The day has come- your track or album is out, and you’re mobilizing to make it known to as many people as possible. In this very intense period, it’s important to understand that the work of promoting a track or a project in its entirety doesn’t stop at sending it to journalists or the media. Indeed, whether or not you use the Groover platform to send your tracks, it is essential to work on recontacting medias and monitoring the internet in order to maximize your feedback and above all, not to miss the potential coverage.
You may have noticed this recently, but sometimes a journalist or media outlet will offer to share your track, whether it’s in an article, a Spotify playlist or on their social networks. The days and weeks go by and you don’t hear from them and their promise… So you start to think that it’s never going to happen. However, maybe your track is already online on that blog you’ve been coveting without you even knowing it! To keep on top of things, there are some good practices to adopt.
Groover Dashboard
Indeed, when contact with a media is successful, a big step is taken- but you still have work to do! Here are a few tips to make sure you don’t miss any media benefits:
1. Don’t break contact once the media has confirmed that your song has been shared
It is important to understand that today all medias are flooded with e-mails and project proposals. If Groover facilitates the connection of artists with the media and other music industry professionals, you will still need to build an exchange with them in order to optimize and make your promotional campaigns profitable. So when a media outlet confirms that your track has been shared, don’t hesitate to reply by thanking them and asking them, if necessary, for some additional information (date of sharing, context if not specified, place of sharing…) Finally, make sure that the media has everything they need to do the sharing, from news about your project, to Youtube/Soundcloud/Spotify links, social networking links, future gig dates and so on.
See as well: HOW TO MANAGE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS AS MUSICIANS AND STAND OUT
Groover Profile
2. Regularly monitor the internet
In music promotion and media relations circles, we call ‘internet monitoring’ the act of regularly looking online for press coverage of a project. This is one of the press officer’s number 1 missions. If you are an aficionado of internet research, you may know the following tips.
To keep a good watch, it is important to use your Internet browser correctly. Also, a simple search with the name of your song or project will not be enough. Especially if they are called ‘Lemon’, ‘Puppy’ or ‘Cellular’. Browsers therefore offer advanced searches, depending on the language of the media (English, French?) as well as the date of publication of the article (less than 24 hours, less than a week, less than a month). Don’t hesitate to play with these tools and adjust your searches accordingly! Whether the title of your song or the name of your project includes one or several words, don’t hesitate to add quotation marks to your search. This will allow all the terms to be taken into account in the search.
Don’t hesitate to launch several searches in a row: one with the name of your project, one with the title of your piece, but also a search with all these keywords, in French, in English, etc. Finally, it is important to understand that in internet searches, not all sites are under the same banner and some may not automatically appear in the first pages. And even if it may seem tedious, don’t hesitate to explore all the pages of your search.
You can also go straight to the website, social networks, Youtube channel or Spotify playlist of the media in question and use the search engines on those pages! For example, you can easily search for Facebook publications by using the search engine and selecting the ‘Publications’ tab. Not only will you get to know the music media better, but you’ll also be able to better understand how they work and the different formats of articles that exist.
3. Recontact the medias (within reason)
If the promised date of sharing has passed, or several weeks have passed since they announced they would share your song, you can of course contact the media again while remaining polite, friendly and not too insistent. Once again, the media probably receives a lot of emails and engages with many artists to share their tracks and talk about their projects.
So you have to understand and accept that sometimes sharing can take a little time. But above all, avoid sending several emails per week to the same media. This will have the effect of antagonizing them and may jeopardize the sharing of your song! Don’t forget that today most online music journalists do this voluntarily and on their own time.
4. Compile your media coverage in a single document
Gathering all the publications that talk about your song/project into the same document is a very important step for the future! Collect all the URLs of the articles and take screenshots of the Spotify playlists, Youtube channels, articles, etc. that feature your song, then add them all to an Excel or Word file, for example. This will give you a ready-made communication tool to present your project to labels, touring companies and other potential future partners!
To get articles and playlist additions to share on your social networks, right this way 🚀