How to Connect With Bloggers Outside of the Music Niche
There are two paths you can generally take with your marketing. You can jump on the road that everyone else is using or you can reinvent the wheel and push the limits of your efforts. I like to go somewhere in the middle, using tried and true models to get fans excited about music, events and products and then looking for doors that no one has yet opened, seeing what happens and then looking at ways to enhance these new methods.
One of these “new road” tactics has been in outreach programs for musicians looking to connect with bloggers. In this new social media era, creating real relationships with people, fans and industry folks is proving to have more of a long lasting effect than the friend blasting days of Myspace glory. The words that come out of bloggers and trust worthy Twitter sources can do leaps and bounds for your virtual promotion and has proven to help sell records.
Most musicians who are looking to promote and market their music through blogs look to the obvious road. They perform some searches on Google for music review blogs, entertainment sites and magazine style music blogs. These sites offer a medium which is safe and provides feedback, links and traffic for the musician – which is a good thing. The thing that most musicians overlook is the fact that you are competing with multiple reviews – sometimes on the same day and your music can get lost as just another CD or Digital Release on the site. There is not much that can separate your review from the rest on the site and when the next day’s or week’s reviews come onto the site, yours gets buried and there is no long term results in the form of sales or traffic.
A New Road To Finding Music Promotion Blogs
The road we have looked into over the last few weeks is to find non music bloggers who have relevant topics and a rabid fan base. Let me tell you what I mean.
Say your album is about Relationships – you know the usual heartbreaks and love songs album. When looking for blogs and authors to help promote your album, why not look for blogs dealing with relationships, dating, heartbreak and love. The authors on these sites are not accustomed to getting free CD’s and offers from musicians and are more likely to pick up your review.
How to Entice Them
When approaching a non music niche blogger, you need to get them a WIIFM (what’s in it for me) point. There needs to be some clear reason why promoting you is going to help them. Here are some things that we have seen to work really well.
Contests – All bloggers love contests. It gives them a chance to promote their site to new readers and through multiple channels like Twitter and Social Bookmarking Sites. Easy contests are posting some song lyrics and having the readers write in comments that relate to the song. The best comment (or a random comment) will win a free copy of the CD as well as sending a copy to the writer.
Exclusives – Give the blogger something that is exclusive to them. Maybe it’s a custom video, an exclusive interview, song or something. Bloggers like to be the only person that has access or early access than the rest of the world.
Incentives – Give the blogger a shout out in your liner notes, newsletter or website. Be sure to let the blogger know what you plan to do and some of your numbers (email list of 10,000 people, etc).
Places to Find Niche Bloggers
This is the golden trick here and the one that requires a little homework and good ol fashioned research.
- Google Blog Search – Do keyword related searches and look for sites that cater to the topics you are looking for.
- Technorati – Same as Google Blog search, but can pull some gems that Google doesn’t find!
- AllTop – This is like a magazine rack of niche blogs. Sorted by topic you can find the top blogs that are on the web on a multitude of given subjects.
Follow Up
This is one of the most important things to do with bloggers outside of the music niche. You will want to be sure to follow up with them and build a lasting relationship with them that is focused on long term growth. Let them know if their post sent over any traffic, sales, new fans or anything else. Be sure to comment on their site when people talk about your music. Help the blogger out by Tweeting and messaging your fans about the post. This attention to detail will open more doors and let more people become exposed to your music.
Bloggers can bring great traffic to your site and in turn help you convert this traffic into fans. The next time you are looking to do some outreach online think about your music and who it might appeal to. I bet there are hundreds of bloggers online that are right up your ally if you know where to look and what to offer.
Let us know about your experiences with bloggers in the comments and also any questions you may have about outreaching to them for your music marketing. We look forward to helping you in your music career.
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This article was written by Greg Rollett from Gen-Y Rock Stars and Label 2.0. He is a marketing professional helping musicians educate themselves on using online tools to help their music career. Contact Greg via email or Twitter.
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