BUSINESSCHOOL101: SELF PROMOTION

Whether you've got an album or an event to promote, you have far more options than you think. What you're doing right now, you can be doing better, and you can expand your toolkit considerably, too. That is what this short manifesto is about. I have been making mistakes as an artist and watching other artists make mistakes for 20 years now, a long resume of highly educational failure.

One of the most common complaints I get from artists who have never contacted me before is that I don't cover their work. Let's make this into a teachable moment. Charlie Mayne, aka Chyse Atkins, has never contacted me once. He doesn't have to. He has a huge local draw and social media reach, and that's why he's constantly getting booked and headlining shows. He's also getting booked by promoters who actually, you know, promote.

This is more aimed at those of you struggling to get started at square one.

Your fanbase is always going to begin with your friends and family, but if your friends and family are your only fanbase, you are fucked and going nowhere. So instead of relying on word of mouth to circulate from your social network out to new eyeballs and ears, you need to focus on finding force multipliers. This is a borrowed military term: it just means deploying your limited resources so they have the greatest possible effect.

One of the biggest force multipliers in existence is the media, the press. For better or worse, my dumb little website is part of this billion dollar propaganda behemoth. From the small fish to the big names, though, precisely nobody is interested in writing about you just because you exist and you want to be written about. There has to be a hook, a story, a reason.

That generally comes down to an upcoming show or an upcoming album. Websites are quick and dirty operations, but print media operates with strict deadlines and require advance notice.

This requires you to plan ahead. As a general rule, you can turn around and hype singles and videos as soon as they're done, but albums? You should have that entire package together two months before you actually drop it — even 30 days ahead is cutting it close. Cover art, final .wavs, radio edits, and at least two music videos, no matter how low budget dirty they have to be.

When you're emailing with the press about your album, too much information isn't really a problem, but it has to be organized right. Give them a short version and a long version. Tell them upfront who you are, what you've done in the past, what you're about to do, and what you'd like from them. Say thank you. Then give 'em your 10 paragraph rundown about your creative journey. Extremely important: include album credits. Tell them who mixed and mastered your album, tell them the names of the producers you worked with. Don't be an amateur dicknose.

Obviously, planning ahead for shows is a huge advantage, too. The longer you can be pushing a specific date, the more you're going to own it even when competing events show up on the calendar. And giving advance notice to publications like Seven Days, Rutland Herald, or the Burlington Free Press is key to securing that coverage.

When you're emailing with press about your show, always give them a written brief instead of expecting them to read and understand the flyer. Lay out everything in typed English words: location, time, entry, and every artist on the bill. Especially in daily print, you're gonna see 50-100% of your press release copy make column inches. So give them that copy.

Give them a story, too. Is this a benefit show for handicapped wildlife? Is this the long-awaited album release party celebrating your hard work and growing fanbase? Is this the first hometown show that Lil Sniffy has played in over a year? Lay that out for them clearly.

Another force multiplier to help you get coverage is having press pics ready to go. Artists really sleep on the value of quality photography. That's a non-negotiable part of the package you need to be building. I used to get a lot of website and print coverage strictly on the basis of having eye-catching, high-resolution photos ready to go for editorial desks on a deadline in a slow news week.

Which brings us to banners, flyers and graphic designers. This is a department where most 802 artists are selling themselves short. There's a lot of people out here hustling .jpgs but few of them have the experience and tools to really deliver the goods you need to stand out. This is one tough titty humdinger of a dilemma, because it really does come down to either money or time: you need to invest in quality work or you need to learn how to execute quality work for yourself.

There's no easy answer there, but it is simple to lay out the assets you need. You need a basic design that works on paper, on a computer monitor and on a smartphone & tablet. That's going to involve a 300 dpi original that gets resized and reformatted into different assets for different platforms. You are going to deploy those assets to create a unified look across everything you have: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, and it's a good touch to update your profile pic on your email account, too. If this sounds daunting, it shouldn't. This involves very little work and it will yield you fast results: another force multiplier.

A side note on social media: if you have profiles you're not using? Delete them. At the very least, leave behind a message explaining that you're not using them and directing people towards the platforms you do use.

Now, when it comes to a single channel, like Facebook, there is definitely such a thing as "Too Much." Spamming pages and groups, posting nothing but the same flyers and text over and over: people will tune you out and you'll probably get kicked off a few platforms doing it. But across multiple channels? No such thing as too much. You want people to see you everywhere, and you need to reach them multiple times.

I’m not sure what band this is but I like their approach to marketing

Tons of local artists are pushing their product in their social media feed because it's low effort (plus they live on their phones.) Very few local artists are pushing their product in the real world. Do that. Posting flyers really works. It ain't free, but it is cheap and effective. Especially combined with showing up in local news media.

You can get more ambitious, too. Some of the most ostentatiously baller shit you can do is get full color 11 x 17 posters made up for your album or show. This is not cheap but it's also a clear sign that you're up to something big, major, special, and important.

You should continue to promote your shows after they happen and your albums after they drop. Read that twice. Document your shows, get photos, get footage. Share that with your fans, thank them for coming out, thank the venue for hosting. Your gigs are only events if you make them into events, so do that every time. It will pay off, and fast, too.

Live music in Vermont, especially in Burlington, involves a very small and overlapping group of people making decisions. Selling out ArtsRiot is your entree to a gig at Higher Ground's Showcase Lounge, and selling that out is how you get booked for the Ballroom.

As for albums: you should keep promoting your new album until you drop another album. Hell, keep promoting it after that, too. Keep dropping videos. Keep dropping singles. Artists are way too quick to get frustrated and give up on hyping their own work, and it's a huge mistake every time.

This is the banner that Mister Burns has up on his Facebook page right now. It's an easy reference that tells you everything he's up to this month. It’s readable, it’s clean, he’s got a template so it always looks consistent. Making regular changes like this is a big part of keeping people engaged with what you're doing.

Between here and the grave, there will never come a point where you "don't have much going on right now." That is a demon on your left shoulder telling lies. Any given week, you can be mining your back catalog to spotlight a dope track or an under-appreciated music video and push it on the whole world. Share stories behind the music, share photos from backstage or the studio. Share music from the artists your work with and the artists you respect.

A smart, professional hustle will never be a waste of your time. The dividends might come slow, but they're always coming. A sloppy, disorganized hustle will often be so counterproductive you'd be better off watching Netflix like all the other livestock losers here on the content farm.

Make the choice to take responsibility. Take the time to formulate a plan and determine what you need. Invest the money to secure those assets and make your product stand out from the competition. That's it, that's all. You have no other realistic path forward. Cheers & good luck.