5 Facebook Tips For Bands
By Robin Davey, Editor of Skindie Magazine, DIrector of Live From Daryls House, and Guitarist of Well Hung Heart.
1. When publicizing anything on
Facebook, if your post just contains text – no links, no photos etc, you
will immediately reach more people than one contaminated with
attachments.
2. If you are going to tag something, tag another internal Facebook page. You may even show up on non-fan feeds saying you are “talking about” the person you tagged.
3. Changing your header or profile picture seems to go far more noticed than just simply posting a photo on your feed. Therefor, use these two things to announce upcoming shows and releases embedded in the photos.
4. "Like" every comment on your posts, reply to what your fans post and ask. Tag people in a post and thank them for coming out or posting about you.
5. Have each member of the band have their real name (or real stage name) as their Facebook name and accept fan friend requests. Make sure they do the same things as above. If you have 5 members in a band that’s 5 times the publicity power. If they think they are too cool to self promote, then maybe they should be self promoting to join another band. You can always start a new profile if you get too famous to communicate with real people.
#1 and #4 are inherently false.
and #2, #3 and #5
ok maybe not #3
Go to your admin panel and look at the reach of posts with just text – they will normally be double that of others. #4 is not claiming to be a truth, it is advice, but it will boost the visibility of your post.
Well, good luck believing that.
Overall good suggestions!
1. Unfortunately, this is all too true and has been for the past several months. Posts with photos now get the lowest reach, posts with article previews are next lowest, posts with no preview & just a link to the article get the 2nd best reach, and text-only posts get the greatest reach. BTW, this totally sucks! I hate text only posts.
2. You’ll no longer show up in news feeds of fans of the Page you tag, but it is a good way to network with other bands, labels, venues, etc because your post will show up in their “posts by others” section of their Page and they may even share your post with their page – especially if you’ve mentioned how awesome they are. That being said, just recently FB has started displaying some posts from smaller Pages when the post is talking about a large Page in the same genre. (i.e. a small musician/band Page posts about Foo Fighters & that post *might* show up in news feeds of Foo fans, but from what I’ve seen it’s not consistent.)
3. Just changed my cover photo yesterday and exactly 2 (I’m not even kidding!) people saw it. A better approach might be creating a FB event, sharing it on your page and asking fans to attend. You can also invite people from your personal profile & ask them to share…especially if you’ve done #5 and many of your fans are FB friends. You also have to be careful to stay in compliance with FB’s 20% text rule for cover photos – they are beginning to crack down on violators by shutting down their Pages without warning.
4. Agree! It’s called engagement and that’s the name of the game in social media. You should, without fail, like every comment that comes into your Page. However, a Page can only tag a person who has commented on your post. In other words you can’t create a post (status update) and tag the person in that status update – until they make a comment on the update. Even when you do tag them, notifications are sketchy and inconsistent, but most people who comment will return to the Page to see if you’ve responded so you should ALWAYS respond – even if what they said is negative.
5. Somewhat agree. Again, you have to remain cognizant of FB’s TOS which clearly state that you are not to use a personal profile to promote a business endeavor. You can get away with a lot of it, but if all you do from your profile is promote then a) you could get your account suspended and b) you could alienate your friends…unless they’re only friends with you because the want to know when your gigs are. Having more than one personal profile is also a violation of FB’s TOS.
Reach depends on how many “Likes” and comments a post gets, not whether it’s text-only.
If you want to do a controlled experiment for this, compare a text-only post with 0 “Likes” vs. a posted photo or link with 0 “Likes” and see if their numbers vastly differ in reach. (spoiler alert: they won’t)
Well for example a text post with 39 likes and 7 comments is seen by 2280 and a photo with 54 likes and 7 comments is seen by 1621, so I am afraid your estimation is off.
These are practical suggestions gathered from info from 5 separate pages with between 2000 and 10,000 followers. You can ignore if you like but I am really just trying to help people out. It is so sad the animosity demonstrated by some people.
The #1 tip should be CONSISTENCY! Post frequently throughout the week, not just once every couple of weeks.
Just saw this…my animosity is towards FB not you man! I appreciate any fellow industry person’s perspective.
It is ironic though because other Hypebot writers will suggest photos always get better reach, and ultimately interaction. Rather than text. Numbers don’t lie though I suppose.
I think FB is slowly becoming a tertiary component to a band’s online presence. D2F platforms like Topspin I think will become the future of how band’s keep in touch with fans. FB is just a conversation tool.