You don’t need to be told that your band’s promotional efforts should include a Facebook marketing strategy. There are, however, things that you are already doing that you could probably be doing better…
Let’s talk images for artists on Facebook.
Use Images, Not Links on Facebook
On a network where most time is spent on the news feed itself, it’s worth noting that photo albums get 180% more engagement on Facebook…
Literally half of the news feed real estate, thanks to Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm, is occupied with visuals, so when you’re posting a link to a new blog post or a video, try posting the featured image or video screenshot, with the article title and the link in the caption.
Not only do images make for more eye catching content than a standard link (and are more likely to get likes and comments), but the image will go into your photo albums and be visible much longer than a status update which eventually make way for newer updates.
The Best Facebook Image Dimensions
To make your photos pop, it may help to know the correct Facebook image dimensions. Images intended for your the news feed should be 600px wide, while Timeline cover photos are best at 851px by 315px.
For the band photographers and tech-nuts out there, it may be a relief to learn that Facebook uses the pretty-much-standard 72 DPI sRGB color profiles for images. Unfortunately, it seems Facebook also ignores metadata such as copyright and contact information (leading to orphaned works).
For the fastest load times (essential for those 600+ million mobile users), keep your images under 100kb using JPEG compression – unless it features text, in which case it’s probably better to go with the PNG format.
Increase Your Facebook Visibility: Quick Wins
- Tag your tour photos with location
- Tag other bands and artists in your live images
- Encourage fans to tag themselves and upload their own shots
- Create lyrics over images with a link to the song on Soundcloud
Facebook used to have pretty strict rules about what is acceptable as a cover photo up until two months ago. Sales talk, contact details and calls to action (e.g. ‘Download our album’) weren’t allowed – But as long as the total text is less than 20% of the total space (and not misleading or infringe on copyright), Facebook’s stance is now more relaxed.
Profile photos have never had such promotional text restrictions (and fans are notoriously bad at returning to a Facebook fan page after liking it), so feel free to use your default photo to remind fans when you are on tour or have a new album out.
Read More: SEO for Musicians: Google Analytics
Image Source: martinaphotography
