According to PR expect, Alajede Ibrahim popularly known as BiyiThePlug, online music PR takes patience, follow up, and a three-phase plan. 

 

For any emerging brand (musicians) a music PR campaign is a great way to spark new conversations, build visibility within key markets, and grow your overall influence over a long-term.

 

The problem is, your budget may be tied up in basic costs such as recording, production, touring, rent, food, etc.

 

1. Not Following Up

PR is a process and the results are in no way immediate. Once an initial pitch is sent out, it may sit for days in the abyss of the recipient’s inbox before it is seen, if it is ever seen at all.

By not following up, you are leaving your pitch up to the unknown. People may see it and respond, or they may delete it, or maybe they just missed it entirely. Without following up, how will you ever know? The only way to make an effective pitch is if you follow up on a weekly basis for a few weeks (typically three or four weeks after the pitch is sent).

2. Not Building Relationships With Your Supporters

Any feature can be a one time thing if you let it be that way. However, if you take the time to build a relationship with the media maker, there is no end to how often and how long they may continue to support you.

If you leverage each feature you get into a relationship, the promotion for each project you release in the future becomes that much easier to execute (not to mention the results of which will be far greater). On the other hand, if you DON’T leverage each feature, you’ll have to start from square one every time you release a new project…

Here are a few great ways to turn a one time feature into a new relationship with a valuable supporter:

 

1. Follow up with the media maker and thank them for featuring you.

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2. Share the feature on all of your social networks and tag the media maker whenever possible

3. Share OTHER features of theirs on a regular basis.

 

3. Overly Hyped

I can think of nothing that will damage a PR campaign more than when an artiste is overly hyped. Not only do most media makers not care, but most often they won’t even believe you when you say that you sound like “nothing they have ever heard before.” Especially because, if you’re being honest, it probably isn’t true.

With the exception of the biggest blogs in the world, most media makers are ONLY doing so because it is their passion. It is always more effective to approach media makers genuinely with a story that is not only honest and compelling, but speaks to creating value for THEM and THEIR audience.

4. Not monitoring the virality of your features

Quite often, media makers will be involved with a network of other media makers either in a similar niche or similar location and they will support each other. This can lead to posts being mentioned in other places, or even fully re-published on other websites.

 

By not monitoring the virality of a feature, in other words not monitoring where ELSE people are talking about you because of a single feature, you are once again missing critical opportunities to build your fan base.

A great way to do this is to set up Google Alerts for yourself so that any time your name or your single is mentioned online, you will be notified via email.

5. Lack of Targeting

Far too often, artistes compile their target list of media makers to reach out to, and it is just a list of the biggest 1% of blogs in the world; along with blogs in the wrong genre and even worse, blogs that focus on the hyper-local (and they are not in that location).

It is very important to understand that the type of music you play (specifically the music you are promoting NOW), where you are from, how old you are, how big your fan base is and what passions drive the influence of your music dictate which blogs you should, and should NEVER be targeting.