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take a guess....

[daveofficer]

buy one get one free spanners

get it? hahahaha

god i'm bored.

[Cloud]

The best tool would be increasing the diversity of the posters on here. I don't think it escapes people's attention that some aspects of the music scene are over represented, while other aspects are completely ignored.

but that will be the aspect wherever you go really....
i'm talking about getting it out to as many people as possible.

[Jan Deal]

Originally Posted by daveofficer

buy one get one free spanners

get it? hahahaha

god i'm bored.

Dammit, I was going to say spanner.

[daveofficer]

Originally Posted by SlowDazzle

Dammit, I was going to say spanner.

ha! i win again! weeeeee!

see how i added the promotional element as well? oh yea, i'm the king.

someone had to get in before alan cynic with the terrible puns for once.

[Cloud]

Originally Posted by pop-notmyface

but that will be the aspect wherever you go really....
i'm talking about getting it out to as many people as possible.

As many people as possible?

Best bet would be decent posters put up in prominent places in all the venues - encouraging people to come and check it out. Convincing promoters to also mention a-m.com wouldn't hurt, as would getting them to offer discounts to people who were made aware of the gig through this website.

Ultimately though, a good website will promote itself.

[daveofficer]

Originally Posted by Cloud

Ultimately though, a good website will promote itself.

really? how? by taking on some kind of sentient mind of it's own and spamming mailboxes once it reaches critical 'goodness'?

word of mouth only goes so far on the web and doesn't reach everyone that could make good use of this website. so many people in aberdeen have no idea about things that happen here and even less about this website.

a girl in my class moved here a few years ago from holland and asked me recently if there was any rock clubs in aberdeen. i was quite surprised cause i assumed(obviously naively) that if you were into rock and metal you would've seeked these places out straight away but i guess how would they know where to look? i give the addresss to this website to lots of people when they ask me about gigs that are happening in aberdeen but i guess it could reach more. thing is neil's a busy guy, this is a service he provides but it's not his job and perhaps he doesn't have the time to go out postering and advertising it.

anyway, we were invited to take a guess. does that mean popnotmyface has the answer already?

Originally Posted by Cloud

As many people as possible?

Best bet would be decent posters put up in prominent places in all the venues - encouraging people to come and check it out. Convincing promoters to also mention a-m.com wouldn't hurt, as would getting them to offer discounts to people who were made aware of the gig through this website.

Ultimately though, a good website will promote itself.

that is a very good point. but you know, we are all just a bunch of stuck-up scenesters...but the aberdeen-music.com website is pretty good in itself.

okay, i'll spill the beans here: myspace.com

okay, before anyone jumps to any conclusions...
yes, it sounds pretty lame.
yes, i'm running out of "cons" here.

BUT, and this is a big but (no pun), myspace is slowly taking over the world of young people if you know what i mean. and the music side to myspace is massive as well. which in turn would mean easy contact to bands and plenty of opportunities for venue promotion.
it would kind of make sense, doesn't it?

this is just something for Neil to give a quick thought to. and i'd be surprised if he hasn't done so already....

[Cloud]

I like the sentiment behind saying MySpace, but there's a concern that it'll change for the worse now that Murdoch has his paws on it. He has a long history of building something up for free, only to then extract more and more money from it (see Sky Television/BSkyB). I reckon (but could be completely wrong) that Neil values the "independence" of a-m.com, and relying on Myspace in any way could compromise that. I don't think it would hurt to create an account on there specifically for the intention of friend whoring though...

As for how a good website will promote itself, take a look at http://www.thehockeyforum.com. I'm aware that there's a convoluted proceedure for registering, but the site is *the* discussion board for ice hockey in the UK. They've gained the reputation by holding yearly hockey matches featuring people from the site, along with making badges and selling e-mail addresses. The hockey community is a pretty friendly one, so the site has grown in reputation without "advertising" as such, but by relying on word of mouth. Whatever happened to the old cliché - "who are you on the boards?"

Look at the Eskimo Blonde thread in the Feedback forum - who is gonna join this forum and leave feedback if they see that? too much stuff here is shot down in flames by people - I know this sounds controversial, but I would back a stated policy of "if you have nothing good to say, don't say it" on here, until such a point comes that the site is mature enough to handle negative feedback/discussion.