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Free music industry advice for artists

The Prescription is our new free, must-have guide for artists who are embarking on a career in music, or established acts who want to stay abreast of the latest developments in the industry. Subscribe now to reguarly receive:

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Friday
May182012

Should you put your music on Spotify?

I don’t buy CDs any more. And the reason why is simple: Spotify. Since deciding to part with £10 every month for the extraordinary privilege to be able to listen to vast chunks of rock history, or indeed new releases that tickle my fancy, the idea of hauling myself off the sofa to go down to a record store and spend moolah on a rotund lump of plastic just doesn’t really cut it for me anymore. It’s kind of sad, because I was the sort of kid who’d save up several weeks of pocket money just to buy one LP which I had ordered specifically, ten years in advance, from the local (and now-gone-bust) record shop. And besides which, I’m a musician – I’m meant to love limited-edition vinyl gatefold double albums made of gold bought from a hipster with a beard, man. In fact, I'm meant to be a hipster with a beard. 

Anyway, from talking to my fellow music-lovers, it would appear that I’m not alone in my abandonment of the physical product. Just as the invention of the kettle seems to have done away with the quaint practice of boiling water on a stove, or the invention of Fox News did away with the truth, Spotify has made it just too easy to ‘consume’ music without actually buying a physical product, and the recent announcement of a streaming chart only confirms that the record industry’s journey from wax cylinder to a file that sits on a server in a cloud computing centre somewhere is nearly complete.

But where does this leave musicians, particularly independent musicians? It leaves them with a dilemma, that’s what. On the one hand, putting your music on Spotify makes your music instantly available to listeners all over the US and most of Europe; but it means that you won’t get much in the way of dosh any time somebody actually listens to your record – as far as I can tell from various internet perusals, artists get around 0.02p per play, meaning you’ll need something like 50 plays of a track to make a penny. On the other hand, deciding to avoid Spotify altogether and exclusively sell CDs and downloads means that you may generate revenue, but massively limit the number of potential listeners.

So which path should you choose? Well, my answer is probably ‘both’ – it’s a good idea to have some music on Spotify, but think very carefully before putting your brand new album on it the day it comes out. Here’s why: say you have 500 fans. If they can be persuaded to buy your new album from you for a tenner during the week of release, you’ll generate £5k. However, if these 500 fans can all access the record on Spotify, and consequently choose to stream it rather than buy it, here’s how the revenue will break down, if we assume (very generously) that 500 people stream your 10-track album 3 times a day, every day, during the week of release:

£0.0002 per play x 10 tracks x 3 plays of the album per day x 500 fans x 7 days = £21

I hope I’ve done my maths right there; but regardless, it’s £5000 versus a pittance. You’d need your fanbase to be playing the album an incredible number of times before you got anywhere close to squeezing £5000 from Spotify. You'd have to an artist that wore very little in the way of clothing but excelled in autotuned squealing and good sex faces.

So the key thing to remember (particularly given the above rather unfortunate equation) is that for the independent musician, Spotify is absolutely not a revenue-raising tool; however, given its huge and increasing userbase, it is a powerful promotional tool – and that’s why you should have some of your music on there. Consider putting a sampler from your new album up: 3 or 4 tracks, and a podcast featuring new material. You could also use it to showcase any back catalogue – albums you put out a while ago that don’t sell any more but which still might be of interest to new or existing fans. If you really want your latest opus to be up on Spotify in its entirety, the best way to go about this is probably to do a ‘staggered release’ where you go with a conventional (i.e., physical, non-streaming) release initially and then gradually release the album onto Spotify, in chunks perhaps (via EP releases) and then finally, a few months or a year after the release date, in its entirety.

Finally, a very important point to remember is that regardless of to-stream-or-not-to-stream dilemmas, the physical aspect of your release should be very special – as highlighted above, streaming services have made people far more reluctant to bother with physical incarnations of music, so whatever you put out physically needs to extremely desirable for fans - don't just rely on a boring, bog-standard CD but get creative with your packaging (you might like to read our article on 'getting physical' for tips).

The irony is, of course, that whatever about Spoitfy, the digital revolution has brought us to a situation in which the only way to make money from selling music is to issue your latest album on signed, limited-edition wax cylinder...

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.  

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.  

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Tuesday
May012012

Using Twitter: top tips for musicians and bands

Although Twitter’s been around for quite a while now (since 2006, if my memory serves me correctly), it’s still not fully understood – or used to maximum effect – by a lot of bands and musicians. But many do seem to have a sense of its importance, and “can you get me a bigger Twitter following?” is one of the most common questions posed by bands to Prescription PR, making us feel as though we are the musical equivalent of plastic surgeons. “For a price,” is a common answer, as we reach for some strange-looking implements. But today, dear reader, we’re giving you some free advice on using the medium – and as you’ll find out, size isn’t everything. Here’s our survival guide…

1. Pick the right username

A very obvious point this, but if your little four-piece is called, say, “The Beatles”, then don’t try to be all clever about things and call your Twitter profile “@YokoOno”. Pick a username that is as close as possible to your band’s, because the people who want to follow you on Twitter after seeing you play that gig at the Cavern in Liverpool are as just as likely to whack “www.twitter.com/thebeatles” into an address bar of a browser as they are to search for “The Beatles Twitter” in Google. Or at least that would have been the case had Twitter been around in 1961. It wasn't, which is why the Beatles didn't 'make it' on Twitter. They actually played a few gigs and wrote decent songs - worth doing that too, by the way.

2. You’ve got a biography: use it

Alright, a biography comprising a mere 160 characters is not nearly enough to describe the incredible things you’ve been through as an artist and to impart your views on the price of cabbage – but it is what will come up in Google when somebody searches for your band’s Twitter page (see example below).

So get to the point – put decent, concise content in your bio that enables people to spot your profile easily in search results, and distinguishes you from the American sports hero who happens to share your name.

3. Look professional

Twitter gives you the option to brand your profile nicely – you can upload a dinky profile picture and a background of your choice. Use these tools to make your Twitter profile appear consistent with your band’s general online presence. In short, don’t rely on one of Twitter’s default backgrounds and a blank profile pic – be professional about things. Otherwise you will look like the Twitter novice that you are. Pay particular attention to the profile pic, because this is what pops up in other users’ news feed when you post your latest inanity about a gig down in the Dog and Duck.

4. Follow the right people

Don’t be tempted to use automated ‘adders’ or dodgy sites to grow a Twitter following. The 10,000 followers you get from such services may a) not exactly be real people and b) simply won’t be interested in your latest double album. They will however, be interested in regularly offering you an oil inheritance from Nigeria or shoving a pair of fake breasts in your face (sadly these offers rarely translate into reality, believe me). Instead, try to follow bloggers, journalists, writers and musicians that you respect and that are relevant to you – for example, bloggers that write really interesting stuff about the nu-metal-cum-chillwave-shoegazing scene that your band is trying to break into. A proportion of these hip bloggers and journalists will follow you back, meaning (as we’ll see below) that Twitter will inform other similarly hip bloggers and journalists that you are an interesting person worth following, generating more hip followers for you.

5. Take Twitter’s advice

When you log into Twitter, you’ll see a ‘Who to follow’ panel on the left, with suggestions from Twitter's algorithms regarding people that you might find interesting. These recommendations are based on who you are already following on the network (and who's following you), and assuming you’ve taken my words of wisdom above on board, Twitter will be suggesting interesting, relevant and (shock!) “useful” people to follow. (If not, it’ll be prompting you to follow more oil barons and big-but-pretend-bosomed ladies. Nice and all as they are, these individuals might not be all that much use to your music career). So take a careful look at the suggestions, check out each profile suggested, and if you think the algorithm has sussed you out correctly, start taking Twitter’s advice on who to follow.

6. Follow back – where appropriate

When somebody follows you, take a look at what they do / write about, and if they seem like a "fit" for your band, then by all means follow back. I’d suggest not following everybody back – otherwise it makes it harder for Twitter to make accurate recommendations about who you should be following and who should follow you. As with points 4 and 5 above, the “quality” or relevance of follower / following is everything here.

7. Remember: content is king…

…but not necessarily your content. By all means post links to your band's new videos and MP3s from time to time, but do not get too fond of doing so; otherwise you’ll just look like a jerk. Believe me, when it comes to overcommunicating about my own music projects, I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt…and despite waxing endlessly about the importance of musicians keeping schtum for five minutes, I still see artists (who should know better) bore their friends, family and remaining fan to tears with hourly Facebook updates about their latest creative endeavours. Nobody cares after a while (if they ever did in the first place –geddit?). Instead, post links to great content from other sources – whack links up on Twitter to scintillating articles which don’t happen to be about your music (and rest assured, there are a lot of them). Or make witty observations about cheese and/or the credit crunch. In short, get a reputation for being an interesting dude, not a self-obsessed bore. If you post a lot of fantastic content on Twitter, guess what? It’ll get retweeted, meaning your lovely face will potentially pop up in thousands of Twitter feeds. Meaning you’ll get more followers, which you can then eventually bore with stuff about your band (which, after all, is why you’re reading this post in the first place).

8. Interact

Although it’s great for broadcasting news to millions of people, starting revolutions in dodgy regimes and so on, Twitter isn’t a one-way medium and by using the ‘reply’ or “@username” options provided you can interact with people and engage your followers (whatever the hell that means; writing the words ‘engage your followers’ is obligatory in any article about Twitter, so I had to include it somewhere). In a nutshell, if you take the time to respond to enquiries from fans or comment on tweets from the hip bloggers you follow, you will build up a rapport with both groups; this can lead to goodwill for you being generated amongst your two key audiences – fans and tastemakers – resulting, hopefully, in more sales and coverage for your band.

9. Ask for retweets – but only when it’s REALLY important

You can ask your followers to “retweet” stuff –  for example, share posts about your latest video, or a big showcase gig. However, don’t prefix absolutely every tweet with “Please RT!” – only do so for posts that are really important. Otherwise you will become the boy who cried “retweet!” and so jaded will your followers be with this carry-on that nobody will ever retweet anything you post. So there.

10. Be regular

Don’t set up a profile on Twitter and then forget all about it. Doing this will a) guarantee that you don’t have much of a following or b) make you look like you don’t give a monkeys about social media or c) don’t know how to use it. None of these inconvenient truths will impress those skinny-jean wearing A&R guys from Shoreditch who are all queuing up to view your Twitter profile right now.

11. Be visible

Remember to promote your Twitter address outside of Twitter. Put it on your album art, your website, your posters, your drumkit, your head – anywhere people can see it. This will help increase your following.

12. Use hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets

If you're tweeting about something topical - for example, Louise Mensch - use a hash ('#') followed by a relevant tag - i.e., '#louisemensch'. This increases the visibility of your tweet, because people often search for popular hashtags on Twitter to see what the latest news on a subject is, or simply to steal a funny tweet and pass it off as their own. So with the example given, people who are searching for '#louisemensch' (and there are a lot of them) may encounter your witty, and quite possibly rude, tweet about her. This may result in more people, particularly those of a non-Louise-Mensch bent (and there are a lot of them) retweeting your witticism or following you (or both).

13. But size isn’t everything…

Finally, another reminder that like your girlfriend said, SIZE IS NOT EVERYTHING. Having thousands of dodgy followers you never communicate with is less important than having a smaller group of influential followers who hang on and retweet your every regular, interesting 140-character utterance. Think about it: if 200 tastemakers with audiences of 10,000 each are following you, and 50 of them dig you to the extent that they retweet your post about your latest video, you’ve just hit 50 x 10,000 people…that’s your video broadcast to a potential audience of 500,000 (many of whom may retweet it again). And crucially, those 500,000 Twitter users you’ve been exposed to are more likely to take you seriously, because they heard about you from a credible source, not the oil baron with the big boobies.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.  

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.  

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Monday
Apr162012

Getting your fans to fund your album

This man is actually withdrawing his own money to spend on manufacturing his CDs...how quaint. 
 

Quite a few musician chums of mine are currently using the ‘fan funding’ model to finance their next albums, and I’ve been watching their efforts with interest – partly so that I can write a blog post about it and partly because I may opt for a similar approach to financing my next record, whenever that eventually manifests itself (so busy am I fathering children and writing posts about how to promote music that my own music has taken something of a back seat recently. Anyway, enough about me).  

So what is the ‘fan funding’ approach? Well, it basically boils down to using sites like www.pledgemusic.com (or, for my Irish cousins, www.fundit.ie) to encourage fans to pledge an amount towards the cost of making your album (I say fans, but really I mean your mum and dad and the dwindling number of friends you have who still put up with your annoying self-promotional efforts).

Typically, you set a fundraising target and ask everybody to help you meet it by pledging to give a few bob (or lots of bobs) in exchange for ‘rewards’. The greater the amount contributed, the greater the reward gained. So, for example, your humble fan pledges £5 and gets a digital download of the album; your Lord Ashcroft-type fan pledges £500 and gets a copy made of gold, a credit on the liner notes as executive producer of the album and, crucially, the opportunity to sleep with the band and dictate musical direction (yes, this is just like how politics works in the UK).

The whole thing is sort of like buying things in reverse: you pay now, get later. This is technically quite a bum deal, but I suppose that fans are not only getting a record (eventually) but a feelgood factor too; that quasi-religious warm glow that only arrives when you support a starving, independent artist (okay, a narcissistic, middle-class child / cousin / friend who happens to be putting a record out, and yes, I include myself in that category).

There’s usually a catch though: if you don’t meet your fundraising target by an appointed deadline, you don’t get any money; this being the case it’s a good idea to either have a rich uncle on standby to make up the shortfall, or have a few quid set aside yourself that you can donate anonymously and save face when not enough of your mates cough up.

Anyway, I've seen quite a lot of musicians use this model of funding quite successfully recently, which is why I thought it would make a good article for The Prescription...but I’ve spotted a few pitfalls too. So, in my ever-generous way, I thought I’d share some sage pointers with you about how to go about financing a record using this method.

1. Set your fundraising target very carefully

If you set your fundraising target too high, you might not get enough contributors to meet it - and this generally means zilch for you. This is crap on a number of levels:

  • It makes it look as though nobody really likes your music (quite possibly a sad, harsh reality but you don’t really want other people noticing this too much).
  • You’ll only annoy all your fans – and particularly your friends – if you have to reapproach them, tail-between-your-legs, with a new target.
  • It may mean you have to dip into your own pocket (more on that below). 

So before you start trying to finance a record using the generosity of your fans/mates, work out the number of REAL pledges you’re likely to get, and the average amount of each pledge - and base your fundraising target on that. Be conservative. 

2. Be prepared to plug a cash gap

Hopefully all will go swimmingly well and your mum will give you lots of money towards your nice little music project. However, it might not; you may fall several hundred or even thousands of pounds short of your target. In which case, you’ll need to take a financial hit if you want to receive any dosh. So, when setting your target, work out what you can really afford to contribute yourself, and stuff some cash under a mattress in case you need it later (note: depending on how your chosen fundraising site operates, you may not actually be able to donate money to yourself, so you might need to slip a couple of sympathetic friends some money so that they can do it surreptitiously on your behalf).

3. Know your market

When offering ‘rewards’ in exchange for pledges, remember the market you are operating in: a music industry where content from big names – i.e., not you, sorry! – is now dirt cheap, or free. So don’t charge £12 for an ‘exclusive digital download’ when Madonna’s latest album can be bought on iTunes for a fiver or streamed on Spotify for free. You’ll just annoy people at best, and put people off pledging anything at worst.

4. Offer decent rewards

Make sure that the rewards you are offering are not all just opportunities for you to be self-indulgent. Although your signature on a CD might appeal to a genuine fan, it’s not going to impress your friends and family much; and no, they aren’t going to be that bothered by you offering to sing them a cover of their choice in their house for £600 either. So consider offering rewards that might seriously appeal to your ‘friend-base’ as well as your fanbase. Think outside the musical box: for example, consider bundling cool items of clothing with your CD that make use subtle use of your artwork without being too promotional (some musican mates of mine bundled a really nice tote bag with a CD they put out a few years ago - even I, as an arch-cynic, was convinced enough to part with cash for one). In essence, don’t make all the rewards too much about you; accompany your CD with items that are genuinely appealing in their own right (you might like to read our suggestions on physical items that your music fans might enjoy for some ideas).

5. Get the intervals between reward prices right

A very obvious point this, but people have different levels of disposable income – however, I’ve seen musicians overlook this when setting their rewards pricing structure, for example by offering rewards that jump straight from £5 for a digital download to £35 for a signed CD copy of the album. Since the fan-funding model in reality invariably relies heavily on people you know giving you cash, an approach like this means you are effectively forcing many friends and family members to choose between appearing a tad mean (by plumping for the £5 option), or generous but at a price they can’t afford (£35 – a lot of money for an independently released album, even if it comes with your name scrawled all over it). The more sensible – and fair – thing to do is to also offer a progressive range of rewards: for example, a digital download for £6, a CD for £10, a signed CD for £16, a vinyl copy for £25, a signed CD and vinyl copy for £30 and so on.

6. Remember that you are NOT a charity

When using the fan-funding model, it’s easy to view yourself as a very worthy cause...and forget that you’re not actually raising money for charity. You’re raising money for yourself, probably at the behest of an oversized ego (there’s nothing wrong with my ego incidentally – it’s better than yours). People do all manner of wonderful things in exchange for cash – climb mountains, trek across India, run marathons, eat vast quantities of mackerel and so on – but the key difference is these things are generally quite challenging and all the money raised is donated to improve people’s lives. But in your case, you had fun making your album and the fundraising you’re doing is going to improve your life (by saving you the bother of spending your own money on manufacturing your CDs). So when asking people to contribute, tone down the rhetoric and don’t come across like you are the musical equivalent of Mother Teresa and that those who are giving you dosh are somehow helping to save the planet. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own creative projects and I’ve been guilty of the hard sell myself in the past; but it’s extremely important to show that you understand, when asking your friends for money towards your project (or indeed when flogging them CDs in a more conventional way) that this is actually quite a big ask.

7. Consider whether you really want to ask your friends for donations at all

If you are in the lucky position whereby you have a genuine fanbase – a mailing list, for example, comprising several hundred loyal fans who actually buy your music – think long and hard about whether you want to bother your friends for pledges at all. It may be that you have more than enough genuine fans to fund your project, and although your friends may be a source of additional cash, there may ultimately be more disadvantages to badgering them for money than not. Firstly, you may irritate people you care about and, from a more selfish perspective, there are musical contexts when you might REALLY need to enlist your mates' help (for example, they may be more useful as bums on seats at an important showcase gig or album launch). Perhaps a balanced approach is to ask your fans to contribute first, and, if it transpires that you're not meeting your target, to ask friends to step in and help at that point.

8. Limit your communications

Don’t post demands for money on Facebook every five minutes (tempting and easy as it is to do so), or email people once a day asking for cash so you can master your album at Abbey Road. You’ll only annoy people and trash your online reputation.

9. Thank people personally

Finally, when somebody donates to your project, don’t take them for granted by relying on round robins or automated thank-you emails from your chosen funding website. If at all possible, send those who pledge money an individual email to thank them, or better still, drop them a text or a call saying how much you appreciate it. Not only is this a nice thing to do, but it will make people feel far more inclined to support you in future.

So, on that note, I’m off to offer my granny the opportunity to sing on my next record for £1000. Cheers gran.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.  

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.  

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Tuesday
Mar202012

The new Facebook Timeline: what it means for bands and musicians, and how to use it properly

In case you haven’t noticed yet, big changes to Facebook pages are around the corner. That Facebook page that you lovingly filled with crap – sorry, interesting content – about your band is shortly going to become a ‘timeline’ rather than a good old-fashioned virtual wall.

That’s nice, I hear you say – and I suppose, yes, it will make your page look a lot prettier and there are a couple of nice new features. However, there is one fairly significant downside for bands: the new format page won’t let you set a default landing tab, which spells the end of that nifty little trick whereby bands (or indeed brands) could set up their page so that users visiting it were automatically presented with ‘locked content’ – i.e., content you get in exchange for liking the page. From 30 March, if a Facebook user visits your page, they see the timeline, period. That said, it’s still possible to use Facebook ads and other links to take users to an app on your page containing locked content; it’s just that the switch does reduce the scope a bit for artists to increase likes by default, and it’s annoying for anyone who paid a developer to build a nice locked content landing tab.

But we are where we are, and regardless of how irritating you find the changes to your Facebook page, it is still for the foreseeable future going to be an important communications tool for you. So, in this post, we thought we’d give you, in our ever-generous way, our top tips for making the most of the new page format.

1. Upload a great cover picture and profile picture

The cover picture is a new banner that goes across the top of your page and it provides you with a good opportunity to make a visual statement about your band. Ok, a pretty basic suggestion this, but important nonetheless: use a really good picture of your act. You should use an image that 1) works well when cropped to 851 x 315 pixels and 2) screams ‘I’m serious about my music’ to any A&Rs, journalists, promoters or indeed any industry bods in tight pants who casually peruse your page. Don’t use a really small pic of your dog that looks rubbish when scaled up. The same sort of advice applies to your profile pic, which is the smaller image that appears in your fans’ news feeds whenever you post some boring information about said dog. A note of caution: Facebook aren’t too keen on letting you use your cover pic as an advertisement, so be careful about whacking big ‘buy now’ text all over that picture of your dog. Or you’ll get a spanking from Mark Zuckerburg. Ooh.

2. Choose your ‘featured apps’ wisely

Just underneath your profile pic you’ll see 4 rectangular ‘app’ boxes – these are effectively the old ‘tabs’ from your facebook page. You can feature up to 12 apps on your page, the rest of which users can access via a little drop-down arrow. It’s important to choose which ones to feature in the top 4, because people don’t hang about long on Facebook pages and you want to make the key stuff very obvious. My advice would be to put your ‘free download’ app fairly prominently at the top, along with any other useful apps that you’ve got – videos and a music player generally being the priorities. I have to say that even after all these years, and with a new timeline to boot, adding apps in Facebook actually remains a really cumbersome process which I don’t have time to go into, so good luck with that (some googling of ‘how do I ad a new Facebook app’ should help…a bit).

On the plus side, apps on Facebook pages are now fairly unmissable – compared to the old tab icons, they are huge. And however difficult it is to add apps, they do come in handy once they're there.

3. Set a ‘founded date’

A 'founded date' marks the start of your musical odyssey and the point from which you can start filling in your band’s back story on Facebook. If you’ve been around for a while, your band may predate the existence of Facebook, so you’ll definitely need to enter a founded date if you want to add information about your musical activities pre-2007. I can’t quite remember how I entered my founded date on my Facebook page, but I think it involved scrolling right down to the bottom of the page and clicking some sort of a pencil icon. As ever with Facebook pages, it’s not madly intuitive.

4. Add milestones

Adding milestones is a good bit more straightforward – just click the ‘milestone’ link which is located at the top left-hand side of the page, underneath your cover photo. Use this option to add significant dates and events in your band’s career, like when you released a record that nobody bought, or did a gig for an audience comprising your mum. On a more serious note, it’s worth taking a bit of time on this, as it does give your band an opportunity to provide something that is of real interest to your fans. Or at least the ones wearing anoraks.

5. Pin and star stuff

You can now give a particular post, link, video etc. greater prominence on your Facebook page by pinning it to the top. Simply hit the little pencil icon beside any post, and hit the ‘pin to top’ link. It will then hang around at the top of your page like a bad smell for a week. This is useful for flagging up particularly important content, like that time you saw Boy George walk into the local corner shop.

Starring stuff is another way to make a post more prominent on your page – if you click the star icon beside a post, it will be expanded to a full-size article.

6. Use messaging

One of the more significant new features of Facebook pages is that fans can message you directly and privately – i.e., not just write embarrassing stuff on your wall. Great if you’ve got a bunch of record companies or hot groupies keen to contact you; not so great if you’ve got a raincoat-wearing brigade wanting to get in touch. On balance though, I’d leave the messaging option switched on; it’s a form of fan engagement and you can always ignore the weirdos if you have to. Of the new features being discussed here, I think the that the messaging option is potentially the most significant, because it allows potentially very helpful people to establish a connection / dialogue with you about your music.

7. Use the ‘build audience’ features

By clicking the ‘build audience’ button at the top of your page, you’ll be presented with various tools that you can use to spread the word about your page (including a handy option to use your mailing list to invite people to follow you). Although these tools are not all strictly speaking new, they are presented in a  simple and comprehensive way and you should definitely take a look at them.

But remember…

Regardless of the above new features,  it’s really important to note that that most of your fans won't actually look at your Facebook page that often (if at all!); rather, they'll see content that you post on it pop up in their news feed. This is why, for all the nice new features, it’s still more important to think about what you actually post on your page than how well the page itself is presented. The better and richer the quality of the content you post, the more you will engage people and define a good online reputation. On that note, I’d actually suggest that you take a look at our recent post on managing your online reputation – it's got a lot of pointers on that score. 

Right, I'm off to put a lot of interesting and perhaps not-entirely-true milestones on my own Facebook page. Like the time I was number 1 in Belgium.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.  

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.  

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Don't miss great free music promotion advice from Prescription PR