Music marketer says it’s time to start focusing elsewhere, you know that the inevitable loss of Facebook as a valuable marketing tool is approaching.
We’ve been through phases of Facebook reducing the reach of one’s fan page and both pro music marketers and industry watchers like myself have focused on the combined strategy of not putting all one’s eggs in one basket while still finding ways to improve the likelihood of fan page posts appearing in fans’ news feeds. So when a well-established music marketer says it’s time to start focusing elsewhere, you know that the inevitable loss of Facebook as a valuable marketing tool is approaching.
From a bigger picture, Facebook has made it clear that they’re limiting traffic to fan pages and you’ll have to pay to get the reach you really want. But that can mean different things for big brands than it does for small fry like many DIY and indie musicians.
Facebook is Privileging Big Brands in the Newsfeed
In fact, in terms of news, some publishers are seeing increased reach and more traffic over the last few months.
This is confusing until you find out that Facebook is privileging particular brands and you’re probably not going to be one of them if you’re not well known.
It’s a “quality” thing and since Facebook math still can’t identify quality Facebook is identifying such things at the “source level.” This is something Google has been doing for years and it’s why SEO pros often point out that certain big brands get a pass on rules that negatively affect almost everybody else.
Unfortunately nobody with any pull or focus has really looked at how this works for big bands vs. smaller acts. But there may be a correlation there as well.
And Things Are Looking Grim for Small Biz Pages
In any case, this post by Mary Green on the effects of Facebook’s development on small biz pages led music marketer Madalyn Sklar to write:
“Just another reason why you should start focusing your social media marketing efforts on Twitter, Instagram and (gasp!) Google+. This latest Facebook algorithm change is killing your Facebook reach.”
I haven’t been keeping up with her approach of late so I don’t know how much of a shift this is at the moment since we’ve all been trying to decide how to deal with Facebook. But it’s a pretty clear statement about FB’s reduced value.
That said, it’s hard to go cold turkey and if you want to squeeze out what value you can, check this whitepaper from CyberPR with a soberly practical take on the situation.
We’ll see how this plays out but Facebook is definitely becoming a weaker tool for DIY and indie musicians and music marketers. And that’s just how it is.