Blog Contest Week 9 - An Overview of Traditional PR

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joiseyshowaa/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

It's hard to believe that I'm on my last entry for Ariel Hyatt's Music Success In Nine Weeks Blog Contest. It's been quite an experience to say the least. Some of it has been easy to do, while other times it was definitely a bit challenging. But I guess you could really say that about anything in life.



Last week I mentioned that my main goal was to get my first newsletter out the door. I'm happy to say that I succeeded in doing that. I've actually gotten some nice feedback from a few of the people that read it. Definitely encouraging and I look forward to developing it into a routine.

The final chapter in the book deals with traditional PR. While this chapter would be extremely helpful to me if I was doing the touring band thing or just playing gigs, I still think I'll be able to glean some knowledge from it for my non-touring band (more on that later).

The chapter gives you some very practical and helpful info on traditional PR methods, such as 8 simple steps to creating a proper press release. Having a background in the music publishing side of the business, I'm very used to receiving press releases from other artists and publishers at my day job. Though I never took the time to analyze them or study them, as I read through the 8 steps in the book, I was trying to remember some of the old releases I've received and thinking to myself "So that's why they all seemed so similar!"

That section was followed up with a step-by-step guide to help you get as much attention as possible which was setup into two parts - your press kit and getting the word out about you. Again, this is a section that would have been so helpful to have had back in the day. But I know that I'll still be able to take some of her advice and apply it to my career today, whether it's as Big Blue Barry the artist or the songwriter and composer for film/TV or for my "band" Crushing Gray (Shameless Self-Promotion - If you like Breaking Benjamin, Nickelback or Daughtry, then I think you'll like us. Check us out at http://www.crushinggray.com).

There are a couple of exercises near the end of the chapter for you to complete. The first one is a personal analysis of your current press kit. The second one is to help you get quotes, both from fans and the industry alike, for your kit. Then to wrap up the chapter, she gives you tips on how to post the perfect press kit to your web site. I'll give you a hint, it involves your music, bio, photos and album artwork. I'll confess and say that I did not complete the exercises yet, however I do plan on doing so, especially for Crushing Gray.

There are a couple of "bonus" sections at the end of the book. One of them is for helping musicians find the right publicist and the other contains a list of 20 sites that she believes are critical for musician's in this new age of the industry. They definitely provide a nice supplement to everything else she talks about.

And with that, my final entry in this blog contest comes to a close. I want to thank Ariel and her team for giving me the chance to participate, as well as everyone else who read the blogs, and especially those who took the time to comment. I really appreciated that. I think I'll post another blog later this week with my thoughts on what I got from this book and contest and what it means for me going forward.

Until next time...