Social Media - What do I need in 2019?

[TWolf]

My band has the FB page of course, but is that enough in this day and age?
Last band I was in had a full website domain, but that didn't seem to get much traction. The FB was our main outlet.
I was thinking about adding Instagram or a You Tube page for the band. Are these worth the effort? Who has had success growing a following through these platforms?
Rock cover band, fwiw.

 

[Bodeanly]

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for sure. All are free. All are with the effort as long as the content is good. In my experience, most people react to polls and trivia. Then it’s all “by the way, come to our show.”

Bonus points for having a band member who is also an English teacher/ graphic designer. Make him do all the work.

 

[buldog5151bass]

A website is the modern equivalent of a press kit - demo video/audio, contact info, band pix, etc.

 

[garp]

My band has the FB page of course, but is that enough in this day and age?

No, it's not. FWIW, Facebook's growth has already plateaued in the U.S., so it could now be considered a limited and shrinking audience. To @Bodeanly's point, do as much social media as you have the time and resources to execute, but to @buldog5151bass's point, don't neglect a standalone website.

 

[TWolf]

No, it's not. FWIW, Facebook's growth has already plateaued in the U.S., so it could now be considered a limited and shrinking audience. To @Bodeanly's point, do as much social media as you have the time and resources to execute, but to @buldog5151bass's point, don't neglect a standalone website.

To the point of doing as much as you have time for, I worry about over exposure/consumer fatigue by constantly posting things. The band isn't incredibly active, we gig about once a month (a little busier over the summer but not much). So to keep the social media going in the in between times can be a challenge.
I'm seriously considering adding an instagram, but that will be an entirely new learning curve, I guess I can get lessons from my 14 yo daughter.

 

[garp]

To the point of doing as much as you have time for, I worry about over exposure/consumer fatigue by constantly posting things.

That's a valid concern.

And don't forget about old-fashioned e-mail distribution lists for gig announcements. If someone has entrusted their e-mail address to you, it's important not to abuse the privilege. Do just one announcement per gig, not a repetitive stream of announcements/reminders.

 

[Tnavis]

My current band doesn't have a domain, and my previous band didn't either. We used/use ReverbNation as a "main page", where it's very easy to update events and post music and some videos, as well as having links to the other stuff. As previously mentioned, all of the other social sites are free, so use them all. Facebook does really weird stuff with band pages, they want ad money, and so if you don't "boost" certain posts, they won't show up in your fans feeds (at least that's my understanding of it).

Demographics are also important here; Facebook is starting to skew "older", and so if you're trying to market to people in their 20's and 30's, you may be missing them completely. It's been my experience (my day job is working at a university) that 18-22 year olds consider email to be as archaic as a written letter, and would far prefer to get messages through Snapchat or Instagram (I have been known to tell them tales of the olden days, putting my mailing address and phone number down on mailing lists for bands and i would get an actual letter from them with flyers to hang up when they were coming to my town, and in one case, got a call from their bassist saying they were coming through town... they looked at me like I was telling them I got updates via telegraph or carrier pigeon).

Long story short, to make sure you're covering all your bases, just do it all. Most of the different social media platforms have the option to multi-post across several different sites at the same time.

 

[DoctorZee]

Have as many of them as you can do well. Doing it well means:

• Posting frequently and keeping everything up to date
• Creating interesting, unique content that people want to view and share
• Engaging with people through comments, hashtags, responding to reviews, etc.
• Proactively seeking out new conversations and followers to grow your audience
• Focusing on content that works best for each individual channel, not just posting the same thing across all channels at once.

Honestly, if you don't have the knowledge or time to do all this (and it can be a lot!) I'd scale it back and focus on quality over quantity. For the start-up I'm working on, I'm focusing on Facebook and Instagram only. YouTube later once we have quality videos. Twitter has a lot of potential, but I think it needs a lot more strategy and time commitment to really pay off.

 

[knumbskull]

Twitter seems a pretty good way of connecting with people for bands/music projects.

 

[G On Bass]

Bonus points for having a band member who is also an English teacher/ graphic designer. Make him do all the work.

As the graphic designer in our band, I assure you that other bandmates helping me do all the work instead of making me do all the work is the best way to keep me doing all the work...They can help by providing pictures, videos, booking gigs, things like that.

 

[jerry]

Facebook for a older demographic, Instagram for younger, basically all of it.

 

[ambrosiajam]

As the graphic designer in our band, I assure you that other bandmates helping me do all the work instead of making me do all the work is the best way to keep me doing all the work...They can help by providing pictures, videos, booking gigs, things like that.

THIS. when band members say things like 'when are we going to post such and such pictures?' .... I DONT KNOW - how about "When are you going to get together for photos?" Things like that are irksome. People don't realize how much of a pain in the *** it is to put together social media content. Take FB for example: Creating an 'event' can be an unnecessarily complicated ordeal. Some aspects work better on the mobile app (go figure) and some work better when you use a computer. You really need to use both. and yes, once you create a band page, FB will endlessly harass you, begging for money. Youtube is trickier as a form of 'social media' but definitely has its place. I'm completely lost on snapchat tho - I would def need to hire someone to do that (which seemingly defeats the purpose lol)

 

[Bunk McNulty]

And now some Old Fart Talk:

You can't just phone it in. If you're a cover band and you want to build an audience, no social media platform is as effective as getting out there in meatspace: Participate in open mics; be a presence at the places you play: the full-bandwidth experience of getting face-to-face with people is far more powerful than any facebook/instagram/whatever posting. Yes, it is inconvenient; yes, it often requires staying up past your bedtime (and mine too, believe me); but once people have met you in person, they tend to have greater interest in what you're doing musically. Sometimes they come see you and bring their friends! (This is also why it is a good idea to schmooze between sets: "Hey, great to see you again" and etc.)

I'm not against social media; we use it all the time. But it is the people who've seen us before who reply to our FB posts with "Yeah, the squad will be there."

 

[TWolf]

Have as many of them as you can do well. Doing it well means:

• Posting frequently and keeping everything up to date
• Creating interesting, unique content that people want to view and share
• Engaging with people through comments, hashtags, responding to reviews, etc.
• Proactively seeking out new conversations and followers to grow your audience
• Focusing on content that works best for each individual channel, not just posting the same thing across all channels at once.

Honestly, if you don't have the knowledge or time to do all this (and it can be a lot!) I'd scale it back and focus on quality over quantity. For the start-up I'm working on, I'm focusing on Facebook and Instagram only. YouTube later once we have quality videos. Twitter has a lot of potential, but I think it needs a lot more strategy and time commitment to really pay off.

Good run down. This is the strategy I'm considering as well. FB and Instagram, and as we get more content, adding youtube. It's all a learning curve.

 

[TWolf]

And now some Old Fart Talk:

You can't just phone it in. If you're a cover band and you want to build an audience, no social media platform is as effective as getting out there in meatspace: Participate in open mics; be a presence at the places you play: the full-bandwidth experience of getting face-to-face with people is far more powerful than any facebook/instagram/whatever posting. Yes, it is inconvenient; yes, it often requires staying up past your bedtime (and mine too, believe me); but once people have met you in person, they tend to have greater interest in what you're doing musically. Sometimes they come see you and bring their friends! (This is also why it is a good idea to schmooze between sets: "Hey, great to see you again" and etc.)

I'm not against social media; we use it all the time. But it is the people who've seen us before who reply to our FB posts with "Yeah, the squad will be there."

I agree totally about the face to face stuff. Myself and our vocalist/drummer try to do as much of that as we can. Our guitarists...not so much.

 

[portpc]

I agree totally about the face to face stuff. Myself and our vocalist/drummer try to do as much of that as we can. Our guitarists...not so much.

+ 1 on this … Meeting folks with a fistful of business cards does work, you are bound to either run into someone having a party/organizing an event/getting married.. what have you.. You make your own luck.

 

[Nephilymbass]

My band has the FB page of course, but is that enough in this day and age?
Last band I was in had a full website domain, but that didn't seem to get much traction. The FB was our main outlet.
I was thinking about adding Instagram or a You Tube page for the band. Are these worth the effort? Who has had success growing a following through these platforms?
Rock cover band, fwiw.

None of them are good for “growing” a following. The best way to do that is to get out and meet people in person and play good shows. But they can all be useful in other ways. I recommend trying them all for one year and if one or two are totally dead then focus on the ones that work better for your band. Different ones work better depending on the target audience of the band.

YouTube is a good place to post your original albums and if you’re fortunate enough to get a thousand people who have YouTube accounts to actually sign into them and subscribe you can actually get paid for it. But most people that use YouTube never actually create an account so they can’t subscribe. My band used to get paid a little from YouTube until they changed their policy. Now we don’t have enough subscribers to make anything off of it. We don’t post content regularly anymore but we will continue to post our full albums and music videos on it.

Facebook used to be awesome but now it sucks. Too much political garbage. They throttle band pages too hard. They throttle YouTube links very hard even on personal pages because Facebook competes with Google which owns YouTube.

i enjoy Instagram. It seems to be where a lot of the people tired of Facebook political garbage have gone. It’s also where most of the musicians I look up to are currently active.