Facebook has been a powerhouse online and throughout Social Media Marketing for the better part of the last two decades. Creating a plethora of opportunities for businesses, brands and artists alike.
The social media giant is showing no signs of slowing down and the platform has doubled down its advertising capabilities. Facebook most recently bought Giphy for $400 million and Mark Zuckerberg may be turning to the platform for its next of phase of building out his advertising empire. Although other platforms like Twitter and Instagram have their uses for artists and music professionals. Facebook has cornered the market with Facebook Pages, Groups and it’s Events features.
As an artist or music professional, if your team can tap into the value that these Facebook features present for a brand. You will be able to fully take advantage of Facebook’s digital advertising campaigns and effective brand building by just merely executing in the space.
Your Facebook page allows you to have a centralized hub on the platform, while also participating in Facebook groups which can be utilized for networking and aligning with like-minded individuals.
Ivy Gray-Klein of corey flood, a band based out of Philadelphia says,
“I might make a post on my personal account about needing a show in a certain city and make it public. Then friends of mine will tag their friends who may have resources or connections in those cities. It may sound kind of trivial, but having that more personal connection really helps, like recognizing you have a lot of mutual Facebook friends with that person… Especially within DIY, leveraging that community can be helpful. I don’t have a professional booking agent who has established relationships with venues.”
The Facebook events feature — in my opinion — presents the most value for anyone working or interested in the entertainment industry.
Morgan Schaffner, the marketing manager for AdHoc says,
“People’s decision to attend a show is often based on social reasons, and Facebook does truly make it very easy to see which of your friends are ‘attending’ a show… I think it’d be very challenging to as easily find such a large target audience.”
Some people may view Facebook as a place for family, friends or keeping up with co-workers. For artists and music professionals, Facebook should be viewed as a marketplace and a place to create networking opportunities. The Facebook Event features can give you access to every city, town or college in the world when running digital marketing campaigns. That is why advertising on the social platform has created this love ~ hate relationship.
Devin McKnight, a guitarist who has performed with Grass is Green, Speedy Ortiz, and produces his own music as MANEKA says,
“I don’t really want to be on Facebook at all, but I feel like I have to because of my band. I don’t know how much it helps, but I do know the event invites kind of have that market cornered. No other platform really offers that.”
Facebook may have a 50–50 split on its branding with some users but the value it creates remains to be undeniable and unmatched.
Now I’m going to go over ‘5 Vital Ways for Artists & Music Professionals to Build a Brand on Facebook’.
1. Always Put Out A Positive Energy
As a content creator, you want to consistently put out good energy and stay positive. This is important because it provides a safe environment and confidence for others to engage. You won’t always be able to control every comment, but you can control the narrative.
You can automate or setup comment monitoring to keep the negativity to a minimum, but you don’t want to come off as censoring someone’s voice or filtering a follower’s comment because it doesn’t look favorably on your brand. Some feedback is good even if it isn’t necessarily positive.
2. Consistently Post And Create Value
Consistently posting doesn’t mean you have to post every hour on the hour. Your Facebook feed is not the same as Twitter, your audience will see or engage with your posts appropriately.
If possible, you should try to schedule content for every day. One part of marketing is being consistent, it helps to create themes or produce a formula for what you decide to post.
This provides variety, it also creates a repeatable cycle that can be executed with ease. Creating value through a repeatable cycle includes mixing in content with ticket sales, memes or games, merch and a little behind-the-scenes footage for authenticity.
You and/or your team can create a content mix with the necessary categories that fit your brand’s build. You can also start by curating content and figuring out what fits your needs as an artists or music professional.
Always remember to leave room for Facebook Live — fans and followers feed on authenticity. There’s nothing better than letting your fan base seeing you in raw form, genuine and unscripted.
This is the recipe for building up those deep connections that add to your congregation of faithful fans and followers. Who will willfully recommend your music, share it and spread the gospel.
Once you acquire, 30 or more followers on your Facebook page. You will be able to access Facebook Analytics, this valuable tool will show you how people interact on your page. The goal is to start out experimenting, sticking to a general schedule and then start testing out which day/times are more effective for increasing your overall engagement.
This data can vary as well, depending on the type of audience that is being targeted. After you have access to Facebook Analytics you’ll be better equipped when it comes to creating content that speaks to a specific audience. All in all, Facebook Analytics should help you in achieving your objectives and goals as an artist or music professional.
Does this work for major artists & music professionals across the board?
Of course it does.
Checkout Lady Gaga as she gives us a taste of her scenic views.
It’s simple and worth the time to capture this moment and provide valuable content for your fans and followers.
Any little behind-the-scenes shot can make your audience happy. — Lady Gaga
3. Post Facebook Videos
A study conducted by Buzz Sumo says that,
“Video posts get at least 59% more engagement than other post types. Although photos are widely accepted by marketers to be one of the most successful post types, video outperformed photos by 73%.”
Facebook is also a great way to funnel traffic to your YouTube channel. It is cross-channel optimization at it’s finest. It allows for advertising and brand building on both platforms as well as driving revenue if you have your YouTube videos setup for monetization.
Videos can be anything from visuals from your content, behind-the-scenes footage, tutorials or even interviews. Always keep in mind that you can also post videos featuring you from other outlets, as well as videos that speak to your target market.
4. Create Facebook Polls
Another benefit of Facebook is their polls feature. If utilized properly Facebook polls can be every bit of effective for artists and music professionals looking to build a brand on the platforms.
Neil Patel also agrees, he says that while Facebook video gets first place as far as being effective, 2nd place goes to polls.
When you add polls to your content mix as an artist or music professional your Facebook marketing strategy is much more defined. Polls allow your strategy to be flexible, you can create polls using texts/questions, photos or even video. They can be applied in your news feed or Facebook story.
As with anything on the Internet, the real value lies within the data that is produced through these polls. It is important to be strategic about what you ask. You can receive direct feedback from your fans and followers with a basic output as to which song do they like the best on your latest mixtape or album, what cities should you visit on your next tour, what type of content do they like the most?
And last but not least on this short list of best practices:
5. Work With Facebook Insights
We dive deeper into Facebook Insights in my Facebook Marketing for Artists & Music Professionals course.
Just for a light introduction, the analytics section of your Facebook page is called Facebook Insights. It is where you can gather information and data about your target audience. This info will inform you on how they behave while interacting and engaging on your page.
If Facebook had a War Room it would be Facebook Insights. You can determine the locations, ages and even the genders of your followers. Once you have that intel you can better tailor content that speaks to them on a deeper level.
Below you can see the Posts tab in Facebook insights, you can see in real-time when your target audience in online and active.
See that bump? That’s when your show is booming. — Neil Patel
The graph above tells us that most of this page’s followers are online and active around 10am. If this was your page, that means that you would adjust your content strategy to increase activity and engagement around 10am. The end result would be more likes and comments.
One of Facebook’s algorithms is that it boosts posts that receive more activity in the first 20 minutes, moving forward you will want to tailor posts around that time to take full advantage.
In our course on ‘Facebook Marketing for Artists & Music Professionals’ we will be exploring Facebook Messenger and how, as an artist or music professional, you can capitalize off of growing trends.
Messaging apps are even more popular than social networks, now. — BI Intelligence
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