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Facebook's decline as a useful band tool...
- Thread starter Runnerman
- Start date
We use a "page" for the band rather than a personal account with the name of the band on it. We don't pay for ads or "promotional" spots on people's news feeds.
Pictures have much better viral reach and interaction than events or statuses do, for some reason. I'm not talking like a little bit - I'm talking about seven times as much. Our ten most popular posts are all pictures. One is our album cover, which we used to announce the release of the album, and the others are gig announcements.
This is great advice. Also, it's now possible to integrate Facebook with your website in many different forms. The possibilities are endless. That is why I'm so confused as to people saying that Facebook is "declining" - it's more useful as a promotional tool than ever! There are people who make their entire living promoting things on Facebook. Hell, some colleges even have "new media" programs which focus quite a bit on social media, Facebook included.
Sadly, though, most people think that a "proper" website means one that looks cool. While this is incredibly important, what your fans really want is not just a place where they can go to read about you and look at pictures. Websites could do that in 1997 - why did we fix it if it wasn't broken? In 2013, you should be providing your fans with an environment where they can interact with you, your music, and each other. SoundCloud, for example, is a great place where people can "interact" with your tunes. Put a SoundCloud widget on your page instead of a generic music player. Post pictures from your last gig to Facebook and let your fans "tag" themselves. Tag people in tweets. Start a new hashtag so that your fans can tag YOUR idea!
The possibilities are endless. People who view Facebook as a useless promotional tool usually see it that way because they are still in the "web 1.0" line of thinking - they see the web as being divided into content producers (bands) and content consumers (fans). Really, it's entirely different now, and if you can hop on board with user-generated content and fan interaction, you can win the Internet for your band.
Using FB assumes that your target audience is all on FB.
FB is amateur hour flavor of the moment, build a website and develop a mailing list.
FB is amateur hour flavor of the moment, build a website and develop a mailing list.
Not trying to be contentious (because I do agree with building your own website and a mailing list), but for over 1 billion users worldwide, and a stock worth of tens of billions of dollars, I would hardly deem FB as "amateur hour" or a "flavor of the moment".
I do think its popularity may be weening a bit due to its over saturation of the market (young kids don't want to share info on the same sites that their parents and even grandparents are on /FB's terrible privacy issues and use of user data to generate revenue/ over-commercialization by corporations), but I definitely think that it's beyond the level of a flavor of the moment...
This is a very good point. Facebook doesn't have high penetration in all markets. Some bands do better with it than others and it's for various reasons, but sometimes it's just because not every band's "crowd" is on Facebook. I also couldn't agree more with you about the mailing list. While we're on the subject, don't over-mail! We send one out every month or so - two in a month if we're feeling ambitious. When we sent less than that, we actually got complaints that we weren't mailing enough. When we sent more, people started unsubscribing.
Hey, hey, hey now. I do waaaay more than post pics or talk politics or other junk on FB. Ever heard of Mafia Wars? Hmmmm? LOL
Can you tell us more about the $5 facebook ad? I placed a $30 facebook ad for an event and got 6 RSVP's. And none of them showed.
One of the first questions I get asked when talking to someone for the first time about my band is, "Are you guys on Facebook?"
To say the least, I think this thread is underestimating the usefulness of FB just a little bit (especially if your core demographic is people under 35).
To say the least, I think this thread is underestimating the usefulness of FB just a little bit (especially if your core demographic is people under 35).
If you're looking at your band's social media presence purely from a business & numbers standpoint, you cannot underestimate the power of Facebook. You've got the potential to reach a massive audience with FB. Far greater than you were ever able to reach with Myspace.
The key to making Facebook and other social media sites work for you is CONTENT. Give your fans/friends good content and they're going to pay more attention to your posts & events. And this axiom holds true for every other social media site. Content, whether it's music or videos or photos are what ultimately engage the audience.
So what do you offer up? Look at some of the things that your FB friends are sharing. That can start to get you moving in a more positive direction with your social media outreach. But from my own experience, VIDEOS really do have the greatest potential for outreach. I've posted videos that were taken with an HD Flip that have generated some pretty respectable responses. And the audio from those recordings was surprisingly good.
As for paid Facebook ads? I've seen those take some bands from LIKES in the high hundreds up to the 10,000 + range.
It's not about any single form of social media, but rather how they all interconnect. Tweeting, instagram, bandcamp, facebnook, soundcloud etc. etc. all tie together so to get the most out of all of it you need to use the multiple platforms available. It's seriously simple to do and much less time consuming than old school forms of basic promotion (anyone else remember sending out hundreds of postcard size announcements about gigs through the postal system?)
I'd be interested in reading some of you social media mavens' thoughts on how, exactly, to make Facebook work in our favor. If one or two of you wanted to collaborate on a thread, I'd be happy to petition the mods to sticky it. I'd personally want to see specific, repeatable examples myself, but that's just how my brain works. I'm not AGAINST using Facebook per se, I've just never seen it work beyond the younger guys in my band saying "zomg Facebook is the balls you HAVE to get this!" We've had maybe 5 people tops show up from creating Facebook events, whereas we regularly get 70 or more from our mailing list.
Maybe we're doing something egregiously wrong with Facebook? Check out our page, www.facebook.com/soulphonicband
I'm certainly open to suggestions!
Maybe we're doing something egregiously wrong with Facebook? Check out our page, www.facebook.com/soulphonicband
I'm certainly open to suggestions!
Absolutely.
Nailed it.
I could see this working both ways. I'm sure the paid ads work for some people. I personally see them, and discount them right away. I don't know, but to me they seem sleazy. Like a guy showing up at your party trying to make a sales pitch. I'm on FB to socialize, not to be sold things. (Hence, my opinion on the eventual downfall of FB).
I see bands that pay for advertisement and my mind automatically goes to "these guys can't build a fanbase on their music alone, they've got to resort to paying FB to be sure they are in your face about it."
Maybe that's just me...
On a different note, (not to be brutally harsh here - but it's true) your music also has to speak for itself. FB isn't some magic bullet to get people to like your music or show up to your shows. If people like your band, they are going to pay attention. Let's face it, we may think our bands are fantastic, but it takes an actual audience to confirm that opinion.
If people aren't paying attention, it might be because they don't really want to...
Meh ... it's worth every cent I'm paying for it ... which is not-a-red-cent. One more media outlet, for better or worse and it's free.
That is for sure. Our band has relatively few likes in comparison to most, but we've been known to draw thousands to some of our gigs.
Yup, this thread could be very useful.
I'll start with an obvious one: as someone already said, pictures reach more people than text. Tagging people in pictures helps, too - pictures of fans at gigs, anyone who sits in with your band, and also tagging band members in gig posters. But don't tag random people in gig posters in the hope that that will make them notice your gig and show up -that's an especially annoying way to spam.
The picture of fans at gigs has turned into something of a successful social media tool. A band member or crew member takes a picture of the audience from the stage. Of course, decent lighting on the audience helps in this regard. You then post that photo on the band's FB page and have your fans tag themselves. It's simple, but it engages your fans.
