Prydogga
Giddyup.
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- Jul 7, 2009
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This is my guide for 'Do's and Don'ts' relating mostly to facebook connections and marketing for independent musicians and bands. Hope you can get something from this. 
I'm not going to pretend I know every single in and out about networking and marketing, not for facebook, and definitely not on a large scale.
What I do know, is that there don't seem to be any clear guidelines for how to succeed respectfully in a relatively new centre for bands and musicians.
Just as myspace had infamous 'street teams' and 'friend for friend' issues clouding the 'scene' and annoying the masses, facebook, as well as any other prominent networks have their own pitfalls for bands to think of as an easy ploy to attract new fans.
Before I get into overly large paragraphs about morals and good practice, I think it'll be easy to show my overall point with some pictures. While I made all but one of these scenarios myself, anyone who has ever ventured into the world of facebook bandpage 'liking' will have probably seen that this happens dozens of times a day.
First up, you may know quite a few musicians on facebook, you might think that's just an audience waiting there on chat for you to awaken to your brilliant music, but really, don't do this. It almost never works.
When you're getting added by random musicians, the last thing YOU want is for a hundred chat boxes to invade your personal space shoving a link in your unprotected face. It's fine if you have send your music links to a friend*, but despite what older generations will spout about time wasting and internet usage, people on facebook don't have time for your link. If they do, they'll go their on their own accord from a post on your own wall, speaking of which....
Another common 'no no', wall posts to random friends are more intrusive than chat boxes, and you'll lose plenty of friends spamming a news feed with the same link on 200 walls in an hour. Again, stick to your own page, wall or a friend's.
Now moving on to more of your own control over a bandpage you may have, before I get into any detail about what's good overall, here's one of the biggest things to avoid, I thought I wouldn't use a real band, but Architects already copped a bit of a backlash for using such a rookie ploy, so they can be used as the example.
'Like to Listen' is one of the most hated features I find facebook users complaining about. Architects may get away with it to some degree having a name to themselves, but when you've got a 'fanbase' of 50, people aren't going to feel compelled to 'like' your page until there's proof they have a reason to.
If you really want to have people promoting your page, you're going to have to get personal.
Forums like this are a great way to meet people who may have a skill you will need down the line, and any friend you make may have a connection you will need, but don't think of friends as 'tools'.
If they prove a useful connection for you down the line, good for you, but don't add someone because their occupation on facebook says 'Graphic designer at' or 'CEO at' etc.
Most of anyone's 'connections' come from putting themselves out in the public eye, and from sheer luck. The amount of times I've lucked across a very friendly, helpful member of a band or company is insane. Really, when you build a fanbase, you accept all kinds of people into a community, hence the important of having strong persona, but more on that later.
Some of the best places outside of forums, blogspots and high traffic sites like Metalsucks, Heavy Blog is Heavy and Got Djent are community based and run pages for music. Ignoring their dated 'dj-joke' names, facebook pages The League of Extraordinary Djentlemen and THE DJENT-LEMEN'S CLUB (Djent Fan Site) have been invaluable to my own musical endeavours, as well as band's our label supports and I've done design for. The 10,000+ fans on either page are fairly active, and getting yourself some support from a page like this** can yield very profitable results as far as your fanbase goes.
Most metal pages have a fanbase distribution that looks like this:
So know that this is essentially your target audience, you may get an older or younger mean depending on your sub genre, but I gather it will almost always fall in the mid twenties through high teens.
If you want to be noticed outside of facebook, use forums and YouTube as both are easily accessed by masses and YouTube especially can easily become viral, giving you a huge boost. As well as actual physical networking, if you're aiming to tour, hop on down to your local venues and try and get a gig, all it takes for some places is the ability to sell 50 tickets or so and you could be opening for touring bands.
Now that I've mentioned giving your audience a reason to listen and like, here's some helpful tips and more pictures (yippee!) to maybe offer some guidance to good advertising.
First, here's some pictures that illustrate the good use of an app that is extremely common on facebook: Bandpage by Rootmusic. This app is free to use and easy to customise in appearance, and connects seamlessly with your Soundcloud account. If you don't use it already, you're one of the few. It can be a slight task to set up on certain browsers, but after that it's very simple. You don't even have to touch it again if you just want to keep uploading tracks to Soundcloud.
Anyway, these two pages (One being mine, cuz i thawt i'd pimp wile i had da chance lolol) use the app, and overall have a good appearance. Which whether you care or not, is very important. How your page looks is almost as important as how good you sound.
Many bands skip over valuable avenues for building a strong persona for the band by not properly using apps or bios. That being said, some will go way overboard, and think that a bio requires you to tell the greatest band story of all time. I could say more, but I think the Vestascension bio makes my point clear in being both a good biography, and referring to the same problem.
If you want an exemplary example of how to just nail a page layout and design, the Vestascension page really is where to go, as far as 'underground' metal bands go, you can't find a much more professional effort in the visual side. Just look at this:
It's appearance like this, with the ever important good language that really makes your page look better. It always annoys me to see pages and soundclouds with effort like this:
How hard is it to use capitals? Judging by the amount of humourous thread title changes we all see the mods do here, not hard.
Another big issue outside of appearance of your writing, is what point you're constructing in those beautifully well organised words of yours.
As Misha covers here it is very important for you to remain unbiased and friendly when representing your band. We all know too many instances where a member flies off the handle and makes the whole group look like a bag of dicks. Avoid this, and avoid getting into heated discussions over genres and such, it never ends well.
I find the majority of bands with a sociable, loving fanbase are reminiscent of the band's own manner. Basically meaning, be nice on your page, and if your name is known as a representative of your band, be nice everywhere, a kind outlook is something that is very amiss on the internet, but it's not hard to take 2 seconds in the middle of a heated post to decide that it's better to just forget about your brilliant reasoning for hating 'djent', or whatever the topic is.
All in all, 'succeeding' on facebook and internet in general, as a musician, boils down to a few things.
Look good.
- Have an attractive page, use good language and present everything in a positive manner, and don't take yourself too seriously.
Sound good.
- I can't really help with you music sounding good, there's other guides for that, but sounding good also relates to your persona on the internet.
Don't be a dick.
Again, be kind and don't get in arguments, be nice to your brother, the usual. But also, don't link your music to random people, don't invite people 2 continents away to your first show, and most importantly:
DO NOT demand likes in return for material. '100 LIKES UNTIL WE POST OUR NEW LYRICS' doesn't work, and again, when you have 50 likes, people aren't going to go out of their way to promote a complete stranger.
I hope some of this hopes, I know with an intelligent community like our board, I'm sure the majority of the painfully obvious advice is unnecessary, but it is surprisingly commonplace,
and I hope I can at least stop one person from annoying dozens of 'friends' with stupid attempts at networking.
I think that's about it. Just use your brain, stick to these guidelines, but also, don't forget to be innovative.
Anyone could tell you how to run your page, but if you can find some unique way to manage merchandising, music release and fan relations, then don't be afraid to try!
If you want anymore good guides that might help you, or insight, do check these out:
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/general-music-discussion/168316-endorsements-how.html
Lefsetz Letter
*Someone you actually talk to on a regular basis, not someone who clicked 'accept' on a button.
**If you want a community page more suited to your style, all you have to do is type in your respective genre into the facebook search bar.
I'm not going to pretend I know every single in and out about networking and marketing, not for facebook, and definitely not on a large scale.
What I do know, is that there don't seem to be any clear guidelines for how to succeed respectfully in a relatively new centre for bands and musicians.
Just as myspace had infamous 'street teams' and 'friend for friend' issues clouding the 'scene' and annoying the masses, facebook, as well as any other prominent networks have their own pitfalls for bands to think of as an easy ploy to attract new fans.
Before I get into overly large paragraphs about morals and good practice, I think it'll be easy to show my overall point with some pictures. While I made all but one of these scenarios myself, anyone who has ever ventured into the world of facebook bandpage 'liking' will have probably seen that this happens dozens of times a day.
First up, you may know quite a few musicians on facebook, you might think that's just an audience waiting there on chat for you to awaken to your brilliant music, but really, don't do this. It almost never works.
When you're getting added by random musicians, the last thing YOU want is for a hundred chat boxes to invade your personal space shoving a link in your unprotected face. It's fine if you have send your music links to a friend*, but despite what older generations will spout about time wasting and internet usage, people on facebook don't have time for your link. If they do, they'll go their on their own accord from a post on your own wall, speaking of which....
Another common 'no no', wall posts to random friends are more intrusive than chat boxes, and you'll lose plenty of friends spamming a news feed with the same link on 200 walls in an hour. Again, stick to your own page, wall or a friend's.
Now moving on to more of your own control over a bandpage you may have, before I get into any detail about what's good overall, here's one of the biggest things to avoid, I thought I wouldn't use a real band, but Architects already copped a bit of a backlash for using such a rookie ploy, so they can be used as the example.
'Like to Listen' is one of the most hated features I find facebook users complaining about. Architects may get away with it to some degree having a name to themselves, but when you've got a 'fanbase' of 50, people aren't going to feel compelled to 'like' your page until there's proof they have a reason to.
If you really want to have people promoting your page, you're going to have to get personal.
Forums like this are a great way to meet people who may have a skill you will need down the line, and any friend you make may have a connection you will need, but don't think of friends as 'tools'.
If they prove a useful connection for you down the line, good for you, but don't add someone because their occupation on facebook says 'Graphic designer at' or 'CEO at' etc.
Most of anyone's 'connections' come from putting themselves out in the public eye, and from sheer luck. The amount of times I've lucked across a very friendly, helpful member of a band or company is insane. Really, when you build a fanbase, you accept all kinds of people into a community, hence the important of having strong persona, but more on that later.
Some of the best places outside of forums, blogspots and high traffic sites like Metalsucks, Heavy Blog is Heavy and Got Djent are community based and run pages for music. Ignoring their dated 'dj-joke' names, facebook pages The League of Extraordinary Djentlemen and THE DJENT-LEMEN'S CLUB (Djent Fan Site) have been invaluable to my own musical endeavours, as well as band's our label supports and I've done design for. The 10,000+ fans on either page are fairly active, and getting yourself some support from a page like this** can yield very profitable results as far as your fanbase goes.
Most metal pages have a fanbase distribution that looks like this:
So know that this is essentially your target audience, you may get an older or younger mean depending on your sub genre, but I gather it will almost always fall in the mid twenties through high teens.
If you want to be noticed outside of facebook, use forums and YouTube as both are easily accessed by masses and YouTube especially can easily become viral, giving you a huge boost. As well as actual physical networking, if you're aiming to tour, hop on down to your local venues and try and get a gig, all it takes for some places is the ability to sell 50 tickets or so and you could be opening for touring bands.
Now that I've mentioned giving your audience a reason to listen and like, here's some helpful tips and more pictures (yippee!) to maybe offer some guidance to good advertising.
First, here's some pictures that illustrate the good use of an app that is extremely common on facebook: Bandpage by Rootmusic. This app is free to use and easy to customise in appearance, and connects seamlessly with your Soundcloud account. If you don't use it already, you're one of the few. It can be a slight task to set up on certain browsers, but after that it's very simple. You don't even have to touch it again if you just want to keep uploading tracks to Soundcloud.
Anyway, these two pages (One being mine, cuz i thawt i'd pimp wile i had da chance lolol) use the app, and overall have a good appearance. Which whether you care or not, is very important. How your page looks is almost as important as how good you sound.
Many bands skip over valuable avenues for building a strong persona for the band by not properly using apps or bios. That being said, some will go way overboard, and think that a bio requires you to tell the greatest band story of all time. I could say more, but I think the Vestascension bio makes my point clear in being both a good biography, and referring to the same problem.
If you want an exemplary example of how to just nail a page layout and design, the Vestascension page really is where to go, as far as 'underground' metal bands go, you can't find a much more professional effort in the visual side. Just look at this:
It's appearance like this, with the ever important good language that really makes your page look better. It always annoys me to see pages and soundclouds with effort like this:
How hard is it to use capitals? Judging by the amount of humourous thread title changes we all see the mods do here, not hard.
Another big issue outside of appearance of your writing, is what point you're constructing in those beautifully well organised words of yours.
As Misha covers here it is very important for you to remain unbiased and friendly when representing your band. We all know too many instances where a member flies off the handle and makes the whole group look like a bag of dicks. Avoid this, and avoid getting into heated discussions over genres and such, it never ends well.
I find the majority of bands with a sociable, loving fanbase are reminiscent of the band's own manner. Basically meaning, be nice on your page, and if your name is known as a representative of your band, be nice everywhere, a kind outlook is something that is very amiss on the internet, but it's not hard to take 2 seconds in the middle of a heated post to decide that it's better to just forget about your brilliant reasoning for hating 'djent', or whatever the topic is.
All in all, 'succeeding' on facebook and internet in general, as a musician, boils down to a few things.
Look good.
- Have an attractive page, use good language and present everything in a positive manner, and don't take yourself too seriously.
Sound good.
- I can't really help with you music sounding good, there's other guides for that, but sounding good also relates to your persona on the internet.
Don't be a dick.
Again, be kind and don't get in arguments, be nice to your brother, the usual. But also, don't link your music to random people, don't invite people 2 continents away to your first show, and most importantly:
DO NOT demand likes in return for material. '100 LIKES UNTIL WE POST OUR NEW LYRICS' doesn't work, and again, when you have 50 likes, people aren't going to go out of their way to promote a complete stranger.
I hope some of this hopes, I know with an intelligent community like our board, I'm sure the majority of the painfully obvious advice is unnecessary, but it is surprisingly commonplace,
and I hope I can at least stop one person from annoying dozens of 'friends' with stupid attempts at networking.
I think that's about it. Just use your brain, stick to these guidelines, but also, don't forget to be innovative.
Anyone could tell you how to run your page, but if you can find some unique way to manage merchandising, music release and fan relations, then don't be afraid to try!
If you want anymore good guides that might help you, or insight, do check these out:
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/general-music-discussion/168316-endorsements-how.html
Lefsetz Letter
*Someone you actually talk to on a regular basis, not someone who clicked 'accept' on a button.
**If you want a community page more suited to your style, all you have to do is type in your respective genre into the facebook search bar.
