What Publicists Need From Musicians – Guest Post by Anne Leighton

Posted By: Michael Brandvold (Michael is a 20 year music marketing veteran who has worked with unsigned indie bands and international superstars. Michael owns Michael Brandvold Marketing a site dedicated to providing tips and advice for musicians.)

This is a guest post by Anne Leighton.

The best, savviest musicians listen to their publicist’s expertise.  Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Tower of Power’s Emilio Castillo pay attention to what I tell them when I disagree, find a wrong fact in their bio, or if they NEED to do an interview during a vacation.  They also tell me when something needs to be fixed.  We’ve never had an argument.  Sure, we’ve all made mistakes that were based in misunderstood e-mails or my faulty research for an address. All my artists have missed interviews, but we rebound and reschedule.  We’re human.

Your publicist interfaces with you: the media, other world and industry tastemakers, or gatekeepers to get you more known in your career.

We work together.  Whether it’s you or Ian, artists have to realize the type of coverage (radio, print, TV, internet) they will receive in conjunction with where they are at the time of their album’s release.  If you’re at Lady Gaga’s level, most everyone will devote space and time to you.  If you had hits more than three to 40 years ago, selected national outlets might be interested, but chances lie more in local print and radio. If you’re still determined to wake up early in the morning, you could get some local TV coverage.

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From the Mouth of a Artist, Tend to Your Social Network Daily and Watch the Roots Take Hold

Lisa Sniderman from Aoede is one of my past clients and for the past few months I had wanted to interview about her experience and growth using social networking to grow her fanbase. Well we were finally able to make it happen. I felt it was important to have a artists say all of this, sometimes hearing it from a peer carries more weight. So take a couple minutes and read about how Lisa went from essentially zero to social networking wiz and grew her fanbase over the last 1o months.

Lisa set the wayback machine to December of 2010 when we first talked. You were a couple months away from releasing your most recent album Affair With The Muse and hired me to help you with your website and online marketing efforts. Your online world at that time was fairly small; less than 1000 on your email list, a handful of Facebook fans, less than 100 Twitter followers. We talked about what you would need to do to grow your fans. How you would have to spend time engaging with everyone on Facebook and Twitter. How you would have to write articles to post on your new blog. How you had to open up and talk about yourself personally more than you talk about the new album. I remember at the time you said you were not sure you could do all of this, that you didn’t know if you had the time. But, you forged ahead.

Now not even a year later and looking back what do you think about that journey?

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Why Is It So Hard to Give a Record Label My Money?

I updated the original article I posted on October 19th.

Maybe I am missing something, maybe I don’t understand why territory restrictions still need to exist. I guess thinking of the world as the territory is wrong.

Maybe my feeling that fans will buy music if you make music available the moment they want it, at a fair price on whatever device they use is just wrong. But right now trying to buy music actually can drive a fan to steal music.

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Stop Typing and Start Shouting to Your Fans with Shoutomatic

I just found a brand new website called Shoutomatic.com that lets you record audio updates to easily post to Facebook and Twitter, as well as posting a audio widget on your website.

Shoutomatic.com is extremely simple, I have already done a couple “Shouts” to test out the service. Here is a link to my profile on the site if you want to hear a couple examples of what I did. They also have good video help to show you how to use all the features.

There are three ways you can record audio:

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Don’t Forget to Buy the Domain for Your New Album

So much of what I write comes from my life experiences; either having worked with bands or from my being a fan and consumer. Life is full of many great lessons. Here is a lesson that hit me over the weekend.

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Make That Five Tips for Your Domain

Hypebot posted a nice article with three tips about your own domain. Good tips. But I want to add two more tips that I think are even more important and come from my personal experience working with many clients.

1. Auto Renew – Set your domain to auto renew. Just do it! I promise you will not be sorry. This means that when your domain expires it will automatically be renewed, with no interruptions. I have had too many experiences with clients, large and small, who did not auto renew their domain and did not notice the emails being sent to them to alert them to the need to renew. One day somebody notices the website is down and the panic begins. The scramble begins to quickly get the domain renewed and back online, in the meantime your site is down and often replaced with a generic page. This leads into tip number two.

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2000 Things to Generate 20,000 Fans – Create a Monthly Fan Meetup

Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This was my favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

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2000 Things to Generate 20,000 – Give a Musical History Tour

    

Author David Meerman Scott made an honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This was my favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.

The end result of all this will hopefully be more Facebook likes, Twitter followers, email list subscriptions, more sales and more traffic to your website… more fans!

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Time Management for Bands: 12 Tips to Handle Social Media Overload

This post is slightly at odds with one of my mentors, Michael Branvold. Strange considering it’s based on his great advice on what musicians should do online daily. It’s not that I disagree with what Michael says. It’s that, well, there’s not enough time in the damn day! Time management is a bane to my existence.

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8 Reasons Why You Need to Have Your Own Website

I was asked to write a guest blog on the topic of why it is important to have your own website. Well for whatever reason the blog was never posted and episode two of The Music Biz Weekly podcast reminded me that I still have this blog and that I should post it. This is a topic that I am passionate about. Let me make this clear, you must have your own website. Let me say that again… you need to have your own website.

Great social networks will come and go, and they are all important. You should be active on as many as possible. They are all great places to extend your website, extend your brand and presence. But everything should come back to your website.

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7 Tips to Make Your Next Music Video

Considering making an original music video?

You may want to check out the 7 tips below to save you time, money and added stress. I just completed my first music video after more than three years of investment where I learned these lessons directly…the hard way. I’m now working on my second video and vowed to avoid the same pitfalls by following these lessons. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes!

1 . Always have signed contracts no matter what. In the beginning, it is usually such a love fest between you and the the very people you want to hire to help realize your vision. They get it!

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10 Marketing Lessons I Learned from KISS

I am a KISS fan, going back to 1976 when my mom first bought me Rock N’ Roll Over. I remember taking heat in the late 70s at school for liking the band, I heard the phrase “KISS sucks” more than a few times. It also took a lot of courage to wear a KISS t-shirt to school at the time… you became a instant target. I grew up with KISS and their marketing has clearly been a influence on me and business growth. I often tell people I went to the Gene Simmons School of Marketing.

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10 Things Every Musician Should Do Online Every Day

Do you or your band have a daily online routine? You better. At the speed this world moves you can’t afford to miss even one day of what is happening. Your competition is not sitting still, so you better be out there. But as a band you have to find a balance that is not going to hinder your ability to be a band. You need to write, rehearse, record, perform… if you don’t do any of those things, being online won’t mean much.

So I thought I would take a look at my daily online routine and maybe you can apply to it your routine.

10 Things Every Musician Should Do Online Every Day

1. Quick Email Scan. – When you wakeup, you’re a band, so whatever time of the day this might be is fine. Grab your iPhone or smartphone and do a quick scan of your email for anything important or urgent. Respond to those very urgent emails right away. You will know what they are when you see them.

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Are You Wishing Your Fans A Happy Birthday?

I love this tip so much… Marcio Teixeira made a very simple suggestion for my 2000 Things article that fit perfectly with something else I was working on, wish your fans a Happy Birthday. How many are doing this? I have to say not many.

I don’t remember getting a birthday greeting from any band recently.

We all love it when someone recognizes our birthday. I am also always impressed when every year Southwest Airlines sends me a birthday card. No other business does that. A very simple action that always makes me think just how much I like Southwest Airlines. You need to do the same with every one of your fans. I already hear the comments… how!

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