The Blog

February 6th, 2010

Survival Guide: Bands on Facebook

As part of the ongoing series of A Band’s Guide to Surviving Online we’ve explored Twitter, Last.fm and now turn to Facebook.

With over 400 million members Facebook has long surpassed MySpace as the number 1 social networking site in the world.

Getting Started:

• Registering for Facebook is quick and easy. Make sure you register a Fan page (as opposed to a Person page).
• Ideally you can get facebook.com/yourbandname
• Facebook has a standard look and format. Your picture, bio, info, links, videos are the main areas to customize.
• Upload your own content, music, standard biography etc. Include links to your other social networking profiles.

What to do with an Account:

• The main focus of the Facebook page is the Wall. This should be a steady and entertaining stream of status updates, relevant links, videos etc.
• Status updates should be meaningful updates on the artistic process (i.e. writing a new song, in the recording studio etc.) or career (i.e. free show this Saturday, check out this article etc.).
• Right now Facebook has a subtle music player. Make sure to upload your songs via the Facebook player or embed using a third party application like ReverbNation or iLike.
• Once your page is populated with music and information, send out an invitation to all of your friends to “become fans’ of your page.
• Make each of your band members administrators of the account and have them invite their entire network.
• Find similar bands and see how they present themselves on Facebook.
• Make sure to respond to each and every wall post, comment and thank your fans for their interest and attention.
• Facebook provides data about the geographic and demographic information of your fans. Because most people on the network have put their real information into the system, this is a high-relevance source for learning more about your fan base.