Facebook Has Fan Pages: Use Them!

Here at Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC we currently represent 320 independent musicians, offering free promotion. There are currently way too many artists today not utilizing social media the right way to promote their music. Facebook has had fan pages for close to 2 years now so don’t represent your band under a “personal” profile. Take a look at the reasons why it is not beneficial to build your music recognition on Facebook through a personal page.

• No use of FBML: Facebook Markup Language is a great tool to integrate your band site with your facebook fan page. Promote your music with streams, videos, blogs, and merchandise with a customized look.
• Friend Suggestions: Facebook will suggest friends for a personal page but you cannot suggest that page to all of the friends you already have. This feature will enable any personal account to suggest your Fan page to all of their friends on their network.
• No Ads: Without a Fan Page on facebook you lose the ability to strategically promote your band through Facebook Adsense. With Facebook Adsense you can choose age groups and area networks in which you want to promote your band. When clicked the advertisement takes you back to the Fan Page.
• Info Tab: The info tab on a personal page includes things like birthday, sex, marital status, birthplace, ect. You obviously, as a band, have no relevance to these questions.
• Track Analytics: Track your page views along with the demographic of your traffic, any activity (comments, likes, re-posts), and age group statistics. The interactions page comes with graphs and charts similar to Google Analytics for smooth functionality and visual presentation.

The main issue that comes with the switch over from a Personal profile to a Fan page is if you will be able to keep the friends you had on the profile account. If you already have your band under a facebook profile you can still create a fan page with a personal account then suggest the page to all the friends you had on the original profile. This will keep you from loosing any of the fans you have already gained. It is also recommended that you do not keep the personal profile after completing the fan page because of confusion issues when searching for your Name on facebook.

By: Mark G. Valente | Online Marketing Director | @MarkwithMWL | Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC