A Friendlier Facebook: 25 Tips to Improve Your Musician Fan Page

Music on FacebookIn the last few years, Facebook has emerged as the undisputed king of the social networks.

Several other platforms hold their own in a niche battle but, as Zuckerberg’s baby nears 1 billion global users and over 1/3 of the US population signed up, it’s almost impossible to ignore Facebook if you want to reach your fans online.

What becomes the burning question for you artists, regardless of size, genre, or location, is how to connect with those fans and keep them interested in the contents of your Facebook fan page.

The Burden of Growth

Unfortunately, as Facebook’s user count has grown, so has the number of groups trying to get their message in front of ever-wearying fans. To rise above the static noise of this Facebook update deluge, you need to vary your content, encourage fan likes and comments, and keep your posts engaging enough to continue attracting attention.

“Yes, yes, yes, we know all this…”, I hear you chorus, “But how?”

Well that’s exactly why I probed some of the smarter and socially savvy artistic folks I know – in addition to the depths of my own experience – to bring you these 25 tips for creative Facebook fan page content:

1. Ask fans to comment with their favorite artist, song, genre, or anything that you believe will fire their passions to contribute. You learn about your fan base, as well as gaining traction in their News Feed from their participation.

Threyda Art Collective Facebook Page

Threyda's Facebook page often posts art for auction or direct sale, based on bids in the comments.

2. Auction or sell one-off items in the comments section of a post, with the image of what’s up for sale. This real-time selling can create visible demand and prompt further interest in your future posts or other sale items, as fans watch more closely for these specials.

3. “A big thing is cross promotion. For example, the Foo Fighters have a FB page and I cover Everlong in a video. So I can tag and say, “Hey, check out my @FooFighters cover” and it will show up on my page and theirs, increasing clicks and impressions.” ~ Khaled Dajani (NYC singer-songwriter)

4. Produce a few different versions of cover art for your next release. Post each separately to a Facebook album and ask fans to pick the art work that you’ll use by most liked/voted for piece.

5. Be timely in responses. You need not be on 24/7, but the sooner you can respond to developing conversations on your page, the better the discussion and closer your fans will feel. Plugging in via mobile devices and getting into the habit of checking in a few times through the day will help your engagement levels no end.

6. Hand over control of your Facebook page to one or some of your most passionate fans for a set period, perhaps a few days to a week. Give them room to express their musical and artistic interests, as far as is appropriate for your page.

7. “Let fans vote on new song choices or additions to your set list.” ~ Karlton Utter of The Hazmats

8. Ask for fan stories from your shows that they’ve attended. Many will be happy to share; you’ll remind them of a great time associated with your music and you’ll get more testimonials/comments encouraging those who haven’t yet seen you to catch that next gig.

9. Check your Insights. Your fan page has the ‘Admin Panel’, which offers a look at your most popular posts by date, time, type of content, and much more. Check these every week to see what your fans are reacting well to and what you need to dump.

10. Let another band or artist run your page as administrator for a few days to a week. Give them access to your audience and they’ll likely reciprocate by bringing some of their friends and followers to your page. It will also freshen up content and allow you to see how fans react to the change.

11. “Use your new show or project poster/art as your profile pic. For your fans, it’s an easy visual reminder of what you’re working on and keeps your visual message fresh.” ~ Alejandra O’Leary (Michigan singer-songwriter)

12. Run ongoing competitions that encourage multiple clicks and comments, such as entries to sweepstakes drawings or picture posting/voting contests. Each interaction gives the fan a greater chance to win and gives you a greater number of connections to these fans.

Facebook Question Function

13. Expanding on number 1, make use of the Facebook ‘Question’ function (pictured left). This gives you instant poll-taking on your page and in the fan news feeds, providing an easy opportunity to encourage one click feedback. Questions on topical subjects, favorite artists, or those that give your fans a choice in your creative process are all great ways for you to increase interactions.

14. Post non-profit or cause related content that aligns with your personality and/or music subject matter. People like and share good causes more readily, helping both the message and your page to spread.

15. Make Facebook content feel like bonus material. Share things there that you don’t post elsewhere, including a look into your tastes, interests, and current listening, viewing, or reading habits.

16. Share an insight into one of your songs, preferably something that hasn’t been explained elsewhere. Ask fans to share their own perspectives on the song & encourage discussion around the themes that develop.

17. “I’ll use Facebook to discover who I know in each city, then communicate with those folks about how to best turn out their friends and their friends’ friends. The best PR is word of mouth.” ~Danny Ross (NYC singer-songwriter & band leader)

18. Give away one-off items by asking fans to like or comment on the post, keeping entry easy & increasing interaction with your page. Draw a winner randomly and offer unique, unexpected prizes to keep interest and participation high. 

19. Weave videos into the tapestry of your page. As YouTube links automatically translate to an embedded video when posted, your fans can watch and listen without leaving the comfort of your page. Remind them to comment or like the post as they watch. 

20. Highlight your most compelling content. The new Timeline based Facebook layout will allow you to pin important posts to the top of the page. Take either your main calls to action (e-mail list sign-up, music downloads etc) and make them one of the first pieces of content that people see. 

21. Work with other bands to exchange page tags. When you’re playing on the same bill as other artists, this helps to encourage each act’s set of fans to check out the other easily, leading to extra visibility and, in the case of complementary acts, more likes of each page.

22. “Pictures, pictures, pictures! Pictures convey so much more than text alone. Keep your page as visual and colorful as possible to create a non-verbal vibe around your music.” ~ Alejandra O’Leary (Michigan singer-songwriter)

23. Err on the side of posts that inspire conversation and feedback, rather than too much promotion of your own links and content. Of course you should highlight new music and important announcements related to your art, but these should be sandwiched between non-promotional content and entertaining posts. Offer more than just another sales pitch. 

24. Request, infrequently, an event or page share. Fans don’t like to feel put upon, yet a certain amount of involvement in sharing your music does help to build a closer bond. When you have an important site on which you need to gain traction, or when you simply need a boost to share your content or a big event, don’t be afraid to explain just how crucial it is and make the ask of your fan base. 

25. Integrate your Facebook presence into other social media and communication channels, especially e-mail newsletters. Go a step further than the simple social buttons that often appear in e-mails and create a special incentive for your subscribers to click over to like your Facebook page. Competitions promoted by newsletter but actually carried out on your fan page are a great example of weaving together your communications lines for those who follow you.

 

Phew! Plenty to be working on there….

 

….BUT, we’re not done!

 

What would you add?

How have you used Facebook to offer your fans a unique, interactive experience?

Add away in the comments below or on Facebook itself. Include a link to your site or Facebook page so that I can update this post and give due credit with a link back. 

 

 

March 7, 2012 by 1 Comment
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Attracting and Engaging True Music Fans In the Digital Era

TechCrunch David Hazan (Mobile Backstage) Video Interview

Click to head over to the video interview

The remit to attract new fans of music is a ball that is now almost completely in the court of the artists themselves.

After a decade of digital disruption, even those artists on whom major record labels decide to take a chance, need to have built a significant base of excited, engaged fans following their every move.

The key question in the emerging digital music industry is this:

Where and how do you as an artist attract and engage these fans?

Watch the interview linked from the image above (or start here and watch for just a few minutes, if you want to avoid the awkward interviewer’s preamble).

It features David Hazan of musician-to-fan community service Mobile Backstage and covers some potential solutions to the question above. Although the platform itself is rather new and still to prove itself sustainable as a business, there is a trend towards these types of ‘true fan’ platforms. The reason being that musicians need to connect regularly and deeply with their most passionate core of fans, in order to drive longer term sales of merchandise, concert tickets, and perhaps even (shock) recorded music.

Wide Open Spaces

The intention of this post is not to glorify one specific service in this realm. Rather, I want to focus your attention on the potential online spaces in which you can best attract and engage fans.

Consider questions such as:

  • Which platforms (social networks, websites, blogs etc) attract the most new fans to your music?
  • Where do you find your fans becoming most passionate?
  • How could you combine platforms to deliver a more coherent, interactive space for your fans to gather and interact?
  • How could you utilize mobile content to connect with your fans more closely?
  • What other media have you not yet tapped to connect with fans? (e.g. video, podcasts, text messaging, crowd funding)
Echna Loch Horizon Sunset
Photo Credit: Ian Balcombe

 

Fan Clubs for the Digital Era

Whatever your answers to the questions above, the overall objective is to find either one highly productive space, or a fusion of many, that in effect becomes the digital fan club for your music and the content, products, and events that surround it.

As outmoded as the notion of a fan club may sound, is it not where the core of your most ardent supporters will gather? Through a combination of interaction with the main event (you!), community with other equally engaged fans, and that intangible ‘inner circle’ feeling that comes of investing oneself in an artist’s work. Furthermore, the excitement that is generated when impassioned fans gather together around a shared interest only furthers the attachment that they feel towards that common denominator. Fans breed further fanaticism.

From this base of hardcore support you can launch all of your future projects, from new music to international tours and other artistic pursuits. And it’s a purer connection in the digital era, as it has been built by you the artist directly, rather than through a convoluted chain of marketing departments and physical retail chains.

 

Your Two Cents?

Where do you stand on this?

Is it a crucial consideration that needs to now be fully taken up by musicians themselves, or simply another distraction from the true pursuit of making music?

Where do you make the truest connections with your fans?

February 29, 2012 by 1 Comment
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Conquering the Smaller Screen: Twitter’s Impact on Television

This is a re-post of a guest article from Minni Kemp, originally published on a previous incarnation of this site. Having attended a Social Media Week panel on Social TV last week, I thought it about time to resurrect her observations on the rise of social media and its integration with our television experience. 

Minni Kemp is a Midwest freelance editor and writer. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, running, and reading cheesy romance novels. You can check out her writing at Professional Intern.

I admit that I’m addicted to Twitter.

Twitter & Television

It’s like the world’s largest custom-built chat room—and as long as you cultivate a good list of people to follow, Twitter can be loads of fun. For me, it’s the easiest way to keep up on what’s going on in the world; my timeline is a busy flow of tweets from friends, coworkers, journalists, and almost all of my favorite TV shows.

Even though I rely on my DVR for about half the TV shows I watch on a regular basis, there are a few shows I insist on watching live, just so I can watch with the other folks in my Twitter feed. The real-time conversations about certain shows are often just as good as the show itself.

Now that Twitter is becoming a part of mainstream media, television shows of all types are using Twitter as another way to interact with hardcore fans and to attract new ones.

The Vanishing Fourth Wall

For some shows, Twitter can carry the action and drama beyond the small screen. Twitter accounts often do more than just offer information about the show.

There are feed for a show’s fictional characters (like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother and his @broslife account), for its actors (Neil Patrick Harris’s @ActuallyNPH), or even for a show’s production staff (@HIMYM_CBS). Giving fans a chance to interact with each other—as well as stars or show producers—can create an interactive and personalized television experience.

 

Absence Makes the Viewer Grow Fonder

Waiting for True Blood to return to HBO  sucked, but in a good way. With @truebloodhbo, the folks behind the show keep viewers hooked with contests and sneak peeks of the upcoming fourth season.

They’ve also used Twitter to build anticipation for the new season among diehard fans and Trubie newbies. For fans of the show, it’s become part of the True Blood experience—and it eases the pain until the show comes back on the air.

Community Service

Twittizens have created online communities to tweet about their TV shows in real time. And networks have taken notice: now, several shows offer Twitter feeds for their shows, featuring some of their favorite tweets onscreen during a first-run or rerun broadcast of a show. Using tweets written by real fans is a great form of advertising for a TV show, and is sure to be cheap and more effective than network commercials or e-mail marketing. The line between interaction and advertising continues to blur, but both fans and TV shows benefit.

For a genre that was once threatened by the rise of online entertainment, television has been quick to adapt and to use the Internet to its advantage.

With social media platforms like Twitter, television has become a collaborative experience. What the future of Twitter holds for more interactive television is still up in the air, but with tweeting becoming an integral part of watching TV, the future of entertainment could become more hands-on for viewers.

 

Your Two Cents:

Do you combine your television watching with tweeting? What does it add to your experience?

How do you see social media further developing and integrating with traditional broadcast media?

Your insights are what make the difference, so please weigh in below in the comments or over on Facebook.

Expect more on the social TV phenomenon as I delve deeper into the subjects of last week’s panel. 

 

February 20, 2012 by 1 Comment
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The 3 C’s of Web Presence Engagement & Interaction

Points of Contact

Recently I posted more in depth explanations of  the first points 1,2 and point 3 on my original 12 point check list for developing your web presence.

Today, we’ll look more at the fourth and fifth points on the list: the touch points of your platforms and using them to form two way conversation with your fans.

Photo Credit: David JW Bailey

These considerations follow on logically from the previous task of selecting your key platforms. Knowing where you’re going to be expending most of your efforts, you can now decide the ways in which you’ll communicate with fans on those platforms, as well as how to involve them in the process.

In short, this is engagement and interaction time!

 

Compelling. Concise. Content.

 

There are always a few memory aids to guide your work in any field. Social media is no exception and you will see these 3 C’s crop up time and again as you read further into the effective use of platforms. As overall way points, they will serve you well.

Compelling. Concise. Content

Content is anything from a sub-140 character tweet to an in-depth blog post on your site. To start on the long road to fan engagement, each piece of content needs to be of interest to your target audience. Be it informative, amusing, or something that stirs their passion, hitting the mark consistently (another ‘C’!) is where your content becomes compelling.

Content lies at the core of your web presence. It is the factor that decides whether visitors keep coming back for more, or are uninterested and leave, never to return. The other adjectives really only serve to emphasize key factors in making sure your content achieves the return value that you’re looking for.

Although a given platform will determine the depth of your content (try getting complex in a tweet….ouch!), conciseness will serve you well in almost every piece you post. By all means, explore the intricacies of a topic beyond 500 words in a blog post. Just don’t use a paragraph when a sentence would suffice. Attention spans are short on the web and the average visitor decides in under ten seconds whether or not they will stay.

Having eye catching headlines and visuals to draw people in, followed by the quality content that will keep them interested, is a sure fire way to keep your visitors engaged and coming back for more.

 

Conversation?Join The Conversation?

The cacophony encouraging us to “join the conversation” grows ever louder by the day. In reality, this is a catch all phrase that wants a more general response from us: interaction.

Once engaged by your content and creations, the next objective is to draw a visitor deeper into your creative world. This extends beyond mere discussion, delving into the realms of building emotional connections to your art, gathering feedback, involving visitors in the creative process, adding game mechanics to content, or any number of new and emerging techniques to develop a stronger bond. A bond that, as it builds, turns uncommitted visitors into excited fans of your work.

Although the application of these concepts has the potential to become quite complex, the core idea is simple: offer your fans a compelling, two-way experience with your art, in addition to the traditonal one-way consumption.

How to do this?

Think about what your most passionate fans say about your creations. What do they love about what you do?

For a writer, it could be the characters of your stories that pulls readers into the world you’ve created. How can you give those characters a new lease of life across social media? Furthermore, how can you weave your readers into the story, so that their experience moves from passive to interactive?

For a musician, perhaps your listeners have certain songs that really speak to them. Ask for their interpretations, or comparisons to other artists. Bring to the fore their thoughts and opinions about the subjects of your songs, valuing their additions to the discussion. Fans now create videos and other spin-0ff art in response to their favorite music, so embrace these creations and encourage visitors to pursue their own answers to the questions posed by your songs.

The more that your fans become involved and invested in what you create, the more they’ll support you for the long haul. Sharing as they go, the power of social networks can begin to work for you as your creations are spread far and wide, offering opportunities to repeat the process of engaging and interacting with new fans.

Over To You…

 How have you geared your web presence to keep new visitors interested? 

Once you have their interest, what steps have you taken to interact with people and turn them into fans of your work? 

Your insights are the truly valuable element here. The real world examples are where we really gain an idea of how to put all this into practice, so please feel free to share your own brilliant successes here in the comments or on Facebook.

Leave links so I can visit and put your fan-making process to the test!

 

 

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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7 Ways to Amplify Your Creative Reach on Twitter

Amplify YourselfTwitter is now firmly established as a valuable social network in its own niche. For anyone wanting to connect quickly and freely with a wide range of folks, its 140 character limits and open follow model make it the platform of choice.

Despite all of this, I still see many dismissive attitudes towards Twitter from artists. Be it the simplicity or perceived echo chamber effect of the platform, a lot of creators are missing out on a channel that offers an outstanding way to connect with new fans from all walks of life. Even those that do take the plunge tend to simply feed through updates from other social networks, creating a very robotic profile with little chance of winning new fans.

 

So what can be done?

Photo Credit: The Paradigm Shifter

First Impressions

Get over the first impression of Twitter, for a start. Yes, indeed, it starts out a pretty lonely place. Few followers, and uncertainty of how to start conversations to build a following, both contribute to the early drop out factor that can plague the network. But persevere, get over that hurdle, and really start conversing with friends, fans, and followers will flock to you in a relatively short period.

Once you get going, you’ll be eager to amplify your tweets, spreading them farther than your own core following by connecting with other groups. Here are 7 pointers to get you sharing your messages far and wide:

1. Use hashtags: In tweets you want to emphasize & share more widely, research relevant hashtags that others are already monitoring and tailor your tweet to fit that tag.

2. Spread tweets & repeats: It’s okay (and indeed important) to repeat your key tweets at different times though the day, as people are online at different times and tweets are fleeting. Tweak wording and delivery to maintain variety, but be sure your core message gets acoss.

3. Ask for help: If something is truly important, don’t hesitate to ask for a retweet or for your followers to recommend to their own following. Don’t ask too often, but don’t be scared to ask, either.

4. Retweet others. Often: When you’re asking for help from others, it helps if you’ve already done the same for them in the past. Sharing the work of others that you enjoy not only adds variety to your Twitter stream, it builds goodwill for others to do the same for you.

Twitter Bird

5. Strategic @’ing: The @ mention has a more ‘personal inbox’ feel to it for most of us, so it can be used to get the attention of someone you’d ideally like to read and share your tweet. Use it sparingly and with subtlety for promotional tweets, though, as it’s easy to cross the line into spam. This is also 10x more true if you barely know the person to whom you’re tweeting.

6. Join communities: …or build your own! Again, hashtags tend to lend themselves to communities – #oTable, #UsGuys, #TweetDiner, to name just a few – as do chats and trending topics sometimes. Find the areas that others gather and begin to participate. If the crowd gathered there is a good fit and it feels comfortable to do so, you can begin to recommend your art or content to members of these communities. In addition, you can explore tools such as Triberr, which joins you to other like-minded content producers and their followers.  

7. Interact and influence: The first and last tenet of Twitter being that the more you tweet in, the more you’ll get out. Participate on a wide range of subjects, in a wide variety of ways, to both build your following and amplify your reach in the longer term. Join in with other established influencers in fields that interest you to boost your message still further.

 

Start Building

Twitter amplification is a strange beast.

In theory, it takes a slow and steady build up of relationships and reciprocation to have a significant audience sharing your messages. In practice, the serendipity of just one well placed tweet, attached to a valuable message or content, can take off like a bottle rocket and explode into all the results you desired.

Your best bet is to follow the tips above, tweet quality regularly, and enjoy the relationships that you build…all the while anticipating that one explosive tweet that shares your glorious creativity to the world!

What ways have you found to extend the reach of your tweets?

February 3, 2012 by 3 Comments
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