Facebook

[Pinball]

[quote name='scoobystig' timestamp='1419546303' post='2640876']
Pinball

Do you have a Twitter account and a YouTube channel

Google loves Twitter, it's easy to then link the Twitter account to your facebook so that any postings on facebook are automatically tweeted and vice versa
That's what I have done, I have however not enable SEO on our website so it doesn't register in searche yets, but I am laying the foundations ready

It's also yet another social media website to try and build a following on, we are going to have a friend in the audience of next gig just taking photos and tweeting them constantly throughout the night
These automatically just get shared with the Facebook page
[/quote]
[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1419683301' post='2641855']
We do. We also put them on our proper website. TBH, I think any band with just a Facebook page isn't taking the interwebs side of things seriously. Maybe I'm just being snobbish about it, but I can't control the design of the band's FB page. I see Facebook in the same light as Myspace before it and whatever will come after it, which may well be sooner rather than later as people get pissed off with FB's attitude. For the time being, I see FB as a somewhat useful evil, and regrettably people expect you to have an FB page so that's what you need to do.
Incidentally, angrybadgers.co.uk has gone but theangrybadgers.co.uk is available...
[/quote]

Thanks for all the advice and whoever suggested starting a thread dedicated to getting likes. I did worry that it may get bombarded with hate for a short time but the power of BC prevailed. I'm up to 99 Likes this morning. Next step is a web site I guess.......more new ground to cover.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Pinball

[Pinball]

[quote name='Oddly' timestamp='1419537500' post='2640768']
Always happy to throw a like to a deserving cause...and if ever I find myself in Bristol, I'll be sure to check you guys out... Nice sound from what's on the page.
[/quote]
Thanks

[JTUK]

Depends what work you do and get depends if a website is cost effective.
I think I might not bother with a new band project website so FB will have to be
the main tool. We use it it for events and general info and I only have a FB
presense for musical/bands reasons.
I guess I'm going to have to get into the like game again...but you only really want likes
from people who are interested in the band and will come and see you.

[tauzero]

I write the website - domain registration is about £3 a year and hosting all the websites I have costs (I think) £120 a year as I run a VPS (virtual private server - ie. it's a share on a server which appears to be a standalone server).

[Pinball]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1419758193' post='2642394']
Depends what work you do and get depends if a website is cost effective.
I think I might not bother with a new band project website so FB will have to be
the main tool. We use it it for events and general info and I only have a FB
presense for musical/bands reasons.
I guess I'm going to have to get into the like game again...but you only really want likes
from people who are interested in the band and will come and see you.
[/quote][quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1419815561' post='2642998']
I write the website - domain registration is about £3 a year and hosting all the websites I have costs (I think) £120 a year as I run a VPS (virtual private server - ie. it's a share on a server which appears to be a standalone server).
[/quote]

I'm increasingly thinking of FB as a free web presence and signpost to other sites and there are good alternatives for free out there. I like Ents24 as a music fan as it emails me info when either a band I follow is playing or what is on at local venues.
Link here: [url="https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/the-angry-badgers"]https://www.ents24.c...e-angry-badgers[/url]

We're also on ReverbNation, which looks good. It's not as user friendly but it does the job. Our band page is here: http://www.reverbnation.com/theangrybadgers?profile_view_source=header_icon_nav

I'd love a web site and am looking into it but everything we do seems to cost us at the moment.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Pinball

[JTUK]

We costed our website out at just under £100. Sure, there are cheaper ways but that was pretty admin
free, as much as these thinsg could be.
For the type of work we did, we thought we could justify it but I am thinking I could go without.
I retain all the right contacts I have so it is onoly for new business and I am under decided about that.
The new band is not geared up for the higher paid new gigs as yet... so FB will do for the time being.

Where we found it was useful was dealing with very professional events organisers, when of course
it was obligatory almost......but for pubs and referral bookings, I doubt anyone looked at it to justify
£500 over 5 years..???
So, 50-50 about it.

[TimR]

Pubs are asking for MP3s really. LemonRock seems to be quite a good site.

[Musky]

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1419844038' post='2643048']

I'd love a web site and am looking into it but everything we do seems to cost us at the moment.
[/quote]
A way round contacting fans via Facebook's news feed would be to collect email addresses and manage your own mail list. MailChimp is free (yippee!) and has a signup form that can be integrated into Facebook, as well as a bunch of other stuff that's quite useful.

Seems a bit strange to think that mail lists seem a bit old school now, as so many people forego email for a lot of stuff in favour of social networking sites, but it's still effective.

[tauzero]

I think I get half a dozen enquiries a year for each band, which is not insignificant for bands doing 30 gigs a year or so. Of course, I also get plenty of spam from SEO companies telling me that they can get my website higher in Google ratings (and now that Alan Sugar has given another of the gits a quarter of a million to do more SEO spamming, that's potentially another one to report to Spamcop).

[mcnach]

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1419458380' post='2640280']
[url="https://www.facebook.com/business/news/update-to-facebook-news-feed"]https://www.facebook...ebook-news-feed[/url]
[/quote]

It actually looks good to me and it doesn't sound like it would really affect posts from bands talking about their coming gigs etc.

[mcnach]

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1419462564' post='2640328']
Hmm neither do I, my understanding was that when you share something from a band page it will no longer automatically go to people who have liked your page but that there will be an option to pay to have the information circulated. Hopefully I'm wrong though. There is no charge for having band pages etc, which is good news. I'm not really up on facebook etc. can anyone else clarify?
[/quote]

Oh, I see... so they really don't cut the annoying irrelevant self promoting posts... they just make sure they pay to do so
I was too naive to believe FB would actually do something useful for us.

[mcnach]

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1419538806' post='2640781']
Just out of interest... What are you hoping to achieve by getting likes from people just for the sake of it?

(genuine question - not sarcasm!)
[/quote]

I often wondered myself.

I like it when we play a gig and we notice a bunch of new likes, and I can check who they are and maybe remember a couple of them as someone who was at the gig. That's cool.
I don't really care for adding "likes" just to fatten up the number. I'd like to think the likes represent people who actually felt like checking us out and liked what they saw.
Is the actual number of any use, beyond being an ego thing "my band has 2x the number of likes than yours ner ner ner neeer ner"?

Just curious.

[Pinball]

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1419883413' post='2643627']
I often wondered myself.

I like it when we play a gig and we notice a bunch of new likes, and I can check who they are and maybe remember a couple of them as someone who was at the gig. That's cool.
I don't really care for adding "likes" just to fatten up the number. I'd like to think the likes represent people who actually felt like checking us out and liked what they saw.
Is the actual number of any use, beyond being an ego thing "my band has 2x the number of likes than yours ner ner ner neeer ner"?

Just curious.
[/quote]

I agree-on the face of it. The problem is that if your unknown or an originals band looking for the chance of a gig or a festival spot, your almost always asked for a link to your sounds and your facebook page. Recently I have been asked twice to reply in writing how many "Likes" do you have on Facebook?

It's a "catch 22" as if you can't get any decent gigs/supports slots you can't reach an audience to raise your profile.

Are "Likes" fair way to Judge? Well no in my opinion. The last band we shared a gig with had 270 Likes, 4x as many as us at the time. I mentioned this when we were setting up and one of them said "ignore that, none of them have heard us, this is only our 2nd gig and its all family, friends and our year group from school and collage". Sure enough when the gig started sure enough far more of the audience had come to see us.

It's all a numbers game but one that it can hold you back-just like not having sound samples or a professional looking presence on the web. It helps get you in the game in the first place.

That's my theory on Facebook Likes so thanks to everyone who liked my band in the other thread-much appreciated

[Musky]

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1419882803' post='2643615']
It actually looks good to me and it doesn't sound like it would really affect posts from bands talking about their coming gigs etc.
[/quote]
Facebook changes often sound really innocuous and a huge boon for the user. [url="http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/news-feed-fyi-helping-you-find-more-news-to-talk-about/"]This announcement[/url] sounds quite good all round but the reality was a [i]mahoosive[/i] drop in the reach of posts to the news feed (as Molan pointed out) and this doesn't really help if you'd actually like to know about gig announcements from certain bands. And this most definitely is going to affect bands as Facebook considers them commercial users - there's a reason they offer analytics on bands' pages, and it's not just to stoke the band's ego.

[mcnach]

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1419885642' post='2643664']
I agree-on the face of it. The problem is that if your unknown or an originals band looking for the chance of a gig or a festival spot, your almost always asked for a link to your sounds and your facebook page. Recently I have been asked twice to reply in writing how many "Likes" do you have on Facebook?

It's a "catch 22" as if you can't get any decent gigs/supports slots you can't reach an audience to raise your profile.

Are "Likes" fair way to Judge? Well no in my opinion. The last band we shared a gig with had 270 Likes, 4x as many as us at the time. I mentioned this when we were setting up and one of them said "ignore that, none of them have heard us, this is only our 2nd gig and its all family, friends and our year group from school and collage". Sure enough when the gig started sure enough far more of the audience had come to see us.

It's all a numbers game but one that it can hold you back-just like not having sound samples or a professional looking presence on the web. It helps get you in the game in the first place.

That's my theory on Facebook Likes so thanks to everyone who liked my band in the other thread-much appreciated
[/quote]

I see.

Nobody ever cared about the number of likes we got on facebook (I think we only just recently broke the 1000, but don't recall exactly) we had been asked for youtube clips, which was a problem as we don't really have any good videos, but have a bunch of definitely not good ones, and old too! We should definitely only post good stuff. We have been asked for soundcloud links too, many times. Some actually came to see one of our gigs before booking us, or sent someone to see us, but they never asked us about Facebook likes. Maybe they checked themselves, I suppose... Now I understand why some bands are so focused on the number of likes... But I'm surprised anybody promoter really pays attention to that. It's like the number of people who say they'll come to an event we're organising...
"wooo! 423 people are coming!" yeah right
But it may be reasonable to assume that a band with 1,000,000 likes may represent a bigger draw than another band with 10... Maybe

[mcnach]

[quote name='Musky' timestamp='1419886186' post='2643677']
Facebook changes often sound really innocuous and a huge boon for the user. [url="http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/news-feed-fyi-helping-you-find-more-news-to-talk-about/"]This announcement[/url] sounds quite good all round but the reality was a [i]mahoosive[/i] drop in the reach of posts to the news feed (as Molan pointed out) and this doesn't really help if you'd actually like to know about gig announcements from certain bands. And this most definitely is going to affect bands as Facebook considers them commercial users - there's a reason they offer analytics on bands' pages, and it's not just to stoke the band's ego.
[/quote]

That doesn't sound quite so good

A good old-fashioned mailing list might end up being the way forward for bands to inform the people who sign up for that kind of announcement. Mailing lists are quite good if they're not abused, I think.

[TimR]

[quote name='Musky' timestamp='1419886186' post='2643677']

Facebook changes often sound really innocuous and a huge boon for the user. [url="http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/news-feed-fyi-helping-you-find-more-news-to-talk-about/"]This announcement[/url] sounds quite good all round but the reality was a [i]mahoosive[/i] drop in the reach of posts to the news feed (as Molan pointed out) and this doesn't really help if you'd actually like to know about gig announcements from certain bands. And this most definitely is going to affect bands as Facebook considers them commercial users - there's a reason they offer analytics on bands' pages, and it's not just to stoke the band's ego.
[/quote]

Well, not quite, because the link posted further above explains how FB decides what you see in your feed.

Just because you have liked a band is no guarantee you'll see any of their posts. This is due to the 'time' element. If you liked a band last year and haven't interacted with them at all, by liking or commenting on a post or photograph since, then FB will assume that they're very low down on the list of things you like and will show you more 'important' things.

So having thousands of likes is very important because only a few of your posts will be getting through. Maybe none. Ideally you need to make a secondary personal FB Musky the bassplayer account. Make this account an administrator to your page and friend everyone to this account who likes your band page. Also friend all your band members 'friends' as well. That way you can invite all the people you know who are likely to want to see your band to your gigs. Just post band related info to your own account.

Edited December 30, 2014 by TimR

[Pinball]

Back to privacy issues. After getting a message from a dead friend from FB a while back, an end of year thread featured a band I was in that split quite dramatically after one gig. Not that upsetting as we all get on but they really shouldn't do that sort of thing. There are cases reported here in the Sunday Times.

[url="http://national.suntimes.com/national-world-news/7/72/393262/facebook-year-in-review/"]http://national.sunt...year-in-review/[/url]

My daughter had a crap year and I notice that she has deleted her acount-maybe because of something like this. Take care

Edited December 31, 2014 by Pinball

[tauzero]

I was ditched from a band because the lead guitarist and drummer wanted to bring in an old mate of theirs. The day after I got the news (the members responsible didn't tell me, the rhythm guitarist was the one who broke the news), FB suggested that I might like to become friends with their new bassist...

[mcnach]

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1420029000' post='2644959']
I was ditched from a band because the lead guitarist and drummer wanted to bring in an old mate of theirs. The day after I got the news (the members responsible didn't tell me, the rhythm guitarist was the one who broke the news), FB suggested that I might like to become friends with their new bassist...
[/quote]

You should have... and then go off together to form a band with two bass players and the rhythm guitarist of the other band.

[Beer of the Bass]

I think the one time that I've actually found Facebook likes to be a useful indicator was in figuring out just how many bands cheat in online battle-of-the-band votes! A couple of times I've noticed that certain local bands get substantially more votes in these things than they have Facebook likes, without doing any promotion that I could see.