Talk is Cheap!

Last Thursday, I attended an un-conference hosted by the students in my class at Centennial College. Talk is Cheap 3.0, was the third annual social media un-conference put on by the PR and Corp Com class of 2010.
One of the sessions I attended was called Music Blogging, and it was led by Parker Mason, an employee at Maverick PR agency. Although the title was slightly misleading, as the session did not focus solely on music blogs, the presentation was about blogging and pitching in general. During his presentation, Mason advocated blogging for interest’s sake, and gave general tips on making pitches to journalists, writers and bloggers.
As a new artist, inviting bloggers to check out your material is a great way to get a conversation started. If a blogger writes a review of your work, your name will go out to all of that blog’s subscribers. This will increase your brand awareness, as well as, create new and potential fans. Putting samples (songs, artwork, photography, writing etc) of your work up for critique is a great way to get your name out there. Word of mouth is powerful.
As for pitching an idea or story, Mason made it very clear that targeting the right person is key. Sending out random email blasts will never be as successful as sending your pitches to the appropriate source(s). Figure out what the best channel for your message would be (journalist, editor, blogger etc). Then, send your pitch to one or two targeted sources. Make sure you send your material to someone who is interested in, or currently writes about your style of art. If you send pitches to the wrong people, they just end up in the trash. So do your research!
Essential tips for making a pitch:
- Make info easy to access
- Don’t send html emails (not easy to read on mobile devices)
- Don’t follow up (it’s annoying)
I learned from the presentation that if you’re going to start a blog, make sure you write about something you’re interested. If you don’t, creating posts will seem arduous and you may lose interest. Writing about an interest will make for a much more enjoyable experience. Mason writes two blogs, one is called blogcampaigning.com and the other is 199x.org The first blog is about issues in PR, and the second is about electronic music and science fiction. Mason openly admitted that he does not enjoy writing for the PR blog. He felt he had to create this blog in order to stay relevant in the PR field. He much prefers to write on the other blog, that he started for fun. One of the greatest perks of creating such a blog is that people send him stuff to check out all the time.