Get more fans to your show!

I love learning from people who have tried an approach and then taken the time to write down what they've learned from that real experience.

That's exactly what Seth Jackson does here in his free eBook, 'Get more fans to your shows'.

And it's great.

Seth says:

In the book, I discuss how to get your shows listed everywhere, how to use social media to really engage your fans, and how to attract the media’s attention.

Also included:

• Managing your time to handle social media
• How to use Twitter and blogs to get more attention from the tastemakers
• How to squeeze every opportunity from your current shows
• Simple strategies to engage with your current fans and gain more.
• How to know what will make a show successful for both yourself and the club.

It's a no-brainer - go and get it. Every artist will learn something.

How and where to flyer your show

If you don't want your flyers to end up all over the street like the guys above and to actually bring some people to your shows, then you need to learn the best way to use them.

Chris 'Seth' Jackson has some great ideas in this post.

Usually, bands scatter their fliers across the city. This is wasted paper and money. If you’re going to scatter fliers across the city, don’t do it for a show. Instead, just do it to promote your band’s website and your band’s name. That will get you more mileage.

For maximum effect, you should put the fliers in places close to the club with a lot of foot traffic. Better yet, pick spots where people have to wait like the bus stop. Try outside of other clubs where people smoke. Ask businesses if you can put fliers up in their shop where people have to wait in line.

Read it all here.

Also, you might find Amanda's post about getting a gig useful here.

Getting Gigs and Agents - what you need to know

I already tweeted one of these articles last week but when I came across another two it became perfect sense to put them all together in one place.

The first one from Grassrootsy gives 4 tips on what a booker is looking for when booking a band - and it's really insighful.

While hashing things out in the group, I took note of how a booker decides who to book for his venue. Now the following list isn’t set in stone and will probably be different for each individual booker, but these 4 factors (in order of importance) will guide a venue into booking you.

Go here to see what those 4 tips are.

That piece itself links to an interview on the same site with a booker who goes into detail about his own experience booking bands and promoting the shows:

The more people you can bring, the more leverage you have. You gotta give something before you take it. So when emailing venues, talk about how you can team up with a local band or two and bring 30 REAL people. Don’t BS and lie to the venue. We have a 25% rule. Whenever a band says they will bring 50 people, we just assume it will be 12 or 13. Then we don’t usually want to do business with them again because they exaggerated their draw when we could have put on another like-minded band with a draw that could have made the night profitable for everyone.

It's long but well worth a read.

Lastly, there's this piece from Dave Cool - and it's a must read.

It talks about how you find a booking agent, but almost the whole piece is great advice for how to be better live and get more gigs - like this nugget:

Get your live show to the point where people are going home blown away and talking about you when they leave the venue. So rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse again, then play as many shows as you can. And be sure to build your set list in a way that makes for a great show, not just a series of songs played one after another.

Read the whole thing here.

The definitive book on this subject is Jeri Goldstein's 'How to be your on booking agent'. It's spot-on and WILL help you get more gigs. Not cheap these days though as it's in demand and currently sold out. You can get it on Amazon or for a Kindle. I recommend it.

Songkick cracks easy gig listing

Songkick is rapidly becoming my favourite gig listing site and it's automated features have a huge amount to offer the diy musician.

Firstly, although you can log-in and create an account to list your own shows, Songkick is constantly scouring the web for live show data and may well import this info automatically - it will do this if you have reached any significant size.

And then, they are rolling out loads of partners who will use the data that they have to populate their own sites - so far including Facebook and Soundcloud.

See this on Facebook - where you can have a tab auto-populated with gigs and links to buy tickets.

And this on Soundcloud.

It will also auto-import into Bandcamp and your own site (especailly easy if that is running on Wordpress).

Well worth a look and something that we'd recommend any band with a few hundred following to check out. It's only going to get better.

Get your band booked at a festival - here's how

Image by Tobin Voggesser

What an amazing place for a gig?

That's what I thought when I read this piece. I had to contact the photographer who let me use the pic to find out where it is - it's the Powellapalooza music festival at Lake Powell in the US.

I know you're going to want to know!

But the piece is why you're here. This post from FanManager sets out sensible steps to take to get your band booked on festivals this summer - and now is when you need to start working on this as line-ups are already being booked and finalised.

I’ve been on both sides of the coin, acting as the talent buyer for 2 festivals and as a booking agent focused on festivals performances for a roster of 12 nationally touring artists. There are definitely some tricks to the trade for getting your artist onto a festival lineup. Here are some recommendations that will steer you towards successful festival bookings.

If your artist is nationally known and desired, most of the information below will likely not apply. If you are reaching out to the appropriate festivals, you’ll make a call or shoot over an email and negotiations will begin if the festival has interest in your artist. Better yet, the festival talent buyer will contact you.

Read the whole piece here.

Then find festivals and get chasing!

Handstamp with your landing page + gig = offline to online traffic

This is so simple and so good.

Great post from a great site - have a dig a round - and I know that this little strategy will work to get fans checking out your site the next day.

The key thing is to have the stamp have a specific URL - where they will get specific rewards - mp3's or live recordings - whatever you tell them. Remind them from the stage and this is a winner.

Can't believe that I hadn't seen it before! Check our post on how to get a gig if you're struggling at that stage - then do this when you do.

Read the post here.

10 things you need to be doing at gigs

Image by CalvinCropley

Great post from We All Make Music to remind you what you should be doing to get the most out of every gig - for yourself, your fans and the venue. Just because you can get a gig doesn't mean you know what to do to get the best result from every show you play!

For the most part it's obvious and just good mannaers but we all need to be reminded now and again.

Read the list of 10 here.

 

Just call it a 'show'!

This article is about one promoter's use of Adwords to sell tickets for a tour / show.

But, the data showed that the response rate to the Ads was nearly 5 times higher when they used the word 'Show' rather than 'Tour'.

It's safe to assume that this is human nature at work and using the word 'show' on your flyers and posters will be more effective in bringing the punters in. Worth knowing as a little trick in your music promotion armoury.

Media Junction were recently asked to promote a tour by a global superstar. There were five gig dates happening in Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool and London. The promoter agreed to work with us on a ‘Test & Learn’ strategy to ascertain which headlines and keywords were most effective.

We segmented the audience in to 3 groups:

1. People who were searching for the artist name
2. People who were searching on specific terms related to the Tour
3. People who were searching for terms related to the artist & venues, e.g. similar artists, song titles

Read the piece here.

 

Live performances should be like Church

Image by Jiaren Lau

He's got a point!

You can learn a lot about how to build your fanbase from seeing what every Church does (that is, when they get it right - you don't want Europe's dwindling congregations to be your model!).

The things that engage worshippers in Church are the same things that will get a reaction from a crowd at your gig.

Really worthwhile allegorical piece.

If there’s one thing I learned from my former years playing in houses of worship, it’s that the Sunday morning experience is designed for maximum effectiveness. Granted, some churches are more finely tuned than others, but the principles of your average worship service should apply to every single concert you play.

Read it here.

Things that will go wrong on stage

Once you've put in the effort to get a gig, it can all still go horribly wrong!

This is a great post that has some very simple tips for forward planning so that you are ready for those moments when you get ambushed.

Common sense maybe, but worth a reminder.

No matter how practiced or prepared you are, some things will always go wrong.

Even seasoned stage veterans have to be ready to deal with a large variety of unexpected mishaps.

Here are just a few of the incidents you can expect.

Read the piece here.

Ten ways to get more gigs

We are all always looking at ways to improve how we get a gig.

This is a great post on KnowtheMusicBiz that looks at the 'what's in it for me' attitude that every promoter or venue that you approach will have. It's natural that they need to have their best interests at heart, so don't fight it - play up to it.

When I used to play drums in a band I wrongly assumed that to get gigs I have to send demos out – the better my music, the high the acceptance rate. It seems sensible right? My thinking was basically that if I send more demos and make better music then I will get more gigs, which is true, but a bad way of thinking (IMO).

Here’s why.

The theory above does not take into account the two main criteria that promoters subconsciously take into account when booking bands; will they make me money? and should I make a personal effort to help them? (by this I really mean are they a friend, or have they been recommended by someone close, or do they just seem like really nice people).

So if I were to work on arranging gigs for a band now I would be thinking:
1. How can I offer more financial value to the promoter at gigs
2. How can I build a relationship between myself and promoters I’ve never met.

Here are ten ideas to think about.

Read the piece here.

10 things to do to book more live shows

Great to do list for the live element of your efforts to build your fanbase.

Photo by Môsieur J. [version 4.0b]]

I particularly agree with the bonus tip! As you know, I advocate email list building as the number one non-music-making task facing you and your band.

BONUS TIP! Everywhere you go, wherever you play, whomever you talk to about your band… collect as many e-mail addresses as you can. E-mail is still one of the best ways to communicate directly with your fan base, and develop long-lasting relationships.

Read the piece here.

29 things you can do to improve your touring

Parts 1 & 2 of a three part post series about tips for touring.

There are some absolute gems in these two posts and I can't wait for the third installment - plus check out Amanda's post on what to do to get a gig.

Martin Atkins who wrote the posts really knows his stuff and the first tip alone on the 'five pointed star inward-facing crush technique' is, honestly, brilliant.

Read Part 1 of the 29 tips here.

Read Part 2 of the 29 tips here.

If you want to get Martin's book - which I'd recommend to any band - you can get it here - Tour:Smart: And Break the Band