Members RadiationNation Posted February 21, 2011 Members Share Posted February 21, 2011 As the social networking wars seem to be coming to an end (at least for now), Facebook seems to be the clear champion. MySpace still serves a purpose as something of a free, easy EPK that still has a certain notoriety as one of the first places to go to experience a band's media online, but losing its larger user base to Facebook the website now seems less like a social networking site and more like a static promotional tool. Naturally, as more and more bands adapt to the changes and start to utilize Facebook as a promotional tool, some lessons are being learned. By its very structure, Facebook relies on content rather than visual design or graphic gimmickry and its creators seem to be working hard to ensure that it continues to be further integrated into our daily lives. Its structure also encourages interaction. The more a band interacts--posting photos, creating events, posting status messages, or doing pretty much anything on the site--the more relevant that band stays in the minds of the users they're trying to stay in touch with. Simultaneously, Facebook Insight statistics ensure that page moderators can learn what works at generating interest and what doesn't and learning from their mistakes can do a much more effective job at interacting with their fan base. No doubt musicians out there right now are exploring all of their promotional options using modern and relatively-new tools such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. With these tools already becoming fully integrated into the daily lives of the people bands would like to see become fans, it seems that extinction is on the horizon for traditional promotional methods such as the email mailing list (itself having long ago replaced the traditional "fan club" mailing list). Personally, my band has seen a much more positive results from audiences since we began promoting our Facebook than we did trying to get sign-ups for our mailing list (either offline or online). Walking up to someone and asking them to "sign up for our mailing list" reeks of desperation, however if you don't get them to connect with you in some way soon after seeing you, you risk fading out of memory in a day or two unlikely to ever be thought of again. Facebook is great in this respect because potential fans only have to commit themselves to "liking" your band, not necessarily signing up as lifelong fans who will forever be subjected to receiving a gig announcement and two separate reminders every time you play Joe's Bar at 11:30PM next Wednesday. Instead, all updates arrive as part of the continuous Facebook news feed--just one more status update in a sea of status updates. The power is also in their hands to stop receiving receiving updates whenever they choose. And finally, the interaction that Facebook provides serve to strengthen the bonds formed between band and "fan." They are no longer being shouted at over an anonymous mailing list, but are given the opportunity to be part of a conversation, meanwhile also showing off their own unique brand of style and wit. In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons that Facebook has become such a huge success. Now, social networking isn't the end-all, be-all of promotion, but it's obvious that the band that fully utilizes Facebook has a definite leg up on those that don't. What methods have you found to make use of Facebook as a promotional tool? Any comments are greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SpaceNorman Posted February 21, 2011 Members Share Posted February 21, 2011 There's no question that Facebook is a powerful marketing tool for local bar acts. However, I'm of the opinion that Facebook's real value as a marketing tool for local bar acts is the viral characteristics of the "wall" - and not so much getting a broad audience to like the group's page. Simply creating an event for an upcoming gig - and then circulating it to the personal friend lists ends up putting that notice in front of hundreds of highly qualified attendees. By saying qualified attendees, I mean folks that know that their friends are considering or are planning to hit attend that gig. I work for a Fortune 500 financial institution - and have elected NOT to "friend" coworkers simply because I prefer to maintain some seperation between work and play. I'm regularly surprised to see friends of friends of friends that I know from work responding to their friends' share of our gig "events". We've got a band page that has been liked by a couple of hundred folks - which we of course share our gig "events" with - however, it's our personal friend lists and by extension their friend lists that do the "heavy lifting" in terms of mobilizing a crowd for our gigs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted February 21, 2011 Members Share Posted February 21, 2011 I guess the trick is getting people at gigs to go to your Facebook page the next day so they can be added to your 'list', but it's sure gotta beat the old method of a pen-and-paper signup list and then trying to decipher all the drunken scrolling of email addresses the next day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members flanc Posted February 21, 2011 Members Share Posted February 21, 2011 I guess the trick is getting people at gigs to go to your Facebook page the next day so they can be added to your 'list', but it's sure gotta beat the old method of a pen-and-paper signup list and then trying to decipher all the drunken scrolling of email addresses the next day. We try to take lots of pics of the crowd and pimp our FB page regularly...they come to the page to look at their pics and friend the band. We pretty much shut down our old mailing list too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wheresgrant3 Posted February 22, 2011 Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 We still cover all the bases... our email list is 8 years old and 4500 addresses. Maybe only 800 of them are still active... still it doesn't matter. Every Wed we send ONE email addressing the weekend events. Our FaceBook is broken into three confusing sites... a page, a profile and a Group. The page and profile were created because to this day FB still won't allow us to register the name 'Nuts In A Blender'. As confusing as it can be... we still maintain weekly updates on all three FB pages. Our MySpace is still up, barely updated since last fall but comeone... who is really using MySpace to promote their shows. If someone needs to find us they can 'Google' us. Last but not least we have our website, currently in the process of a redesign. We still get between 100-250 hits per week because we regular post updates, pics and videos from shows. What does this all add up too? Can't be sure, but this afternoon we released our weekly video gig recap from last weekend on FB, and already it has over 152 hits and 121 plays in just 3 hours. I think we've used every advantage we can for web marketing and it's been the cornerstone for us building a generous following over the years. We spend alot of time managing it, but the payoff is bodies on the dance floor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted February 22, 2011 Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 We try to take lots of pics of the crowd and pimp our FB page regularly...they come to the page to look at their pics and friend the band. We pretty much shut down our old mailing list too. I definiately see the value in it and I think the social-networking models have the old ones beat hands down. In the case of my band, it's pretty pointless though. Our bass player insists on keeping up a Facebook page and it certainly doesn't HURT anything, but I do often ask him "why? when we don't play any public gigs anymore??" But I've read somewhere that all the combined Facebook/MySpace/Twitter stuff all helps to increase visability and SEO for our webpage, which is our primary promotional device. So whatever-works I'm all for! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tim_7string Posted February 22, 2011 Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 We try to take lots of pics of the crowd and pimp our FB page regularly...they come to the page to look at their pics and friend the band. We did the same thing, first on myspace, then on Facebook. I didn't even bother to update my main site. It was a lot easier and faster to just upload to the social networking sites. It was fun to see how many pictures got viewed on myspace. I knew that it was certain people checking out the crowd pics by the fact the same people were included in each photo that had a lot of views. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members vanlatte Posted February 22, 2011 Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 We try to take lots of pics of the crowd and pimp our FB page regularly...they come to the page to look at their pics and friend the band. We pretty much shut down our old mailing list too. That's a really good point, and it ties in with the current trend of crowd participation; what better way to get people to at least check out your page then saying "Come out to our page and see the Pictures of You!" (great Cure song BTW ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RadiationNation Posted February 22, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 That's a really good point, and it ties in with the current trend of crowd participation; what better way to get people to at least check out your page then saying "Come out to our page and see the Pictures of You!" (great Cure song BTW ) We did that at our last gig and will probably be doing more of it in the future. We're also doing some face painting, so people can get their face painted then their picture taken and be invited to tag themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wheresgrant3 Posted February 22, 2011 Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 That's a really good point, and it ties in with the current trend of crowd participation; what better way to get people to at least check out your page then saying "Come out to our page and see the Pictures of You!" (great Cure song BTW ) I'm not sure if that's a current trend... we've been doing that long before Facebook... long before Myspace. In fact we continue to post pictures from shows even though we've made the jump to video. http://www.nutsinablender.com/pics.php So add this up: 8 years... 45+ picture galleries per year... 50 pictures in each gallery= 18,000 pictures. I'm not taking anything away from Facebook... but we use Facebook updates mainly to drive people back to our website each week... to see the pictures.... and it's what leads to 200-250 hits per week on the website. It's not home base for us... it's just a piece of our marketing plan. If this is the current trend then I guess we were long ahead of the curve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wardjames Posted February 23, 2011 Members Share Posted February 23, 2011 I feel like facebook is a great, userfriendly tool. I don't think it will replace email lists though, and I don't intend to stop taking email addresses. I remember reading a book called the Indie Band Survival guide a couple of years ago and one point that stuck out was to have a distinct website rather than relying on myspace. The main reason the guy cited was that myspace could become obsolete at some point. At the time (this is probably less than 2 years ago) I thought the guy was crazy. Now myspace seems less and less important, and we only update it every so often. The same thing could happen to facebook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steveosplace Posted February 23, 2011 Members Share Posted February 23, 2011 We try to take lots of pics of the crowd and pimp our FB page regularly...they come to the page to look at their pics and friend the band. We pretty much shut down our old mailing list too. Hey, thats a great idea... We need to take pictures of our crowds too! We're a newish band and still learning... But yea I'm sure our crowd would love to look at themselves in the recap too! I've seen other bands do it and thought it was kind of a waste (I want to check out their setup and not a bunch of drunks!) but we've got to look at it from our audiences perspective too. This is a bit of an "aha" moment for me, sorry if its painfully obvious to you seasoned bands! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Outkaster Posted February 23, 2011 Members Share Posted February 23, 2011 I update the myspace while our website is beijng redone. Facebook is done by the girl singer. I don't what if any difference it makes. The important thing is that people can find your schedule and where you are playing. Facebook is all I hear about and it is getting old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members vanlatte Posted February 23, 2011 Members Share Posted February 23, 2011 I'm not sure if that's a current trend... we've been doing that long before Facebook... l I think you misunderstood me; the trend I am referring to is not taking pics of fans and posting them, but crowds being more interactive and part of the show. Of course maybe that is what you meant anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members vanlatte Posted February 23, 2011 Members Share Posted February 23, 2011 I feel like facebook is a great, userfriendly tool. Did he just say "userfriendly" Do you actually USE facebook? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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