Every DIY musician would like more people at their gigs and shows.  But what is the best way drive an online social media audience to a show?

How do you get your online audience to leave their home and turn up to a show?

Here’s how most indie musicians promote a show.  They’ll upload a jpg of the event poster to social media.  They’ll maybe post a link to the Facebook event and leave it at that. What you need to do is show an audience what they are missing out on.  You should be focusing on showing people the end product, in other words your onstage performance.

We’ve all seen commercials for fast food restaurants.

Lots of shots of the tasty ingredients and the final money shot with someone eating and enjoying their burger.  That’s what you need to be aiming for.  Show your online audience what they’d get if they turned up to a show, the ‘end product’. Here’s how you execute that.

Show people evidence your live performances as often as you can. Photos are good.

Want people at your shows? Let them see the ‘end product’

Video is even better. A video shot on a phone is fine as long as the audio is of a reasonable quality and not distorting. I’d recommend getting some high quality gig filming done at some point with an audio feed taken from the mixing desk.

My band played a festival this summer (see footage below) and we were one of the only acts to take our own cameraman so that we can show our performance to our online audience at a later date. An expense yes, but an investment also.

If you’re lucky to have a good number of people at your shows, make sure you also film the audience.  Show your online fans that they can be part of a ‘real world community’ and that they are missing out on a shared experience.

If you don’t have anyone to film or take photos ask your audience to do some filming and to take some snaps to pass to you after the show (maybe for a beer or two?).  You can even get creative and use a Gopro style camera like this.

In summary, people want to know what they are getting before spending their time and parting with their money.  If you show them (and keep showing them) they are more likely to come out and watch you!

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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