Daily D.Y.I. – Know The Right Bloggers
Just as digital distribution has democratized music sales, blogging has democratized music journalism. Anyone with a free Blogger or WordPress account can declare themselves a critic.
Most bloggers are true music fans who want to discover great new music and share it with the world…or at least there 37 friends who read them faithfully. If 10% of those 37 readers come to one of your shows, that's 3.7 fans that you didn't have yesrterday telling their own 37 friends about you.
Bloggers are also more approachable then most print journalists who often can only write about what writers assign them. And bloggers have influence. Fans respect writers that are passionate about music and proving it by writing for love instead of a paycheck. One study from NYC's Stern School Of Business even showed that blogs more than MySpace helped tosell new music.
How To Know Which Blogs To Target
Two words: niche and location. Using a blog specific…
search engine like Google Blog Search or Technorati type in music + Chicago or better yet a use specific genre like heavy metal + Chicago. Think fans of Arcade Fire would like your band too? Try Arcade Fire + your city. Try all kinds of combinations including that obscure band who you think copied your style. If they wrote about them; why wouldn't they write about you?
You can do the same thing nationally by simply searching under genres or similar artists.
Next on Daily D.I.Y
- Blog Directories & How To Apporach Bloggers
wow! thanks bruce. i’m really excited about more of these to come. i’d love to receivce to just these daily DIY posts in my inbox if they are going to be as good as this.
definitely looking forward to the next post!
A great tool for finding blogs to write about your band is Hype Machine. They have a list of almost 1500 blogs, ranked by influence. The full list is here: http://hypem.com/list You can also use the main search engine on Hype Machine to find blogs that have reviewed similar artists to you and then reach out to those blogs.
Bloggers today are what newspaper columnists were to the “dead tree, old school” media yesterday.
Normally, unhindered and unrestricted by editorial policy, they are the trend setters and the tastemakers of journalism
Consider the impact that someone like Chris Brogan has. Writing on social media and technology for businesses, organizations and individuals for the past ten years, he is rated as one of the top 20 bloggers by Advertising Age Top 150. IF you were talking mere numbers, his reach is tremendous.
If looking for publicity, it would be wise not to overlook the blogger.