How to get publicity on Violinist.com

August 31, 2009, 6:24 PM ·

Updated February 2016

Our mission at Violinist.com is to help our readers share their love for the violin. To that end, we encourage professional violinists, and their representatives, to become part of the Violinist.com community.

No matter your role within the violin community, you can find ways to connect better with colleagues, fans, students and customers through participation in Violinist.com - whether you are a:

Publicist representing a major artist
Soloist looking to elevate your profile
Music school or teacher
Symphony administrator
Representative of a music camp or festival
Violin shop owner
Luthier

The Violinist.com features that best serve your needs will vary by your role, of course. Here are some of the ways that individuals in any of these roles can utilize Violinist.com to spread the word about their projects, products and events:

Blog:

Any registered member of Violinist.com can create a blog on the site. You might have a blog elsewhere on the Web, but a Violinist.com blog has the advantage of being exposed to an audience of more than 9,000 unique readers every day.

Violinist.com editor Laurie Niles also selects notable blog entries to highlight on Violinist.com's front page, as well as in our weekly e-mail, which is sent to thousands of violin players, teachers and fans around the world.

Writing a blog on Violinist.com immediately engages you with our loyal and passionate audience of thousands of violinists, in a way that blogging on a personal or corporate website cannot. You are welcome to cross-post entries from your other blog to your Violinist.com blog, but do remember that the best blog entries read like personal conversations with our readers, and not like dry, voiceless press releases.

Great topics for a blog entry include:

A behind-the-scenes account of practicing, performing or recording
A notice about an upcoming audition or application deadline, along with tips for success
An essay about a favorite artistic influence, musical or not.

Discussion Forum:

The heart of Violinist.com is its discussion forum, where members hang out to ask and answer questions about the violin... and life in general. This is a great place to interact with readers on a more intimate level, to find readers with a great curiosity about the violin, and to show your service to the violin community by providing answers.

You should use a lighter hand on the discussion forum than you would in a blog entry. Here, you are not the main voice in the conversation, as you would be in your own blog entry. Don't bring up personal projects unless they relate directly to the question at hand, and then only mention the project as necessary to address the question being discussed. Humility goes a long way in any online discussion.

Interviews:

Violinist.com editor Laurie Niles frequently interviews top performers and instructors in the violin world. She welcomes contact with representatives of these individuals, although she must warn that she cannot conduct every interview she is pitched. That's why we've created all these other ways for professional violinists to get publicity on Violinist.com.

All of the above services are provided free of charge to anyone who registers on Violinist.com. However, publishing and maintaining this valuable community service is not free. That is why Violinist.com offers a variety of sponsorship packages.

Advertise:

Your financial support of Violinist.com, through the purchase of advertising, allows us to continue serving the global violin community, as well as to provide all of the above services, free of charge to all members. Without advertisers, this community could not survive.

Violinist.com is a family business, owned and operated by Laurie and Robert Niles, of Pasadena, Calif. We don't have a corporate parent to support, so even a small sponsorship (from $50 up to $1000 a month) goes a long way toward helping us keep the site running as well as providing outstanding original reporting, interviews and coverage of the violin world. Please see our advertising page for a list of packages, as well as research data on Violinist.com's readers. You also can contact me - via robert@violinist.com - for more information, or to place an order. Thank you for your consideration.

Update: I've written an additional article on best practices for advertising a violin-related business. I hope you'll take a look at that one, too.