the community around your music.
  • Auto responders are rubbish and insincere. This will work against you, its better to engage and talk to a few followers than spam lots of people with automatic direct messages.
  • People tweeting about you is far stronger than anything you can do yourself. Twitter is all about word of mouth. If others talk about you its authentic and real, the only way to achieve this is to create great music and engage with your audience. Its not going to happen overnight but it does work. Recommend music by other artists you love rather than shouting about your own all day.
  • Drop in links only when its relevant. Tell your followers when you have have a new blog post, photo, videos or have just posted a gig on Live Unsigned. Many people use Twitter as their way of finding new content, blogs especially. You wouldn’t run up to someone you don’t know and try to sell them something would you? Ask your followers to do specific things once you have built relationships, including download your album, go to a gig, re-tweet a link or join your mailing list. Just don’t overdo it.
  • Get feedback. Find out what they think about your new songs, set list or artwork. You could even crowd source art work or ideas for places to play by asking your Twitter followers. Try to make your tweets into questions if possible if you want your followers to respond.
  • Be careful with your privacy, especially if you are telling people where you are going. Telling people your address and then saying you’re going on holiday is a very bad idea.
  • Set up a search for your band name and web address and follow and engage with anyone who is talking about you. Monitor this every day as it takes two seconds once you’ve set up the search.
  • Say thank you. Thank your followers for re-tweeting you and when they tweet about your music. This will help you to engage with your audience and will encourage them to do it again. If you want to build a following your audience should be the most important people in the world to you.
  • Open up, but don’t bore people. No one cares about every tiny detail of your day, but the more honest and open you are the more authentic the relationship will be with your audience. It requires you lose some of the mystique of the performer but you will connect with your followers more. How this will work for you as an artist depends on how you want to do it, we can’t tell you what your authentic Twitter voice is, only you can do that. Being rude and offensive is probably a bad idea but maybe that is your voice and who you are and some people will love you for it. Be yourself.

Twitter is a constantly evolving site, new ideas on ways to engage are always coming along. The best way to build a fan base is to watch what others do, engage and be as interesting as you can (while remaining true to yourself). You can follow us on twitter at @liveunsigned and get links to all the latest Live Unsigned band reviews at @lureviews.

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January 18th, 2011

Twitter for musicians part 1

Twitter is one of the best tools to connect with your audience, if you are prepared to put the time in. If you look at ten different musician’s Twitter feeds you will most likely see ten different ways of presenting yourself on Twitter. There are no strict right and wrongs, the most important thing is to be yourself. One of of the biggest mistakes bands make is to outsource their Twitter to someone else and it just becomes a dull stream of tour dates or even worse is out of character with what the musician stands for. Generally speaking you get back what you put in, if Lady Gaga and Stephen Fry have time to run their own Twitter feed then so do you, no one else can Tweet in your voice. Don’t think of it as marketing think about it as talking to your audience as friends. You can make some amazing friends through Twitter.

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

Here are some basics for building a Twitter presence, it takes time but its worth it:

  • Have a witty to the point biography and a interesting clear photo. Big images work better on Twitter. Try and get something people will remember (for the right reasons) and its always good if you can keep the same image across all your profiles. Set your background image on your Twitter page to something that correlates with you and your website. Twitter biogs that boast about how wonderful you are are a really bad Idea, keep it simple and funny if possible. Twitter isn’t the place for egos.
  • Add your Twitter address to your promotional material and install the Twitter Widget on your website. This helps to gain followers and also makes your website look busy (its in the profile options and there are various embed options, its like embedding a Youtube video).
  • Follow a small group of people and really engage with them.  You can follow people who follow musicians you sound like or search Twitter for keywords relevant to your music and follow people talking about them. Follow people you are friends with or you are a fan of (including Bloggers, Podcasters and Journalists). These are people you can build a relationship with on the basis of shared interests.
  • Follow a few hundred to start off with and communicate with them via @ messages. Respond to their tweets and offer useful links in your replies. Gradually people should start to follow you back, then repeat this to grow the number of people following you. Take it slowly  – if you are following 2000 people with only 10 followers this makes you look like a random spammer, not good (spammers are moving from Myspace to Twitter along with everyone else). Just follow a few people a day, its more imporant to be talking to the people you are following already.
  • Tweet your gigs when you post them on Live Unsigned. Every time you post a new live show on Live Unsigned share the show link with your followers via Twitter and ask them to re-tweet it.
  • The important thing is how engaged your followers are, it doesn’t matter how many people are following you, its more important that the people following you are really paying attention. If your followers are talking to you they are far more likely to be interested in your music.
  • If you want to follow the most engaged followers of a band similar to you search on their twitter name within twitter search i.e. search for @radiohead and follow and engage with the people talking to the band – these are the most committed fans, the hardcore.
  • How often you update depends on how much your audience wants to hear from you and how much you want to tweet. Some followers want to know everything (the superfan) and some only want to hear occasionally. Tweet more if you are in the studio or if you are on tour, when interesting stuff is happening. After a while this will all feel natural. Some people tweet a lot, some don’t.
  • Don’t mention your music too often, talk about it when you have something new or interesting but don’t bore people. If only 5% of your tweets are self promotional you’re probably OK, Twitter isn’t about that. Its about making friends and building relationships, this then gives you permission to mention your music, not the other way round. Don’t think of it as marketing, think about it as talking to friends – “check out my music” isn’t interesting.
  • Re-Tweet often, if you think its interesting and relevant to your followers. You can get away with some promotion here if you re-tweet nice things others have said about your music, but don’t overdo it.
  • Don’t spam people via @ messages. The quickest way to get blocked and reported for spam is to @ message people with links to your music and a “check out my music” message. Very bad idea.

Part 2 of this post coming soon with information for more experienced Twitter users.

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November 4th, 2010

7 ways fans can spread the word about your band

The most valuable thing you have as an indie artist is your fan base. If you are working on a budget ask your fans to help you, its amazing how people want to be part of what you’re doing. Remember to make them feel special by saying thank you and giving them exclusives like downloads and promotional items when they help. A personal thank you costs nothing but will empower a fan to dig in and support you. Here are some things your fans can do for you:

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

1 – Tell their friends online about your music – If each fan tells one person about your music it will double your audience. Different people have different groups of friends and word of mouth from a trusted friend is far more credible than any advertising. Ask fans to post about you in forums, tweet and blog about what you are doing. Don’t wait for it to happen, ask your fans to tell their friends. Marketers call this a “call to action” but it will only work if you have built goodwill with your fan base by treating them well.

2  – Get them to vote for you – The web is full of online competitions, why not ask your fans to vote for you and get their friends to as well. It always tends to be the band with the largest following that wins, so mention it across your social media and email list and see what happens.

3 – Suggest places to play – Its always hard to find great venues to play, so crowd source your touring. If you ask your audience where they want to see you there is more chance they will turn up! One thing that tends to happen is there are outbreaks of fans in particular places (maybe due to press or evangelical listeners). Find out where your fans are and go to them. This will reduce the chances of playing to an empty room ever again. You can even put posters for the gigs on your site and ask the audience to print them off and post them around town. Touring musicians often save money on hotels by staying at the homes of fans (and playing the odd house concert while they are there).

4  – Ask them to make content for you – Do you need a video or a T-Shirt or poster design? Ask your fans to make one for you, let them be involved and get them talking. Make it a competition and show the rest of your audience what is being created and publicly praise what is being done. Singer-Songwriter Jonathan Coulton‘s career was given a boost when his music was used on a fan created World Of Warcraft video on Youtube that had over 4 million views. One great fan made viral video can make a huge difference to your career.

5 – Distribute MP3′s – How much you want to do this depends on your attitude to copying your music. Some bands ask fans to burn copies of their CD to give to friends. This free promotion helps spread the word. Others have asked fans to upload music to file sharing sites which has lead to growth in the audience. As CD Baby founder Derek Sivers says “Obscurity is the enemy, not piracy”.

6 – Contact their local media on your behalf – Its one thing for you to contact your local radio station and press but if your fans are doing it for you it adds a lot of credibility. The Grateful Dead were famous for using this strategy in the 70′s, they said on the packaging of their records they didn’t have a lot of funds for advertising and would ask for the audience’s help.

7 – Raise money for charity – Raising money for a good cause unites people and is good for morale all round. It gives you something to talk to the press about and across social media. Get your fan base involved and do some good for the world. It will bring your audience together if you are all working towards a charitable cause and it indirectly spreads the word about your band.

All these things happen as a result of goodwill built up with a loyal audience. Make sure you reward them and say thank you and you will have a resource of immense value. Report and share success, its their success as much as yours. Remember none of these things will happen if you don’t ask your fans to help, do everything in your power to make it so its you and them against the world.

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September 28th, 2010

9 YouTube ideas for musicians

Sometimes its hard to believe YouTube has only been around for 5 years, so ubiquitous has it become. A great viral video can break a band – here are some ideas for YouTube content beyond the standard song promo video:

1 – Animated Videos – Approach a local college, filmmakers forum or your Twitter/Facebook followers and ask if anyone is an animator. Try and negotiate a mutually beneficial deal to make an animated video. Maybe they are looking for music for a project and you can provide that for free in exchange for a video or you can expose their animation to your fanbase?

2 – Video Songs – US band Pomplamoose and others have used this technique to become huge on Youtube. To quote the Pomplamoose website:

“VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:
 1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice). 
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds)”

People really enjoy the process of seeing the band make the record in real time. They record each take as they perform it then edit the takes together using iMovie so that all elements of the performance are shown, at least for some of the time in the video. This honest and open approach to recording and video making has allowed them to become professional musicians through iTunes sales, licensing deals and advertising.

3 – Live Footage – Whether its a friend/partner with a Flip camera or full on 3 camera mayhem its vital to get some live footage on your site. Most listeners and promoters want to see if you can pull it off live. Try to get the person doing sound live to provide some good quality board recordings so you can then match up with the video footage. This can make all the difference.

4 – Cover Songs – People often search YouTube for songs they already like, if you do a cover you are more likely to show up in their search results. Often people do an acoustic or instrumental version of a popular song.  Do it in your own style and put your own spin on it. Honesty and authenticity go a long way online.

5 – Free Online Tools – There are lots of free online tools for creating video content. Animoto takes your photos and creates a short video based on them, Xtranormal is a service that lets you create computer animated videos just by typing in a few instructions. Both are  really useful tools and if you put in the time you can get some great content.

6 – Post A How To – From guitar lessons to cooking tips, give your audience an insight into what you do and some useful information as well. People are often searching for specific things such as equipment demos or particular places or instructional items, if you add keywords relevant to your video you are more likely to be found.

7 – Documentaries – Show how you prepare for a gig or how you rehearse or record. Allow your audience to go behind the scenes. You could film a tour diary, interview the people in your band and friends and fans.

8 – Response Videos – One way to engage with the Youtube community is to respond to a video already online (there is an option to post a video response under most videos). You can respond with one of your own videos or record something special, for example you could post your cover of a song as a response to the original. Video responses encourage debate and allows you to pick up on the audience of more popular videos. Ensure your response is relevant and not spam.

9 – Youtube Playlists – Create your own playlist. Give it an interesting name and theme (like”Acoustic Greats from South London” etc) and include some popular artists videos as well as some of your own – this gives people another way to discover your videos and music through Youtube search.

When you post a new video tweet about it, share it on Facebook, embed it on your website and blog. Ask your fans to do the same. Remember Youtube has a social network element so build relationships, comment on other peoples videos and make friends just like you would anywhere else (and don’t spam!!). Be interesting and get people to talk about your videos.

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September 24th, 2010

How to get your music featured on blogs

In the last few years music blogs have become essential for new artists, moving faster than the print press ever could. Some of these blogs have massive audiences from one person in a bedroom to sites such as Pitchfork which is closer to a print magazine. Blog search engines such as the Hype Machine allow listeners to hear tracks streamed from the top few blogs and bands can break through in a very short amount of time. Many musicians leak new tracks to influential bloggers before anyone else. So how do you get music blogs to write about your music?

The easiest way to find the relevant blogs to approach is to search for them based on an artist who is similar to yourself (ask your friends if you don’t know who you sound like). Use Google Blog Search to find relevant blogs initially by searching for similar artists. Google finds all bloggers, rather than the Hype Machine that just focuses on the more popular ones. Some blogs may only have 5 readers some may have thousands, you can normally tell readership by the amount of comments on the blog.  The smaller blogs can be more open to new artists than the big ones, most Hype Machine searchable blogs are swamped with submissions.

When you approach bloggers the most important thing is to read the blog, this is vital, do not just fire off a spam email. Find out who writes the blog and become part of their community, comment on the blog (with thoughtful responses, not spam).  Once a relationship is built you can send an email enquiring about a review. Mention something specific in the blog related to an artists similar to your music and send a link to a (free) zip file of your album hosted on Megaupload or Bandcamp. Most bloggers prefer an album or EP to single tracks. Ensure you follower any instructions on the blog with regard to any specific requirements for submissions.

By approaching a few of the smaller bloggers you can build relationships and get some quotes and start the fanbase. This won’t happen overnight but is really worth doing as honest relationships are the only ones that really work. What you need to do is grow a small, loyal following and allow this to grow organically through word of mouth. Every quote you get from a blogger is really useful for building your press kit and overall credibility.

When your music has been featured on a blog send an email thanking the blogger and then do everything you can do to promote the blog post. Tweet about it, mention it in your email newsletter, Facebook and quote it on your website. Do everything in your power to show you appreciate the post and that you are helping the blogger to grow their audience.

Now next time you approach another blog you can quote the hopefully positive reviews you have received when you make contact. It’s much easier to get one of the big blogs to review you once you already have some good quotes from other bloggers.  Keep a log of the blogs you are in communication with so that when you release another record you can get in touch. This method takes time but is well worth it. The more remarkable your music is the quicker things can happen, once momentum builds bloggers tell other bloggers and your music spreads round the blogging community and beyond. As ever word of mouth is the only way to really make this work.

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