317 Power Words That'll Instantly Make You a Better Writer. Ever noticed how some writers have an uncanny ability to toy with your emotions? Within the span of a few pages, you can go from shaking with excitement to bawling your eyes out to flying into a rage and throwing the book across the room. It’s the hallmark of great writing, proof of mastery of the craft, and the yardstick by which aspiring writers measure their work.
And it goes beyond storytelling. Sure, taking the reader on an emotional roller coaster ride is essential in novels and short stories, but what about emails, resumes, blog posts, proposals? They’re all designed to influence the reader in some way. You want to pass along information, yes, but you also want the reader to feel a certain way about that information. Maybe you want to impress them, get them excited, make them cautious, get them angry, encourage them to keep going, or any number of emotions. So, you might wonder… how? The good news is it can be yours. How to Instantly Become a Better Writer It’s simple: Use power words. 37 Tips for Writing Emails that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked. How to Write a Band Bio.
If you are a working musician – or aspire to be a working musician – you need to be able to sell yourself and your music. At some point you may have to present your work to a record label or publishing company and you will be competing against many other artists for a label representative’s attention. Believe it or not, it is very similar to applying for a job: your band needs a resume and it needs to stand out. This is accomplished with two key pieces of information – a bio and a factsheet. A bio and factsheet are useful for many different reasons. A record labels A&R representative will use your bio and factsheet to determine if your band is a good fit for their label – likewise radio stations look at your bio/factsheet before they bother to listen to your music, there’s only so much time in the day and if your bio doesn’t sound like you fit with the station then they won’t even crack the case on your album. There are two primary ways to go about creating a bio and factsheet.
6 Essential Elements Of A Music Digital Press Kit [Musician Website Quick Fix #9] Guest post from musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle. When creating your website, you have to think about the different kinds of people that will be visiting it. These can be your current fans, potential new fans, as well as media and industry people.
For that latter group, they’re likely looking for different information than your fans are, and you have to be sure to make it easy for them to find it. This can best be done by adding a Digital Press Kit to your website. Here are the essential elements to include in your digital press kit: 6 Essential Elements for your Digital Press Kit 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Where to place a Digital Press Kit on your Website A digital press kit is an important element of your website, so create a “Press” or “Press Kit” section and include it as part of your main menu navigation. Creating a Perfect Pitch - Laser Focus Your Message. We had Music PR superstar Ariel Hyatt as a guest here a few weeks ago, announcing Bandzoogle's sponsorship of her Music Success in 9 Weeks Blogging Challenge.
The Challenge is in full swing, with many old and new Bandzooglers taking part... among others: Jennifer Grassman, Hudson K, J Ammo, Sean Wright, Core Zero, Jacknife Stiletto, Atlas Take Aim, Brett Barry, Ed-O, Gord Yelich, Jay Trainer, Jordan Martyn, From Chaos, Maura Jensen, Meghan Morrison, Nicholas Howard, Agenda Red, Saturn, The April Maze, (wheeew... and more... let us know in the comments if we forgot you). After setting some goals, Week 2 was all about creating a pitch about your band or solo act. We liked the advice so much that we asked Ariel if she would re-blog that chapter here and she gracefully accepted. Feel free to post your pitch in the comments here, or get a conversation started on our Facebook page or in the Community forums, if you'd like other members to comment and help out.
A pitch has many names. 1. A. How to Make Sure A Potential Fan Never Comes Back to Your Website. “But wait – don’t I want them to come back to my site?” Yes, you do. All the time. So don’t make their experience an awkward, annoying one, and they just might return for more. It’s 2013, and the web-surfing public has lost nearly all patience for things on the web that don’t work/look/act right. They’re a fickle bunch, and they’re always one click away from ditching your site and never looking back. This doesn’t mean you need to have a site that is a non-stop carnival of excitement that no human could possibly drag themselves away from, but it does mean you need to have a site that doesn’t leave people rolling their eyes, shaking their head, or rage-clicking their “back” button. Here are some things that might give people a great reason to run screaming away from your site, vowing never to return. * Flash intros.
. * Not being mobile-ready. . * Hard-to-read text. . * Your site’s design is from the Stone Age. . * Rampant grammar/spelling errors. . * Too many ads/overlays. . * Bad nav. Call to Action! 10 Ways To Grow One Gigantic Mailing List. This guest post was written our very own Jon Ostrow, Cyber PR®’s publicity director, who can be reached by email or on Twitter!
Email addresses collected from your fan base is an invaluable marketing tool. While social media’s real-time centricity remains it’s own beast of burden, email addresses allow you to target specific fans and then contact them directly, at any given time. A well-executed email marketing strategy can mean increased loyalty, increased engagement and ultimately an increase in revenue made from your fans, be it through recordings, ticket sales, merch, or other wise. So obviously, the act of collecting the email addresses from your fan base is vital to your success and therefore you need a strategy that maximizes the chance of your fans actually giving you their email address. This is not something you want to leave up to chance. Luck for you, the strategy is quite simple. The key is to make the offer that is high in: Desirability Exclusivity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. E-Journal - Press Release Headline Do's and Don'ts.
Press Release Headline Do's and Don'ts Before a writer or editor will read your press release, he or she must have a reason to look it over. A good headline and subhead combination can make the difference between a press release that gets read and exposed ... and one that gets ignored. Nowhere is this more true than with online press release postings. Take a look at mi2n.com/news/bands -- where bands and record labels post hundreds of PR notices. All you see is a listing of short headlines and slightly longer subheads. Viewers need to click a headline to read each entire press release. Here are some examples of headlines from the mi2n.com site, along with my thoughts on what works and what doesn't: Headline: Tito Puente Jr and His Orchestra Subhead: Tito Puente Jr Orchestra Ready for the World Comments: The best headlines succinctly spell out the essence of the news story.
Comments: This headline doesn't say much either. Headline: Zak Daniels and the One-Eyed Snakes Live on Stage Again! Music Industry News Network. Ideal for artists and labels, as well as supporting promoters and agencies, Mi2N Music PR service provides guaranteed press release placements through a network of newswires, eGroups, blog communities, boards and forums, as well as MP3 and video distribution. In addition to guaranteed PR placement, the packages provide exposure through the Mi2N website and daily newsletters sent to over 24,000 music professionals across the globe. Order any Mi2N Music PR package and receive 3 months of All Access membership on Musicpage.com, a secure online community built to promote musicians and music professionals to the music industry.
You will be able to choose a Music PR package for your PR in Step 3 of the submission process below. A No-Cost Back Door to Getting Your Music On The Radio. Today I’d like to share a resource with you guys that only came to my attention recently. It’s called RadioGuestList.com and it’s essentially a no-cost back door to getting radio publicity and exposure. In a nutshell, RGL is a service that connects radio show bookers, podcasters, talk radio show hosts and even television producers with expert guests to fill their shows. So how do you qualify as an expert guest? Well, there are two ways to look at this… First the obvious one: You are likely a recording, performing, and all around professional musician and therefore an expert on the subject.
I subscribe to RadioGuestList.com and there are regular listings for shows seeking musicians and entertainers. Why not you? But that’s fairly straight forward. Getting any kind of publicity (radio or otherwise) is going to be hard if you are only looking for publications that want to share the latest rock, pop, or hip hop artist with their listeners/readers.
Here’s an example… How about you? Jamz and Toast Music Blog. How to Write a Music Bio. The following article is a guest post by Julia L. Rogers. Julia helps me behind the scenes at MusicianCoaching.com. She is a classically-trained musician, a published author and a contributing music writer at Bitch magazine. Julia plays out regularly in New York City in various original projects. She also writes about business strategy, social media and emerging technology for corporate clients ranging from the Huffington Post to American Express (and writes artist and band bios!). As an artist or band, you’re going to be repeatedly forced to explain yourself. And if you are incapable of communicating – in words – who you are, what you sound like and why someone should care, you’re not going to go very far. The most important thing to remember is that your artist bio is not a rambling autobiography or the introduction to your future memoirs: Your bio is a professional sales tool.
If you want to be taken seriously as an artist, you have to have promotional material. How to Write a Music Artist's Biography. How To Write An Artist Bio That Really Stands Out - TrackHustle.com. I’m always surprised to see how few artists have quality bios. What I often find is a (seemingly) quickly patched together paragraph or two that ends up communicating little or nothing about the band’s history or the sound and style of their music, and even more sadly, most bios provide the reader absolutely no context for which to listen to the music and get a sense of the artist. When I was a major label A&R man, I always looked at the artist’s bio to get some basic information about the artist I was checking out. And while I trained myself to have low expectations in regard to bios from independent acts, very few gave me even the most basic information about the artist that I wanted.
A well-done bio is essential. Think of it as a window into your world - your bio is a direct introduction of you to writers, booking agents, and industry people that you want to pay attention to your music so you can get the opportunities you’ve been dreaming of. A Bio Consists Of: 1. 2. 3. 4. FutureHit.DNA | The Site of Author, Jay Frank. How many e-mails do you get from musicians? How many of them do you actually read? How many do you respond to? While many digital music experts constantly talk about the importance of the valid e-mail list to a musician, they seldom discuss what should be IN those e-mails. Given the messages I’ve gotten in the last few weeks, it’s clear that very few artists know. In an admittedly unscientific approach, but fun nevertheless, I examined the 63 emails I got from artists in the last two weeks and found some very common ground.
By far, tour dates are the #1 thing musicians put in their emails, with nearly 60% doing so. I get it. Chances are your phone has the ability to record video. Why do so many music biz people know Bob Lefsetz? If I combine every email that mentioned a fan contest, a Kickstarter campaign, a Stageit webcast, and the like, it still came out to less than 25% of the emails I received. 6 Social Media Tips for Music Producers & DJs (pt 2) | Point Blank Blog. In Part 1 of our social media tips for music producers and DJs we looked at having tidy profiles, snappy biographies and a defined strategy. Now we look at some of the biggest mistakes to avoid and a simple way to stay ahead of the pack… 3. Chat, don’t broadcast.
It’s quite easy to simply shout about how great your last gig was or how amazing the new track is sounding. Anyone could write this stuff so it feels impersonal and quickly ends up sounding generic and annoying too. 4. Likewise, harvesting ‘likes’ by forcing people to ‘like to win’ or ‘share to enter’ competitions is in direct breech of Facebook’s terms and conditions (even if you do see some big labels and artists pulling this trick regularly). 6. Search results - m31music - Dark Canyon Records Mail. The Kama Sutra of Music Marketing. When was the last time you thought about music promotion and romance at the same time? Been a while? Well, by the time you finish reading this post, you may do it more often. (Thinking about the combination, that is. How often you "do it" is up to you :-) This whole idea started when I ran across an article by Desiree Gullan called "The Kama Sutra of Marketing. " It reminded me of an analogy I've often used: Marketing is a lot like dating.
But most self-promoting musicians don't think of it that way. So, here are some valuable lessons from the world of romance you can apply to your music promotion efforts: 1) Don't settle for just anyone -- search for your music fan soul mates You've heard the jokes. Do you do the same with your music promotion? How old are they? Get a handle on who you want to attract. 2) Get to know your fans first What do you do on a first date with someone you really think has potential?
Sadly, most people feel the need to impress others with how cool they are. Okay. Music Press Releases - Album Press Release Template. A well written press release is the first step in getting some attention for your new album. Use this template to help you organize your information. Note that this template was written with bands and indie labels in mind as the writers and the media in mind as the readers. PR folks and radio pluggers will want to take a slightly different approach with their press releases, and one sheets for distributors and stores should also be slightly different.
The Header: Centered at the top of your page should be the band's name and the album name. To make sure this information draws attention, make sure you use a larger text size than the rest of your release, and also use bold and/or italics. You can also set this information apart by putting it in a box. If the album is on a label, include the label name and/or catalog number here as well. A few optional inclusions for the header are: Paragraph One: This is where you want to announce the new album.
10strategies | The Indie Band Survival Guide - Beta. 3 Must-Read Articles on Writing a Band Bio or Press Release. AdWords: Keyword Tool. My Album is Finished– Now What? How To Put Your Music On Jango And Make It As Effective As Possible. Jesse Cannon.