Facebook Pages Are Dead
What to Focus on Instead…
Are you still promoting your music on Facebook? That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The challenge is that algorithms are constantly changing, and what used to work doesn’t work anymore.
Are Facebook pages dead? That’s what we’re going to be looking at in this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast.
Podcast Highlights:
- 01:17 — Facebook is on a downward spiral
- 02:11 — Instances in which Facebook pages still work
- 05:48 — Alternatives to pages
- 08:15 — Episode summary and additional tips
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Transcription:
Hey, it’s David Andrew Wiebe.
Over the years, I’ve warned about single source dependence, building on rented land, digital sharecropping, and the fickle nature of social media platforms in general.
As far as I can tell, Facebook, or Meta, or whatever they want to call their products these days, is on a downward spiral it may not recover from.
As of now, it’s still a viable marketing platform. It’s just that, as per usual, marketers ruin everything, and if you aren’t doing the right things, you aren’t rewarded for your behaviors.
And what I’m about to share with you here may not be news to you, but I do think it’s worth viewing through the lens of adapting. After all, the subtitle of The New Music Industry is Adapting, Growing, and Thriving in The Information Age.
And, while some say we’re now in the Experience Age, and no longer in the Information Age, I don’t think adaptation is going to prove any less important. So, let’s talk about Facebook pages.
The Death of Pages
Now, there are exceptions to everything.
If you have an established Facebook page, or if there’s a reason for people to come looking for you, pages can still work. There are, for example, personalities who only ever seem to publish on Facebook, so I miss out on their videos unless I actively seek them out. So, every Wednesday, I log in to Facebook to see what they’re up to because I know they usually go live on Wednesdays.
I co-founded a community called The Indie YYC and we use Facebook as our primary platform. There are always risks and I’ve shared my concerns with the inner community, but given everyone’s busy schedule and participation level, publishing to Facebook has worked, and continues to work for us. Just for reference, we have nearly 1,500 likes, and over 1,600 followers.
Although engagement level isn’t always consistent or predictable, we do reach about 100 to 600 people per post without boosting them.
The issue is, if you’re trying to establish a new page and a new brand now, unless you’ve got a big budget to spend or a lot of traffic you can push from your email list or another platform, a Facebook page is not going to be a good use of your time.
I’ve read articles on Facebook’s algorithm updates, and honestly, I see the same generic advice that always gets thrown around — connect with your audience, post at the right time, share inspirational stories, create quality content, make short and engaging videos.
Not only is this largely unhelpful, because it’s subjective advice, I find that the most engaged videos on Facebook are now long form, not short form. So, some of the advice is either bunk or misinformed.
In other words, you can’t exploit a specific tactic to get more engagement right now. It used to be that if you went live, you could drive up a bunch of engagement, but again, that only seems to work for established pages at this point.
Alternative to Pages
Like I said earlier, though, Facebook is still a viable platform. It’s just that you should consider prioritizing different activity.
Groups are still more valuable properties than pages, especially groups where participants are actively posting and asking questions.
If you have a group of your own, you’re all set. Put your attention on growing it instead of your page, because chances are it’s going to prove more valuable.
But even if you don’t have a group, you can join groups and be a part of the community, so there are plenty of chances to leverage other people’s audiences.
Profiles are also great soapboxes.
I’ve talked to enough artists to know that some are going to take exception to that. They treat their profile as sacred, don’t post unless they have something to share, don’t post things they don’t support, shy away from posting marketing posts, and so on.
Look, you’ve got to be the one to decide what your tolerance is.
But some of my most engaged posts, recently, were either about my now four-time award-winning film score for The Nobody Prayer, or my beginner guitar program, Chord King Course.
For the most part, I don’t understand the aversion to posting more frequently, because at the end of the day, you can’t outsmart the algorithm.
I’m not necessarily saying you should post 17 times per day to your Facebook profile. You can certainly do that with your stories. But you shouldn’t turn gun shy just because your latest post only got 20 likes when your last one got 140. You might think it’s simple math, but it never is.
People often assume it’s the content, but it could just as easily be the time at which you posted, the use or lack of emojis, misspellings or no misspellings, whether you’re touching on controversial topics, imagery, and more.
I feel like the best thing you can do is to treat it like an experiment. Post different things. See what people respond to. Then, and only then, begin to narrow in on the type of content people seem to respond to most.
The only reason it might be awkward to post “marketing” content on your profile is because you think of it as separate from your personal life.
I don’t know about you, but my marketing efforts are my life. Whether I’m sharing my lunch or my latest podcast episode, I’m sharing what’s going on in my world. Trying to separate the two and define one as personal content and the other as marketing content is where some of that awkwardness can show up and stop you from being as forthcoming as you could be.
The funny part is that the instant “win” button for most social networks is posting more frequently …
Episode Summary
Here are the key points from today’s episode:
- Starting a new Facebook page from scratch might not be the best idea, unless you have the time, energy, and resources to dedicate to growing it. This doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t post to your page at all. It just means there isn’t much of an incentive to prioritizing it anymore.
- Facebook groups and profiles are still great places to share your promotional posts. Obviously, you want to use some discretion here, but if you never ask for anything, you never get anything either.
- It’s all well and good to build your social media following but given that it’s harder than ever to reach the people who like and follow your page or pages, you need to take them offsite and capture their email address. Take advantage of a tool like ConvertKit at MusicEntrepreneurHQ.com/ConvertKit to begin collecting email addresses so you can keep in touch with the audience you’ve worked so hard to attract.
- Don’t forget to adapt. Things are constantly changing out there. New social networks are popping up at an unprecedented pace, and web 3.0 is fast emerging. Don’t get left behind.
Closing Segment
We always look forward to hearing from you. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share on today’s topic, drop us a line at musicentrepreneurhq@gmail.com. We’re always happy to feature your email on the show if it’s relevant, on-topic, and value adding. If you have a question, someone else probably has the same question, so there are no stupid questions. Send your feedback to musicentrepreneurhq@gmail.com.
This has been episode 265 of The New Music Industry Podcast. I’m David Andrew Wiebe, and I look forward to seeing you on the stages of the world.
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Originally published at https://musicentrepreneurhq.com on March 25, 2022.
