Facebook is all about #content. Contrary to what you may have heard Facebook doesn’t favour video over photos if both are uploaded to the Facebook platform. An engaging, original picture will have far greater reach than a boring video. Nothing is capped on Facebook, but they will push certain content over others.
Keep posts short, and to the point. One or two posts a day is more than enough, once or twice a week is plenty. Don’t write too much, as you don’t want to be having a ‘See More’ link as people won’t click on it.
People tend to use Facebook when they are emotional– see any number of posts moaning about bad service in a restaurant or exclaiming joy at some life event. Try and tap into these emotions and speak to people rather than at them. Keep your tone consistent and don’t try and sell in every post.
- Hashtags on Facebook enable people to search for your content. There’s no way on Facebook to search for individual posts, so by using Hashtags it can help people find your posts. To be honest, they’re not really as useful as they are on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t push hashtagged content any more than normal. They can however be a good way of hijacking a viral event, and making a post reach more users. An example being the multitude of spoof posts when Kim Kardashian “broke the internet”. Don’t use too many hashtags though as it looks #desperate.
- To increase your reach, you need people engaging with your posts. No-one is going to share a ‘Buy Now’ post with their friends. But to get those posts seen by others you need a high engagement with your other posts so make them good! What you really don’t want is people clicking ‘Hide Post’ or ‘I Don’t Want To See This’ as that kills the number of people Facebook pushes the post to. Tagging other pages can be a good way to increase reach, you can do this by putting an @ before their name. Useful if you have an artist to tag or brand you’re working with.
- Videos should be uploaded to Facebook rather than linked from YouTube. Facebooks algorithm ranks native content much higher than anything that links away from Facebook.
- Facebook Ads. These can be an affective way of getting your message to a relevant audience using Facebook’s extensive targeting options. Facebook Ad network also extends to Instagram and off-platform. But there’s no point paying to show people a bad advert (you won’t get reach no matter how much money you throw at it) and the booking process can be a but daunting for the uninitiated. Kudos offers a service for coordinating paid reach campaigns across social networks. Speak to your label manager if you’d like to know more.
- Promoting posts. You can do this by clicking on a post and hitting ‘Promote’ but if you go through the Facebook Power Editor tool you get far more control over who sees your post. You can target users by age, gender, location, relationship status, similar likes, loads of things really. It’s probably not worth getting too deep into things unless you’re promoting something really specific; for instance, a US Tour isn’t worth promoting in Europe. Don’t be afraid to reach out to new territories- if your stats show most of your fans are in Europe or the US, try targeting Australia, Japan or Latin America if you’re looking to grow profile. Likewise, if you’ve had a sync on a TV show that’s outside your target audience, try and reach people in a different age bracket/location. In the US at the moment you can trial targeting a post to people who are watching a certain TV show- potentially useful if you have a TV or TV Ad sync.
Link your Facebook to your Instagram. Whilst Facebook ranks native videos highest, it ranks Instagram videos above those on YouTube. Instagram posts should be friendlier, and more irreverent in tone. Use it for a behind-the-scenes look into the release process, or a glimpse into your day-to-day life.
- Things Facebook hates: Video links from YouTube. ALL CAPS IN POSTS. “Like and Share” or “Comment and Share”. “Out Now!” or “Buy Now”. All these things get shot down by the algorithm.
- Things Facebook likes: Native video (videos uploaded directly to Facebook). Relevant, sharable content.
- There’s lots of tips for using Power Editor to target ads here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/194355723944655
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/162528860609436
For more information on Facebook ads or best practices email owen@kudosrecords.co.uk
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