Longing for the day ...

10 Best Practices of Online Music Promotion

Just found this list by Nancy Baym of 10 best practices for online promotion. Nancy is a professor at Kansas U and has been studying fans culture and fan behaviour for a while now. She has some great ideas and her stuff is well worth following.

The only thing I'd add (notwithstanding that there are more than 10 possibilities) is that it's important to co-ordinate on-line and off-line strategies. When I was working as National Forum's Communication Design Consultant I found that one of the hardest things to get clients to understand was that this brave new world of online communication was not its own closed shop - it's vital to integrate the online strategies and measures into the broader communication strategies.

Too often, clients (and bands!) would make the online stuff the province of their technical staff, without much thought for the content and communication priorities. They knew they needed and online presence, but didn't understand its real value.

Bands risk falling into the same trap: don't just leave your online stuff up to the member with the most tech-savvy. Get together and form a clear strategy for every photo shoot, interview, gig and release that includes a consideration of what this means in both the on-line and off-line environments.

There are several ways to do this: make sure the band's URL is prominently promoted at every function; after a gig, work the room and get as many fan e-mail addresses as you can; promote gigs to online radio and other broadcast people, and so on.

Don't assume that the two worlds will overlap and/or merge - have a strategy to make it happen in both worlds.