Getting heard is every musician’s biggest challenge.
Fortunately, the days of begging friends and family to attend shows and hoofing it around town with a stapler in one hand and a pile of poorly drawn show fliers in the other are over.
Technology has arrived and ushered in a new era of self promotion. As a result, plugging your band and getting bodies out to your shows has never been easier as long as you are familiar with the territory.

Rule No. 1: It’s all about social networking.
Here are a few sites you should become intimately familiar with as you move forward with a promotion plan:
Facebook/MySpace - Join and get to work amassing a loyal following of friends and strangers. These sites are a great place to share photos, push calendar dates (for shows) out to your “friends” list, post audio and video files of your music. The possibilities are endless.
Twitter - It’s easy to gather a large following quickly on Twitter. Search options allow musicians to pin point a target audience and pursue those followers. Then, keep your fans up to date on band goings on with 140-character “tweets.”

YouTube - Join this site and start your own channel. There you can post music videos, performances, audio recordings - whatever. And it does work - Justin Bieber went viral through the popular video sharing site.

Foursquare - Another social networking site that is changing how musicians self-promote. This site allows you to “check in” at various places so that all of your fans will know when you are playing and where.

Fanbridge - A site designed specifically to connect with fans and musicians in a way that is meaningful and long lasting. Fanbridge is a great way to develop a loyal fan base of people who have a strong interest in music and are more likely to buy recordings and attend shows.
The best part of all, every social networking site mentioned is easy to set up and use and is free. Now, the only thing holding your band back from stepping up to the next level is you. So get social!