Online Tools Every Concert Promoter Should Use

WWhether you’re doing it yourself or outsourcing it the fact remains: promoting concerts is hard work. And, with information expanding as quickly as it is, time will only tell how difficult it is to stand above the noise. But what if you could make technology work for your concerts? The following post explores tools that you can use to make this happen for your shows.

Social Media

While the mention of social media may be a little cliché, there are still quite a few tools that anyone can use to make social media work for them. The way to make this happen, though, is to find the perfect set of tools for your needs.

Hootsuite

Want to update your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social media profiles with content? Hootsuite is the way to go with tools that plug in and schedule your posts for where and whenever you desire.

Need to grow your Twitter followers in between shows? That’s do-able using Tweet Adder to grow followers related to keywords you’ve set and automatically tweet content from the blogs you’d reference anyway.

Want to find valuable press contacts? Twitter is at it again with Twithawk! This helpful tool allows you to queue tweets based on specific keywords, with one example being the simple phrase “music blog”. From there you can send automated preset messages (not recommended to prevent account suspension), send custom messages to each contact, or just save your findings from the tweets you see. Either way, when you use social media don’t just follow the status quo of status updates. Look for tools that will maximize your effectiveness and make you stand out from the common practices that everyone else uses.

Automated Marketing

While it may seem too good to be true it is: there are quite a few tools to make your marketing do itself. Don’t take this the wrong way: these tools will take time to set up, require maintenance, and never replace other tools. Still, they are an incredibly valuable part of any marketing strategy.

MailChimp

Take this scenario: you don’t want to spend much time but want the benefit of a vast social media presence. Different from above, as this is fully automated, start with step 1: knowem.com. This simple website will instantly take information added to their website once and use it to create hundreds of social media accounts for you.

From there, use Ping.fm to send updates to each account.

And once you’ve driven these people to sign up to your email list, say with a webpage that trades free content for their email address, you have another option: Mailchimp. Their simple RSS to email tool will allow your new blog posts to be sent to your email list automatically via their RSS to email tool. Do not be confused: you cannot fully automate marketing. You can, however, automate a big part of it allowing you to focus on the rest.

Online Ticketing

It is absolutely essential that you have online ticketing available for your events and many of you know this. Still, the online ticketing rabbit hole goes much deeper. For example, did you know that some of the services provide a widget so you can let people on your website view and buy tickets for your shows?

Attendstar

Additionally, many provide social tools that provide a price incentive to anyone who shares your event to their friends. Finally, the top services have mobile ticket scanning applications that make registration management a breeze. One company that I recommend highly is Attendstar.

Currently, they provide all of the amenities above while also offering $250 in free services to anyone who uses our company, GetPromotd, to market their concerts on event calendars across the Internet. You can opt-in by adding a show to GetPromotd and emailing us, for this offer, once you do.

These tools can be invaluable when used in the right way. When used in the wrong way, however, they can be un-valuable. The key is knowing the places that your audience already spends their time looking for content like yours. From there, some focus and research will unearth tons of tools you can use to minimize effort and maximize benefit. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason: so we can truly enjoy the music or listen closely to the people who do.

Tim Kern is the CEO of GetPromotd. He’s an avid indie music fan and drummer, a certified techno-geek, and is passionate about helping bands and other event holders get their message out to the people who really care.