The Art of Self Promotion : Performers Guide

Posted by Alex on May 21, 2009 in Blog, Featured Articles | Comments

Its true! We all have to start somewhere. Before i begin telling you my advice and lecturing you as some would say, i wanted to start by telling you a success story. About 4 years ago i was living in Weymouth, Dorset. I was only there for the summer to build up some work. Weymouth is right on the coast and in peak season has lots of tourists, so it was a great place to run events and the talent down there was good too.  After extensive auditions i was managing 6 people aged between 17-22. I offered my advice to all of them. five of them didn’t listen but one did. One of them toured Europe. I will give you one guess which one did?

We all have to self promote from time to time and its not always the easiest thing to do so i hope by reading this you will pick up some simple but very affective pointers. I don’t plan on going into too much detail but you can always email me or leave comments with your questions and i will do my best to answer them.

Networking: So what is networking? It’s the skill of communicating with people within the same sector of business as you. For most of you this will mean managers, promoters and other performers.  So the question is how do you do it? Well there are to many ways to do this but a good start would be to attend any public event that is along the lines of what your after. Send emails out to local people in the same line of business, use a directory to find them. The message will soon go around. Dont make it too obvious. Your trying to build contacts so treat them like friends but remember its business so keep them close but not too close.

Social Networking: Everyday the Internet is getting more powerful so take use of this free power. Look at the trends and register for the most useful social networking sites. Facebook offer a service for artists to make public profiles so people can become fans of your work. This is a superb way of letting people know when your performing or your attending an event. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 fans or 300 fans. Ask people from your personal profile on Facebook to become a fan. Most people have at least 100 friends on Facebook so that’s 100 fans already. Where to go next? Try Twitter. This site is a social networking breakthrough. Register yourself an account with the user-name “YourStageName” and start talking. Over time your followers list will expand. Try to avoid the auto following tools. Its better to follow 300 of your diehard fans and friends than 3000 people trying to sell you Viagra and “Ten tips to improve your sex life.”. I only follow people who make good conversation with me or who interest me. There are many more following me than me following them which works for me and it will work for you too!

Blog: Spend a couple $$ and buy yourself a website.. Make sure its relevant eg. yourstagename.com. Then install WordPress or another blogging platform and start typing. Talk about your latest auditions or events your attending/attended etc. Get yourself a nice theme.. That first impression could see you signing a record deal. If you need some advice on designs or hosting for a site, email me and i will put you in contact with some people who can build you amazing blogs for less than a few hundred dollars and refer you to some great hosters. Remember to connect all your Social Networking sites to your blog. You will be all over google within weeks!

Media: Well this can be broke down in to several sections so lets start with Samples: Whether your a singer, songwriter, or musician make sure you have some samples of your work online and available to give to people on CDs. Once you get some feedback and you find out if people like it or not you can start considering setting up an online shop on your site for digital downloads of your tracks. Photography: Its all about appearance, if you go to an event make sure you are in the photographs. Don’t bother hiring a photographer unless its totally necessary for promo shots. Lastly try your Local Media: There is no shame in giving your media a kick start. Get a close friend or fake it yourself and send an email to the local newspaper with a report on something interesting like a leak on where you will be performing or that its rumoured you signed a record contract. It doesn’t have to be accurate. You will find once you give them a nudge they will come up with their own ideas. Remember the golden rule. All publicity is good publicity.

So do these tips really help? Well i practice what i preach. These were the steps that i began on. You just need to give the world a nudge in the right direction and the rest will follow. In the past few years the media has pushed me further than i had planned to be pushed. It was reported a few years ago that i was being made head of a National Organisation which was called the Royal Variety Performance which as many of you know is for Her Majesty the Queen.. Well they were kind of right but the organisation was the National Variety Performance and not connected to the queen.. but did i mind? Not at all! It was also once reported that i was working with Simon Cowell. When the reporters asked when i was leaving my seafront apartment in Weymouth i just replied with the best advice i can give you. “No Comment” Leave it to their imagination. The possibilities are endless.