Facebook just celebrated 1 billion people to use their platform in a single day. It’s no surprise that it is the first place bands go to set up a profile.
Whether you are starting out or looking to improve your Facebook marketing here is a great guide on how to get your first 1,000 fans courtesy of: Quick Sprout
There are a few things that your need to consider before putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket.
For a few years now, Facebook have been steadily pulling back on Pages organic reach. For small pages of less than 10,000 fans this usually means that only 20% of your fans will see your status update.
They do this so that you will spend money to boost your update through their advertising platform.
For pages that had already built up a following this was a big kick in the teeth, but for anyone starting out, this creates an opportunity.
Here in Ireland it costs approximately €35 to reach 1,000 people through advertising on Radio, where as it costs on average 35¢ to reach 1,000 people on Facebook.
On top of that Facebook have so much information about their users that you can narrow your target market down to a few thousand people. Making sure only those likely to be interested see you ad.
With this in mind there are a few rules you should follow to ensure that you succeed in creating a following and don’t just generate more business for Facebook.
You should look to grow your mailing list from day one. The only way to truly own your fans data is to build a mailing list (or mobile list).
People log into their email accounts to read their emails; they don’t necessarily login to Facebook to read their timeline.
There are some rules you should follow before you jump into email marketing. Please read Seth Godin’s Email Checklist.
You can set up a mailing list in a matter of minutes with Mailchimp which is free to use until your list grows above 2,000 subscribers.
Boosting posts allows you to reach a lot more than just your current fans for little money. But it works better with some posts than others.
If you posts are engaging and get more likes and share, then they will continue to be shown to more and more people. Facebook videos are great for this as they automatically start playing in the timeline.
You should also look to use promoted posts to take people from Facebook to your website/blog. This way you will have more opportunities to get them to either sign up to your mailing list or to buy from you there and then.
When thinking about what you should be posting and promoting on Facebook, you should consider 3 things.
Getting your music and band name in front of new people. The more people see your name and here your music, the more likely they are to become fans. This is why radio is so good at breaking music. Repetition is the number one way to hook people.
Constantly interacting with your current fans. Posting photos, videos and having two way conversations is the bast way of turning fair weather fans into die hard fans. Be yourself, be human and don’t pretend to be part of a big team. People don’t want that. They way to know that your are out there doing it for yourself.
We promote on Facebook because everyone is already there. This is a great opportunity to find people to send to your website, ticket sales page or music store.
You emphasis is on engaging your fans as they will act as a street team and become your biggest promoters.
Now that you have a better understanding on how you can use Facebook to grow your audience and sell more music.
