On Thursday, Facebook dropped some MASSIVE news which will affect every musician using the platform. Facebook is running out of space in the newsfeed which is huge problem for them. They’re trying to give people the best experience and relevant content (not spammy posts from bands!).

Moving forward, priority will be given in the news feed to posts from friends and family, especially those which prompt conversations. This priority will be at the expense of brand pages (band pages).

Facebook is making it harder for you to sell stuff. Again!

Facebook have previously used ‘Comment – Like – Share’ as the main criteria as to whether a post will be seen, this will be changing. In addition, conversations between people which prompt ‘back and forth discussion’ (or ‘Share and talk’) will now be a big factor too.

Whatever reach your posts are getting now, you WILL be getting less reach. No ifs, no buts. Zuckerberg says he expects the time spent on Facebook to go DOWN in the short term, he’s in it for the long term.  If you’re a page that gets little comments or reactions on your posts, you’ll be most affected with this drop in reach.

Thanks for nothing Mark!

Moving Forward – What Is Going To Be Effective

• Page posts which generate conversations BETWEEN people will work.
• Live posts often generate discussion so they should still be effective.
• Post videos that prompt discussion.
• Sharing and talking about ‘public content’.
• Use news to start conversations.
• Boosted posts and Facebook Ads are going to become more important .

There is already a  ‘See First In News Feed’ option which allows a user to tell Facebook ‘I want to see posts from this page first when I log on’.  This feature will still work and perhaps us musicians need to get the word out on this feature to our followers.

As a final thought, we should always remember the old adage, ‘Don’t build your house on rented land’. Always work on building your email list which makes you less reliant on social platforms as this is fan data YOU own.

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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