Being an up and coming musician can be both a delightful and dreadful gig. You’re always writing music, recording, performing in bars and/or clubs, and trying to sell yourself on social media platforms. Selling yourself also means shooting a music video for your best song. You can always just upload the video to YouTube and engage with trolls, or upload to Vimeo and engage with trolls. But you want to, not only sell your music video, you want to engage with your growing audience and earn more fans. Facebook is the answer for that.
Create a Page
It seems like a no brainer to create a page for your music video but most musicians seem to overthink it. You’ve encountered pages on Facebook before but they’re usually for products, films, or some cause to have you donate money to. You can create a page for yourself (or your band) to garner an online following and inform people of events, concerts, and more. Creating a page for a music video seems kind of redundant but it’s a great step forward for you.
For a music video page, go to ‘entertainment’ and locate ‘music video’
Like a film, a music video is a story with an arc and a message to tell but set to music. It’s not a novel idea since music videos have been around for about forty years but you need to treat each one of your videos like a huge premier set to be seen by millions. The process of creating and maintaining the page is just the same as maintaining your musician or band page; you can update on the filming and editing of the video.
When your music video is complete you can upload it directly to the page and inform those followers. The uniqueness of the music video page is that you can round up more than just fans of your music. I mention before that music videos should be treated like movies because, in a nutshell, that’s what they are. By posting behind the scenes clips and updating on the status video itself will generate a whole new audience. It’s all about the music video to help you sell it and all about how you sell it to generate likes.
Utilize Your Page
Another no brainer; you have to utilize your band page in order to let your audience know about your new entry in your video catalog. You are not just selling your music video to fans but you’re also reestablishing your persons as a musician and your product (music). After the editing of your music video has completed, then it is time to post the work of art to your band page. The process here is the same as your music video page. Sell, sell, sell.
Ads
You can quite literally sell yourself on Facebook and take out an ad to be seen by millions, or to who ever your genre of music appeals. Ideally, you would want to create an ad from your music video page. The reason: it makes the time spent on crafting the ad much simpler. All the time you spent crafting how you want to showcase you impending music video can be ‘transferred over’ into an ad. Just find the ‘Build an Audience’ button at the top of the page.
When you initially create an ad, you can set up the underlying goal. Here I chose to obtain more page likes.
You can customize the ad the way you like, like the name, the description and demographics. You’ll want to narrow down your target audience and demographics. Only you know what your demographics are and it isn’t everyone. You don’t want to have your campaign reach be too broad nor too specific; you run the risk of not reaching the people you need or not reaching enough people. If you make hip-hop songs about 1950s classic noir films, then you can choose the lifestyle and interests of your fans.
File out your demographics and be honest about who you appeal to.
Ads can become very expensive if you don’t know how they work. Most people try to wrap their heads around it and try to buy ads and it ends up costing them more than they could afford. You’ve identified your campaign name now you need to establish a budget. You could make use of a daily budget or a lifetime budget (you also have control over the duration of the schedule). In addition to this you also have bidding and pricing or ways to utilize your budget to its maximum potential.
This is your money and ultimately, you have to manage it. Set a specific budget plan for your ads.
You can bid for page likes, for clicks, and for impressions. If you select Bid for Page Likes then you will be charged every time someone sees your ad, yet you’re restricted by the amount of cash you put in for your budget. If you select Bid for Clicks, then you will be charged for every time someone clicks on your ad (with the same restrictions on budget aforementioned). Lastly, if you select Bid for Impressions, you will be charged every time someone is shown your ad per every 1,000 impressions. I recommend Bid for Clicks but it depends on your strategy.
Create an Event
Why not channel Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve and make a countdown for the world premier of your new music video. Like I mentioned before, music videos are like movies; movies have events to mark the premier of said film, you can emulate that notion. When you schedule out a shoot, you should have a release date in mind on a specific date, more or less. Do not sell yourself short and create an event on Facebook to hype up your work. If you think you’re the next big musician, treat yourself like you are.
Just fill out the credentials like you normally would. Just add, for location, the Facebook URL or the site to where the music video is to be hosted. You can edit the events details even after it’s been created.
These are just a few tips to how you can sell your music video on Facebook. However, you shouldn’t be using Facebook for all your needs. You need to be using multiple social media platforms to sell yourself and your music.
Via Music Think Tank
