You’ve got the music, you’ve got the look and you’ve got the practice, your band is ready to go, the only problem is that nobody knows who you are. The good news is that thanks to the internet there are now plenty of ways to get the name of your band out there but don’t be over reliant on it. 10 years ago the internet was relatively new and still growing at a vast rate so people took notice of bands that were discovered there. Now almost every band seems to come from the internet so why not try the alternative and go back to giving a bit more of a personal approach. Here is a mixture of 5 ways to promote your band.
YouTube
You only have to look as far as people like Justin Beiber, Ed Sheeran & Psy to know that YouTube is probably the best and quickest way of becoming a star but only the very select few actually get noticed. Record companies now have teams of people who trawl through YouTube all day long looking for the next big thing and some record labels now solely deal with internet artists.
Social Media
Social media should come after you have posted your bands video on YouTube, this is ideal platform to share it with the world and try and drum up some viewers to make it more popular. Tweet famous people, reviewers, bloggers or just normal music fans but try and interact with them and get them to watch and re-tweet your video. Use a program called followerwonk to directly target certain people who like your genre of music.
Flyers & Posters
You can now combine modern technology with more traditional methods, get a poster made for your band but try adding a QR code to it, a QR code is an image that you take a photo of and scan on your phone, it then take your straight your desired web page. This would go to your iTunes or YouTube page.
Hand Out CD’s
Every band should have a promo CD or a CD with a few songs on to showcase their talent. Once you have recorded it to your computer go online and visit a site like VP Online to get your CD’s duplicated, then you can send out a hundred copies to different record labels, producers or club promoters.
Play Live Gigs
If you have done the last section well, handing out CD’s, then you should find this step easy, ring around, offer to play for free, do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door at a club where you can perform on a regular basis, try and grow a small loyal fan base first and then work up from there.
