Marketing your music on Facebook can be very troublesome. The main reason for this is probably Facebook’s nature as a social network, which is somewhat different compared to other social networks. Facebook users add mostly friends on their profile, who they already know. MySpace’s slogan “a place for friends” sounds more true with Facebook. However, you still can market your music on Facebook and you can get pretty good results, but you have to utilize slightly different techniques than on MySpace.

When you are marketing your music on Facebook you have to realize that Facebook works best as a communication tool between you and your existing fans, getting new fans is the hard part. On MySpace the most used music marketing technique is searching for bands and musicians, who play similar music to yours, adding their fans as your friends and sending a big picture comment. You could always try to imitate that technique, aka spamming, on Facebook by searching artists whose music is similar to yours and interacting with their fans by “poking” them or sending them a message. However, due to Facebook’s nature I don’t think you’re going to get good results, people will most likely ignore you.

Optimizing your Facebook musician page

Before you embark on your marketing efforts it’s important to first optimize your Facebook page. First of all upload an eye-catching profile photo and fill in the basic info. Keep your page as “clean” as possible, in other words remove all applications you are not using and place the most important applications as high up on the page as possible. When we are talking about which applications to use on your musician page there are various possibilities in the ever growing catalog of Facebook applications, but only a few of them are actually useful for musicians. As a musician you should consider using applications, which allow you to put your songs, music videos, pictures, upcoming concerts etc. on your page and which allow you to interact with your fans.

Facebook offers pretty standard applications for musician pages to begin with, such as music player, events, video, photos, wall, discussion board, notes and discography. However, for all musicians I recommend using iLike’s applications and possibly also ReverbNation’s applications. Both of the companies have created some very efficient interaction and marketing tools for artists and the main reason I recommend iLike over ReverbNation is the amount of active users. iLike has over 15 million registered users with a collective audience of over 200 million users. The iLike application for music fans, which I’m personally using quite a lot to follow the latest news of my favorite bands, is the most popular music application on Facebook and every musician should try to take advantage of that.

Use iLike to communicate with your fans

In a way iLike is a social network inside other social networks. Basically this means that once you create your iLike profile you can integrate that profile on to other social networks, such as Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, and control all the iLike applications on those social networks through your iLike Universal Artist Dashboard. Instead of having to collect new fans on each social network separately iLike allows you to collect fans to one destination no matter in which social network the iLike application is integrated on. You can also communicate easily with all of your fans, who are using iLike on various social networks, through your iLike account. This kind of system works surprisingly good and it is the best aspect of iLike.

A good example of using iLike applications effectively on your musician page can be seen on The Academy Is… band’s Facebook page. If we examine the band’s Facebook page a bit closer, an interesting occurrence is that they have 2624 Facebook fans at the time of writing this article, which is not so much compared to their 193689 iLike fans. This also arouses a question that should you use iLike to get more fans on your Facebook page or the other way around? After some research I noticed that basically every artist had more fans on iLike than on Facebook. It makes sense since iLike is not limited to only one social network.

As I said before, in my opinion your Facebook page alone can be a very effective communication tool between you and your fans, especially because of the News Feed function, which collects your friends mini-feeds into one big stream of events. However, combined with iLike, Facebook is probably the best communication tool available for musicians. If you have iLike on your Facebook profile and you have “liked” some artists, the News Feed shows also notifications from those artists if they have listed events or news on their iLike musician profile. Clicking the iLike notification link will redirect you to your iLike Music Feed, which shows you more detailed information about your favourite artists’ concerts, events and news.

Personally I’m using the Music Feed function quite a lot to check out what my favorite artists are up to and if they have any upcoming concerts in my area. This way I don’t have to check all of my favorite artists’ websites for tour dates and news. Of course your official website should aways be your main communication tool between you and your fans, but since there are services like Facebook and iLike available for free I really recommend taking advantage of them.

Spice up your Facebook page

In my opinion ReverbNation is one of the best social music networks around. They offer a wide variety of music marketing tools for free and their music promotion widgets are especially useful for any artist. Similar to iLike, you could consider ReverbNation as a social network inside other social networks, thanks to their widgets which can be embedded on various social networking services. ReverbNation’s Facebook application, My Band, is a great addition to the company’s previous music promotion widgets and a great way to spice up your musician page and personal profile.

However, if you are already using iLike’s Facebook applications I recommend you keep on using them. Having two or more music player applications on your Facebook page with the same songs on them might lead to some clutter, which should be avoided. Nevertheless, in the end it comes down to your own preferences and marketing approach. Experiment with different applications and use the ones that work best for your purposes. Below are some random application ideas to spice up your Facebook musician page.

• If you have a blog, use Simply RSS to show your blog’s RSS feed on your Facebook page. You could also use Simply RSS to show your Twitter updates if you are into micro-blogging.
• Joining and supporting a good cause is always good publicity, check out Causes application.
• Let your fans know more about you with Extended Info application.
• Show your fans where they can find you on the Internet with As seen on… application.

Getting new fans

So, how can you get new fans, who don’t have a clue about your band, on Facebook? A good way to start is using your already existing fans and friends. Invite all your existing Facebook friends to become a fan of your musician page and to use the iLike application to “like” you, ideally also adding your songs to their profiles. Also, notify your fans through your other social network profiles and official website about your new Facebook page. Every Facebook profile with your music on it is a marketing opportunity. Try to persuade your fans and friends to place iLike/ReverbNation application on the top of their profile, so that every visitor has an easy access to your music.

The most active way to market your music on Facebook is using your own personal Facebook profile and your band members’ profiles. You can for example post your songs or music videos on your friends’ wall applications and leave links to your musician page. You could also use the iLike application’s “dedicate song” function and dedicate your own songs to your friends, who have the iLike application on their profile. Also, join relevant groups and do these same activities on the group’s wall and discussion board.

Another good strategy is making friends with other bands, who play similar music to yours, and cross-promote each other by adding each other’s songs on your iLike applications. This kind of technique is used quite a lot on MySpace as bands often show other bands on their top friends.

There are probably a lot more ways to market your music on Facebook than the ones I’ve mentioned here, so if you happen to know any of them please do share your wisdom and knowledge with us. It would really be appreciated since we are all here to help out each other.