Spring has sprung the grass is ris, I wonders where the birdies is… so says Charlie Brown, Spike Milligan, Ogden Nash or was it E.E. Cummings? I suppose if you’re a fair-weather band you might be thinking of getting out into the fresh, Spring air and going busking? No? Worried about volcanic ash getting into your equipment or lungs?

Over the last week or so, I’ve noticed a GoogleAd for Busking Cancer, which is an event in aid of Cancer Research UK and sponsored by Fender® that You can get involved with. I’m interested because it is a website promotion opportunity. Your local media are often looking for ways to appear philanthropic (without actually really doing anything!), so it’s quite easy for bands to promote themselves while supporting (and on the back of) a local charity.

Out of curiosity for what bands I might find who have Busked for Cancer, I search Google Web and Google Images and the band that stands out from the crowd are Radfax. Radfax have not got a real website (but that isn’t stopping them) - they have only got profile pages: MySpace, Radfax Blog, UnsignedChart, PeacefestUK/Ning, Twitter and YouTube. Wow, They could’ve bought radfax.co.uk <joke>like I just did</joke> which was about £22 for 2 years, and could have been a focal point for all their efforts!?

Radfax are a Psychedelic Rock band from London and they Busked for Cancer in September 2009. Their music is influenced by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, early Clapton, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Black Sabbath and many more I’m sure.
The band members are: - Skullyman: rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals. Speed: vocals, rhythm guitar. Tony: bass. Flud: drums.
Go and see them play live at Lock 17 Camden Lock, London - they post their gig dates on their blog and Twitter.

How To Promote Your Website While Busking: hand out business cards or flyers (Include: band name, website URL, email address) to everyone who donates, offering them a free mp3. Put the freebie on your website and Make It Very Easy To Find And Download. Ask them to join your mailing list to get another freebie from the same web page.

Always wear T-shirts with a readable Web Address on - if you send me a T-shirt (I’m XXL and my favourite colour is black. Email for my postal address UK), I’ll use a photograph of it for my avatar.

Visit Busking Cancer on Twitter and get a little local promotion for yourselves and your bands’ websites.

Twitter and band promotion eh! Big Tip, don’t do it like me - I think I do just about everything wrong, anyway, I’m only there to find out what others are saying and doing, and I really don’t use it to promote UnsignedBandPromotion, and that sounds like a big fat lie because I mainly just post links to my blog! - and I don’t have that much to say either, but hey, I’ve been a member of a webmaster forum since 2001 and I’ve only made 30 posts! …I’m trying to improve my tweets.

Twitter is, billed as a micro-blog, but I think it falls somewhere between a Blog and a Meta Tag. It often has a ‘one side of the conversation’ feel about it, and everyone seems to be talking at you in proverbs, straplines, recommendations and disjointed waffle because of Twitter’s input limitations, so just like blogging or forum posting the true promotional value of tweeting is in what you actually have to say, your contribution, which will have a much bigger bearing on your success than anything else. If your forte is egotism, then Twitter may not be the best place for you to promote yourself or your band, bands who are so far up their own arses that they’re coming out the other side, are instantly boring and would get anyone with half a brain frenziedly scrambling to unfollow rather than RT.

Basically what you need to do is, write short, conversational sentences with minimal punctuation, of about 20 words (140 characters including spaces) that have a special magnetic appeal, charm or power that inspires loyalty and enthusiasm from your audience - not difficult then!

Following others is easy. Search out and follow - @BandPromotion (I usually retweet gig dates if I’m aware of them), @Band promoters, @Venues, @Record Labels, @Music News, @Online Radio and @DJs.

Ask your - @e-team, @fans, @friends and @family to join Twitter, then ask them to retweet your important posts i.e., Gig/Tour/Recording dates/diary.

This is a first for me - Google checking to see if I’m a human or a bot! While using google for some research, up popped a ‘We’re Sorry’ message. It appears when Google feels that a computer on your network is sending them automated traffic, and automated queries are against Google’s terms of service. All is soon resolved and service returns to normal after typing in a bloody CAPTCHA. So, Google now think that I’m a human, everyone else thinks I’m an arse!

Create a linear path that will guide your fan through your website step by step, and provide a non-linear navigational structure that is:
1/ easy to understand
2/ easily recognizable
3/ consistent

Promote Your Genre

Folk Rock	Gothic Rock
Indie Rock	Punk Rock

"What colour is rock music?" That’s a hard one for me to visualise, nothing really comes to mind - maybe yellow & chrome? Indie rock is easy though, light blue with a little light fern green, so is Punk, pink & black, Gothic is black, purple & red, and Folk rock is browns, burgundy & moss green. I wonder if my colour perception of music is the result of looking at too may bands’ websites and album covers?

My inquisitiveness gets the better of me, I log-on and head to Google image search, and look for punk music/rock/band/s, and I repeat the search using AltaVista, nothing jumps out at me and I’m not really satisfied with the results. So I open up Photoshop and create a new image. Then I copy and paste the first three or four most relevant images (filtering out the dross) from each of the search results into the new image file. Blend a little, resize, pixelate and crop… Wow! Bingo! The image feels right. I repeat the process for folk, gothic, indie and the big one, Rock. The images have the feeling of their genre (they do for me anyway). What does your genre look like?

Before you set out to promote your genre, you need an aim and a strategy, you don’t need an elaborate and convoluted plan. Find out who your fans are and work out what is the most appropriate promotional mix to connect with them. Don’t concentrate on your website in isolation to everything else, however, it is important that your website is a part of your overall promotional strategy. Be aware of the different time scales - a lot of UnsignedBandPromotion’s tips are short term, but You also need to think about the long term and the bigger picture.

A note about branding: it’s not just about getting your name out there, it’s about getting your brand out there! You do this by creating a strong, positive and unique identity within your genre and by promoting it at every point of contact with your fans.

Rock

Genre Promotion Tips

1. Not many independent bands put much effort into identifying their niche in the marketplace, branding or promoting their genre, so it’s an easy prize for those bands that do.
2. I think that it is important for a band to define their genre before they start promoting themselves, just like it is important not to promote your website too soon. Nail your genre as soon as possible - I wouldn’t be a trailblazer by inventing a new one, just keep it simple!
3. Use the search engines to find out what other bands of your genre are doing and to keep an eye on the competition. The top five search engine results will normally be well-connected authority sites (as per usual). Some worthy bands are:
   • folk rock band first band listed: HEDGEPIG [Google #5 Excellent Result]
   • gothic rock band first band listed: THEMIS [Google #4 Excellent Result]
   • indie rock band first band listed: THE LAYAWAYS [Google #20 Good Result stiff competition]
   • punk rock band first band listed: CODE 415 [Google #7 V.good Result]
4. The easiest way to promote your genre from your website is to write it into your website’s title tag i.e., "post-rock band" V.simple. Also works incredibly well when joined geographically i.e., "post-rock band farnborough".
5. Using Meta tags is not a secret ingredient, however, you could give the Genre Meta Tag a whirl!?
   <meta name="Abstract" content="(’http://www.your-url.com/’ Genre: punk rock)">
6. Team up and get involved with websites that fit-in with your genre and lifestyle - from a fashion house to a plant food supplier to a motorcycle dealer!
7. Reflecting and defining a band’s genre:- your name, your band’s name, the brand’s name, URL, logo, avatar, slogan, website design, colours, graphics, images. Your sound, techniques, styles, context. This information should be on everything and everywhere.
8. Promoting and marketing your genre, style, image, aura and brand simultaneously through your website, can have a powerful effect.
9. Get yourselves a Website Co-ordinator / Designer.
10. The most effective way to promote your genre from your website is to fill your website with relevant and spellbinding content - blogs are good for this.

[Ed. note] Just because UnsignedBandPromotion happens to be #1 in Google for MySpace Band Promotion I get a few bands asking if I can "get their name out there". No. I do not get hands-on and help bands to promote MySpace, PureVolume and profiles in general, or FreeWebs, Yahoo! GeoCities, LYCOS.tripod and other free webhosting type of pages - You Need A Real Website.

Helping Indie Bands With Website Promotion,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
Helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own.