The second part of my guide to doing your own DIY night or putting on bands! Like all good advice that I can pass on about promoting, you can frequently find me not doing most of it – I tend to just pick and chew at what I can in the time I’ve got.

The humble flyer is still the most important bit of paper in the independent promoters arsenal. Posters can be too easily ignored, but putting a flyer into someone’s hand actually makes people make a decision about a night and whether they want to go. Chances are it’ll be a probably not – but they’ve had to take in the information to make that decision. A flyer will also follow them home if they take it and maybe even adorn the fridge making it less likely they’ll forget that the event is on and why they would want to go.

It’s important to get all the information on the flyer. Annoyingly I frequently forget to put the myspace or website address on mine. Location, bands/music that you’ll be playing, price, time, venue are equally important. I guess I think that because these are the reasons why people will want to go and how they will go to it.

I’ve never splashed out on shiny printed flyers, they look more professional but I’m not sure that they’re cost effective, and if you’re planning a break even budget, you’d only have to push the cost onto the people coming through the door.

Photocopies are not the most elegant of things - but they’re cheap. A good design will make up for the deficiencies of the photocopy. I still feel that there’s nothing wrong with borrowing images of things that you like – cartoon characters, bands, stars of the silver screen, images that re-enforce the ethos of the night are all good. The Sugarfoot Stomp flyers (such as the one below) are excellently designed with consistent imagery running through month after month so you know what you’re getting with the night, but it also makes the flyers easier to recognise so you’re more likely to spot it in amongst several flyers.

Having said that, there’s no point in going overboard on design if you don’t have time. I’m sure Peter Saville would disagree, but it’s much better to have a flyer out than an excellently designed one sat in your living room.

In terms of putting them about, flyer racks are ideal – record shops all have them! I’ll put together a list of *everywhere* that you can put flyers down at some point. Ooh, and I’ll do a map! *gets excited*. You need to pop flyers in the venue too, ideally when you put the posters up, and if you’re ever walking past the venue where you’re doing your event then swing in and pop some down on the tables.

I used to do a large amount of flyering outside of gigs but less so now, it’s currently illegal to distribute free printed material in the city centre without a £250 permit (if you’re found guilty the fine is £2500)… so use your discretion if you choose to flyer outside of gigs.

I was really pissed off when this law first came in because it missed out Broad Street which is the one place in the city centre which could do with a good law on flyering. The process which is repeated tens of thousands of times down Broad Street goes “ooh you’re pretty and you’re paying me attention, a flyer with another girl on it thank you very much, I’m a bit drunk and incapable of taking in the information so I’ll just pop it on the floor here where I like to keep my flyers”. Pleasingly there is a consultation out which will be extended to Broad Street, although Digbeth is also being consulted over.

I’ve always picked up any flyers which people drop anyway, most gigs I flyer outside tend to have less than 50 people in anyway so it’s no big chore.

Flyering outside of club nights is a similar business. I used to flyer outside of Snobs to varying degrees of success. If you’re targeting your flyering right then it’ll probably be a night you’ll want to go to… so flyer inside the venue, why not?

Actually, you could piss the venue owner off if you’re promoting a night in a different venue – and you don’t want to do that as you may need to book their venue further down the line, so either ask (chances are they’ll say no) or again use your discretion. If you’re flyering inside then talk to people when you give them the flyer. If you’re enthusiastic about your event to someone, then hopefully they’ll want to look at your flyer more.

Keep some flyers with you too in case you bump into people who ask when the next one is.

Scanning them in and flyering on myspace is a bit hit and miss. Some profiles are just full of flyers and I think people will just ignore them. I think part of the point is it needs to be a credible source – so post less flyers and only to people that you know and use it as the start of the conversation (you should only really be able to post flyers on the myspaces of people that you know to be honest – if feels nice having loads of myspace friends but does it *actually* get people to your gigs or do they just start to ignore the bulletins that they get from you and loads of other bands/clubnights. Not even the Arctic Monkeys myspaced their way to success. This isn’t anti-myspace, just use it carefully.

Finally, pop some flyers round the venue on the night. If you’ve booked the upstairs or downstairs of somewhere, then it doesn’t hurt to put flyers on tables in the main bar.

Hope this helps, this is what I do but different things may work for different people yaddah yaddah yaddah.

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