(Don't) Read All About It.
This morning, I’m
suffering from a unique kind of stress that only comes from learning that next
week’s gala Mostly Comedy isn’t in the local paper.
I can’t complain. The amount of coverage we’ve had over the years is fantastic. I also heard tell that the show was mentioned briefly in a piece on Hitchin Festival last week – but our ticket sales suffer noticeably when they don't write a feature about it. They have a catchment we could never reach on our own, and if we can’t spread the word sufficiently, we risk ending up with a sparsely populated and expensive gig.
These days, our shows are sold primarily through Twitter and our mailing list. We’re lucky to have enough subscribers who are genuinely interested in the club to book tickets, plus a handful Twitter followers who repeatedly retweet our posts to push our line-up information about. This social interaction, however, soon reaches its limit, without a push from the local press. You need to reach the uninitiated too. The internet is great for spreading news quickly and cheaply, but without a PR budget, you only reach people who are actively seeking it; there’s still no substitute for a little well-placed copy in a newspaper that lands on the local area's collective doormat
Perhaps I’m being a little previous. We’ve sold a reasonable amount of tickets for the time-frame, but we still have a fair way to go to cover the cost and make it work. It’s not about making a profit; it’s about not making a loss – and putting on a good night in the process. I’ll spend the next seven days constantly checking the figures with my fingers crossed. Such is the life of a promoter.
I can’t complain. The amount of coverage we’ve had over the years is fantastic. I also heard tell that the show was mentioned briefly in a piece on Hitchin Festival last week – but our ticket sales suffer noticeably when they don't write a feature about it. They have a catchment we could never reach on our own, and if we can’t spread the word sufficiently, we risk ending up with a sparsely populated and expensive gig.
These days, our shows are sold primarily through Twitter and our mailing list. We’re lucky to have enough subscribers who are genuinely interested in the club to book tickets, plus a handful Twitter followers who repeatedly retweet our posts to push our line-up information about. This social interaction, however, soon reaches its limit, without a push from the local press. You need to reach the uninitiated too. The internet is great for spreading news quickly and cheaply, but without a PR budget, you only reach people who are actively seeking it; there’s still no substitute for a little well-placed copy in a newspaper that lands on the local area's collective doormat
Perhaps I’m being a little previous. We’ve sold a reasonable amount of tickets for the time-frame, but we still have a fair way to go to cover the cost and make it work. It’s not about making a profit; it’s about not making a loss – and putting on a good night in the process. I’ll spend the next seven days constantly checking the figures with my fingers crossed. Such is the life of a promoter.
