Digital PR – Blogs, Sites, PR Companies and DIY
Online PR is the process of getting your artist and their music onto websites other than your own, in order to get the attention of new fans.
Having discussed the work involved in getting an artist written about by blogs, online PR is essentially the next level up. The work of online PR is to get placement on sites where the readership is a lot higher, thus putting an artist in front of a wider audience. Music/entertainment websites generally have a higher turnover and range of content than a ‘blog’, and usually involves more than one writer and a number of freelancers too.
For music there are roughly three different categories of sites to focus upon:
Niche sites:
These are music websites that specifically deal with a certain style of music. Content is added to the site based upon what that community are interested in. They only feature artists which fit within their musical remit and will often have their own forums or discussion areas. These are the easiest areas for smaller artists to gain attention, as long as they fit within the specific musical genre or remit.
www.breakbeat.co.uk – Drum and Bass.
www.residentadvisor.net – Electronic Music
www.punktastic.com – Punk and Emo
General music sites:
Music sites whom cover a broad range of music. Some general music sites have a slight leaning towards certain styles of music, but mostly deal with a range of music and a vast amount of content.
Portals:
Portals are websites that bring together a lot of different types of content into one site (news, entertainment, business, celebrity, lifestyle, music etc and are typically owned and run by large internet companies. They have a large number of visitors and music is one part of their overall offering, often with regional versions (i.e UK, US, etc). Portals tend to have editors for each type of content on the site.
Music can also be found as part of other sites offerings such as:
www.ivillage.co.uk – (female orientated)
www.fhm.com – (male orientated)
www.perezhilton.com – (Gossip site)
Types of Content
Single/Track Reviews
Live Reviews
Album Reviews
Written Interviews
Audio/Video Interviews
Competitions
These are the standard types of content that all sites are looking to use on their site. It essentially makes up the basic offering of music content. However, responding to customer demand, the increasing number of blogs/websites and the easy availability of music, sites are moving more and more towards unique and bespoke content.
Unique and bespoke
Track By Track talkthroughs (Video, Audio and Written) – The artist will talk through every track on their latest release giving insight and information about the influences, writing and recording.
Live video footage - Video taken from a live performance edited into individual tracks.
Photo Galleries – A set of anywhere between 5 and 30 photos based around a theme, i.e. ‘artist through the ages’, live event, behind the scenes etc.
In The Studio – Blog posts, video updates and photos from the recording of a new release.
Artist Opinion Pieces – The artist themselves writing on music or another topic not to do with their own artistic output.
Top 10’s – An Artist favourite tracks, artists, festivals etc
Behind The Scenes – Video of the band walking on stage.
Tour blog – Daily blogging and pictures/video from the road.
These are just a few content ideas that sites are currently using.
How to approach Online PR
There are numerous companies who can do your online pr for you at a cost. These companies have regular contact with the biggest sites and a large database of contacts for smaller sites and even blogs. If there is budget available then hiring a good online PR company can be a good move, but it’s worth asking yourself a few honest questions before hiring.
Do blogs already write regularly about the artist?
Does the artist have a large fanbase and the ability to contact them?
Does the artist have time to do interviews and produce content (video/photos/written word), for the time period you are hiring for?
Are you able to get for free/pay for journalists’ tickets to your live shows?
If the answers to these questions are yes, then its advisable to hire a pr company, if they are mostly no’s then its worth looking at addressing these questions before moving forward.
Doing it yourself
This is all about research. Contacting the right sites about your music, is key to doing online pr yourself.
Collate a list of the sites that are most pertinent to your music. Start by writing down the sites that you regularly visit which have music content on them, and then ask your friends and fans to let you know where they visit.
Once you have a list, go through each site and look at the type of content that they have. For example if they don’t review albums then there’s no point sending an album etc.
You then need to contact that site, and this is the most important part to get right, as there is no second chance to make a first impression.
On most music sites they will have a general info@ email address or a contact form in order to make contact with the people who run the site. It is worth spending the time writing individual emails to each of the sites that you want to get in touch with, as most of the 100’s of emails that sites receive a day are email blasts sent impersonally to large lists of address’.
Keep in mind that this email needs to be as short and succinct as possible, here is a rough list of what to include:
About the artist.
Upcoming releases
Upcoming tourdates
Link to listen (myspace etc)
Any content you have to offer (free download, video, photos etc)
Invite to a live event
Try and talk about the website that you are writing too, to show that you have a knowledge of their work and how the artist fits with that. For example you could say “Artist X is a big influence and we saw that interview you did with them on the site etc” or “ a lot of our fans have said they visit your site” etc.
Inviting people down to a live show is important too as online PR is a longterm game as much as it is a short term exercise to promote a release. Meeting editors and writers and getting to know them, may not help you in the short term but in the long term these relationships can be invaluable.
If you don’t hear back from a site then leave it a few months and go back again, with another personal email etc. This will take time to build and may be frustrating, but if you keep bugging someone they are much more likely to never open another of your emails.
However if you do manage to get a review or interview etc, then keep the writer and the editor up-to-date with the artists progress and send them music, gig tickets etc even when you have nothing to promote.
Whether you use an online pr person or do it yourself, bear in mind that what you are doing is raising short-term awareness of the artist among people looking for general music info. What you need to do is harness this spike of interest into contactable longterm fans.
You should make sure that you ask for the bands website url to be included at the end of any content and if you can add an incentive in like a free download or video footage etc to get people to visit your site. Many people will have their interest piqued by music website but will go elsewhere to find out about you, by searching google or visiting myspace. Make sure that if you are doing online pr that your website and social networks are up-to-date and ready to engage with new fans.
Posted by David on 20 Oct, 2009