With baseball season comes the inevitable references to “Field of Dreams” and probably the best-known line from that film, despite it now being 31 years old. (Yes, really. Look it up!) Without a doubt you’ll read or hear, “Build it and they will come.” Turn it into a little game, to see how long it takes for that dialogue to come up once the Major League Baseball season begins.
In the world that creators live in – musicians, podcasters, authors, and more – there is actually a bad spin that can be put on that, though.
Recording artists nowadays are seen prior to the release of a single, EP, or full album telling followers to “pre-save on Spotify.” Podcasters launch an episode of their show and push to get potential listeners scurrying to iTunes to subscribe and listen. Authors celebrate their work going up on Amazon and wait nervously for interested readers to make their purchase (and, like podcasters, leave a review).
The above are all logical – and expected – scenarios. But if that’s ALL you do, your scalp will bleed from scratching your head wondering why more people aren’t consuming what you’ve put out there.
Shame on me. I’ve been so busy presenting on stages around the country – and now on virtual “stages” – that I’ve shared what you’re about to read verbally but not in written form. Until now.
The good news is, this list of 20-plus ways that you can promote (your music, your podcast, your book) can overwhelmingly be done alone and with little to no cost! So, rather than sit back and say, “Okay, my new release is on Spotify or my podcast is now on iTunes or my book is on Amazon,” promote the little minnow rather than sitting back and waiting for people to find it swimming in the ocean-sized inventory of content on those platforms.
Remember that as easy as it is to hire me to be your publicist and do the promotion for you, up until then, when you’re on your own, if you don’t promote, who else will?
As you read through the following list and decide that a couple of these might seem elementary, do a self-audit. It might seem obvious, but are you doing it?
1. Get media interviews. Be sure to have a hook, though. Just being a recording artist, podcaster, author, etc. and having what you think is good music, a good show, or a good book, merely puts you in line with the other creators who are contributing to that huge body of metaphoric water referenced above. Seek out TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, and online media outlets and give the host and/or producer a reason why they should interview you (and not the other recording artists, podcasters, or authors).
2. Post media coverage on your website AND on YouTube. I devote an entire section of this website to showcase where I’ve been interviewed. By posting media coverage on your site, it shows others who are considering interviewing you that you have the experience on the guest side of the mic and that others have found you to be of interest to their audience. Posting on YouTube gets you on the second largest search engine in the world, and thus a chance to be found by folks who might otherwise not come across you and your show. Take the audio from radio and podcast interviews and set them to still photos that will create video that will keep the viewer interested: your photo, your EP/album artwork OR your podcast logo OR your book cover, plus, the interviewer’s photo, their show or station’s logo. Here’s a sample of one that I just did last week for a client where you can see how even though it was audio only, I used enough images and changed them regularly as the video went along, so as to hold people’s interest rather than stop and click away because it was just one static image throughout the entire interview.
3. Have a business card just for your music/podcast/author career. Giving someone the business card for your day job and expecting them to remember that you do music or have a podcast or are an author – not to mention them committing to memory what your new album or weekly podcast or latest book is called – is not only asking a lot, but it’s a missed (branding) opportunity. At the least have a website address on there, but consider having your name, number, and email address as well. I have a business card specifically for my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast that’s printed on both sides! No one in possession of one of those will wonder what the show is about or where/how to find it.
4. Apparel. Just like you see me with my company logo on my shirt in the accompanying photo, whether it’s a hat or a shirt or both, be a walking billboard for your music or podcast or books. Initially you will find these to be more useful PR-wise than for merchandise sales, but don’t wear non-branded apparel to an event where you can market your content. I recommend putting at least your website on the back too, so that people seated behind you will be more inclined to look it up than if your shirt was blank on the back. (Tip: Sit up front so that more people will be behind you seeing that web address.)
5. Email signature. I had someone approach me after a speaking engagement and thank me for bringing this one up because although it’s obvious, they did the self-audit and realized they hadn’t implemented such. Mine is loaded, to include all of the following: website address, text links to five social media platforms, and text links to five platforms where “Now Hear This Entertainment” can be heard. If you don’t think this is valuable real estate, consider your chances of someone looking you up further if it’s blank down there (other than, “Sincerely, John Doe”). All it takes is ONE entry there that really catches someone’s eye, and boom, off they go to check you out on Instagram, Spotify, whatever. (I invite you to email me personally so I can write you back in order for you to see the layout/design of what I just described and how simple it is to set up yourself.)
6. E-newsletter. Mine goes out once a week – on the day that my podcast comes out. That’s it. I’m not spamming people, nor am I suggesting you need to do so. Remember, you have total control over the content, the length, and the frequency. Many services will even let you use their platform for free until you have a certain number of contacts in your database. So, you get access to professional templates so that what you send out looks good. Again, steal my ideas. Sign up for mine (see the newsletter sign-up box on this page) and study what I do (or don’t do) and what you like (or don’t like) that you want to apply for yours. Regardless of how you send yours out, just do something. In this day and age of our email inboxes being on the receiving end of newsletters from others, make sure you are active as a sender too.
7. Public speaking. I have spoken at music industry events, author conferences, put on workshops, been a speaker at a content marketing summit, talked to e-marketing groups, and, of course, been featured at podcasting events. Heck, I have an entirely separate website devoted just to all the speaking that I do. But whether you’re talking to a Rotary Club, speaking at a corporate event, or, yes, featured in front of fellow podcasters, musicians, or authors, you should master the art of weaving your new song/EP/album (or podcast or book) into your talk. Respect what the organizer has requested and stay on topic, but, find a way to reference your music/podcast/book here or there, but then also be a promoter as you’re meeting attendees before and after your talk. (Bonus: The events that allow you to sit and have dinner with attendees beforehand really provide for some great self-promotion time.)
8. Promotional items. Be specific to your subject matter, however. I give people a small container (pictured) that has earbuds in it. On the outside of the case is my podcast logo and website address. This makes sense because “Now Hear This Entertainment” is a podcast featuring interviews with guests who are having success in entertainment – primarily music. Listeners need earbuds to listen to music and podcasts! Thus, it’s a logical item for me to pass out. However, if you are a CPA and you give me a koozy, how does that make me think of your business? If you host a podcast for DIY home repair enthusiasts and you give me a small screwdriver with your podcast website URL on it, that’s clever and totally appropriate. If you gave me a drink coaster, however, I wouldn’t make the connection. (Stop giving out all the damn pens too. I get annoyed when I open my desk drawer because of all the pens that fall all over.) One of my author clients puts a feather inside a random page (think bookmark) because her book is about her seventh-great-grandmother, who was an important Native American woman in history. See the logic there?
| Need help with your efforts to promote? |
| Book a 15-minute power session with me (private video chat) |
| Book a 60-minute power session with me (private video chat) |
9. Social media. Yes, I waited this far into the list on purpose. It goes without saying that you should be promoting on social media (maybe spending money on Facebook ads), but not just on social media. That being said, I highly encourage you to have one account dedicated solely to your podcast, author career, etc. This is what I do with Instagram. Yes, you’ll see posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn about my podcast, but I put other posts related to my company on those platforms too (i.e., every Monday the post is about the blog for that week). However, seven days a week on Instagram I am posting to an account dedicated solely to my podcast. How do I manage to find something for every day of the week? Sometimes I go to a show notes page from a past episode, pull out a great quote from that guest, create an image for it on canva.com, and voila, I have an Instagram post. Go Follow it to steal ideas from me on what else substantiates posting every day of the week.
10. Award nominations. These expose your music, your podcast, your book to not only the other nominees but to voters and readers who scan the list to see what artists, podcasts, authors/books are competing for a certain award. Before you know it, they’re checking you out to hear why your show, music, or book is a contender. AND, this speaks to #9 above because it’s something to post about on social media other than the obvious.
11. Provide a road map for your guests to promote. (Sorry musicians and authors, but this one probably just applies to podcasters.) Email the guest to let them know that the interview is out, the various links they can choose from to promote to their followers, and your social media handles that you’d like them to tag in their posts. I’ll also write, “Some guests like to say, ‘We talked about _______’.” There is a greater likelihood of them putting something up if you give them suggested text than if you just say, “Thanks again. I hope you like it.” You might even get new social media followers of your own! (Bonus: I even attach my podcast logo to the email in case they want to use it.)
12. Contact other interest groups. Stay with me musicians and authors. There’s a spinoff of this one that I’ll get to further down the list that will help you, but for now, I think this particular entry is safer for podcasters only. One example that demonstrates this is when I had a former WWE Diva on my podcast. While I certainly did #11 above, I also contacted wrestling websites (as well as a fan site or two for that particular wrestler). Clearly they would want to hear what she had to say. Before you know it, now they are promoting your episode for you!
13. Gimmicks. As of the day after tomorrow I will have done a combined total of 460 podcast episodes. Rest assured that when that number hits 500, people will know about it. Just like… One gimmick of mine that I’ll point to [and for musicians this might be “It has been one year to the day since my (title) album came out” or for authors, “It was exactly one month ago today that my new book (title) came out.”] was when I hit the four-year anniversary of my podcast. I had a bakery do four cupcakes in my show colors. One had an N on top. One had an H, one had a T, and one had an E. Four letters, four cupcakes, four years. I took a picture of them and posted it on my Facebook page, my personal Facebook timeline, in my podcast’s Facebook group, on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and in my e-newsletter. Heck, I even put the photo up as a post on my podcast’s Patreon campaign. You can also highlight show milestones (i.e. episode 50, episode 100, and so on). Get creative!
14. Cross promote, cross promote, and then cross promote. I write a blog here every Monday on this website and more often than not refer to my podcast, with a link over to it, of course. I will also refer to other blogs that have been written, with links over to those. Occasionally on the podcast I’ll be heard saying, “I wrote a blog about this recently. Listeners, go to NHTE.net and click into the Blog section to go read that.” It keeps people engaged with the content that you’re creating. Plus…
15. eBook. This ties in nicely with the above in that – while I’m re-purposing content from the podcast to fill the eBook – I have links throughout so that readers can click to go and hear the interview that what they’re reading about was pulled from. Don’t create more work for yourself. My eBooks are a convenient workbook so that listeners don’t have to start all the way back at episode 1 to find out where I gave out the tip and what it was. Plus, remember this – There might be someone who finds the eBooks (or finds the blog) that didn’t know I have a podcast. Now they do. ((wink)) Musicians, authors … write a blog, turn a (big) collection of them into an eBook. There, I just combined this and #14 for you. You’re welcome!
16. Refer to past episodes of your podcast. This might be my favorite out of this whole list. (Stick with me musicians and authors because I’ve got something on this for you too.) Just like with movie lines, I have a bizarre mental rolodex of past interviews that I’ve done. When I hear a guest talking about something that jogs my memory in relation to a previous conversation that I’ve had with someone I’ll say, “Wow, I’m glad you brought that up. That’s a lot like what I talked about with (guest’s name) back on Episode (number). Listeners, if you never heard that episode, go back and listen to my interview with (guest’s name).” I also will put a link to it on the show notes page, but, what happens then is they go listen to that one, only to hear me employing the same tactic and sending them off to another related episode. And so on. (By the way, this also helps you become a better interviewer because it forces you to make sure you’re listening closely to what each guest is talking about.) Musicians and authors, when you’re being interviewed, do a version of this yourself, which is to say, “It’s actually like a song I had on my previous release, titled xx…” or “It’s similar to something I wrote in my first book, (title)…”
| Related posts: |
| Resources for Indie Musicians |
| 6 Reasons Why You Shouldn't No-Show for an Interview |
17. Do a “Best Of” episode. (Musicians – are you at a point in your career where you could do a Greatest Hits release or a Retrospective? Authors – if you’ve written three books that all go together, package the trilogy rather than only selling them individually.) Podcasters, not too different from the above, it enables you to tease – in one episode – a number of past podcasts you put out, in such a way that the listener will want to go hear other episodes that you’ve put out. PLUS, I did this three times (NHTE 101, NHTE 203, and NHTE 301) and each time I emailed the dozen guests who were featured on each and let them know of this exclusive club they were in and voila, now I had 12 additional people promoting an episode for me!
18. Start a second podcast. (Musicians. Only perform solo? Join a band!) Yup, it sounds like a daunting task, but, think about it. If someone comes to your new/second show but doesn’t know about the first, you’ll mention it and suddenly get folks listening to the one you’ve been doing all along. When TASCAM hired me to do a podcast for them, I was sure to ask for this allowance. Similarly, if you look at the website for my weekly “Catholic Sports Radio” podcast, you’ll see that I have ads running that say, “Are you a music fan too? Check out Bruce’s other podcast.”
19. Contact constituents who were mentioned on your podcast. Musicians and authors, remember in #12 above when I promised something for you later on that? Here it is. Podcasters – I interviewed a drummer who talked about the endorsement that he had, which led me to write to that drum company and tell them that this artist did that for them. They will thank you, puff their chest out, and put it out on their social media (and possibly their website and/or newsletter). Musicians and authors – If you appeal to a certain group (you just wrote a song about a cancer survivor or your new book is about aging), then contact relevant groups to see what you can collaborate on (i.e., for the two examples I mentioned it would be the American Cancer Society – perhaps start with a local chapter – and AARP, respectively).
20. Record on-location (with branding). When I do an interview on-site somewhere, not only do I wear a shirt, as recommended above, but I have a tabletop banner that I pop up so that passersby can quickly see what the interview is being done for. As seen in the accompanying photo, I even have branded mic flags to promote my podcast. Musicians and authors can do this even if it isn’t something that sticks. As in, a “pop up recording session” or an “impromptu brain dump at Starbucks where I put thoughts to paper towards planning my next book. Grab a coffee with me. Ask questions.”
21. Ask someone you know to listen (or read) and provide feedback. Have the confidence, of course, that they’re going to like what they hear (or read). But, know that this will make them feel trusted and almost part of the team. They will then become a promoter and tell friends about it. (“Yeah, he even asked me to listen/read and give him a little feedback. I was able to give him some advice that I’m going to be listening/watching to see if he uses.”)
22. Give a number for listeners to call. These people too will become a street team and tell others, “Listen to this episode of this podcast. They played back a voicemail I left on their message line.” Now all of a sudden other people are bringing listeners to your podcast.
23. Have a banner day. If you’re going to do enough on-site events, invest in a standup (also called rollup) banner that stands taller than you are but also perhaps even the tabletop version. Don’t overload it with information, though. A relevant picture (or two), a website address, and text that will allow you to use it for some time to come (in other words, musicians should have a banner for themselves and not for their latest release and authors should do the same, otherwise you’ll both be spending lots of money on banners every time you put out something new).
24. Use other podcasts. Get yourself interviewed on other podcasts, yes, but consider advertising (either a paid placement or trading ads with another show that makes sense/has relevance). Musicians – your version of this would be playing on other artists’ songs and/or guesting at one of their live gigs. Authors – your version of this would be collaborating on something so that you could join in on your writing partner’s signing or launch event.
The list is lengthy, I know. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But start chipping away at it. Use it as a checklist. See how many of these you can employ. And throughout it, if you feel overwhelmed and think you just can’t manage the time to try to promote your show, then remember, if not you, then who? Well, okay, you can book a 15-minute power session with me or a 60-minute session, or even hire me so that Now Hear This, Inc. is your publicist and you can focus on just doing what you do and creating what you create. I’d love to hear from you and learn about your goals and objectives and how I can help.
Take advantage of my more than 15 years in the business. Tweet at me to @NHT_tweets. Alternatively, use Facebook, LinkedIn, or even email to continue the conversation.