For years, I’ve talked about Thanksgiving weekend as being the best weekend of the year for gigging.

Well this year those live gigging opportunities are not available, for the most part. You may find an innovative venue here and there set up to present safe and COVID conscientious gigs, but they are slim and far from available in every town.

So, the next best opportunity this year, is for a streaming gig.

Most of you have gained tons of new tech skills over these last eight months and many even have a regular streaming event set each week or each month.

I still contend, that Thanksgiving is going to be the best weekend for gigging this year as well, only this year live streaming is the way to go.

As in years past, the situation remains similar with families gathering, all be it perhaps in smaller groups.

Travel may not be as prevalent this year, but it is Thanksgiving and friends, and families will safely get together to celebrate in some form.

And since you’ve done such a fabulous and extensive job of developing your home broadcast studios, expanded your streaming tech skills, you are ready to present a Thanksgiving weekend show or shows on Friday and, or Saturday nights.

Believe me, your fans spread out over the globe will welcome your event.

You’ve got two and a half weeks to promote it if you haven’t already lined this up.

If you do a regular weekly live stream, perhaps you ought to consider moving the one for Thanksgiving week to the Friday or Saturday night instead of your regular day during the week.

Since folks will be in a larger group than your normal fan attending your shows on their own from their home, you might consider asking for your donations as a family or group donation instead of an individual donation. For example, if you had previously asked for suggested donation for single fans of $10-$20, you might ask for a group donation of $40 or $50. You might also consider donating some portion of your proceeds to the local food bank for this event to help increase the donations. Designate an exact percentage of each donation, like 10% of every donation will be donated to our local food bank. Name your food bank in your area. This is a great time to add this aspect to your live stream event.

The beauty of this plan this year, is that you are not constrained by physical location, size of the venue, your travel to the venue or how well the venue promotes your show.

This year you have built a loyal following of fans who have grown to love your live stream shows. Now they can introduce you to their friends and families who may have never stumbled upon you. This is an audience expanding opportunity. Don’t miss it!

Start planning immediately. Send an email out right away announcing it to your lists. Build anticipation, build some excitement. Give your event a name, make it special and slightly different from the regular shows you’ve been doing.

You might also consider created a ticketed zoom event for all the same reasons as above. Here families from all over might join the event with the visual aspect of zoom giving folks a sense of attending a larger live concert event. There really are so many possibilities to explore for this weekend of streaming shows.

Be creative with yours. Remember, if families are getting together with each other, just as in every past year, by Friday night and certainly Saturday night, everyone is itching for some distraction from family dynamics. Be the distraction. Give them a reason to enjoy something uplifting, something entertaining.

You have a golden opportunity here. Jump on this right now. I wish you the best live streaming shows of this year and gratitude for your support and friendship.

Enjoy Your Holidays!