Dear Christian Music Industry,

Have you been by any of the “heavy hitting” bloggers pages lately?  Oh, come on CMI.  Do you mind if I call you that?  CMI?  I feel like we are friends enough now right? Anyway, I know you have been visiting a bunch of these “heavy hitting” blogs recently.  You know how I know?  It’s this new little thing that your marketing people are doing called the “Blog CD Giveaway”.  Yep, I know it’s you.  I know that you are the one’s contacting these bloggers with massive amounts of readers and asking them to talk about and give away the new records you are releasing.  They are everywhere.  Autographed copies, pre-release copies, copies with t-shirts, copies with posters.  There’s a number of ways that one lucky reader of these popular blogs can take home something special from either their favorite artist or a brand new artist they have never heard of.  It’s a good move CMI, and I support it.  Well done.

I do have one question about this tactic though.  And I’m not even being as sarcastic as I normally am with you.  Are you ready?  Here it is.  How come you recognize blogging as a valuable form of marketing to the masses yet you still are struggling to get your artists to blog themselves?  There’s an easy way to get your artists to blog well and all you have to do is ask.

I will give you one guess, Christian Music Industry, who would write about your artists new records with more passion and more excitement than any blogger you will ever meet.  Do you want to know who it is?  It’s the artist themselves.  I know, it sounds silly.  Why would an artist talk about something that they have spent the last year and a half giving birth to?  Surely they aren’t going to be able to convey a message more convincing than a popular blogger, right?

Maybe look at it this way.  I could show you pictures of friends kids, and I could talk about them all day and I could even get you to tell me that they are cute and you like their dimples or something, but think of the difference between that and me telling you about my kids.  What if I showed you pictures of my kids?  Told you about how they jumped off the couch and got a concussion?  Showed you their first day of school pictures?  Wouldn’t you be more convinced of my passion for my own kids?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about other people telling the world how cute my kids are, but if I am going to ask people to talk about my kids and tell people how great they are, wouldn’t I be doing that myself as well?  Wouldn’t I create a platform where I could join in the conversation and give people the real inside stuff?  The stuff popular bloggers might not know about?

As always, it’s great to talk to you Christian Music Industry.  Let’s get coffee soon.

Brody

Read Parts 1-7 Here