Social Media

Stop Wasting Time Sending Facebook Event Invites

This guest post comes from Dave Cool, the Blogger In Residence at musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle.

image from www.google.com I have a confession to make: I stopped checking Facebook Event Invites late last year. It started feeling eerily like MySpace at its worst (and look where MySpace is now). I have an average of 80+ invites at any one time, and what made it even worse was the constant messages that were sent to everyone invited to the event, whether they had confirmed or not. So not only did I stop checking event invites, my Facebook inbox became such a mess that I stopped checking that too.


That is until Facebook changed the way their messaging system worked. Your Facebook inbox is now an integration of SMS, chat, email or messages. But one of the biggest changes for bands is that now any messages sent through Event Invites no longer wind up in someone’s regular inbox, they now end up in the “Other” inbox. That’s right, the “Other” inbox where message updates from Facebook Fan Pages go.
Facebook Inbox

The “Other” Inbox

How many people actually know that this secondary “Other” inbox exists? How many people know it exists and proactively check it to get those updates? I’m willing to bet, not very many. I actually knew it existed, but had totally forgotten about it, and now have 20 pages worth of unread messages from Facebook Pages. It’s like a junk mail folder that I never open. And now all of those messages from events I’m not attending are going to that inbox too, which is great news for me (and I might actually start using my Facebook inbox again), but it’s not very good news for people organizing events, specifically bands.

What’s the solution?
What should bands do now? Keep sending messages through event invites even though they are going to the “Other” inbox? While you can keep doing this if you want, here are a few other things you can spend time on that might give you better results and more attendance at your shows:

1. Stop blindly inviting everyone to shows  – I live in Montreal, but I can’t tell you how often I get invites for events that are happening in Toronto, New York, Boston, etc. Is there a chance I will be in that city for the show? Yes, in theory, but it’s really not worth the risk of being blacklisted. Blacklisted? Yes, you can actually ignore all invites from certain people if you want to. I do it all the time, and being invited to shows that are not happening in my home city is often the reason (especially getting invites to shows in each city of a band’s national tour).
Facebook Ignore Invites

And if I do happen to be in that city for the show, I’ll find out when the person updates their fan page, sends out a message through their mailing list or tweets about it. But blindly inviting everyone in your Friend’s list is just not the way to go.

2. Be active on your Fan Page -  Be sure to post regular updates about your show on your Fan Page. Event details, updates about the line-up, links to blog posts & video blogs on your website previewing the show, pics from band rehearsals, etc. And why not use Facebook Questions to build your set list? Each day ask fans to choose their favorite songs and build your set list from those songs.

And if there are opening bands, talk about them too! You can post info about the bands, their music, pics, videos, etc. If you regularly post creative updates leading up to the show, it will no doubt help create buzz/excitement about the event.

3. Send personal messages to people that you invite to events

So the messages you send through the Event Invite itself are now going to the mysterious “Other” inbox? Well, why not take the time to send each person who you’ve invited a personal message inviting them? And I don’t mean copying and pasting the same message to each person. Yes, you can and should use some of the same elements, but take an extra few minutes and personalize the message to the individual. You can reference a recent conversation with them, tell them what’s going to be special/unique/fun about that night, basically, tell them why they should come out that night.

Don’t be discouraged
This post is certainly not meant to be discouraging, but more of a reality check for promoting shows on Facebook. I sat in many empty rooms during my 3 years as a venue booker in Montreal, and often the band’s idea of promoting the show was creating a Facebook Invite and sending out 1 message to everyone who they invited. It’s just not enough anymore, and this goes for any event where the audience is not built-in. The message here is that we all have to go the extra mile to get people to our events, and the more creative, the better.

In what creative ways has your band promoted your live shows on Facebook?

Bruce Houghton on 07/11/2011 in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (11)
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11 Comments

  1. i don’t agree with this post. as much the invites can be spammy, i use them to figure out what’s going in the city each weekend.
    even better there is a sub-page called “Friend’s Events” which shows me the ones that my friends are attending but i didn’t get an invite to.

  2. The nice thing about creating a Facebook “event” is that it creates a page that you can send people to. So you can email it, tweet it, blog it, or post it in your facebook feed and your friends and fans can interact with it by posting comments, photos or videos.
    Chris B

  3. Dave –
    I agree with much of what you said with a couple qualifications:
    1. I do end up deleting many events I receive, but the ones I say “yes” or “maybe” to automatically show up on my phone’s calendar. Many a show has turned from a “maybe” to a “yes” when my phone reminded me on the day of an event.
    2. Like the comments above, there are some essential functional uses of “events” including having it listed on the left side of the Fan Page which helps if the wall gets cluttered.
    I think for now, an artist should go ahead and create an Event, but should also follow your advice.
    Facebook has actually made it much harder in recent days to do what you request – they almost eliminated the ability to target your invites beyond a few large cities. Check out my post on the subject: http://blog.intrepidam.com/does-facebook-hate-musicians
    david holmes

  5. I have lots of friends where I’m from who promote music in the area – being friends with them on facebook basically means every single day I get an invite to some kind of gig – the problem is now I just ignore them…
    There needs to be some kind of better management of them – even better – categorisation in facebook so that you are signed up to newsfeed type things, there is an ‘events’ section, divided by user / genre / venue etc., then if you want to know what’s on where, you can just click on the genre, promoter, venue or day…. I’ll take all the royalties please…

  6. ” Well, why not take the time to send each person who you’ve invited a personal message inviting them? ”
    Hmmm NO. Sorry but I have a life…

  7. Hi Bob,
    Well, I can understand that sentiment, but in my opinion for artists to succeed in this new music industry they must spend time connecting directly with their fans, and this is one way to do it. People are bombarded with mass emails and messages, those artists that take time every day to personalize messages to fans are making an investment in their career going forward. Many DIY artists spend hours every day responding to emails, responding to fans on Twitter or comments on Facebook, and this has become part of the job description in many ways.
    And remember, all of those people who are being invited to events and who are then being sent mass messages have lives too, I just think it’s worth the time to get to know those people and what’s going on in their lives so that you can better understand who they are and what it would take to get them to come to your shows.
    Thanks for reading and commenting.
    Cheers,
    DC

  8. Hi David,
    Thanks for reading and for your comments. I actually do think it is still worth creating event invites, but not worth the effort sending mass messages through them anymore.
    And I think Facebook hates all of us 😉
    These puppets pretty much sum up how I feel about Facebook these days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRg9Q1d3kY
    Cheers,
    DC

  9. Hi Mr. Tunes,
    Thanks for reading and commenting. I’m glad to hear that FB events are still working for some people. I guess in my case they’ve started to feel like MySpace events did just before I gave up on that site.
    In general, these puppets do a better job at explaining how I feel about Facebook these days:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRg9Q1d3kY
    Cheers,
    DC

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