If you are an Upstate SC musician or venue, you probably want to get your events listed on the Upstate Live Music SC Palmetto Showcase calendar so that you come up in searches from the hundreds of people looking for events every day (over 2500 one day this week hit our site with over 20 THOUSAND page views that day!)…
How do you get listed? It’s simple, however, you have to meet a couple requirements:
First, the event must feature LIVE MUSIC. That could come in the form of a solo musician, a duo, a trio or combo, a full band, an orchestra, an acapella group or choir, even karaoke is being included.
The event needs to be open to the public, not a private event. Yes, you can have ticket sales or cover charges, but if it’s listed, people need to be able to attend.
The event must be local to the Upstate of South Carolina. That means, we want to focus on Greenville, Pickens, Oconee, Abbeville, Greenwood, Cherokee, Laurens, Spartanburg, McCormack and Anderson counties. Not to say we will not allow an event in Newberry or over the line into NC – we simply want to focus on what can be easily driven to in an hour of the center of “The Upstate”.
The event CAN be a jam night, open mic, or a festival. It can feature 1 act, or even 20.
If your event/s fit those criteria, congratulations, you’re ready to move on!
What’s the process for adding an event?
I’m glad you asked! Go to our Palmetto Showcase site and select “Add Live Music Event” from the top menu. Don’t see the menu? You must be on mobile – instead you might seen a “hamburger menu”, 3 dots, or 3 lines at the top of the page. Click on that and you will see the options you need.
NOTE: You will be prompted to login – but you can register if you do not have an account. Don’t worry, the account is FREE and always will be! In the future you can then use the “Login” menu option anytime you wish….
Once you are on the “Add Live Music Event” you will want to input as much information as you can, since people are only interested in attending events they know something about. It’s up to you to tell them!
Here’s what I recommend for the input fields:
EVENT TITLE: I recommend you put something descriptive of your act, such as “The Epic Band at The Amazing Bar” (Yes, those are fictitious, probably). This is VERY important because you only get a second to get someone’s attention and if you just put “Epic Band”, that is a missed opportunity to tell them where. It could be “The Epic Band Rocks Seneca” or “The Epic Band – A tribute to Elvis”.
EVENT DESCRIPTION: Okay folks, this is where you get to tell all about your show. It could be the same information every single time and you could cut and paste, or you could craft this on a per event basis. PUT SOMETHING for goodness sakes. Tell what type of music, what your best songs are. Tell what the specials are at the venue. If you don’t take this opportunity to tell people something about you, what on earth would convince them to come see you? A sentence or a paragraph at least! “We play 60s shagadelic music and pass out LSD” would be better than absolutely nothing
EVENT TIME & DATE: Note that this defaults to 8am – you’re probably not playing at 8am, so set this…. Setting an end time can help people determine if they can make it to your show before you quit playing. Don’t know when you will end? Guess.
You can set RECURRING events here! Say you have a standing weekly gig at The Amazing Bar (good for you!) after you input your date and start/end time, now click the “ADD MORE EVENTS” button. You could select “WEEKLY”, then every 1 week, and set the series ends on to some date in the future, say next year. Now the calendar will populate with your event on a weekly basis without you doing anything else at all.
If you have 2+ appearances at the same venue, you can also opt to select “ADD MORE EVENTS” and for “Event Series”, select “ONCE”, and then in the “On” field, select your next date from the calendar and now you have the original date, and this second one. You could add a 3rd, and so on.
EVENT IMAGE: How about putting your logo here? Sure, you could upload a different graphic for each event, but there’s something to be said for consistency. If you are going to be entering more than a handful of events, I would recommend using the same logo or photo, that way, they are easy to spot as you scroll through the listings. It’s a way to help with your brand familiarity.
What works? Before you upload something, scroll through the calendar and look at what others are doing. If you see something that catches your eye, it probably works pretty well. Do that. But remember, some people will be looking on phones, some on computers. A bad graphic may look better/worse on a different device. Aim for a high resolution logo.
If it will not upload, it’s probably too large in size. Try scaling it down.
EVENT CATEGORIES: These are important if you want people to find you while using the filters. If you are a rock band, and you play rock music, select those at the minimum. Really, you should pick the top 3 or 4 genres that fit your act. Try to avoid categories that don’t fit your band lest people come to your show after finding you and end up hating you for a poor description.
EVENT TAGS: These can help you get noticed and found too! Find a few that describe your act.
EVENTS STATUS: Should be “Scheduled” unless you are editing an event and need to cancel it.
ORGANIZER DETAILS: This is YOU, or you could assign it to another organizer. An Organizer can manage more than their own listings. You could volunteer to help out another act, or your side-act, etc.
EVENT WEBSITE: Do you have another page with more information? Do you have tickets for sale? You can use this field to point people to the ticketing site. Or you could point it to your band’s page, or Facebook, or Instagram. It’s not necessary, but it’s an opportunity to drive people to you other site.
ADDITIONAL FIELDS: I added these to help people who might not want to go to a smoking venue, or people who may be looking to take their kids, or who want a stronger drink than beer – setting these is a nice thing to do to help people decide if they want to come without having to do research on their own.
EVENT COST: Set this to 0 or leave blank if there is no cover, no tickets.
Agree to the terms – where you acknowledge that the site is offered as is, yada yada and then hit the SUBMIT EVENT and you’re done!
Remember – the more you tell, the easier it is for people to decide if your event is for them.
People will typically look at the event and if there is no information there, they will go on to the next one. It is unlikely they will go google your band, your venue, or your event.
Give them information, get seen, and get followers!
Good luck… If you need any help, just let me know…
-John M. Hoyt – Upstate Live Music SC / Hot As A Pepper Party Band