Making it fit your Niche and the Personal Side of a Playwright's Self Promotion
Making It Fit
One of the problems with being a "niche" artist is that when it comes to promoting yourself, you have to find "niche" methods. As I stated in a previous post, there are countless numbers of folks out there writing about tricks, tips, and methods of marketing yourself. I know because I do read them. Not every piece of marketing advice is going to apply to you, so you will have to run much of it through some heavy-duty filters. As an example, here are a few decent websites:
For Musicians: (my friend Bob Baker's) The Buzz Factor
And one of my favorite blogs -Seth Godin's Blog
As for myself, a comedy murder mystery playwright, I have to sift through much of the information, on-line and in books, and twist it to fit what I do. Years ago, my friend Mr. Baker hosted an "Indie Music Boot camp" and he asked me to come and videotape the various presentations. There were some great guest speakers offering insight into the "indie" world of self-promotion including Derek Sivers, founder/creator of CD BABY, and Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR Music. As I listened to the speaker's pontificate on marketing and promotion, I found it was easy to replace the word "musician" with the word "playwright" and apply the advice to myself. (except the bit about creating an email list for a nifty Newsletter -everybody is on that bandwagon!)
I encourage any artist, whatever your niche, to read the information available about promoting and marketing and modify it to fit yourself.
The Human Element
What the guest speakers discussed was "Social Marketing". The major factor of social networking sites is the personal interaction or human element. Back in High School, when I was an actor in "The Miracle Worker", the playwright, William Gibson, did not have a Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook page. He did not have a website. You could not jump on-line and find out if he "Liked" anything or posted photos of his lunch.
If you desired to interact with him, you could write a letter and send it off to his publishing company and maybe, just maybe, they would forward it to him. Perhaps, years later, he might respond.
Today, you can find and interact with almost anyone on the internet. Many of the theatre groups and/or actors that have been involved with my scripts are my "friends" on Facebook. I get emails from High School students who are involved in my plays and have questions about characters or dialogue, which come straight to me (not forwarded from a publishing company) and I always respond personally.
I have visited High Schools during productions and held Question/Answer sessions and lead the students through some improv games. I'm not telling you all this to toot my own horn, but only to claim that "personal interaction" is one of the best methods of "self-promotion" you can utilize. People will remember you from the interaction of answered email, phone call, or personal appearance more than they will remember the name from a name printed on a page.
The Discussion Interaction
There are many websites such as Linkedin or Reddit that have "discussion groups" related to your field. People interested in a topic (writing, music, art, self-publishing, etc.. ) can seek advice, introduce themselves or maybe even rant. Many social networking sites have discussion groups for your field of interest. I would warn you however about jumping into any discussion group to use it as an advertising billboard for yourself:
"Hi, I'm an Amazing Playwright and have 500 scripts your Theatre needs to produce!"
Gee, thanks, Goober! But this is a Playwright Discussion Forum and we are all amazing playwrights and we all have scripts. It would have helped if you were familiar with this fact. I believe the appropriate response involves the phrase "preaching to the choir". Read over the threads in the groups to get a good idea of what the topics are about before you jump in guns a-blazing. I have seen this happen many times and other people on the discussion boards can get irritated and share a few unkind words. Don't be spammy.
I have lurked on several boards to read topics relative to what I wanted to know. On occasion, I would post a question and I would get educated answers. Discussion boards are a great place to get information.
Anyway, I encourage any artist to interact with other artists. Lend advice or participate in any discussions that may be posted. Stay away from the Smarmy Salesman approach. Use it to "network" with others in your field. I have met other playwrights who specialize in certain types of plays, (musicals, children's plays) and will refer work to them and in turn, they will do the same for me.
In fact, before writing this blog, I posted a question on the Playwrights Group, seeking other writers to share "How They Promote or Market" themselves and hopefully will get some responses I can include in my next blog. There is also a comment section below if anyone wishes to contribute.
