Be prepared. In order to promote your shows, your band needs to have updated band photos (hard copies and high resolution JPEGs), a press kit (with photos, band bio, sample music and a few press clippings in a folder or online) and a website. Set up profiles at MySpace or Facebook, as well as Last.fm or other social or musical networking sites to promote your band’s music and upcoming shows (see Resources below).
Work with the club. Once you book the show, ask the club or music venue if they will promote the show at all. Sometimes clubs make up their own flyers or announcements about certain events.
Collaborate. Ask the venue what other bands are playing the same night as your band so you can make contact with them. Contact the band via phone, email or Internet profile to see how they are promoting the show and how all of you could join forces in order to promote the show well.
Alert the media. Get a list of media outlets—newspapers, alternative weeklies, radio and television stations, school campus media—in the area from a local Chamber of Commerce, online or in the phone book. Send a press release or press kit to local and area media several weeks before the show, or as soon as you book the gig. If you don’t hear anything from the media within a few weeks of the show, contact the appropriate department head (i.e. music or entertainment editor or producer) to follow up that they received the materials and ask if they would like to set up an interview or have any other questions. If you absolutely can’t get a feature article in the paper or a segment on the air, at least ask if you can be placed on an event calendar.
Be available. Make sure the media knows your band’s website, email address(es), phone number(s) and other contact information; when the media contacts you, make you or your band members as available as possible and keep your appointment—you might only get one shot.
Get connected. Create MySpace, Facebook and Last.fm bulletins, messages and announcements promoting the show. If you are creative and computer savvy, create online banners promoting your band or the show.
Create flyers. Using a word processing or publishing computer software, create 8.5 by 11 and/or quarter-page flyers, which should include your band name, venue name and location, date and time of the show, cost of the show and possibly a band picture. Print out flyers on white or colorful paper in color and/or black and white.
Post flyer around town. When you are in the vicinity of the venue or town, hand out flyers to people and place flyers at the venue, in merchant windows, on restaurant and public bulletin boards, campus buildings and anywhere else you aren’t vandalizing or littering. If you are not in town near the date of the show, send flyers to the venue, record stores or your friends and fans to see if they can place them in public.
Enlist the help of your friends and fans. Get your friends, fans and anybody else to help promote your show by having them hand out and post flyers, post online messages and spread word of the show by mouth.