Is Your Facebook Page Worthless?
If you’ve been around since the heyday of Myspace then you no doubt remember what it felt like when the bottom dropped out and all those “friends” were suddenly worthless. Is the same thing about to happen to your Facebook page? Has it already?
Watch this video to find out how a few recent changes over at Facebook might drastically effect the value of all those “likes” that you’ve been working so hard to amass, and learn what you can do about it…
To connect with the MMM Facebook page go here and click “Like” <== To connect with my artist page go here and click “Like” <== If you’d like to learn how to build a “purchase funnel” for your own music, click here to watch a brief video which will explain the next step <==
And as always, leave a comment to share your won experiences, thoughts, insights, or just to say hi!
It’s actually more serious. Paying for Likes without knowing what you’re doing is wasting money. I bought some of these page boosters and got 109 fans from Albania. Evidently I’m popular there. It is click farms, people. You have have see who is liking your pages. Chances are they are not even real people. So you are paying FB for the opportunity to have bots like your pages. Then the more likes you get, the less interactions you get, then actually the less real people who are fans ever see your stuff. FB has screwed us royally even if we pay them. This has been documented in a video on Youtube.
Vernicious :
I think you should publish that on Facebook, The more I am hearing I am thinking that FB is a whole load of nonsense and a complete waste of time, I am thinking of getting out of it all together, and putting my time into something much more resourceful like creating good music.
If this is the way it is, I also think Music Marketing Manifesto might consider excluding all to do with FB in its course, after all are we better off knowing that the there are real people on the end of emails,(Fans)even though the fan base will be smaller, rather that spending a huge amount of time collecting virtual people who can’t but your music because they are not real people and therefore can’t money, you must understand I am not having a go at MMM this is a fantastic concept, and if as it says on the tin with a little leg work you can successfully sell your music to real people, do we really need the Facebook’s of this world, unless there is a way to extract the real from the virtual I don’t think so.
that is even MORE enlightening!! CLICK FARMS!! facebook is NOT for artists. we are kidding ourselves. 109 Albanian fans !! so then they send your posts to the alabanian click farms and actual people who gave you a like are eventually eliminated. they do not receive more posts because they have not interacted frequently. and of course the reason they have not interacted more frequently is because facebook NEVER SHOWS THEM YOUR GODDAMN POSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a very nice catch 22.
john we don’t see how you could recommend using facebook for ANYTHING after telling us your post was sent to a couple hundred out of your 10,000 likes!!!
FACEBOOK IS NOT FOR ARTISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Search for fake Facebook likes. Here’s the article from businessinsider – http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-advertising-fake-likes-2014-2
Hey guys,
Click farms are an issue but Facebook is not in any way involved with click farms. It’s carry over from click farms that support the “pay for likes” services out there carrying over onto some of the legitimate campaigns.
The way it essentially works is that there are plenty of companies out there selling likes. they employ people in countries like Egypt, the Philippines, and Albania by the sound of it, to sit there and like pages all day long. To keep things looking legit, they also like many sponsored campaigns that are popping up on FB. For this reason, and as pointed out, paying for a “like” is arguably worthless unless you really target a specific audience. Which is very easy to do. But even then, if there isn’t any real interest there then it is likely that engagement will be low, and your reach will go down. Edge Rank (Facebook’s ranking algorithm) works in such a way that the less engaged your audience is, the less priority your post will be given on someone’s wall.
But what is being discussed in this post is completely different. I am suggesting that you extend your reach to your own audience. This is about getting your message in front of those people that genuinely like what you’re about, not paying for likes. I don’t advise that at all.
It’s easy to get frustrated with Facebook and suggest that they are just a big corporation which is only concerned about making money. I think we would be naive to think that any service out there was anything different. It’s a trade off. They offer something of value, and they eventually try to monetize it in some way. FB is doing that, to be sure. But I think there is still a lot of value there.
At the end of the day it’s about traffic. If we want to grow, we need to get in front of people. Facebook has it. We can spend the next 5 years creating our own traffic network of web properties and content, or we can spend a few smart dollars on advertising and let someone else do all that work for us. So long as you are driving that traffic towards a mailing list and building an asset of your own, while focusing a bit on ROI, I think that’s the way to go. I for one am thankful for the ease of Facebook’s ad platform. I think it offers a lot for us as musicians. But I also think a lot of people needed to be aware of the fact that they don’t own much of anything if all they are doing is relying on some third party platform to maintain their base.
John, as far as I can tell my results are from following the strategy you laid out. I paid Facebook to boost my page. The results I got are from that. I wasn’t buying likes. If you watched the video or read the article you would see someone that has researched the issue. FB may improve their ads but as it is now, buying boosts seems a waste of money if I am not even connecting with the people that already like my page by boosting a page. Can you show otherwise? Someone suggested using another of FB ad products and that might be better.
Hi Vernicious, I am very familiar with the article and the video put out by Derek Mullen. In fact I’ve shared it with quite a few people. But the campaigns in question were trying to specifically get likes. That is a very different think from extending your reach to a target audience of people who are already familiar with your page. You don’t even pick up page likes when advertising to people who already like your page. This is a strategy designed to increase your the reach of your content. That’s all. I think you’re confusing two different strategies.
I’m willing to be educated. When you buy page boosts what do you get? That is the service I paid for. Is there a service offered by FB to get likes? I’m not familiar with one. The result of my boosts were 4-5,000 views. Since I have only 100 friends, who were they shown to? I assume the likes came from people viewing my page boosts. Since so many came from Albania, I assume that is who saw them, or where the click farms are. Neither of which helps me reach my goal. I did later see page where you can target boosts. It is interesting the first country listed for me is Albania. This makes me wonder whether that was a default and the pages I boosted where shown mainly there. This itself is tricky, since from my artist page when you hit boost doesn’t give you targeted options. Or did they base my default to Albania based n these mysterious friends I’ve acquired in Albania. I’m sharing my experience for others to learn. I didn’t have positive experience from boosting pages. I’m sure I can learn more if others share what they have learned too.
Boosting your page is different from boosting a post. When you promote your page you are trying to get likes, which I don’t recommend. When you boost a post you are extending the reach of your post so that more of your followers see it, should the organic reach not be as much as you would like. How strong your reach is depends on how many people engage with your post to begin with. Who sees your boosted post depends on your settings. if you go with the default it will be your friends and the friends of your friends. If you select advanced settings you can target just your friends or create all kinds of advanced targeting configurations. It sounds like you promoted your page though, which will potentially expose you to click farms. Cheers.
If you have 10000 likes on your page, am I right in saying that you can import emails to your computer from these or does that only apply to your contacts on your account
Please advise
Hey Brendon, you cannot import the email address of a like. Cheers.
John, you are a guru.
I see where you’re at with the facebook thing, but now your “reach” is a dangling carrot and they’re making everyone into an ass. As musicians we are duty-bound to do what works, but as writers and thinkers and poets we’re duty bound to name the rising beast- facebook is a Wall Street game now! All of my personal convictions aside, facebook just put a tax on talking to your people and as long as they get paid it will only get worse. The only solution is to find another way, or, give all the hard work you described to them for distribution as It sees fit. The whole thing is crazy, its a heroin dealer tactic. And as long as you want that money, folks are gonna go for it. pay to play; I call bullshit.
I think you are quite right sir.
I think Facebook is coming to an end for me as regards pages and business, it seems to be a waste of time and keeps one from the creation side of music after all if there are no new compositions, there’s nothing to sell. I think one is better off to build there own fan base and look after it rather than depending on a third party like Facebook.
“I think one is better off to build there own fan base and look after it rather than depending on a third party like Facebook”… That’s the ticket.
The beauty of capitalism is in the balance between value and survival. I personally, am less disenchanted with FB and see them as offering a lot of value. But if enough people feel as you do Ol Abe, then that disappointment will make way for a competitor. We shall see what the future brings 🙂
Dear John,
To my understanding (and from experience) the “boost post” feature is not the way to go for talking to / sharing content with your own fans. For that purpose: use the ads manager and choose your target accordingly. Why? Because when you choose the “people who like your page and their friends” option in the “boost page” feature, chances are that Facebook favors “and their friends” far above “people who like your page”. I stumbled on this a while ago when I boosted a post and later on saw the specified statistics (I think I saw those in the ads manager). The number of “friends from fans” who saw that post was very large, the number of connected fans that saw that post was very low (below hundred and we have about 14k of followers) . From that moment on I’ve stopped using the “boost post” feature and always go to the ads manager to specify who I want to share with. If that is only to already connected fans (and mostly it is, except when we release new material), then I make a separate ad for that.
All respect and best regards,
Merlin Cornelius.
Hey Merlin,
I’m aware of what your talking about and I think that’s a fair comment, though I’m not seeing quite the same ratios. As I mentioned in the video, you can definitely take that route quite easily, even with boosted posts. You just need to go down into advanced options and open up a new window. But my point was just to single out one simple thing that people can do to increase their reach without needing to learn an entire new platform and process. That said, I agree. If you want to take the time, and for certain situations, I think going into the advanced targeting is probably a better way to go. I’m just a bit lazy and like keeping things simple, so long as the engagement is there.
My problem with this is, it’s like rewarding them for holding our own fans hostage. The more we pay them, the more it’s going to encourage them. I refuse to give them a dime. We need to find an alternative to FB, and use that instead to drive traffic to our sites. Any suggestions on what I should use?
agreed, Joblin. Initially I heard that FB lets users see 15% of posts, and that statistic was viable for pages as well (or maybe just for pages? At any rate it applied to pages.) Based on what John showed, that is complete BS and it is more like 2% exposure. For my page, it does hover around the 13 to 15% mark, but I have like 265 or so followers, so maybe it’s a case of diminishing returns when your page gets more likes. But then, that’s not exactly incentive to grow your page, now, is it? I think I’m gonna go short some FB stock, LOL.
Hey guys. I hear where you’re coming from but while it’s easy to get frustrated with Facebook and suggest that they are just a big corporation which is only concerned about making money. I think we would be naive to think that any service out there was anything different. It’s a trade off. They offer something of value, and they eventually try to monetize it in some way. FB is doing that, to be sure. But I think there is still a lot of value there.
At the end of the day it’s about traffic. If we want to grow, we need to get in front of people. Facebook has that traffic. We can spend the next 5 years creating our own traffic network of web properties and content, or we can spend a few smart dollars on advertising and let someone else do all that work for us. So long as you are driving that traffic towards a mailing list and building an asset of your own, while focusing a bit on ROI, I think that’s the way to go. I for one am thankful for the ease of Facebook’s ad platform. I think it offers a lot for us as musicians. But I also think a lot of people needed to be aware of the fact that they don’t own much of anything if all they are doing is relying on some third party platform to maintain their base.
And this is why I usually share more important posts from my “M Pollace Latin Jazz” page to my profile page … I don’t have a huge number of followers on my page, but sharing with friends on my profile page means my post generally reaches as many people as I have followers on my page, if FB’s analytics are accurate. 🙂 Rarely will I pay to boost. But, I may decide to as I get more savvy with marketing. I am not so invested in my FB page that I feel I need to chase engagement … the more worthless FB makes it, the less likely I will be to throw effort at it. I am tired of “service providers” nickel and diming musicians for this access or that. I have become quite cynical. That said, John, I derive value from your course, even if I really haven’t delved too much into it yet; I am not referring to you when calling out that other category of services.
Thanks Michelle. Glad you’re enjoying MMM. I can understand the frustration.
This was great! I was wondering why I had so many followers, but my posts were only seen by a few. Thanks John I need to share this right away
-Charles
My pleasure Charles. Glad you enjoyed the post.
exactly what we thought. we will give no money to facebook. artists need to know that facebook has become bullshit for artists.
use it so you can keep in touch with your granny and want to know when your friends are changing the color of their toenail polish.
john you use the term “THROW MONEY”. think about that. it is a perfect description of what you are asking us to do.
here is a hard fact. many of us are eating off brand tuna fish 3 times a day. we have no money to THROW!
we see a picture of musicians in a caddy convertable laughing and throwing large bills to the crowds chasing them. that’s the movies and it don’t happen in real life. there are only a handful of musicians that could actually do this. the stones and dylan etc as they are all over or quite close to the billion dollar personal asset point. but they are way too smart and tight fisted to pull such a stunt.
but thank you for very clearly and simply explaining what is going on. we just don’t think that throwing money money at facebook is going to help anyone other than facebook.
Glad you enjoyed the post Depravos. This ironically reminds me of my days as a club promoter where I once sat in the window of the venue throwing actual money down onto the street as people arrived. Purely to make a skeptical, which it of course did and which led to many more successful nights.
While I realize many musicians are very tight when it comes to working capital, the point to everything I am suggesting is that we need to be focused on ROI. Advertising is not an expense if it is generating profit. So long as one can put a profitable funnel in place we have no reason to fear advertising expenses or the companies that offer them. That’s my two cents anyway. Thanks again for watching.
Great info John.Thanks for the advice.This info is food for the thought.Keep the great videos coming.
Thanks Dante. Will do!
Thanks so much John. We have heard it before but thanks for making it clearer! Unfortunately spending that sort of money isn’t so easy when sales aren’t that great but I guess we have to pick and choose which posts to boost. I have always been frightened to hand over my Credit Card details to fb and was unaware I could do a one day boost. perhaps I’ll give it a try… I’ll let you know how I go. BTW whenever I share my music from my bandpage, that’s the LEAST amount of interaction fb gives me. I’ll have to see if we can boost those posts.
Sounds good Lori. Let me know how it goes. Thanks for checking out the post and for taking the time to leave a comment.
This was great John. This explains a lot of what I’ve been seeing. Now I don’t feel so bad :-). Thanks for the video.
Thanks Susan.