Jim Carlson dot Net

Editors note: Other articles in this series:Updated Facebook Band and Business Pages, Musicians and Social Media Networks and Surviving a Recession as a Musician.

In my last post on Musicians and Social Media Networks, I discussed the basics of social media networks that help musicians communicate and promote their music. I have a MySpace band page, and as I discussed in the post mentioned above, managing social media networks can be a challenge, but may be worth the effort.

Needless to say, when Facebook announced Band Pages, I wasn’t the first to jump on bandwagon. However, after reading an article on New Muisc Strategies: What websites should I be on? (part 3), I took another look.

To set up a Facebook Band Page, you must already have (or create) a Facebook account. Once you are in your account, you can create ‘pages’ using the Page Manager application link in the left hand navigation.

At first glance, the band pages share similar features that MySpace band pages have: photo albums, fans (friends), videos, music player, The Wall (comments), and events (gig calendar). Pretty basic stuff. So why create another page on another social media network?

The Facebook Band Pages have a lot of additional, useful and innovative features that MySpace simply doesn’t have:

• Mini-Feed, a quick look at what’s new on your page
• Fans can upload photos and videos to your page. What a great concept: Your fans can contribute to your page by adding footage of your gigs!
• Discussion Boards allow you or your fans to discuss your music
• Notes: Jot a note to share with the group. A mini-text wall that also lets you tag tour pals
• Discography: List your complete recorded history
• Admin Section: Allow others to manage your page. Too busy to keep up? No problem!
• Tracking: Facebook Pages utilize Insights, an analytics package that lets you track Page Views, Unique Views, Fans, New Fans, Removed Fans, Wall Posts, Discussion Topics, Reviews and Photo Views. You can also track your visitors by gender and age. To top it off, you can export the data (daily or weekly) to Excel or .csv formats.

A couple of other notes about Facebook Band Pages:

• If you already have Facebook friends, they must choose to become one of your fans. This is a cool feature, as you may want to maintain a private life as well as promote your music.
• You can message your friends (one at a time) or fans (all at once, or target by: location, sex and/or age) with event updates or special messages
• No offense to MySpace, but Facebook’s interface is far more functional and in my opinion, easier to use.

One of the best things about setting up the Jim Carlson Facebook Band Page was Google indexed the page within hours. As of this writing it remains in the top ten results for the keywords: Jim Carlson.

Facebook Band Pages are a great way to reach out and communicate to fans that MySpace may not reach. Setting them up takes a bit of time, but the maintenance is quick and easy. Since MySpace and Facebook have different demographics, it is definitely worth considering setting up a Facebook Band Page.