The basics of social media marketing
Or: How do I get more fans on Facebook?
Regardless of music style, instrument, age, gender or place of residence, we all have a common goal: “fans” and concert goers.
There are many ways to get more fans online, but we are now focusing on the obvious service.
The big blue-white F-word at the top of the social media food chain: Facebook. Social media marketing has for and against for every platform, but finally there is an obvious reason why you should focus on Facebook first. It is by far (really, the second one doesn’t even come close) the biggest existing social network.
This means; whether you want to focus on existing fans or attract new fans, it is almost guaranteed that they are already on Facebook.
Facebook page vs. personal profile
It seems easier to market yourself and your music from a personal profile. But there are good reasons why a Facebook page is the better choice:
- No fan limit on your page: Facebook pages have NO limit on the number of fans. However, for personal profiles the number of “friends” is limited to 5000.
- Find out what appeals to your fans (and what doesn’t!): Statistics (a feature NOT available to the personal profile) are an excellent tool to find out where your fans come from and what content (content, photos, videos, etc.) they respond to most.
- Promote posts: With a Facebook page you can “promote” posts so that they reach more people. Depending on how much you want to pay, your post will reach people who are not yet your fans or have not yet clicked your page. This can be a successful way to increase the visibility of your content and music – but it can also quickly become expensive.
- Ads: If you have a Facebook page, you have access to Facebook Ads. With this you can promote your page, get more Likes, announce concerts and CD baptisms etc. You can even target specific regions, demographics and interest groups. Again, Facebook Ads can quickly become expensive. So set a budget.
How do I use Facebook Ads to get new fans
In certain circles, advertising and marketing has a bad reputation, because people think that good music does not need advertising and that marketing buys its fans.
We see it differently.
Even if the own product is worlds better than everything else, every business has to advertise in order to make potential customers aware that the own product exists at all.
If you want to make potential fans aware of your music via Facebook Ads, there are a few rules of thumb:
- Setting goals: What do you want to achieve in general (e.g. “more fans”)? How high do you set your goal (e.g. “I want 500 new fans”)? How much time do you give yourself for that?
- Set budget: On Facebook you can choose between two ways to calculate the costs.
The first way is per thousand impressions (how often your ad is shown). This is a cheap way to reach a lot of people but you have no guarantee that they will interact with your ad. If you simply want to increase your visibility, this is the best way.
The second way is per click (how often your ad is clicked): This is the more expensive way of advertising but you only pay if someone clicks on your ad; not if someone just sees your ad.
Once you’ve decided which is the better way to go, set your budget per day or for the entire campaign and make sure – especially if you’re paying per click – that the budget for your goal is realistic. The more effective your ad is, the easier your ad will be clicked and the less you will pay per click. - Set targeting: Again, there are two ways to find your new fans via advertising.
The first is to promote your Facebook page to fans of artists who have an audience similar to yours.
The second is to upload your own mailing list to the Facebook Ad Manager and create a “custom audience” similar to the fans you already have. Facebook will then analyze your uploaded fans and search for other people with similar characteristics based on their geographic and demographic characteristics and preferences. This is a fantastic tool!
Advertise posts
On Facebook you have the possibility to “advertise” existing posts in addition to ads.
This converts a normal post into a sponsored post. This is often more appealing, because these sponsored posts are better embedded in the normal posts than ads and therefore more difficult to recognize than advertisements.
Promoted posts are a good way to reach friends of your fans and thereby find new fans again or even reach your existing fans who only see your posts irregularly. This happens more often than you might think, because Facebook’s “EdgeRank” algorithm filters all content and decides individually for each user what is “relevant” for him. It may make the news feed of each user cleaner and more relevant, but it also means that only 5-10% of your fans will see the “normal” posts you post.
Great, ” shareable” content
The most important way to get new fans is great content.
What is “great” means something different for every kind of fan but in the end you need content that drives interest in you and your music and appeals to your fans enough to make them come back to your site and want more. If you manage to generate content that your fans even share, so much the better!
- Music: Music is without doubt your craft. If the quality is not right, everything else is in vain – that’s why your music should always have first priority.
- Pictures: Whether it’s pictures of you in the studio, at a concert or just on the street; pictures are always a simple and appealing content that can be posted regularly and often.
- Videos: Compared to other content, videos receive by far the most attention on Facebook. Together with likes, comments and shared content, they are far more appealing than photos, text or links.
Posting videos on Youtube and then sharing them on Facebook is an easy way to share good content on Facebook and build a presence on Youtube at the same time. Posting the videos directly on Facebook is better for your visibility, because the Facebook algorithm weights the videos published directly on Facebook more than “external” content. - Facebook Live: Facebook has invested heavily in live video streaming as the content of the future, and now everyone can stream directly from a Facebook page. With Facebook Live, you can turn your content into an “event” where fans can view and comment. The live videos can even be saved and viewed again later, which in turn generates video content for later.
Measure and optimize effectiveness
By using a Facebook page you have access to analysis tools that measure the effectiveness of your content.
Every posted content has an analysis area where you can see how many people you have reached and what interactions (including likes, comments, shares) have taken place with your post.
Pay attention to this data because it helps you to see what kind of content (photos vs. videos, days of the week and time of day of the posts etc.) works for your audience and fans and what content misses the mark. You can draw conclusions from this, plan your future posts more precisely, use your budget more effectively and reach even more people.