Online fans are more than just a mailing list

Merely by being active on them you will attract attention to yourself through your own activity and the activity of your followers.

 

Here, instead of trying to recruit faceless visitors to your site, the object is to gain as many followers as possible for your band. While the mechanics of self-promotion on each of these platforms may differ substantially, the methodology you need to employ will not. Just as with your own website, you need to keep active so that you are visible and interesting - keep your page up to date with fresh news, photos, video clips and music. But don’t get too carried away on these platforms. More than one message per week will start to alienate your followers, who will begin to perceive your barrage of information as spam.

 

Keep your platforms active

 

This is a time-consuming activity, and it is very easy to get sidetracked. In order to keep on top of your social networking profile, you should be allocating at least some time each day. In fact, as a serious band, to allocate one hour of each day for replying to messages, upkeep of websites and general keeping-in-touch is not unreasonable. If you rotate that hour per day across all your band members, then it is not too onerous. It also has the advantage of making sure that everyone knows how to use the platforms and is up to date with what is happening out there. If you are serious about gaining a good, loyal following, you have to stay in communication with them and not treat them like a mailing list that you only talk to once you have some news or a gig you want them to come to. Also, from an international perspective, you will only start to get good penetration into an international market once your footprint on the web becomes pretty high. This means you need to show plenty of activity, your name needs to come up in a lot of search engine results and so on. So you have to work it. Of course, your own website and social networking profiles alone will not be enough to get your name up in search lists. For that you have to be on more websites as well, but that can be done just as easily.

 

 

International music sites

 

Just as there are specialised music and music news sites in South Africa, there are plenty internationally. Spend some time surfing the net looking for these and bookmark them. Then read them regularly to see what sort of music they are into and how their news is presented. Also make sure you trace the contact details of the news editor for the site using the contacts section of the website. Then, just as you would with your South African media, start sending them your news releases. Try and see if they will link to your official band page, and make sure you have a link back to them already up. If they have a member system, join up so that you receive their newsletter and updates. If they have a band section, make sure you sign up for it, load your band profile, pics and music. Try and get your information onto as many sites like this as possible in the international market. The more sites your band name appears on, the more highly your name will come up in international keyword searches by web users. And the higher you rank in those searches, the more likely international surfers are to actually click on the name and read about you.

 

Be patient

 

Once again, this is a time consuming and fairly slow process. One that requires constant attention. It requires dedicated time, a plan and real intent to reach an international market. Some sites have content from all over the world and it is hard to become visible through the clutter. However, by remaining active, updating regularly and replying to all messages, making friends and sending out information, you will begin to develop a profile and make some headway. The trick is to be patient and remember always that any friends you make outside of our borders are important.

 

Originally published in David Chislett's One, Two, One, Two: A Step By Step Guide To The South African Music Industry. Download a free copy of the book at www.davidchislett.co.za.