Facebook Tweaked It’s Feed Formula Again, And It’s Not Good News For Musicians, Music Marketers
Facebook is constantly tweaking the formula that it uses to chose which posts appear where in a users News Feed. Lately, they've been more transparent about those changes, and that means that marketers get the news – bad and good – of these shifts before they happen. A new round of changes appear to be mostly bad news for musicians and music marketers.
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Facebook is, yet again, changing how it ranks the content that appears in users news feeds. Upgraded are personal posts form "the friends you care about," such as photos, videos, status updates or links. They will appear higher up in News Feed so you are less likely to miss them.
Downgraded are most posts Page posts. Pages include the accounts of almost all musicians, labels, brands and businesses.
How will it affect your reach? Here's what Facebook says:
"…we anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages. The specific impact on your Page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience. For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through Page posts. We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends. "
The Solution?
Keep posting on Facebook, particularly content that you think fans will share. But double your efforts to grow your email list. It's the only form of contact with your fans that you – and not some social network – really control.
How long will it be when Pages are not shown at all?
I truly see the day coming when any page with a large number of likes, will not be shown unless they pay to promote it. I also think the day is coming when the 5000 friend limit will actually be made smaller. You can also expect large friend pages to be “auto converted” to commercial pages that will have to pay to get listed. FB’s goal seems to be to monetize everything….
That’s part of the reason we started Bandtraq and I’d like to invite everyone to try it. It’s an aggregation service for music fans that tracks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, etc. creating a simple unified feed with the latest news, videos, releases and so on from the artists you choose. For bands it means that they can reach every fan following them on the service without leaving their usual social platforms. Of course, it’s not for casual fans, but rather for those who like to follow many bands, especially, if they are non-mainstream. So, check it out here http://bandtraq.com. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.
This is only bad news for musicians who are creating Facebook content that is not informing or entertaining. Marketers and artists need to understand the difference between content and advertising. If you’re creating authentic content that engages your audience, you’ll be find. If you’re posting advertising, you’ll have to pay for your impressions.
I do also agree with the suggestion to double down email efforts. Remove as many barriers between you and your audience as you can.
I tried it and it just doesn’t work. None of the bands I like on FB and Twitter show up in the news feed.