Right,
now you've booked your gig and you 've got the line-up for it, what
comes next?
Promotion!
You might get some people coming just from sheer luck but we
doubt
that; word of mouth will bring you some people but you can do more, the
more (as in: as many places as possible) you advertise the better your
chances of actually pulling a crowd to your event.
Here we'll cover the basics and give you some tips and links for online
promotion, every little bit helps.
How to
- Step 1: us
- Keep
us informed of what's
going on:
moc.liamelgoog@nosrep.dnuos.ronevsorg
- listings,
- times,
- prices,
- description,
- flyers, posters etc...
we list all the gigs on our myspace and on last.fm as soon as we are
aware of them and have the details, and upload the posters (see 2)
- Step 2: PAPER
- Get a poster & flyer sorted, if you are
crap at designing I'm
sure
you know someone who can.
- You DON'T NEED 5000 glossy full colour double
sided flyers, A6 B&W flyewrs work very well, or simple one
sided
B&W or color (if you really think you need that) ones.
- Flyers are good to hand out when you go out or meet
people
which might
be interested.
- Posters are good for putting up at the venue and
also in
the local area (just remember that flyposting is mostly illegal, so ask
in shops if they'll let you put them up) other potential places are
colleges or unis in the area where the gig takes place, and anywhere
else you think it might catch the eye of people who might come (records
shops, etc...).
- Always keep a handful of flyers with you as you
never know
who you
might bump into while outside.
-
Step 3: INTERWEB & THE VIRTUAL WORLD
- If you use social networking sites (myspace, facebook,
orkut, etc...)
use them to promote your gig, DON'T overdo it with constant mailings
though, you don't want to piss people off and that is easily
done.
- Use the list of online gig guides at the bottom of
this
page to list
your gig in the general ones and more specific ones which might be
relevant to you.
- If you use "music genres" forums/message boards put
your
gig in it if
they have a section for that.
- If you are going to promote gigs regularly think
about
sorting out a
mailing list to keep people aware of what you are doing. (we now have
one setup too)
-
Step 4: THE BANDS
-
Get them to do their bit as well, they can't do it all but they sure
can help, same advice for them as we've just given you.
interweb links
we usually do last.fm but if you want to add it yourself here is the
correct link for the pub:
- http://www.last.fm/events/add?venueid=8783683
We might be adding gigs to some of those but certainly not all nor all
the gigs, simply because we do have some other things to do so get
tucked in check those and if it's not there go and add it, it can't
hurt.
Part 1: general gig promotion sites etc (can't
tell you which works
best but this is the order they appear in a google search)
- http://gig-guide.co.uk
(needs registration)
- NME
Gig Guide
- http://www.livegigguide.com
(needs registration)
- http://www.nationalgigguide.com
(needs registration)
- http://www.lemonrock.com
(needs registration)
- http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk/londongigguide.html
(make
sure you read
the instructions no registration needed)
- Time
Out (make
sure you read the
instructions no registration needed)
- http://www.gig-events-guide.co.uk
(needs registration)
- http://www.skiddle.com/promotion
(needs registration)
- http://www.spoonfed.co.uk
part 2: Punk gig listings
- Eroding
Empire (click on Submit,
D'oh!)
- http://www.myspace.com/londonpunkgigs
(contact and inform
via myspace)
- http://www.punkoiuk.co.uk
(Just
fill in, The Grosvenor is aleady in their database)
part 3: Local to us listings
- Urban
75 (needs registration, very
strict
rules about
advertising events you MUST contact a board moderator and get approval
BEFORE posting)
And there are endless others as well.
