Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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How to Beat Facebook: Top Posting Strategy for Musicians

As social mediums look for more and more ways to monetise, real good content can sometimes get lost. Ahmed Samy gives you some pro tips to get heard.

Staff Writer

Social media promotion is an essential aspect for any artist, musician or business starting up these days, with the Facebook Pages feature being the leading tool for most publicity-driven disciplines. However since the introduction of the 'Boost Post' feature, where a page would have to pay up for certain amount of exposure to a set chosen demographic, Facebook's new algorithm seems to deliberately hide your posts from potential interested parties until you pay up. It didn't take long for users operating on Facebook Pages to notice that their posts were reaching less fans and musicians especially with direct links to their SoundCloud were getting way less views or likes as opposed to a link that takes you to a blog that has the same SoundCloud track embedded. With such discrepancies, I will now provide you with ways on how to beat the algorithm for free, because to be honest, personally I'd rather spend my money buying records than paying Facebook.

For starters Facebook shows the most recent content at the top of the News Feed. If you post an update at 2am, but your fans are using Facebook at 8am, you can be sure they aren’t seeing your updates. So know when your fans are online, day wise and also time wise, and strategise accordingly on when to post. You can find out when your fans are online by going to your Facebook Insights and clicking the Posts tab. 

Secondly, people use Facebook because they want to be heard, so responding to comments is important. Your Facebook page has an optional threaded comments feature that lets you reply to specific comments. Post the track list to your set as comment. If you're really doing your homework and playing unreleased stuff it's fine to withhold a couple of tracks, but the whole set being a mystery is just not very engaging. Plus if you're playing these tracks uniquely and not just a track after the next on Traktor, you can rest assured that only you can play your tracks in your style.

Stay far away from copy that begins with the word "like" (or "comment" and "share") because it’s pretty much a kiss of death to organic reach. There are plenty of ways around this, from moving the call-to-action (CTA) to the second half of the sentence to asking for a "thumbs up," but perhaps the best way to include a CTA without being punished by the algorithm is by putting it on an image. Same thing with a SoundCloud track; as mentioned if you have your track posted on a website then shared on your page chances are it will wind up more frequently on people's newsfeeds. Also try and keep a balance; don't constantly post the same kind of content - some days post images, other days post links and some days post nothing. 

At the end of the day these are just loopholes to get you through to a wider audience so before trying them make sure you're ready for the exposure.