At two billion monthly users, Facebook remains the largest social app with regard to logged in users, and therefore stands as an important marketing tool for artists when it comes to connecting with fans and promoting their music. Here we look at some of the Facebook marketing tactics for 2017.
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Guest post by Nikoo Sadr and Victoria Morris, both Managers of Interactive Marketing at The Orchard from The Daily Rind.
As of June, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users. This makes Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users. With statistics like that it is obvious Facebook is important in our marketing strategies for artists and remains the go-to platform for brand presence. Creating a Facebook page for your artist in 2017 should be a no brainer.
To create a successful Facebook page, artists need content that promotes engagement and resonates with their fans. This is easier said than done as it can be difficult to keep up with the ever-changing platform. Nevertheless, an overarching theme is that authenticity is key. Below are a few tips and new features to help you generate new but genuine content to connect with your fans.
Camera Effects And Frames
Facebook now allows anyone to create their own frames to use as their profile picture or with Facebook camera. You can start creating your frame via this site and once you’re done you can then encourage your fans to share that frame across their profile pictures. This could be a great way of raising awareness and putting spotlight on a specific album release or event. For more advanced developers there’s also a possibility to create masks, animations and advanced scripted effects.
Additionally Facebook has also brought several new filters, masks and video reactions that can be used with Messenger. Video reactions to Facebook live, which allows people to bring up custom video filters to share joy, anger, sadness and more.
Tag A Product To Your Post
Facebook product tagging has been around for some time now but it’s a great tool that is still not being widely. First of all you will need to add the products, such as vinyl, tickets, t-shirts, to your Shop section of your page. This can be products that redirect you to a website, bandcamp or similar. You can find the shop section on the left hand side of your page. After you’ve added all your products you can then tag certain products to your posts by choosing the tag product button.
Banner Changes
You can now add a video as a banner instead of a static photo. Additionally, pages can easily add and edit information directly on top of their banners. At the moment you cannot choose where the text appears but it serves as a good way to gain extra attention pointing to an album release or keeps updates easier without having to change the banner photo or video itself. These features are still being gradually rolled out and are not yet available for all pages.If you don’t yet have access to video banners at the moment, try visiting a page that has the video banner featured. This should then ‘unlock’ the feature on your own page.
News Feed Algorithm
In order to continue to reduce low quality content in the News Feed Facebook will now be cracking down even harder on clickbait. Nevertheless, taking advantage of Facebook’s algorithms is a great way to create a high reach for your posts. These algorithms favor posts with high engagement rates and authenticity. Facebook can actually tell if you are making a sales-y post and will hide it in fans news feeds, especially posts that ask for likes, comments and shares. Also, be wary of wrapping too many links as Facebook will detect this as clickbait. Feel free to dig deeper for details here.
Facebook Insights
Something else Facebook algorithms are looking at is how timely your post is. A great way to use this to your advantage is checking when fans of your page are online through your pages Insights. Insights will show you when your fans are online and also how your fans react to each post, making it easier to layout which posts work best with your audience and when. Additionally, the following metrics will be rolling out to pages soon if you do not have them already:
- Follows: The rise and fall of number of total follows (people who choose to see updates from the page in their news feed) will be shown over time.
- Previews: The amount of people interacting with your page, without visiting the actual page.
- Recommendations: This metric will show how many times your business receives recommendations, if this is occurring for your page.
Find 2017’s best practices here and get to taking advantage of one of the most powerful platforms on the internet!