Facebook Frenzy!

Hello class and welcome back! As promised I am picking up where we left off last time in our discussion of the three major social media sites that most music artists use. After talking in great detail last time about Myspace, let’s now turn our attention towards Facebook.

Although Facebook may be new to many artists, it has been around since the dawn of the social media revolution. It’s really like the old adage of the chicken and the egg, which can first, Myspace or Facebook? The correct answer is that Friendster came first, then Myspace, Facebook and then Twitter. Now there are even newer sites like Yuniti and Bebo competing for your social media attention, but that’s for another day. To quote Dr Dre, it’s back to the lecture at hand.

So what about Facebook? Is it really any better than Myspace? First off, Facebook was originally only available to college students. You had to have a valid college ID and email to join. The idea was it would give college students a way of meeting each other once they got on campus. So unless you were truly a college indie artist, you could not be a member of Facebook. At the same time Myspace was free to join by all, and it was geared towards artists, which may give reason to why it took so many artists time to join Facebook.

To me Facebook has become the place for friends. Sorry Myspace, even if you hadn’t changed your tune, it's true. If you want to connect with friends or with colleagues it's the place to be. But what if you are an artist or band? Is this the best place to spend your social media time? It is free of content pursay, as in it don't offer or feature entertainment news or otherwise, so what does it offer the user that will attract them to your artist profile? To answer that question let’s examine Facebook a little closer.

Facebook now claims it has hundreds, I repeat hundreds of millions of profile hits a day. That is a staggering number! I have read it was close to 300 million hits a day to be exact. With over 500 million active users these numbers are probably correct. As of 2009 there were only 307,006,550 people living in the USA. That’s like every American logging on to Facebook daily! With that many users’ odds are that artists should be able to use Facebook to gain new fans, but then again maybe not.

Facebook users seem to follow a social media trend and only connect with those people that they directly know. If you are outside of their personal sphere they almost always will ignore you. So what's so social about that? I can already call, email or text these people. Do I need a website to do this for me? No.

Many artists already have email mailing lists that they regular use to send email updates to. These same artists have been doing this nonstop since the invention of email with great success. So why has this not translated to the social media world?

So how can an artist best use Facebook then? With Facebook artists are forced to create what is called a group page or fan page where they can post there music, bio, pictures, tour dates, etc. First though, they must create a personal page which is tied together with the other two. Confused yet? So am I. Facebook will not allow you to sign up as an artist, so this is their way of allowing you to do so.

When someone signs in to Facebook to look up your music they must search for your fan page. Not you directly, or the personal page you setup, so it’s important to include your artist name in your Facebook link if you want them to find your personal page as well. i.e. facebook.com/yourbandname not your personal name. I see lots of artists making this mistake.

Also, you can only add up to 5K friends to your personal page. After that you have to get your fans to ‘like’ your group or fan page. This is not as easy as it seems. It’s hard enough to get users to add you as friend on Facebook. Asking them to ‘like’ your fan page too can be a daunting task.

I can see where artists use Facebook to connect in a much more personal way with fans they have met and have built a personal relationship with. It’s easy to have a one on one conversation by posting on each others wall or adding to a users comment. Yet, once, again it’s all about real relationships. This is where social media continues to fail artists who are looking for success through the Internet. Facebook, as helpful as it is with connecting with people on a personal level, does not offer the close personal relationship ties that can be developed outside of the internet in the real world.

I read several weeks ago that more money was spent on online advertising then on print advertising in 2010. The trend is forecasted to continue to grow in that direction over 2011. As more and more people turn to the Internet for things on a daily basis the more likely they will turn to using social media as well. At this point and time Facebook seems to be the hub of a lot, if not all, of that social media activity and a lot of those advertising dollars. Chances are if you are working as hard in the real world on your craft as an artist as you are with your social media presence, then those looking for new music will find you to on Facebook. And with 500 million users it’s for sure a good place to spend your social media time.

Next time we will take up Twitter and several other new social media and micro blogging sites and examine their impact on the social media world and how they affect you as artists. I can already hear you now, “So what’s micro-blogging?” Don’t worry the answer is on the way!