[dropcap_1 color=""]I [/dropcap_1] absolutely abhor Facebook, much more so than I did Myspace. Facebook has made it very difficult to use my profile as a promotional tool with the latest changes. I started out like anyone with a personal profile. I didn’t do a band profile at first, even though I had done as such on Myspace. Once I did hit the 5000 friend limitation, I found that Facebook itself lost it’s promotional power, and in fact has since been overshadowed by other social networks including Twitter, as well as the response I’ve gotten from optimizing my website.
Once I hit the 5000 friend limit I tried a new friend account. I would write to new friend requestors and ask that they go to my new friend account. Daily I was sending emails up to 50 people trying to friend me in a day which was impossible to keep up, but I tried. After some time however I realized, one day this account will fill up and then I will have to divert friend requests from 2 accounts. I decided I didn’t want to do that so I created a fan account and started doing the same thing, emailing new friend requestors to”like” my fan page.
Although my friend count wasn’t going down much since I could only email 10 or 20 people a day, I kept at it, that is until one day I started getting errors! Now every time I tried to send my link to my fan page, I got an error to the effect that someone reported my page as offensive! Ok so I’m thinking, if it’s offensive (and I have no idea how it’s offensive, the error didn’t specify) why didn’t then delete my page? So now, any time I try to message my link I get this error and cannot send the link. I’ve tried variattion, like using Tiny Url and other ideas but nothing works, the error always happens. I even had my mom try sending for me and the same thing. I searched forums, i tried contacting Facebook’s support but no help what so ever. So Facebook as banned me basically from sending my link. What is odd, I can post the link on my wall! But not in messages. Do you smell something fishy like I do?
Another problem is the Suggest to Friends link. It does’t work and I read that it’s been decommissioned. So I can’t suggest to my 5000 friends to join, I can only post on my wall which has little effect on my “friends” as only a fraction of them actually joined my fan page. I still can’t bring myself to start a group and add people that didn’t ask to be added, I hate how Facebook just joins me to groups without my permission and I”m not sure I can do that to others simply to promote.
So what is the solution? Advertising.Yep, the all mighty dollar.
Facebook has pushed me into a corner where the only way I can promote my page effectively is by paying them. That’s not going to happen. You cannot buy fans. People do not get onto facebook to find new bands, they go onto Pandora and Last.fm (and used to go to Myspace) for that. People go to facebook to see bands they are already fans with. Then they go play farm games. People don’t get on Facebook to listen to music plain and simple. Even if they did you can’t host a player on your Facebook, so my page is no good for showcasing my songs.
I think that Facebook well knows what they are doing and the limitations are set so that anyone, musicians or any busines/service is forced to pay for advertising on their fan page that has no limits. I also know the history of all social networks, and they all fail eventually. Putting money and effort into Facebook it futile and not efficient. What makes sense is to put money and effort into building a fanbase that is connected to your website and your email marketing plan.
Think of all the bands on Myspace who had millions of fans, then everyone migrated off and most of those bands lost those fans. Why? Because they didn’t use email marketing which is hard to do on any social network. The smart thing to do is to focus effort mostly on your website and your email marketing list. Then as a musician focus on social networks designed around music like Sound Cloud, Last.fm and Reverb Nation. Lastly keep up with fans on Facebook and other social networks, but do not try to gain fans or worry about retaining fans through any social network.
xoxo
Christine Rage
