photo: designerkottayam + kirstyfields (CC0)
If you’re a musician, singer, songwriter, composer, or even an industry professional and you’re not using Facebook to build a fanbase, you are missing out big time.
The following comes from Savvy Musician Academy, a proud partner of DMN committed to educating a brand-new class of successful musicians.
Facebook has been one of the most important things I’ve used to propel my music from a hobby to a 6-figure career, all as a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t tour.
That sounds kind of hard to believe to some people, because they’ve been on Facebook a while now and haven’t seen results anywhere close to that! Not to mention the constant changes to the algorithms (read more about that here).
There’s always a reason why things work for some people and not others.
It’s not a game of luck or chance on Facebook. We’re dealing with human behavior, emotions, algorithms, and data.
“SO WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?”
Let me fill you in on what you might be doing wrong so you can fix it ASAP and get better results.
Mistake #1: Using your personal profile to promote your music
“What’s wrong with that? I seem to get better interaction when I post about my music on my personal profile.”
There are five big reasons why you want to STOP using your personal profile to further your music career immediately:
Reason #1: It’s against Facebook’s policy to use your personal profile for business, and that includes anything you have for sale, including your music.
Your personal profile is meant for friends and family. That’s why they cap you at 5,000 friends – because, realistically, you don’t have personal relationships with more than 500 people (let’s be honest). But they still allow a larger number for, say, acquaintances, work colleagues, etc.
This friend limit was put in place so that it would keep the newsfeeds personal. The last thing you want when you’re trying to interact with friends and family is to get spammed by people you hardly know about their latest vitamin MLM. I’m a big supporter of small businesses and even network marketing, but I always tell my MLM friends that they need to stop promoting on their personal page if they want to build a business, and start building a following of people on their business page, based on a certain lifestyle, common interests, and community. Then, and only then, will people will want to buy what they have. The same thing goes for our music.
We’re going to do the exact same thing.
Reason #2: You are capped at 5,000 friends on your personal profile.
Why would you want to cap yourself? It makes absolutely no sense to place limits when trying to build a fanbase around the world.
We’ve already talked about why Facebook has this policy, but the fact is that some people reading this right now are going to be stubborn and keep their personal profile just because it seems they get more interaction on their personal profile. The reason is because that’s where you’ve put your focus. Plus, Facebook’s algorithms are designed to show friends and family’s posts first. If people are on your friends list, yeah, there’s a bigger chance they’ll see it.
I believe the pros of that do not outweigh the cons and the bigger benefits of having a professional Facebook fan page.
So how do you get people from your personal page to your business fan page? I suggest you make a public post explaining that you’ll be moving all your music posts to your new (or old) official fan page. Explain you want to keep things a little more separated in your personal life and music life. People will understand. Give them a heads up, and also let them know that they can interact with you on your fan page, where you’ll be very active. Then copy this post and put it in the public “about” section of your personal profile. That way, when people are searching for you and sending you friend requests, they’ll see why you haven’t added them, and they’ll also see the link to where they CAN interact with you.
Another reason you don’t want to use your personal profile to promote your music is…
Reason #3: Google does not spider your personal page but does spider your professional business page.
What does that mean? It means Google sends little bots to search for keywords, phrases, and interests. Those bots “spider” web pages to find them. This is what gives you an SEO ranking when people search for certain terms. Google does NOT send those bots to your personal profile, which gives you no added benefit to posting your music there as your primary social media marketing channel. Google does, however, spider public professional pages. That means that, every time you post, all the words and images you use go into Google’s systems as it searches for relevant keywords, hashtags, and key phrases. This is how potential fans will find you in search results. Oftentimes, if you’re using a Facebook page properly, this is how you get on the first page of Google search results. Good enough reason for me!
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Reason #4: Lack of boundaries!
Fans (and sometimes stalkers) will have access to you day and night. If you’re just starting out, this might not seem like a big deal to you…yet. But eventually, you will not like the fact that any and all fans can reach you any time of the day or night. Many of them just assume that if you’re online and they have access to your profile, they can simply converse with you and message you whenever they want. And, mark my words, they will.
I learned the hard way when I started getting some creepy messages and people borderline stalking me. Keep in mind that you have your very personal friends, family, and loved ones on that same friend list. They can access this. They can see those people commenting on your kids’ pictures. I believe privacy and security are an issue here. So, for that reason alone, it’s a healthy and safe idea to separate your music page from your personal/private profile.
And one of the bigger reasons you don’t want to use your personal profile for music business:
Reason #5: You cannot use Facebook advertising for your personal profile.
If you get to the point where you really want to build a serious following of fans online, at some point you’re going to want to learn how to use Facebook ads properly (I have extensive training on this for musicians). In order to advertise, you must have a professional business page. That’s the only way you can set up an ad campaign.
You also can’t show ads to your personal profile of friends. You can show ads to the Facebook page of fans that you’ve been building, though! So it does not help you in any way to build a personal page that you can’t ever advertise to. It just doesn’t make any sense.
OTHER MISTAKES MUSICIANS MAKE ON FACEBOOK…
Mistake #2: Using outdated graphics on your Facebook banner and website
Sure, that photo of you from 5 years ago or 20 years ago is great… but that’s not you now. Plus, most outdated photos and graphics look outdated. We can tell. Get a new photoshoot done once a year. Get new graphics made for each new release, and update your Facebook banner and social media platforms with the same theme.
It’s a very jarring experience for a fan to see one image or graphic of you on your Facebook page and then go to your website, only to experience a totally different look and feel. What we want is brand continuity. That means we provide a consistent experience across different platforms and channels, which helps establish our brand identity. And it also establishes trust between the consumer and the brand – the fan and the artist.
Secondly, if you’re making your own graphics and banners (and you’re not a graphic designer), stop. I don’t mind being the bad guy, but I have to tell you: we can tell you did it yourself. Go to fiverr.com or hire a friend who knows what they’re doing and get yourself some professional-looking graphics and banners. Just because we are often very creative beyond music, and just because we like playing around with Photoshop and Canva, does not mean we should be doing those things. Our energy would be better spent on making more great music and building our fanbase. Those are things that only we can do. Other people are great at graphics, so let them do what they do best.
Mistake #3: Promoting your music in every post
“What are you talking about, Leah? How else am I supposed to get people to listen and buy my music?”
There is a time and a place for flat-out promotion. But this is a by-product of doing something far more important: building a community and culture of like-minded people AROUND our music. What does culture mean? Culture is a common belief, theme, or idea that unifies people together.
We often think of the word in a larger context of the culture of a certain country or something. But as we grow our music and our fan base, we create our own little music eco-system, where there are relationships and transactions.
Those create bonds, common interests and ultimately a theme.
So, for example, when you go to my music fan page, even if my music isn’t your cup of tea, you’ll know within 3-5 seconds of scrolling what my music is all about, even though I might not be posting all about my music.
This means it’s no longer all about quantity. It’s all about quality.
Now, the Facebook algorithms have changed a lot. It used to matter that you posted all the time, and some businesses even posted every hour! The reasoning behind that was that people tend to only engage with what appears in their newsfeed, so the goal was to try and be in the newsfeed all the time, which meant they posted every hour, since people are jumping on and off Facebook throughout the day.
The algorithms have changed recently, pushing the posts of pages further down the feed. This means it’s no longer all about quantity. It’s all about quality. The better the quality of the post, and the more your posts help to build a real culture and community around your music, the more chance your post has of being seen and getting engagement.
This, I believe, is the most important thing you can possibly do on social media. It’s the one thing most musicians never think about. They’re always thinking of the end goal, which is sales and followers (and we do need those goals). But how they go about it is usually backwards. Building a fan culture around your music solves that problem for good. And it’s something that you can and should continue to do as long as you make music, even if you’re 100 years old!
That was a lot of meat to chew on!! Great job for getting all the way to the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget to grab your freebie to help you transition your profile followers and get them on your official page!
Much good advice.
Especially about separate artist page.
Although I believe it is possible to be good at creating the visual elements for yourself; that can be part of the creativity, after all. (See Tycho, for example)
Deleted my FB page two hours ago.
Feels good! 🙂
Eh, the problem is people tend to not engage in music ads. Most consider it ‘spam’ ..
This post is not about ads, it’s about using a professional page properly. And yes, fans totally do engage if you have great content.
This post feels 5 years ago. You know what you have completely missed? The fact that now it’s actually ‘cooler’ for musicians/dj’s/producers to not be on Facebook or most social media at all.
There is a growing number of up and coming and some already well established artists who don’t have that social media presence. The tide has turned – instead of sharing everything with everyone and being transparent, a new culture is emerging where they’re saying “we don’t want to show you everything I’m doing” – They create more intrigue and mystery in themselves by not being on social media.
The clever part is that they let everyone else on social media talk and post about them.
Of course there’s way more people on social networks trying to gain more followers etc, but the tide is turning. Things never stay the same.
Well said. We musicians are sick of “social media marketing.”
The fact you’re more concerned about what’s cooler than what actually works says a lot. I’m not interested in what’s cool, I care about RESULTS. This stuff is basic, and yet most musicians aren’t doing these things, or are making all these mistakes, which is why I had to write this article.
Facebook is dead. Censorship killed it .Artists know this
+1
Ha! Tell that to my accountant. I’m strictly a recording artist and making a GREAT living by promoting my music on FB. This doom and gloom attitude is exactly why artists are still broke!
Totally agree. And an artists is at least to me, a lot cooler than the one spamming everything on twitter and fb.
One example is Dido, almost no posts in 3 years on FB or Twitter.. People will still buy her music though.
There’s a ton of people who claim to have done great things with their own methodology. Most have very little personal success to back up their claims.
If their schemes are so amazing why are they not making and promoting their own music and doing what they love instead of peddling some bullshit sales course.
So true. This Leah McHenry, who supposedly makes six figures from a ‘band’ nobody has ever heard of, is something of a joke. If you do some digging, you’ll find most people think her ‘courses’ are useless and overpriced at best and a scam at worst. Judging from this pointless ‘article’ (gee, I shouldn’t use my FB profile as my band page . . . what an amazing wisdom!) the useless part is definitely true.
Spoken like typical broke musicians who don’t understand the first thing about internet marketing. Sad! I get your cynicism but that’s the exact reason why you’re not successful. Artists who aren’t on Facebook are missing out on their biggest market – with over 2 Billion people there. You have fans there who don’t know you exist yet. It’s a foolish thing to only consider what you think makes you look cool.
And for anyone accusing me of not being genuine, I’m extremely transparent about my own music career on our Podcast: The Savvy Musician Show on itunes and Stitcher, and I make regular videos talking about what I’m doing that works and doesn’t work.
https://www.facebook.com/onlinemusician/videos/177182519851900/
Your ignorance is very revealing. I wrote this article and I am in fact very active in my recording career and it’s growing every year. I also value transparency and talk a lot about what I’m doing and what’s working or not working on our podcast: The Savvy Musician Show – which is on iTunes and Stitcher. In addition, I make videos all the time talking about my personal music revenue and what that looks like being a recording artist who strictly promotes online (I have 5 kids so I don’t tour).
As for my courses, they are a WHOLE lot more in-depth that articles like these.
Yes, the tips here are definitely for beginners, but you’d be surprised how many people are making these rookie mistakes.
FB is for old people.
Great Article! Speaking of, have you heard of Sound Legends? It basically helps take your music career to the next level – legendary status. Sound Legends is an online music service with a complete suite of easy-to-use tools and resources to help independent artists achieve legendary status. They even help independent artists get their music copyrighted, which is the ultimate game changer. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/2Ew8dJo
This title is hella misleading. It says 3 ways to dramatically increase your Facebook page engagement. Then the article proceeds to name 5 reasons why not to use a personal Facebook profile as a artist page and other random things we are “doing wrong”. I didn’t walk away with anything that’s going to dramatically increase my engagement. Someone care to chime in and fill in gaps?
I 100% agree with you – the title is not the right one for the content!
All this info is SO basic and almost goes without saying. A child could think this up.
Interesting… and yet 98% of musicians I work with aren’t doing these things. Sometimes the obvious things aren’t being done!
Hey Leah, this post is titled “3 ways to dramatically increase your Facebook engagment “. I don’t know if I am missing something but could not find the 3 ways dramatically increase engagment that applies to me. Could you please 123 them. Cheers