Surviving Covid-19; Events, Musicians and Photographers

With the government’s latest announcement, pushing us into the ‘social distancing’ stage of the strategy to tackle the Coronavirus outbreak, there’s a serious concern around people in the events industry, from musicians, artists, photographers, promoters and event organisers, the impact is massive.

As with my previous blog, I’m aiming to share some free advice for people who may be struggling or worrying about where the next paycheque might come from. It’s not groundbreaking stuff but if it helps someone open up a few new doors digitally to get some cash in whilst we ride this situation out, then I’ll be happy.

If you have some kind of skill, whether you're a photographer, videographer, DJ, Musician, Producer, Mixologist or something else - People are always interested to learn more from you, especially in these times where we could have a bit of free time on our hands. There's a tonne of people, especially over in the states that are making money from teaching skills through webinars and training courses online and the fact they're all online eliminates the need for human contact and perfect for people self-isolating.

Have a think about what you do which people may be interested in, here's a couple of ideas;

• Photographers - A guide to Adobe Light Room and live image edits.

• Videographers - A beginners guide to Premiere Pro.

• Musicians/DJ's/Producers - Advice on how to produce, mix or scoring.

• Mixologists/Cocktail Makers - Online cocktail making classes?

• Promoters - Event & Event Marketing guides?

Thought of an idea about the course you'd like to run? Perfect. It's time to get your Webinar set up. Zoom is a favourite and allows in webinar chat functionality, allowing you to answer questions as you go. Here's a good list of some free webinar services which are available if you want to have a look around; https://growthlab.com/free-webinar-service/

Remember - Before you do your first webinar, have a practice run with family and friends that way you're not hitting tech issues when you first go live with paying customers.

Once you're all set up and ready, you can head to Eventbrite and list your event. This will allow you to sell tickets and most importantly, make money. When setting up your event, make sure you give your Webinar a killer description as this will ultimately be your sales pitch.

Link to Eventbrite here - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/

Now you've got your webinar planned, it's time to promote it. The cheapest way of doing this, head to Social Media. Use paid social ads to target people you think would be interested but remember, you don't necessarily want to preach to the choir - If you're doing a photography course, you don't want to target other professional photographers. Think about how amateur photographers might be using social media and what pages they might be following and aim to target them that way. Once you've done your first webinar, this process will get easier. You can use the email database from the first group of Webinar sign-ups to build a lookalike audience on Facebook to get even more refined with your targeting. Find out more about Facebook ads and Lookalike Audiences here - https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531?id=401668390442328

Now a special note for Event Photographers facing cancelled gigs...

I know there’s a lot of people looking to start selling prints. For those that don’t know, there’s a free app out there called ‘MiPics’ - Available on the App Store.

You can upload your pictures in there en-masse and it will configure them into an array of different products, such as prints, pillows, phone cases and more. You can set up your own page with all your products on there and promote it through your social media pages.

Use Paid Facebook/Instagram Advertising to drive clicks and sales. There's a wealth of different targeting options in Facebook, which allows you to target people to suit your photography discipline, for example, if you're into landscapes and travel, there's targetting options available to those that love landscape and travel shots. Similarly, you can target based on the product, for example, iPhone cases to IOS users and Pillows to new homeowners. They do take a small percentage of the overall sale but it takes the faff out of printing, packaging and fulfillment and it diversifies your product portfolio completely.

MiPic Available on the AppStore - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mipic/id740119533

Finally, for those in creative industries that support the events industry; collate a portfolio and email it to every creative marketing agency close to where you're based. You might specialise in events but marketing agencies will still be promoting social media content, TV ads and potentially podcasts and a lot of smaller agencies outsource projects on a campaign by campaign basis. It's worth getting on their radar as people get sick and drop out so you're available as an overflow.

I hope this helps people! As always, any questions, my inbox is open or if you're in a different industry looking for support during this pandemic, make a suggestion in the comments below and I'll add it to my list of industries to talk about.