Kelly Richey has been described as “Stevie Ray Vaughan trapped in a woman’s body with Janis Joplin screaming to get out.” That’s an apt appraisal of the Lexington, Kentucky native who’s now based in Cincinnati for many years. A working musician since her teens, she began her professional career as a member of the Arista Records group Stealin’ Horses; in 1990 she formed The Kelly Richey Band, with whom she has become both a national and international touring artist.

Kelly Richey is also consummate entrepreneur who refuses to quit. Since establishing her own label, Sweet Lucy Records, Richey has released 11 albums and a live DVD.  When I first spoke to her in August 2008 she was at the end of a long struggle to try to break through using traditional PR and radio.  She had spent a fortune on radio promoters, and traditional publicists, retail positioning and other old school tactics that were just not working for her.

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What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School (a bestselling book) talks about a research study that was conducted at Harvard between 1979 and 1989:

“In 1979, the MBA graduates were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”

Only 3 percent had clear written goals and action plans to achieve them.

Thirteen percent of the graduates had goals, but they were not in writing.

The other 84 percent had no specific goals at all.

In 1989, a decade later, the researchers again interviewed the students of that class. Surprisingly, they discovered that the 13 percent, who had goals that were not in writing, were earning on average twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.

The truly amazing finding was that the 3 percent of students, who had written, clear goals when they left Harvard, were earning over ten times as much, on average, as the other 97 percent together.

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The First Round Of Contestants Are Announced!

Congratulations to all of you who have opted in to participate in the Music Success In Nine Weeks Blogging Challenge!

Our judges may be watching you and commenting on your progress as you go along!

Follow Them on Twitter!:

http://www.twitter.com/andrealane1

http://www.twitter.com/bigbluebarry

http://www.twitter.com/bfrankemusic

http://www.twitter.com/colinrink

http://twitter.com/fiZbandcom

http://www.twitter.com/freqtheater

http://www.twitter.com/heidihowes

http://www.twitter.com/johnnyonlymusic

http://twitter.com/mossbluffmusic

http://twitter.com/nicolago

http://twitter.com/PerfectPitchMan

http://twitter.com/irainrain

http://www.twitter.com/runawaydorothy

http://twitter.com/symetrk

http://twitter.com/DSP_ROCKS

http://www.twitter.com/seanimler

http://www.twitter.com/IckysEgo

http://www.twitter.com/KGrocks

http://www.twitter.com/mdlstweet

http://www.twitter.com/maurajensen

http://www.twitter.com/snailquail

http://www.twitter.com/tamrahayden

http://www.twitter.com/vikkiflawith

http://www.twitter.com/offering

http://www.twitter.com/monarocks

Here is the first round of participants and links to their blogger challenge blogs:

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Announcing a New Cyber PR Contest!

To commemorate version 2.0 of my book, Music Success in Nine Weeks, I am launching a blogging contest.

The rules are easy

STEP 1. YOU READ IT!
Pick up your copy of Music Success in Nine Weeks here: Buy Book

Then send an email to ariel@arielpublicity.com with a link to your blog to let us know you would like to participate! 

Please use “MSi9W Blogging Contest Entry” as your subject line.

STEP 2: YOU BLOG IT!
Crack open the book (or the ebook version) and start with week one. Blog as you go along.

In order to qualify for this contest, all you need to do is create nine blog entries, taking readers through your experience with the book and blog about how it is helping, where you learned the most, where you are getting stuck, etc.

Wait: I don’t have a blog on my site, you say?
That’s okay! You can blog on your MySpace page, at your Last FM profile, on your Facebook Fan page, or set up a quick and easy blog at WordPress or Blogger.

STEP 3: WE JUDGE IT!
The artist who has come the furthest and learned the most using the techniques outlined in the book will receive a complimentary Headliner Cyber PR campaign for three months starting in March 2010.

Who Judges This Contest?
The Cyber PR staff: Ariel, Chris, Sara, Christina & Stefan, and the moderators of the Cyber PR Mastermind site, Carla and Kelly, will be reviewing your posts.

STEP 4: YOU WIN IT!
If you are selected as the winning blogger, you will receive one full Headliner Cyber PR campaign from Ariel Publicity.

This campaign is worth $1,595 and will get your music into the hands of bloggers, podcasters and online radio station DJs, plus it will help you organize your entire Social Media attack plan (Twitter Facebook, etc.)

So, get started right now and e-mail us to let us know where you’re blogging so that we can begin to watch your progress, and cheer you along!

Judging Starts TODAY • Judging closes March 10, 2010

So… Not sure you want to do all this work?

Here are a few quotes about our Cyber PR campaigns from artists who paid full price

“Ariel has incomparable reach. Less than one month into my campaign, I’ve already been played around the world, in Australia, England, the US, the Netherlands, and more. I’ve already come across in-depth reviews of my debut album from widely-distributed bloggers to which I would otherwise have no contact. No effort is wasted, and I can follow the campaign, in detail, in real time. It’s incredible, and it’s working.”
–    Trey Green

“Hiring Ariel Publicity was by far and in large the best money my band ever spent. Ariel starts right away and within days we had more publicity than our record label’s publicity company had gotten us since we signed… worth every penny.”
–    Jeffrey Todd, Fort Pastor

“Ariel and her staff are simply the cutting edge of cyber publicity. It’s not that Ariel has enhanced my music’s exposure. She’s put it on the map.”
–    Beth Hirsch

Participants will be posted shortly!  Stay tuned….

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Lay it on thick

While in business school I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how businesses can have a uniquely positive impact on their communities, without necessarily being nonprofit or social enterprises.

“Thick Value,” a phrase frequently used by Umair Haque, a favorite and most influential thought leader out of Harvard Business School,  captures this well.  It is the idea that businesses need not only be profitable, or of value, in the financial sense, but must also provide meaningful and sustainable value to society as a whole.  From my perspective, thick value is essential to success in the long run.

I was reminded of the notion of thick value when I met yesterday with Ariel Hyatt, founder of CyberPR. I had seen Ariel speak at the Future of Music Policy Summit, and then met her briefly at the SoundCtrl Music-Tech meet up during the CMJ Music Marathon, but this was the first time time that I had the opportunity to sit down with her and see first hand just how visionary and potentially disruptive her platform actually is.

Unlike the traditional fee-for-service approach to PR, which is predicated on ‘buying access,’ Ariel created an online, technology-based PR platform that actually facilitates relationships between artists and the media.  The platform, as well as the abundance of educational podcasts, e-books and blog posts throughout the site are designed to empower independent artists to optimize their own public relations, rather than reinforcing dependency on third party gatekeepers.

Her site is incredibly comprehensive, elegant and well thought out. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor a few times while she was demoing it for me.  I can only imagine the tremendous amount of mental, emotional and financial investment that has gone into developing it. I have no doubt that ultimately its value to independent artists and musicians, as well as the fans who would have not otherwise been exposed to them, will be exponential.

This is thick value at its core.

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