FireBird Blog

Selling yourself

With the ubiquitous rise of the information super highway, it seems that everyone must have some online presence, whether that’s FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, a blog or a good old-fashioned website.

But why?
Well, exposure! You need information… do you get out the old Encyclopaedia Britannica? No – you go to the computer. You want a route map… do you get out the 2001 road atlas? No, you go to Google Maps (or similar). You want a plumber… you get the point.

Well, most people do. If you are one of those who doesn’t, you can stop reading this now, you’re just wasting your time.

So, it’s information technology, there’s a lot of it out there and people use it to find what they need. It’s used ever-increasingly for services, if you have a band then you provide a service so you need to make the technology work for you.
OK, I can think of a couple of bands that may not quite fit that criteria but generally, you can get better gigs by appealing directly to the people wanting your band, via this wonderful ‘new media’.

But how?
In addition to being a guitar hack, I build and promote websites, luckily better than I play guitar!

Most of my lucrative function gigs come from the internet. Social networking is fine but it’s a limited audience: friends and fans. I don’t think I ever got a big gig from Facebook, it all comes from my website.

If your band website is not getting you gigs, there’s something wrong; probably it can’t be found by your target audience or it’s just plain crap. An effective web site not only has to work well in the search engines (both my sites FireBird and Alchemy are top, or close to in Bing and Google for my target audiences) but that’s only half the game! Once there, you have about 5 seconds to hook and sell to prospective clients, otherwise they will go elsewhere.

But how much?
An effective, professional website could cost less than half the money you make on 1 function, or maybe the cost of 2 or 3 pub gigs (depending on what you charge, of course). So if you think you’re missing out, email me.

I’m just off to the bank with the latest gig deposit cheques, what are you doing?