5 ways to promote yourself as a musical expert

Tip 1. Newsletters

You may already have a newsletter in an online or offline format, and it’s probably a great tool for marketing to your customers or fans (if you are a performer). They might appreciate news about products or services, offer discounts and provide value-added content that keeps people interested. If you’re using the direct marketing route, here are some tips to make your newsletters more appealing and effective: Use bold, eye catching headlines. The ones below are examples I made up on the spot so brainstorm for others which grab the reader’s attention immediately:

“Learn the latest methods here for improving your guitar/piano/drumming technique”

“Do you know the way for getting more gigs?”

“Revealed – 5 tips to help you get your foot in the door in the music industry”

2. Speak the reader’s language. Imagine you were dealing in person with your customers and write in a way they think and can relate to. Make it conversational rather than formal or centred on you.

3. When using a call to action (usually towards the end of your newsletter and tied to a special offer), state the facts and focus on the benefits the customer will get when they buy your product/service. Keep it simple and leave the reader in no doubt what they need to do next.

Tip 2. Press

The lessons and skills you’ve acquired over the course of building your reputation as a musician and/or teacher have immense value to not only your audience and clients but the wider community you operate in. The press always need experts in a particular area they can turn to when writing about a topic like music. But journalists are pulling their hair out trying to fill their newspaper, magazine, radio or TV shows with useful, entertaining information. If you can show them how to do that, you’re virtually guaranteed some coverage. So, how do you meet their needs? Think about it like this: all of these journalists are under pressure from their editors to find stories that are of interest to the readers/listeners/viewers. Think of topics that will appeal to your readers, major issues that are talking points and give your viewpoint in a way that positions you as an expert and problem solver. You can then target magazines, papers and other media with your solution to a major talking point. Think of major (and current) issues in music e.g. school music education, teaching methods, the state of the music industry etc. Online pr sites like http://pr.com, http://www.pressreleasepoint.com, http://www.prlog.org, www.free-press-release.com and http://www.1888pressrelease.com/ are also great places to publicise yourself and these can be linked in with your other activities.

Tip 3. Books/E-books

Becoming an author is seen as respectable as you are putting all your hours of knowledge into print/online format for the benefit of readers. You could write about learning your particular instrument, or getting into the music industry. To get started I would recommend downloading Express Scribe http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html which allow audio recordings you make to be transcribed into a text format. Also look at articles in your industry and see how you could better that incorporating your opinions and beliefs to create something of value to readers.

Tip 4. Webinars

Webinars are seminars taught on the web, hence the term. Webinars can also be one way to sell yourself as a performer (streaming live gigs/concerts online) or your teaching expertise. By holding a webinar, you can potentially charge people to watch you perform or talk about and demonstrate your instrument. Because you’re offering people access directly to you (the expert), webinars are worth the money charge. Software like WebEx can allow you to stream presentations, audio and video to up to 3,000 participants. You can take questions from your audience in real-time and the platform offers built-in ecommerce, so you can charge for access.

Tip 5.

Online article sites and Social Media Places like Ezine articles, Article base, Pubarticles and Hubpages allow you to display your knowledge in an area as well as link to your site. The best way to maximise the effectiveness of each article you submit is to use keywords that people are searching for. You can do this using Google keywords search. So if you teach guitar, you can enter “guitar tuition” into the search box and review the results to see if there are more specific searches that include other keywords you can use in your article. The key is to use these keywords in the headline of your article and sparingly within the article itself as you don’t want to be guilty of overusing keywords (otherwise known as ‘keyword stuffing’).

Social media such as facebook is great, especially if you have a page about your business there. You can write and post articles on the discussion section and the more you do, the more Google recognises that you’re adding new content regularly meaning your page gets ranked higher, moving up the search pages. Myspace and other social networking sites allow users to post blogs with a link back to your website.

Go out and promote your knowledge if you believe it helps others. Your audience will thank you for it.

Visit www.grademusicworld.com for information on everything music-related, from learning an instrument and preparing for exams, to getting a job in the music industry