Introducing Yourself

Lets assume you’ve paid some attention to the previous installments of the How To Get Blogged feature and you’ve managed to avoid making a total arse of yourself thus far.

• You’ve picked some sites relevant to your music , 
• actually made an effort to find out what they’re about
• dropped a few comments around their site
• have drafted an email header that doesn’t make you look like an utter fuck wit.

Congratulations!

You’re probably now in the top 5% of the inbox hopefuls. The next thing to do is initiate contact.
Don’t fuck this up now, everyone is watching.

Once again this comes down to common sense which seems to elude all but the very few.

EMAIL SOMEBODY – GET A NAME

The first pointer in drafting any form of correspondence,whether online or on paper is to address it TO someone. An anonymous catch all email isn’t going to cut it.

Bombing emails out to Info@ yaddayaddda with the opening gambit of “Hi I just wanted to…” is going straight in the spam can.
It’s misguided and impersonal and the recipient likely has hundreds of emails to get through so why would they bother with a mong who can’t be bothered to figure out your name?

So what you MUST do is find the name of the blog administrator / contributor and use their name in the first line
“Hi Jack…” POW and already I’m putting down my ginger biscuit and taking more interest in what you have to say. Easy.

To illustrate the point lets have a nosey inside my swollen inbox – how many people have actually bothered to figure out who to email at this here website ?

 

Yep. Just two.  Now it would be awfully conceited of me to assume that every email  sent to Loudat should be addressed to me in person but when you stare at that lot EVERY morning you soon start picking up emails that have at least been targeted roughly at the site.

Finding a blog admins name is really not that hard to do. Frequently it’s found in their ABOUT page. Often you’ll find the blog contributors listed, or perhaps they will have a Facebook page for their site and you can get their name from the Adminisitrator info.
They might have listed their name on their Twitter account. Have a nosey about and see what you can find

The point is to use their name. It makes the email personal and give the impression that you’ve done your homework.
Part of it at least.

SWOT UP

At this point you are tantalisingly close to someone wiping their eyeballs across the rest of your email
The next step is it PROVE to the blog admin that you’ve done your homework and get yourself fully into the good books.

This,again, is really easy to achieve.

Simply read through their blog, find a post that interests you, hopefully featuring music that might not be a million miles away from your own, and then…read it.

Once you’ve inwardly digested the post and mulled it over in that genius brain of yours you are armed and ready for a full charm offensive.

You can now, in a genuine capacity, demonstrate in just one quick sentence that your email is in the right place and deserves ,at least, to be read. Magic. And this is how you do it..

Hi (insert bloggers name)

I really enjoyed reading your post on “Insert post title” and thought you might be interested in hearing this track “Dying For Approval by I’m Gonna Cut Myself”

In a real world situation an email that would definitely merit me reading further would go like this

Hello Jack,

I enjoyed reading your blog post on the the new Tribal Tension EP. I’ve got a breaks track you might be interested in? Here’s a link…

Fucking. BINGO.

Here’s what’s going on in my head reading this very short, very effective sentence.

“Shit..How does he know my name? That’s spooky…oh yeah I publish it on the site.
At least he’s taken time to look around..what’s this? Ooh look He’s into breaks,that’s handy I could do with finding some decent breaks…hang on a minute…he’s GOT some breaks that I might be into. Well this IS nice I’ll definitely give that a pop…”

At which point I will brace myself for inevitable disappointment and start clicking for music..

Really, it’s that simple. Bare in mind we haven’t actually got any further with the copy. I’ll have read that sentence , it will tick my mental boxes and I’m sold, I want to hear it….CLICK.

AFTER THE CLICK

What happens next is entirely down to your music.

At this point I could not give a flying fuck about who you are, where you’re from, who inspires you, how you weep tears of musical creativity ,bottling them each night and taking them to gigs to anoint members of the crowd who gather enmass at your live performances to bask in your heavenly glory. I just want to hear a good tune.

TO SUMMARISE

Up to this point we’ve covered , in a rather long winded fashion, how to get to that all important CLICK.

If you’ve got this far – seriously – Very well done. Getting someone to listen to your music is so hard to do.

To get your track heard, however brief and fleeting, proves that you are doing something right so fair fucks to you.

Remember:

• Get the blog admins’ name – use it in your introduction as it’s personal and direct
• Find a blog post on their site relevant to your music – mention that you’ve read it, it shows genuine interest and indicates a well targeted promo
• Get the link in early – if the above 2 points ring true with the blogger, the music must swiftly follow. There is time talk later.

NEXT INSTALLMENT

So what happens when it comes to that  CLICK ?

A blogger should be able to hear your track in 2 clicks or less,
The first click to jump to your music, the second click to make it play. No more.

The next installment will make sure you get this bit right first time.
Hope this helps.

If you found this at all useful / amusing leave a comment and /or share some tweetage
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