Adam Hoek Looks At Headliner.FM

Today I have another really in-depth guest post from Australian musician Adam Hoek. Adam reached out about a recent post I did on Headliner.fm. Below is a pretty good guide to using the service which is gaining steam. If you would like to write a guest post, please send your idea over to marketing@genyrockstars.com.

10 Tips To Getting Ahead With Headliner.fm

A short time ago I saw Greg from Gen-Y Rock Stars talking about a website called Headliner.fm. I decided to take it upon myself to get a deeper look into it and this is what I have learnt to work best so far.

First up lets look at how it all functions. Dont worry, if I can do it, you can do it!

Headliner works like this

• Step1: Set up a 120 character promotion to be broadcast through twitter, myspace and or facebook.
• Step2: Shedual when you would like your promotion to be released.
• Step3: Submit your promotion to a specified cloud of people(musicians) and hope for the best.
• Step4: ????
• step5: Profit

What is great about Headliner.fm is that it is music focused.

It works in a similar manner as paid tweets. But you dont want your local cat lady promoting your band, you want great bands with tons of fans to promote your music!

This site caters to the fans of bands connected to headliner.fm. They are the ones that will see your promotions in the end.exciting right? Realistically, you are looking at 1% of this number to be a click through and 10% of the click throughs to actually be of any use at all. While this number continues to get smaller and smaller the great thing is that your potential audience is FREAKING HUGE 49million music loving fans at your disposal and you can get to these people at a very low cost!

Dont get scared now, Im just going to run some numbers for those interested. Scroll down further if numbers make you queezy. Yay for math!

For ease lets just say there is an audience of 50 million(I dont like math with odd numbers)

50,000,000 potential fans(PF) = 500,000 click throughs(CT) = 50,000 people giving you results(R).
For math lovers thats PF/100=CT
CT/10=R
Thats a lot of results. If you were selling a CD for 10 dollars, this promotion could generate 500,000 dollars.
Thats at least a years worth of McDonalds! (*depending on your eating habits) Pretty exciting stuff!

Man those numbers look sweet. I dont even like math but when it comes to sales like that, I get interested pretty fast! Of course this type of promotion doesnt come easy. That’s why I want to give you some easy tips to follow, to generate the biggest number of potential fans(PF) to feed your McDonalds cravings.

Enough numbers… BRING ON THE TIPS!!
Below are 10 tips for making headliner.fm work for you.

Tip 1: Promote something worth promoting.
Sure, this seems like an obvious step, but it is critical.
With the power that can be generated from this site, you have to make your promotions count.

What not to do:

• Promote the fact that you got a new puppy.
• Sure it seems exciting to you, but face it…a lot of people have puppies, its not that interesting…sorry.

What to do:

• Promote an album release.
• This is what will generate fans which will make you money.
• With this money you can buy as many puppies as you like!
• You get the idea.

Tip 2: Time your promotions inteligently.

You can set up your promotion schedule by date and time(morning afternoon and night)use this to your advantage! You have to account for time for your promotion to go through the site and for your PF(potential fans) to read and react to your message. From my investigations I have found that 6 days will get you through the system with the best results. From the time the promotion rolls out, you have to give enough time for peoples reaction.

This is usually a shorter time, I would say it is safe to account for a full day before you see any reaction. Also these promotions go out world wide. So you may need your promotion to go out while the rest of the world is sleeping…if thats your kinda thing.

What not to do:

• Set up a promotion for a meet and greet with the band on the same day as the actual meet and greet.
• Internet is fast… but its not that fast!
• Because pushers(other bands/artists) have to see your promotion in site, if you promote on the same day, a lot of pushers wont even have
• logged on before your meet and greet happens.
• Face it, a lot of musicians are lazy and will not follow your schedual.

What to do:

• Set up your pomotion well in advance (minimum 6 days for best results) and allow 1 day for reaction time from potential fans.
• This way pushers see your promotion request in their own time which generates more PF.

Tip 3: Make your promotions fun!

People want to be entertained, they dont want to click on adds. So hide your add within your promotion. Make it look like the pusher loves you.
You are the one who chooses what is written not them. The pusher already has fans eating out of their hands.
So what the pusher loves, their fans now love.

What not to do:
promotion example:

‘ADAMHOEK has a new music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVt1ZynvHXA’

Sure it works, but would you click it? Its a pretty lame promo and will not get you many CT(click throughs)
And odds are pushers wont even push it, just because it looks boring, which cuts down your PF considerably.

What to do:
Promotion Example:

‘ HAHA HAA that ADAMHOEK song is helarious its already got 20,000 views.OMG I’m gonna watch it again! http://bit.ly/x6JAe ‘

Doesn’t that make you want to click it more? (*maybe over did it a bit with the OMG) The more personable they are, the more likely they will get CT. There are some big artists on this site like Diddy, Weezer and We the Kings. If Diddy tweeted the above promotion wouldnt you click it? Yeah you would.

Tip 4: Focus your reach.

If you make GrungeCore-Metal-Screamo-Post-PunkRock. Dont waste your time/money advertizing to soft jazz fans. This goes for you Jazz softies too. Of course dont be too focused…or else where is the fun? If you make Jazz consider who your PF is. Not just Jazz lovers but possibly Pop, Acoustic, Ambient, Blues lovers etc…

headliner.fm gives you the possibilty to set it up however you wish

Also where would you like your promotion to go?

So far, your options are twitter, facebook and myspace. If you want just tweets select just tweets. This is really up to you. I myself dont find mypace to be particularily exciting for promotion. Facebook on the other hand can be very useful due to its large continued growth in recent years.

Tip 5: Add a link.

Everyone loves media, thats why there is so much out there. Posts that have a little blue highlight in them somewhere generally get more views than without them. Its just the way it goes.

Like this link here http://bit.ly/aIiC6J

Where does it go? Where will I whisk you away to now? Is it a rick roll? WHO KNOWS! Pretty exciting. Right? Go on click it. Get it out of your system.

Also use a url shortener like bit.ly to give your promotions more room to breathe within the 120 character limitation!

Tip 6: Use the power of the ants!

The natural first thing you want to do is get Diddy to promote your band. But seriously guy, what are the odds of that happening? Sure its relativly higher than usual through headliner.fm but still come on, seriously?

When looking at the fanbase of artists on the page, make sure to look at the ones with only very few fans. You can try and get Weezer to promote your band, but odds are they get so many promotions they will be very selective with their
choices.

The bands with 30 fans are the ones you want. Smaller time artists. There is a certain credability and intamacy that comes from a promotion through smaller artists. Beacuse their fans want them to grow they are more likely to click through and have a good look at your promotion.

There are a lot of people out there, but there are waaaay more ants. Did you know that the collective weight(biomass) of ants on earth now, exeeds the weight(biomass) of humans on earth now? There are 6 billlion of us! Thats a heck of a lot of ants.

In music the same phenomenon exists. There are way more small time artists than large scale artists. Use them to your advantage!

Tip 7: Screen your Promotion requests.

Odds are someone will ask you to promote something for them as well!

Aren’t you suddenly the popular one! Do you feel the power? I can see the fire in your eyes already! But dont let it get to your head! With great power comes great responsibility (lesson learned from watching spiderman).

Initially you will see that promotions that you accept will give you bandbucks(site credits).With these credits you can make more promotions! Yay for you. But you may soon realize that you will be loosing your own fans due to your twitter/facebook feed being filled with strange promotions. Choose which promotions you think match your style and are worth pushing. Check their links to make sure they are functional and have a listen to their music. If you don’t like it, why do you think your fans will?

Tip 8: Connect with new fans!

Once a promotion has gone through and people click through your link, make sure that you talk to them. They obviously want to know you a little bit better. This works very well if you are asking for twitter followers or collecting emails. Send them a little personal message. It will blow their mind, that a cool artist like you is talking to them! When you talk to them early, they will more than likely stick for a few months (even if you are not doing much with your music!).

Tip 9: Stop walking and start running!

Before you even put up a promotion have your second one ready and your 3rd in the works. This way you will constantly be visible online which is good for your presence, which will make pushers more likely to push you. Don’t do 1 promotion and sit back for a few months. Get out there and get stuff done did fool(I use fool in the politest way possible)

Tip 10: DO IT ALREADY!

It seriously is a powerful tool and can really shed a tonne of light on to what your doing as an artist. What are you waiting for? You can make promotions for free and once you get confident in it, put in like 10 bucks and see how far you get?

With my 10 bucks I can reach 17,200+ possible fans. How much can you get with your 10 bucks?

Send me your promotions and let me see what your doing with it.

If you’ve got questions don’t hesitate to holler at me via twitter, email or smoke signals.
Party hard, or hardly party.

• Twitter: @adamhoekmusic
• email: music@adamhoek.com
• website: http://www.adamhoek.com
• Get 35+minutes worth of free ADAMHOEK jams at http://bit.ly/aIiC6J