Facebook’s facelift: 2021 best practices
Facebook, now the largest social network worldwide, has kicked off 2021 with some major changes. Here, explore how to most effectively navigate these changes as an artist in 2021.
Guest post by Amber Nagle of The Orchard’s The Daily Rind
With over 2.74 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. Facebook has seen a year-over-year increase of 12% in its active users since September 2019 (active users are those who have logged onto Facebook during the last 30 days). Being the largest social network, it’s no surprise that Facebook kicked off 2021 with some big changes.
Shifting From Likes to Follows
On January 5th, Facebook announced a more streamlined vision for their platform. Instead of allowing pages to showcase the number of ‘likes’ and the number of ‘followers’ – they have streamlined the experience to simply show the follower number.
You might ask: what’s the difference between a like and a follow? Your follower number shows you who is actually receiving updates on your page, which gives you a much more accurate picture of who your fans are.
The New Page Experience
In addition to that change, Facebook has launched a new Pages experience, creating a more simplified user-friendly layout..
The new Pages experience also provides artists with a dedicated news feed for the first time, making it easier to discover and join conversations and engage with fans.
Additional Updates on the new Pages Experience include:
- Easy navigation between personal profile and Pages.
- Updated task-based admin controls giving trusted Page admins full control or partial access.
- Actionable insights and more relevant notifications.
- Safety and integrity features to detect spammy content and impersonator accounts.
Premium Music Videos – PMVs
The last major change this past year has been the introduction of PMVs. Just launched in August of 2020, PMVs bring Premium Music Video content to fans in the US.
Music videos are highly discoverable on the platform. Followers receive a notification when their favorite artists launch a new video, people discover music videos based on their friend’s watch habits, and new music can be discovered on Facebook Watch.
Through Creator Studio you can view analytics and edit your videos. Creators have the ability to edit the title, thumbnail, description, tags, posts text, poll, and closed captions.
Here are Facebook’s Tips for a successful PMV release:
Pre-Release:
- Engage with fans and collaborators in the weeks leading to release
- Create a Facebook Event for the release
- Launch or activate Fan Groups
Post Release:
- Drive off-platform traffic to your music videos on Facebook
- Use Call-to-Actions in your posts and on your page
- Share clips from your music videos to Facebook and Instagram Stories or Instagram Reels
- Encourage fan engagement and engage back
- Go Live to talk about the video
- Find other moments to share your video
Complete 2021 Best Practices
Need a full Facebook refresh? For more tips & tricks on how to best utilize Facebook, check out our full 2021 Best Practices here.
