photo by Cayusa

This post was written by Greg Rollett from Gen-Y Rock Stars, a music marketing resource and community for indie musicians. Check out their free Gen-Y Rock Star Tool Kit or email Greg for more information.

Social media is beyond the craze of the day. You can’t turn a corner online without hearing the latest social media trend, craze, site, testimonial or campaign. Everything from the beloved Twitter to Facebook to Wikis to blogs to Social Networks, everyone wants to have this conversation with their fans, customers and viewers.

And they should.

Conversation and word of mouth is one of, if not the, best way to increase sales and conversions for your products, your music, live shows or other endeavors. The problem for smaller bands, start-ups, bedroom songwriters and first time producers, who may have extreme talent, is that no one wants to talk to them because no one knows who they are.

How do you find these fans?

Essentially there are 2 ways to find fans online these days. You push hard for the free way, friending everyone in sight, commenting on blogs, walls, forums, etc, producing content in exchange for emails, use of sites like Digg, entering contests and other strategies for finding fans. This is very effective, yet time consuming to create media and build relationships.

What about buying some fans?

The second way is to leverage traffic from an existing site and find the exact people that would love your music and get it in front of them. This is also called advertising! Social network profiles allow for extreme demographic breakdowns and that can be a blessing for advertisers. In the music marketing world, it opens even more doors as most people on these networks are very open about their favorite artists, albums, movies and songs. This is advantageous because you can now place ads on the very pages of the people like like either a) your music or b) music that is similar.

Myspace and Facebook both offer this form of advertising and will only charge you when someone clicks on your ad. Myspace MyAds were designed for indie musicians to connect with fans on the service. Facebook’s platform is even more robust, offering targeting options for age, location and profile keywords.

The Future of Indie Artist Music Advertising

While the afore mentioned ad options are great, due to the sheer number of people on the networks, the best place for someone to learn about your music is when they are actually listening to music! Sounds simple right.

Think about it. You are listening to a station on radio, be it an FM station, Sirius, Pandora, whatever. You are hearing songs that you are familiar with and like, which makes since because you chose to listen to that station for a reason. When a new song comes on, one that you have never heard before, you become curious. You might look to see who the artist is and keep that artist on your mind, becoming more familiar with them every time you hear their music.

There are 2 services taking advantage of this scenario today. Jango and Grooveshark are taking the music discovery from the radio and adding in elements of Pay-Per-Click and demographic advertising together to create opportunities for indie artists to build their fan base.

With both services indie artists choose music and other artists that their own music would flow together with. When a listener on Jango or Grooveshark is jamming out to one of those artists, pay per play tracks will be added to their station giving indie the same opportunities to have their music heard on these stations. Listeners can instantly learn more about the artist in question and even buy tracks or support the band from inside the network, allowing for an instant increase in new fans with which to have conversations with, build trust and invite to shows.

Grooveshark estimates that from a 2,000 song pay-per play you can grab around 250 new fans. Not a bad trade off for $250. That’s about $1/per fan.

So the next time you think about finding some new fans, don’t be scared to buy some. These fans will be more interested in your music, your blog, your videos and attending your shows than those who get your SPAM messages and requests.

If you have used advertising for your band, tell us about it. What was cool, what wasn’t and what helped you on your quest to become a Gen-Y Rock Star.

Putting on a successful live performance takes a lot of hard work and preparation. Booking your gig and rehearsing your set are important, but they’re only half the battle. Perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is promotion. How do you get people to attend your show?

In a previous article, I talked about how to grow your band’s email list. In this article, I’ll cover how to capitalize on those efforts by crafting and sending emails effectively.

It’s important to consider both the content and the timing of your email blasts. It has been my experience that a two-email approach for an upcoming gig works best. The first is an announcement email, meant to plant the seed and mark the approaching date on the calendar. The second email is a last-minute reminder, meant to catch the folks who might make a game-time decision to attending your show. Here’s how these two emails break down:

Email #1: Plant the Seed

The first email is to be used to officially announce the show. This should be sent no sooner than two to three weeks before the date of your show. The purpose of this email is to plant the seed in the minds of your recipients. It marks a mental spot in their upcoming calendar of “things to do”. Include all of the necessary information: The venue, your set time, street address, cover charge. A nice touch is to add a link to a Google map of the location.

Obviously, you’ll want to add a bit more to it. Entice your fans to make the effort to come out. Use your own personal style to keep the message positive, uplifting and exciting. Feel free to be casual and conversational, even a bit personal. You want to create that sense of intimacy with your following. You don’t want to come off sounding like a corporate mass-email blast promoting a product.  Of course, you are promoting something.  Your music.

Include your website or myspace link at the end of the email. Not all of your subscribers are familiar with your music. They might not even remember signing up for your newsletter. Give your recipients a quick and easy way to go check out your tunes online before making the decision to come see you live. You might also include a link to the facebook event you created for this gig (more on using social media to promote your gig in an upcoming article).

Email #2: Lock it Down

The second email is a quick reminder about your show. Re-state the essential show info (venue, address, and time) along with a very brief message. Don’t use the same text from your first email. This will come off as borderline spam. Keep it casual, fun, and again, enticing.

Send your second email sometime during the week of the show. If it’s a weekend gig, send it early in the day on Wednesday. Catch your audience right when they’re beginning to plan their weekend. Maybe they have a date and they’re looking for something fun to do- like catch a live band! Or they have friends coming in from out of town looking for a raging night out in your city. This email just filled their need for that awesome “thing to do” this weekend.

Don’t Over Do It

Remember, people are very fickle about their email preferences. You don’t want to risk losing subscribers by sending too many emails. As a rule of thumb, You should never send more than one email in any two week period. Pack enough interest and purpose into each message so that each one is a welcomed delivery in your fans inbox.

If you have a packed schedule of upcoming gigs, you might want to consider promoting several gigs in one email, or pack an entire leg of a tour into one or two emails.

Keep it interesting and mix it up. Don’t re-use email content. Always take the time to add a unique twist to your message and tone so that each email has a fresh feel to it.

Over to You

How do you use email for your promotional efforts?