How does one expand his or her fan base? This is an issue I have been wrestling with for several months, perhaps since I started playing with the Savoys. The problem is that around our neck of the woods "advertising" or promoting a gig consists of small letters on a marquee outside the club we are minding that weekend. This is appreciated, however it is not enough to get the word out.Word of mouth is always the best advertising, but when you play bars, people sometimes forget important details, like the bands' name. I believe Orv has a list of email addresses of friends, family and a few fans which he alerts frequently to upcoming shows. This has always been a tried-and-true method of keeping in touch with your fans; I remember going to punk shows as a kid, and all the up-and-coming bands had a mailing list where you could add your name and address to the list, and you would get (if you were lucky) 2 newsletters per year from the band, or their management telling you what's been new and exciting in the band's career. This, of course, was before the days of email, websites, and blogs.
I particularly don't like the idea of a mailing list. People are more alarmed than ever about identity theft, and I don't like the idea of collecting all this personal information and (God forbid) somebody hacks into my system and takes all that information. The possibility of this happening, however remote, is very real.
This leaves fledging bands like us in a quagmire. If we can't go to our fans, how can they come to us? If we want a dedicated fanbase, we need to communicate with them frequently.
The answer is right here. But only for those who -- out of luck, or an undetermined period of web sleuthing would stumble onto this page. Furthermore, how do our fans even know that we exist on the world wide web?
So I decided to create a business card, something small, economical, expendable, that can sit at the tables and be large enough to attract attention, but small enough to not be a nuisance. Furthermore, if you win over a new table of fans, all they have to do is pocket the business card and take it home. I thought it was a great idea, and the rest of the band agreed.
The image at the top of this post is what I managed to put together over the course of yesterday afternoon. There are two imbedded images; the most obvious one is a photo of Orville's new saxophone, the other is a (heavily) faded image of the band on stage.
Over the next several weeks, I am going to continue this experiment, and see (a) if people take these cards in their possession, and (b) if this generates web traffic, and thusly, a larger fanbase. We should know the results by the end of April.
