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Alison Marchant

Alison Marchant

Song writer, singer, musician.

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Self promotion – talking about yourself isn’t bad

March 26, 2020 By Alison

This is my last post in this series so thank you for reading. Again before I start I just want to say that I am no authority on this matter, I’m sharing my experience even the things I’ve done wrong. If you know more than I do then I would always appreciate help with this!

Promotion, social media, advertising, all of these things terrify me honestly. I spend a lot of time worrying about what I’m posting, if people will see it, if I’m trying hard enough. What I’ve learnt, though, is that the only truly wrong thing is not posting anything.

I’ve played open mics and had people offer to put posters in the pub window, which is amazing. I’ve had people I haven’t spoken to for years share my son

I spent a lot of time being very anxious about sharing my music, being embarrassed about it because I didn’t know if it was good enough to share. The thing is, I’m putting it out there, I have to believe in it, so I have to promote it.

For your first single you don’t have access to anything, no Spotify or Apple music for artists, no presave links, nothing. So when I saw a lot of people saying that you have to get two months worth of promo out of a song, starting a month before and not stopping till there’s something else to talk about, I stalled. I had no links to send people to. I had a website with nothing on it, I wasn’t gigging, I had no songs out, so what was I supposed to show people.

What I did instead was I waited until a week before my single came out and then I posted everywhere saying ‘hey, look, my song’s out a week from now’ and then I did ‘hey, my song’s out this Friday’. And then, as soon as my song was out, I went into promo mode.

I think I posted four times on Instagram the first day, then another two the second day. This includes stories. I posted all of these to Twitter and Facebook, and then I just kept talking about it. Every couple of days for about two weeks I reminded people of my song.

My one piece of advice about promoting your first single, when you have barely any followers, is be proud of what you’ve done. This is something you have to believe in. Shout it from the rooftops if you have to, just tell everyone. Ask people to share it, get your parents, your friends, anyone to share it everywhere. If you can get just one or two followers from your first ever release then you’re doing well. And when people tell you it’s good, or they share it, share their post, say thank you. Maybe they’ll share it again.

Just believe in your art, tell people you believe in it, some people will believe in it with you.

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