This issue we’ve focused our attention to the power of the blog. Such a powerful tool that mainstream journalists have also taken to writing them. We turned to the experts; the bloggers themselves and asked them ‘How do you get bloggers to notice you?’
Firstly, it depends upon what you mean by ‘blogs’. Some people may consider (in our opinion incorrectly) that Digitalgig could be labelled in this way. We obviously consider ourselves to be a magazine, but other people who call themselves magazines are listed as blogs! Confused?
If you want more coverage from people like ourselves then one of the biggest has to be Drowned in Sound (http://drownedinsound.com/). They have a policy of submission by email to their editor. They are weighted pretty heavily in favour of the signed scene however but do feature a number of unsigned bands and artist from time to time.
In terms of what people want, as with all things, different people like different things. We asked the wonderful people and music bloggers at I Heard it On (http://www.ihearditon.com) what they look for and they told us; “We post the music we’re feeling. We’ve noticed on other blogs that they write at length about the story behind a song or behind a band or where they saw or heard that artist. Most music bloggers prefer to write about more than the music. Give a blogger some interesting back-story or invite them to an interesting show and they’ll write about it.”
We put the same question to the fantastic Jenny May, founder of Bandweblogs (http://bandweblogs.com/) who added; “Bands should send all their info to bloggers in the first email: press/pics/video etc.”
From our own perspective if a band approaches us and wants to be featured in Digitalgig, we like to know a bit about them, what they sound like and just a bit of info about where they are from etc. We actually prefer a link to myspace etc. as it gives us a good idea of all of that, but press kits are also welcome as long as they are not just a bunch of words expressing how wonderful everything is, without any link to the music. After all that’s what really matters right? A couple of pictures in the press stuff always helps too as they tend to give us a good flavour of the band. Our format thrives on good images so if you sound great and have some striking photos you’re bound to grab our attention.
In terms of blogs, for a good place to start to find the people actually writing about things they think are great check out this website: http://hypem.com/list. Hypem is a site which aggregates music blogs. The list is however based on listings on Delicious (http://delicious.com/) and Technorati (http://technorati.com/) two sites which basically act as a way of people finding good websites. There are other sites which also find ‘good websites’ –
Stumbleupon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) and Digg (http://digg.com/) for example are based on their users making a link to the site they have found they like and telling other people. It’s a bit of a popularity contest really.
The Hypem list does have a number of blogs, and a number of sites we would consider have more of a magazine flavour. Some of them have submission guidelines and editor’s email for you to send your links / biogs / music to, others; the more pure blogs, are simply based on what the people want to write about. Unless you get onto the blogger’s radar it’s difficult to get them to notice and write about you. A word of warning at this point; it is obviously tempting to pretend to be someone writing about yourselves and big your band up in that way… Don’t. This is known as ‘astroturfing’ and not only is it frowned upon by bloggers, but also (for companies at least) illegal!!
In all cases you should try to check out the kind of thing they usually write about and see if you think that you fit the bill (so to speak).
You’ll also probably find that the majority of these sites feature a great deal of signed music alongside a smaller proportion of unsigned bands. There is no doubt it is harder to get your music written about if you are largely unknown. Don’t give up though. Just try to send your stuff to the most appropriate places.
We would, however, recommend the following:
Essentially, the main thing about the internet and marketing via social networking and the like is that you create as many links and pieces about yourselves in as many places as possible. In that way you can climb the search engine rankings and generally become more noticed.
If you want to stick out press about yourselves, we would highly recommend Mi2N (http://www.mi2n.com/). You can put your press releases on here for free. We put one on and life went a little crazy for a while as they put it in their newsletter which goes out all over the world! That should tell them you exist!
Make a big thing of anything you think you could hang a couple of good stories on and see where that takes you.
The essence of it all is to get yourselves noticed, so social network, find music forum sites and post info there and just generally try to increase your fanbase. The more you get yourselves out into the internet world the more likely you are to get noticed by the bloggers out there. We also believe that it’s a good idea to try to vary what you put out in each site a bit. We know this is a bit of a pain, but it’s a simple fact that people like to read fresh stuff. We come across loads of bands who repeat the info from myspace on their website / facebook page / reverb nation page / blog. On a purely selfish note it doesn’t help us to research the band and compile any meaningful questions to ask when we want to interview them. On another note, your fans want something new, some of them will follow you from site to site, some of them will pick up on other sites you are on and take a look. Give them some reason to do that.
Do bear in mind that any social networking site with a general forum (Pure Volume and Drowned in Sound being of this type) has a tendency to attract people who can be needlessly negative. Just ignore them. Some people are jerks, pure and simple. Consider reporting them to the moderator if they are just evil.
If you do any of these things then link back to us and we’ll make sure that we link back to you. You’ll have at least one friend on most sites straight away then!
So there you go. The blogosphere is a wide and varied thing but, if you want to make it, there are friends and allies out there. You just need to take a look and jump in with both feet. We look forward to reading the results.
