WebSite and Email

Advertising part 3

Web sites and email

The next step in advertising your music and shows is email, mailing lists, and web site. With web sites some hunting on line you can find fairly cheap web hosting and web site building programs. One thing I would suggest is to a program and the tools to collect email addresses so you can build a mailing list. Some will have templates and simple lay outs for you to follow to make it easy to start out. Mailing lists can be a very helpful and useful tool when trying to spread the word you have a show coming up in an area, or a new CD on the way.
You want to have some basic stuff always in these email messages to your fan base. Things like a band photo or logo, web site address, and simple basic things like up coming shows.
The information in your emails should always reflect what is on your web site. Write in a simple quick to read format or style. To much chit chat and the reader will move on. One or two paragraphs to get your information out there is all you need. Things like hey we have a show coming up, or a CD release party, a new T shirt design ready to go, are all you really need. Don't over load the ready with non critical information like Joey just changed his bass strings while Fred was painting his drum sticks. These extras take away from a professional feel and make you seem to the reader less of a up and coming band but more like a group of garage wanna Be's.
Secondary stuff can be further down in an email like an over all list of up coming shows, recent press quotes, or if your song has played on radio and a few fun things like a video shoot coming up.
With some templates you can try and mirror your web sites visual look. This helps make you look a little more professional and help show an over all band style.

For a web site there are lots of places advertising services and there are a lot of free sites you can also use. There are more and more features the free sites are offering these days. You may want to start out this way to save your budget at first. The free sites also have payed upgrades and premium services you can later buy into. Places like Reverbnation , Purevolume , New Artist Radio, Noisehead and about 100 more if you go hunting. Most of them have the basics to get you going and premium services for a price. You can also with a lot of these sites link them together so that updates can show up across the board. You can also link in things like Twitter and Face book. This will help you build a better on line look and presence.

Another simple and free way to go is building a blog. Places like Blogger.com and Word Press can have you up and running in no time. They have a few templates you can use as well for a look and other add on's you can place through each page.

Once you have a site set up the next part is getting the word out. So when your putting up fliers, handing out hand bills and stickers. make sure everything have your web site address on it. Think of all these things like  business cards, use them to get people to go to the web site for more information. once you get people logging on to your site make sure you keep the information and content up to date.