The introduction of Facebook's Timeline opens up new possibilities for music marketing that will become even more significant as it is extended to Pages. Though most bands and many individual musicians are currently left out, marketing opportunities include offering fans band-focused Timeline Covers for individual accounts via a Fan Page. The related introduction of Movie Maker, which takes highlights of your Timeline and turns it into a short video, also opens up new possibilities.
Timeline Covers, the big picture at the top of one's Timeline, seems to be the most immediately productive option. A variety of tools already exist for creating one's own Cover. For example, Pic Scatter allows you to make a montage of pics choosing from your Friends, your Likes or one of your Albums.
Margaret Durante Offers Fans 3 Timeline Cover Options
But the best idea for bands, which should continue to bear fruit even after the initial novelty wears off, is offering one's fans Timeline Covers which can be done via one's Page. Michael Brandvold points out Margaret Durante's Covers for her fans (shown above) and suggests:
"The images should be 850 pixels X 315 pixels. You can put your logo, band photo and album cover in image. Also make sure to add your website url, Twitter ID and Facebook Page so you can be found. Maybe add a message about when your release is coming out or tour starts. Make up 3-4 different ones to give your fans a choice. Try using them as a fan gate, offer them to your fans after they click LIKE."
Brenna Ehrlich is overseeing a series of band designs at MTV Hive for use on Timelines (including the above thumbnail image from The Static Jacks). Kissing Crust posted 80+ creative examples of Covers though not band-related. Musefy's Francis Bea offers some dimensional info so "you can pull out your favorite photo or vector editing programs and create a uniform Timeline and Profile Picture."
Timeline Movie Maker Suggests Further Possibilities
Though Timeline Movie Maker is still rather limited it suggests possibilities for the future or can be exploited now if you're willing to do a bit of extra work. It's the joint creation of Facebook and Definition6.
Movie Maker takes highlights from your Timeline and turns them into a short video. It's a pretty random process and though you can remove pics, their replacement is also random. You have 5 choices of soundtrack and there's no embed option so you have to link to the final product.
However, you can follow the example of Evan Moore (via Fast Company) who used SnapZProX to screen record the video and post it on YouTube. I'm sure other tools exist for video capture and soundtrack replacement and fully expect that not only are independent tutorials on their way but that related or similar services should appear that give you more control.
However the future of hacking Movie Maker goes, it's clear that Facebook's Timeline is opening up fresh options for music marketing. If you've embraced visual content creation, i.e. taking entertaining pictures related to your band, then you should be positioned to exploit new possibilities such as Covers. And if you've got some money for pro help, making moves now will allow you to take even stronger advantage of early mover status.
Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and music industry resources at Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
