Social Media

HOW TO: Make The Most of Your Facebook Page

This guest post comes from Eilish Burke of Amp Music Marketing.

image from i667.photobucket.com It's 2011 and every artist worth their salt has a Facebook fan page. But keeping yours up to date can sometimes feel like a chore. And how do you know if you're really making the most of your page? Could you do things better to encourage your existing connections to share your page with their social networks? Here we describe some helpful ways to make the most of your Facebook page.

A good landing page

We've blogged about this in detail in the past so we're not going to repeat ourselves. Just go here for the info. ReverbNation have just updated their Facebook app and added lots of easy-to-use functionality.

Well worth having a look.

Photos

The new Facebook layout allows you to customise which 5 photos you want to display on your page. There are some creative ways to hack this to lead your fans into different photos. Here's a handy tutorial thanks to Ian from makeitinmusic.com:

Store

Facebook is first and foremost a way to connect with your fans. But that doesn't mean you can't use it to sell your music too. More and more artists and businesses in general are integrating stores into their pages. The best one out there for musicians is through Topspin Media. Topspin have just this week opened up their platform to all musicians (previously you had to be a agency/label like us in Amp, or have a large number of fans to gain access to the software). Integrating your Topspin products into your Facebook page is done with the click of a few buttons and has the professional eCommerce support you'd expect.

While having a store on your page is great, it can be hard to find on the new Facebook layout; now that tabs have been removed links to the different areas of your Facebook page are less prominently located under your profile picture. One way to get around this and get your product into the news feeds of your fans is to embed your product links into Slideshare presentations and post these as status updates. This method has the advantage of allowing 100% visual customisation and the launching of store links directly within the Facebook News Feed.

Audio

  The best ways to post your songs to Facebook is not to use the Facebook Music Player. You're much better off using third party sites like a ReverbNation landing page (above) for on-demand listens or, to highlight new music, simply post SoundCloud or YouTube links in your Facebook status. Here at Amp we love the portability and customisation that SoundCloud offers – it's a great way not just to share your music, but also to distribute it and get fan feedback.

Link Sharing

Keeping your Facebook active with interesting content can sometimes prove a struggle – especially if you are going through a quiet period. One way to ensure you have things to post is to use link agregator tools that collect information based on your interests and connections and share these back with your social network. The best-known of these tools is probably Paper.li which creates a regular newspaper-style webpage of links and stories. Other examples can be found here, including the awesome (unfortunately iPad-only for now) Flipboard. It's only a matter of time before a sophisticated 'personalised magazine' that integrates with your social networks like this becomes mainstream and cross-device.

These are just some of the things you should be thinking about when managing your Facebook page. Using the best applications, combined with an attractive layout and a consistent posting strategy will grow your connections.

Eilish Burke is a co-founder of Amp Music Marketing, where she helps musicians & labels make the most of all their online promotion. Get in touch, they're always looking for exciting new projects.

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10 Comments

  1. by posting YouTube links into facebook, users can take advantage of a site that I created, http://www.TubeLoop.com. It mashes YouTube and Facebook together allowing one to see their news feed of YouTube videos as well as look through my favourite artists feeds for YouTube videos.
    The app is starting to really pick up and its no surprise why – a lot of my favourite artists post videos all the time and I like creating playlists using those videos – it’s how I discover music.

  2. Surprised there’s no BandPage on here!! So much better than Reverbnation’s thing. It’s easier to design the page, and it looks better. Not gonna switch, ever.

  3. BandPage looked better until Reverb updated their app. Now I think its a toss up. But…
    The Reverb app collects fan emails for me which is HUGE, and I can set it to force a fan to share my music with friends if they want my download. And lets not forget that its free.
    Its not surprising that Artists still choose things based on how they look instead of how they actually impact there business. Most artists just don’t think like a marketer. Its hard to unlearn our natural tendencies!
    My advice would be to add both apps and then alternate between which one is the default and see which one does better for you. Nothing more true than an experiment.
    Don’t be married to either app – be married to results.
    Ciao!

  4. Timothy, this is a great observation:

    Its not surprising that Artists still choose things based on how they look instead of how they actually impact there business.

    I totally agree. Results is what really matters.

  5. Also too from what I understand Facebook is now allowing iframes on Page tabs now so you can creat your own totally unique landing page with an iframe.. No more need to learn fbml

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