How not to promote your band

I'm certain you can find many good resources on how to promote your band. Myself, I've read quite a bit of what Matt Bacon of Dropout Media and Niko from Moshpit Pr write on this topic. So if you want to know what to do to get more attention to your band, go and read what they have to say. That is not the topic of this post. 

This post will deal with how not to do it.

1. "The dickpick of the metal world". It basically goes like this: someone adds me as friend on social media (facebook in my case) and asks me to check out their band without any other interaction. Now, why would I want to stop listening to the band I'm already listening to and check out your band in stead?
The classic reply is something in the lines of "well, why not?" and "If the song is bad nothing happens, if the song is good you lost your chance".
Well, I as everyone else have limited time, and the worst thing that happens is that I spend a minute listening to your subpar band in stead of Judas Priest or Uriah Heep or that interesting little band I was checking out. 
Sulking over me asking why I should listen to your band is also not going to help.

How do you solve this? Always, when presenting your band, remember to actually present the band! That is, tell me what is unique with your band! And saying "we're really heavy" just isn't going to cut it. Also, tell how it compares with what I already listen to. Don't know what I listen to? Check it out on my profile, there's a whole list of bands I already follow there. If your band sounds like them and have the same good qualities that some of those bands, I might very well follow your band. However only if you tell about it!

2. "The weird invite". There is a feature on facebook where you can invite your friendlist to like a band. Sure, invite your friends to like your band! But if you have friends that don't like metal, is there really a point? Is there a point to invite your grandmother to like your goregrind band?
Similarly, when you add someone to your friend list, and then invite them to like a band, please consider if they actually like that genre! I get a lot of invite weird bands that are nowhere near what I like to listen to. I like prog, melodic metal and melodic death metal. So why do you invite me to like hardcore and post-punk? 
Even worse are those that work in PR, and therefore invite me to like all the bands they work with. I don't know, if that's supposed to promote the bands, but the only result is that I ignore any invites from them, simply because I have learned that they never considered my taste in music before inviting me. I'm probably missing out on some great bands this way, but I can't take time to check out every invite I get when I know 90% of it will be music that will not engage me in any way!

How do you solve this? Send requests to people that might like your music! Talk with them, figure out what they're into. Or, if that's too much of a bother, just look at their profile. Most of us are more than ready to tell what we like, hell I've even written about it on this blog. And yet, requests to review non-melodic stuff keep pouring in.

3. "The keep your music a secret" I'm always surprised to find bands with little to no useful information on their social media. 

Your social media has an "about" section. This section should include a link to your music!
You're nothing as a band if you don't make music (cover bands rely on live following, so they are a different thing for the purpose of this discussion). The music is literally the reason to check you out. It's your claim to fame, your whole reason to have a social media presence as a band. If you don't have any music for me to check out, why would I follow your page? 
And I should not need to google for it, or search your whole page for it, or have to follow 10 different links to get to it. Most people simply will not care, and will go to the next band, where they don't have to search for the music

How do you solve this? Well, it's really easy. Have some good recordings of your band. At least one song. It can be live, but it needs to show how your bands songs sound, so one should be able to pick out the sound of different instruments. Post in on the internet and link to it in the "about" section!

I might add more to this list in the future