You’re making brilliant music – now you just need more people to know about it! 

Getting the word out to more people is a great way not just to promote your event but also to make new connections and inspire others to get involved with Make Music Day. 

In this blog we’ll be looking at different ways you can spread the word – effective techniques both conventional and unconventional: 

• ‘Traditional’ media (newspapers, magazines, radio etc)
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
• Guerilla marketing – some things you may not have thought of!

1. Traditional Media 

Journalists are always looking for stories to fill their newspaper columns or radio/TV programmes and love content that will be entertaining or useful for their audiences. 

Here are some pointers on what they’re looking for (see if you can shape your story to fit)

• Something different! Tell them what makes your music event special, different or exciting.
• Local relevance – are all your choir members from one village?  Has your band had a positive impact on the local community?
• Accurate information – make their life easy, they don’t want to be spending time researching information that you can give them. 
• Something new – are you launching a brand new music event or project?
• Short attributed quotes, with name, role (e.g. band member) and the area they’re from.  
• Photos: include two or three good quality photos, approximately 1MB in size. 
• If you’re organising a large event, consider inviting a photographer from the local paper
• Or if it’s before the event, use pictures of your last event, or your band/music group/yourself

We’ve also put together a press release template to help you share your story.

How to approach media:  

• Monitor the media you want to target – what sort of content do they usually publish?
• Who writes the articles? If they’re a local journalist can you connect with them on Twitter or via the newspaper to bring their attention to your event?
• Email news desks or planning desks and tell them about your event, remembering that timing is crucial and depend very much on whether they publish monthly, weekly, daily or online 
• You can get contact details simply by looking at your targeted media – you’ll usually find a list of the editors and team on the the masthead, which is often at the front of a magazine. 
• You can also use tools such as  media.info, Journalisted.com and the Community Media Association,to find relevant journalists.

2. Social Media

Social media is the best way to increase awareness about your music generally and to create a buzz about your Make Music Day event or activity specifically. 

You can use our Social media poster maker resource to create your own Make Music Day graphics for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Social media tips 

• If you want to get people liking, commenting and engaging with your posts, our  number one tip is to do the same for others – spend as much time engaging with  other people’s posts, as you do posting your own content.  

• Give your audience value in one of the following ways – educate (e.g. how to videos),  inspire (e.g. an uplifting story) or entertain (your brilliant rehearsal!) 

• Use video as much as possible – it’s twice as likely to be shared. Use live video if you  can – your live posts will be favoured by the algorithm which means they’ll be seen by  more people.  

• Encourage people to engage with your posts by asking questions, creating polls and  asking for feedback on your music.  

• Post at the time of day when your audience is likely to be online.  

• Be social! Spend time seeking out other accounts similar to yours and follow them.  

Where to post 

We focus on the following social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. If  you post on one of these platforms and tag us, we’ll do our best to engage with and/or  share your posts. Please see below for platform-specific guidelines and tips.  

When to post 

Don’t wait until the day of your event to post! 

Your planning, preparations and rehearsals all make for great social media content, so start posting as soon as you can. 

For more social media advice plus some stock copy you can use in your posts download the Make Music Day Stock Copy and Social Media Toolkit. 

You can also access the slides from our ‘How to Get the Most out of Your Social Media’ workshop – you’ll find lots more tips there. 

3. Guerilla Marketing – some unconventional techniques

Sometimes doing something unusual is the best way to grab people’s attention. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

How about trying some chalk messages in your neighbourhood (a great way to get the kids involved!). You’ll find some more inspiration here.

Got some flyers? Bring a smile to people’s faces while you’re delivering them by getting on your roller skates (or enlisting some more skate-y friends!)

An oldie but a goodie when it comes to spreading the word – surprise your community with a sandwich board – you’ll be surprised at how many people come up to talk to you….

Finally when it comes to spreading the word, don’t forget to start with the people you know – you may be surprised at how many people you can reach just by plugging into your existing communities. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing techniques around. 

So whether you’re using traditional PR, social media or guerilla marketing – or quite possibly all three! – make sure you’re making lots of noise about your Make Music Day event so that it can be enjoyed by as many people as possible. 

Need more support with promoting your event? Why not:

• Come along to one of our online Meet-ups or Ask Us Anything sessions
• Join our free Facebook group Make Music Day UK Community– a place where you can join in the chat with other event organisers – ask advice, share tips and experience and of course share your music
• Check out our Resources page – crammed with useful stuff about planning, promoting and running a Make Music Day event. 

~ with thanks to Chalise Zolezzi of Namm for the guerilla marketing ideas.