| July 2007 5 HOT TIPS For Building Your Fan Base &
Music Publicity Bootcamp Recap Building Your Fan Base = Building Your E-mail List For the past several years, I've allowed bands to wimp out on one of the most critical and important things that they need to do be doing to further their careers. I am not allowing you to wimp out anymore. One rule people:
The Size Of Your E-mail List = The Size Of Your Income So, how big is yours? Myth: I don't have any shows to promote. Therefore, I'm not going to do a newsletter. Reality: 50% or more of the artists that I work with don't have any shows to promote. Zero, zilch, none…and they still want to be artists in the world getting their music out and heard and liked and listened to (why in the heck would you hire me if you did not want your music out there?). You must communicate something to your fans regularly and consistently to be in the game. If you do not communicate regularly and consistently, or if you disappear from the hearts and minds of your fans for several months, they will not know where you've been, and they will not know how to be your fan. I don't care what the content of your newsletter is. Everyone has something to say, and even better - everyone has something to show. Photos of your vacation, your kids, you in the studio, you at your day job, what you thought of the last episode of the Sopranos, or what's in your iPod this week. Whatever it is – send it regularly to your fans. These are interesting and pertinent pieces of information about who you are, and these are great ways to connect with other people. When you only e-mail your fans when you have a show, or a new CD to sell them, it totally screams: "Hey fan, I want your money!" You just show up out of nowhere and say: "I know you had no idea where I've been for the last six months, but here, buy something now!" and people hate being sold to. (Remember my last issue of Sound Advice - Networking 101?) When I started regularly communicating with the fans through my fan list at Ariel Publicity, magic started happening. My articles started getting picked up and reported online. People started leaving me nice messages and saying thank you for my newsletter, and I even threw my first all-day workshop that came directly from people on my newsletter list and it SOLD OUT so fast I had to add a second session!! Why? Because I sent an e-mail! In other words, I made money by just communicating. Studies prove that people buy from people that they like and trust, and there is no better way to earn people's trust than by communicating with them regularly something personal and fun or unique about yourself offstage that your fans may not know. So, go out there and build your e-mail list.
5 HOT TIPS For Building Your Fan Base 1. Give Away A Free MP3 To Everyone That Signs Up To Your List - The last thing you want to do is put a box in your page saying, "sign up for our e-mail list so we can send you more e-mail." That's basically what that says. Instead, try giving something away as an incentive to get people to sign up to your e-mail list. I highly suggest a free MP3. This says, "thank you fan, we appreciate you signing up for our mailing list." BUT… How do you get a free MP3 to send to your fans you may wonder? Easy – http://www.fizzkicks.com - Go sign up here and Aaron, who runs the site, will host FREE downloads for all of your friends for 2 months. After that it's a measly $9.99 per month for unlimited downloads and uploads and Aaron will sell you these AMAZING little credit card size customizable cards to hand free MP3s out to your fans (or load them up with your new tracks and sell them)! A hell of a lot cheaper than pressing a CD and way cooler…. And Aaron will send you 120 cards for $19.99 (and tell Aaron I sent you). 2. Do A Live Giveaway/Raffle At EVERY SHOW - When you are playing a show, hold up a CD or a T-shirt on stage and announce you are doing a free giveaway and a raffle. Have a friend sweep through the venue with a hat and have all the people in attendance drop their business cards into the hat. When the hat reaches the stage, pull a random business card out and do a giveaway. Then, mention to the crowd that you're going to add everyone in the hat to your e-mail list. You've just collected a ton of new e-mail names and addresses that you definitely would not have captured (or giveaway a cool Fizz Kicks card!!). 3. Collect Text Addresses - Before you start playing a gig, when you are asking fans to switch off their cell phones, ask them first to text you their information. Then you build a cell phone text e-mail list and you can e-mail people directly to their cell phones the next time you're coming through town. This is a totally unique and original way of communicating on people's cellular phones and will get you noticed. 4. Mine Through Your Inbox - We all have them. Huge inboxes stuffed with e-mail from people who you're communicating with. Are they already on your e-mail list? If not, e-mail each of them and ask: "Is it okay for me to add you to our fan mail list?" (and offer a free MP3). And if they say yes, add them directly on to your e-mail list. TIP: Never ever add someone without getting permission first, because that's considered SPAM. 5. List Trade With Another Band - Once you have a sizeable e-mail list, you can approach other bands that you play with or whose music is similar to yours or maybe they're from your hometown and you can ask them to write an endorsement e-mail saying: "Hey, if you like us, you'll like our friends!" Then they can send that endorsement out with a request for joining your e-mail list and you can in turn do the same for them. When you do a list trade with another band, always make sure that your music is very well described in a couple of sentences - what you sound like, who you get compared to, and if you can, take them directly to a page where they can get a free MP3 the moment they sign up that's streaming so they can check you out.
Music Publicity Bootcamp Recap On June 2, 2007, Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity and Bob Baker of TheBuzzFactor.com joined forces to give their first ever workshop. Artists went through four hours of personal PR training from veteran music publicist Ariel Hyatt and music marketing coach Bob Baker. The event was such a success and sold out so quickly that Ariel and Bob added a second session that day to accommodate the high demand! In this fast-paced, intimate workshop setting, attendees learned how to get media exposure and make the most of the latest Internet publicity trends. Matt Maher, an intern with Ariel Publicity, wrote this great piece recapping the second session taking place that day: Publicity Bootcamp Session 2 = Priceless Admission to PR Bootcamp: $60 Non-working, brand new 25,000 BTU A/C Unit (including installation): $698 Knowledge gained during a sweat-stained Saturday afternoon in a packed, un-air-conditioned downtown Manhattan office on the first weekend of a New York June with industry PR experts Bob Baker and Ariel Hyatt: …Priceless Hands on training and unabashed information sharing were definitely the two major hits of the second PR Publicity Bootcamp taking place in the successful afternoon session of Saturday's workshop. The satisfaction of the participants was evident on their faces when they got to openly share their experiences with the other artists, Bob, and Ariel and learn about what worked and didn't work from everybody's collective trials and errors. Likewise, receiving expert critique on previous press kits and performing simulated pitches about their music to the rest of the group proved critical in the learning process for everybody and offered the kind of insight that is impossible to acquire from self-taught PR training or by reading from a book. While participation and interaction between participants were great positives in the session, things would have been chaotic were it not for the guidance of Bob and Ariel. With voices of authority and time-worn experience, Bob and Ariel zipped through a core explanation of what is "PR" in the first two hours. Presented with simplicity so that both novices and those with more experience could learn equally, they tracked the importance of PR for artists at its most basic definition all the way to the PR of the future on the web and in the digital form. Everybody was aware of the ever-changing entity that is the music industry today, but with two PR veterans who have lived through and now embrace these developments directing the way, it was obvious that participants left with renewed enthusiasm and box of tools that they can use to take on the challenges of the contemporary music landscape. The session wasn't just "all work and no play," however, as group exercises such as creating headlines and sub-headings for press releases and the sharing of biographies on a typical "one-sheet" provided some lighter moments of the day. With the creative spirit flowing, the group came up with catchy phrases like "Mortician Musician Resurrects Dylan." Unfortunately, this also led to Bob venturing into his database of corny jokes (you'll have to come to the next one to get those juicy tidbits). We had to give him credit though, the attempts at the least worked to distract everybody from the afternoon heat. In fact, by the end of the session, the A/C incident seemed to be a distant memory having been transplanted to the back of the minds of everybody by the wealth of knowledge and information delivered in the Publicity Bootcamp. A/C or no A/C, the session sent participants off with inspiration, knowledge, and confidence to tackle their musical goals that indeed, could be called priceless.
CONTACT & INFO
http://www.arielpublicity.com http://www.bandletter.com
PERMISSION & PRIVACY
You have received this email because you "opted-in" and requested to receive Ariel Publicity's Band Letter or as a courtesy because you are a musician or a member of the music media. If you feel that you have received this email in error, you may unsubscribe from this newsletter by clicking the link below. | 
