Getting Local Bloggers to Pimp Your Tour

photo by comicbase

Every once in a while you come across one of those no-brainer ideas that can help you exponentially. This is one of them. To all the bands going on tour, looking for free promotions to a built in audience. Bloggers are the journalism that you should be looking for and more specifically, you should be looking for local bloggers, that write about their community and what is going on there.

How do I find these Bloggers?
Google Blog Search- In the screenshot below you can see that I searched for "Orlando Blog" and got 500,000+ results. Not all of these are going to be relevant but there are some diamonds in the rough. The related blogs give you a few options to look at right away including Downtown Orlando Blog, Ultimate Orlando Blog and Living Orlando.

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Placeblogger - This is the MacDaddy of local based blog tools. Once you have your target city or state, just drill down till you find the info you need. Drilling down to Orlando, FL gave me 10 blogs to look into. The other great thing is that knowing an area well, I can also see 1 blog in Sanford, FL, 1 in Altamonte Springs, 2 in Lake Mary and 1 in Lakeland. You can see in the screenshot below the data is represents when you get to your final place destination. Placeblogger is also a community driven site, meaning that if you know of a great location based blog, you can submit it into their directory.

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Which Blogs Do I Reach Out To?
Not all bogs are created equal and your time is extremely important, espicially if you are contacting sites while on the road. You want to be sure that you are getting in touch with the most relevant writers with the largest audience.

By going to these pages you can assess things like Google PageRank and Compete Traffic for the site to see their reach. Even those PR and Compete Data are not 100% accurate, it gives you a clue as to how many readers and how big their influence is. For instance, Living Orlando has a PageRank of 3 and Compete Traffic at 5,400+. As a small touring band I would attempt to reach the author and give him a reason to write about your show, your band and a story to get people interested.

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*Music Marketing Tip* If you browse with FireFox, there is a plugin called Search Staus that gives you all this data and a whole lot more everytime you visit a page. Download it now!

Musicians using bloggers to their advantage with ultimately spark their total music marketing package. This tactic is time consuming, but getting 3-4 press mentions online, to go along with any street teams, mailing lists and on site promotion will only increase you bottom line and allow you to continue rocking out for fans all around the world.

-Greg Rollett

Will Play For Clothes

In today's music business you are seeing artists make money by doing anything but selling music. The fact is, your music can be a catalyst for your business. Rappers selling drinks, pop stars selling perfume and DJ's rocking shows in mall stores for a few bucks.

You see, it's not just you, the artist who is looking for promotion and a way to stand out from the crowd. Stores, businesses and brands are doing everything that they can to get their message and products across to Gen-Y.

I'll DJ for Some Kicks
The Washington Post had a great article on stores ranging from department stores to traditional mall filler stores having DJ's create an ambiance and style to associate with their brand. The results can be great for the musician. Lord and Taylor can pay in upwards of $1,000 for a gig in their store. Other brands offer trades for clothes, shoes and accessories.

Gen-Y Rock Stars can use this music marketing tactic to reach a defined audience and demographic that they may not see at one of their night gigs. Tie in some promotions of your own and you might have a new game plan to gaining attention.

Not a DJ?
So a lot of you might be saying that there is no way for my band to rock out in a department store. That may be true but there are other live performance opportunities like this that you can begin to take advantage of to put a little cash in your pocket and attention to your faces.

Restaurants and Bars
Look for downtimes in a local restaurant or bar. This may not be the money maker that helps you quit your day job but it will usually get you a free meal and some beers and the admiration of the crew that stops by after work.

Businesses
No, you are not going to rock out during their morning sales meeting, but if you have some selling ability of your own, you may be able to get them to use your music in their next commercial, informational video for clients or YouTube clips. There is normally a marketing budget for these kinds of things. Ask for a credit at the beginning and end of the song with your band name, song title and website address.

Sporting Events
A few of the bands we work for were hired by the local Orlando Predators, an Arena Football League Team and were compensated well for an hour's worth of music. They got to play during the tailgate in front of the main sponsor's booth. It was great awareness and got them into contact with some good partners. Another group that had success here played for the Tampa Bay Lightning at Halftime. They were paid a guarantee and we negotiated that everyone in a winning section won a free sampler from the group. Remember that sporing events are usually family friendly.

Remember to look for events that can use your noize to help them shine above everything else that are hearing. Also be sure to come professional, as most of these businesses are not used to working with Rock Stars, young egos, tattoos and other stereotypes. They are running a business and you are helping them to increase their profit.

-Greg