Facebook Launches Music Stories Post Format

Facebook has launched a new feature that helps users share and discover new music called "Music Stories."

Music Stories is a new post format that allows people to listen to a 30 second preview of a shared song. The preview is streamed from either Apple Music or Spotify, and can be either purchased from or saved to the streaming service.

The previews are available directly from Facebook, but if you want to hear more you can click through to the streaming service.

To use the feature, just copy the link to the song or album, then post it to your status update box. This creates a preview that others can interact with. An animated spinning record with a pause button shows as the track is played.

This is a great way for artists and bands to get their music in front of their Facebook fans, and is a tool that can be especially valuable on an artist's profile page.

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Facebook's Post Reach Falls Like A Rock

Facebook is the largest social network by far with over 1.3 billion users, but its effectiveness as a promotional tool is dropping almost to the point where it's not worth even using despite those large user numbers. A new study by Forrester Research called Social Strategies That Work shows that a post may only reach as few as 2% of followers, making many artists look at the entire process and say,"Why bother?"

Up until about 3 years ago (before Facebook went public), if you had 100 fans or followers, a post would reach all of them. This dropped to about 15 (or 15%) when Facebook began monetizing its platform by requiring you to promote the post in order to reach all your followers. In other words, a post would only reach about 15 of your 100 followers unless you paid to promote it, in which case all 100 would see it.

This declined even further last year to around 6%, and now Forrester says it's down to 2%, which means that only 2 of your 100 followers will see your post unless you pay to promote it.

Yes, it's possible that these figures can go higher on an occasional post, depending upon a number of conditions set forth by Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm, which measures how relevant a post is and who sees it, but don't count on it.

Forrester suggests that advertisers move to smaller social networks with less competition and better platform terms, but that won't necessarily work if not enough of your followers are there. And by the way, the study also puts Twitter in the same category as Facebook in requiring payment to access all of your followers.

Advertising on Facebook can actually be highly effective, but it also comes with some quirks (like text in graphics can take up no more than 20% of the graphic's area) that make it challenging. That said, if you continue to use Facebook for promotion, you'll have to be prepared to spend some money to do so.

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The Secret Technique To Engaging Your Fans Online

Many bands, artists, managers, record labels and anyone trying to reach and increase their fan base with Facebook and Twitter sometimes face a dilemma - great posts that don't receive enough action or engagement. The fact of the matter is that exciting your fans enough to take action from your posts is more a function of the way you post, rather than the fact that you're posting in the first place.

If there's a secret at all when it comes to attracting your fans enough to read something, and then getting them to act on it, it's this information from the Social Media Promotion For Musicians handbook.

Make sure that every post:

• Includes a photo. Posts with photos receive 39 percent more interaction than ones without. That said, posts with videos receive fewer likes and views, mostly because people don’t want to commit the time it takes to watch an entire video. That’s not to say that you should stay completely away from posting videos, just remember that in this case, less is more.

• Includes a link. Always include a link to additional information, pictures, video, mailing list, or your website. If you have someone’s attention enough for them to read your post, it’s likely they’ll take action even further if given the chance.

That’s said, the type of link that you include does make a difference. Using a long URL can get you three times the engagement on Facebook, mostly because people trust it more than one that’s been shortened. What’s the difference? Take a look:

Long URL:http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com 

Shortened URL:bit.ly/vjgIUQ or ow.ly/eMLi2

Shortened URLs work great for Twitter when the number of available characters is limited, but always use the longer one for Facebook.

Basically, a photo is what attracts your fans to read the post in the first place, and the link gets them to take further action. It's a known one-two punch that works and works well. Try it and see.

To read additional excerpts from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and my other books, go to the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Facebook Posts Cheat Sheet

I've been writing about the best times to post on Facebook and Twitter here for a few years, and as we get more granular data we continue to determine what works best when it comes to posts from a brand (don't forget, every artist is a brand). Buddy Media just released a study of over 18,000 Facebook pages from the world's biggest brands to determine the following "cheat sheet" for wall posts.

• Posts between 8PM and 7AM get 14% higher interaction because they present fans with content when they're the least busy.

• Posts published on the weekend get a 14% higher interaction rate than during the week.

• Post only once or twice a day. Brands that post more see 19% less interaction.

• Keep it short. Posts of 80 characters or fewer receive 23% more interaction.

• Use photos. Posts with photo attachments receive 39% more interaction than posts without.

• Be careful with video attachments. Video attachments receive fewer likes, views and shares than average.

• Call to actions work. When fans are asked to like a post, they do so at 3 times the rate than when they're not asked. The also comment at a rate more than 3 times times the norm. When asked to share a post, they're 7 times more likely to do so.

• Long URLs work better. Always include a URL including a link to your product, but use a long URL since it receives a 16% higher interaction rate.

• Use questions to drive comments, but be sure to place the questions at the end of the post. Posts with questions have 92% more comments.

• Experiment with emoticons. In some cases, emoticons can provide as much as 52% higher interaction, while in other cases, the interaction can be lower than average. :D and :P have the highest interaction rates.

These are all fascinating data points and worth considering before any post. You can download the full report here.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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The Latest "Best Time" To Tweet And Post

Sometimes getting solid data about anything online is such a moving target. There's a lot of different studies and none of them may correlate. A new study by the URL shortening service Bit.ly has some new info on the best time to tweet in order to gain more responses, and the best time to post on Facebook in order to get more Likes. Here's what they found:

Twitter

• The most clickthroughs come between 1 to 3PM EST Monday through Thursday.

• Not much happens after 8PM weeknights, or 3PM on Friday.

• The lifetime of a typical tweet is 2.8 hours.

• Peak traffic time is from 9AM to 3PM EST Monday through Thursday. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get more responses, since there's already a lot more competition for attention.

Facebook

• The highest clickthroughs come at 3PM EST on Wednesday, with links posted from 1 to 4PM getting the highest average clickthroughs.

• Links after 8PM and before 8AM struggle for attention.

• Facebook traffic starts at about 9AM, but Bit.ly suggests waiting until 11AM to post.

• Facebook traffic begins to fade after 4PM.

Now just to show you how some of these studies differ, previous studies by Dan Zarrella and Vitrue have found that the best time for Facebook posts were 8AM, 11AM and 4PM EST, while the best time for tweets is 11AM, 3PM and 8PM EST.


Just to go a bit further, Buddy Media did a study a month earlier and discovered the following about Facebook:

• Brands that posted outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement than between 10AM and 4PM.

• Thursday and Friday got the best engagement, while Monday and Saturday had the worst.

• Posts with questions have a 15% higher engagement rate. A question starting with the word "would" gets the most engagement, followed by "where," "when," and "should." "Why" gets the least engagement.

So like with much of the stats that we see online, you have to take these things with a grain of salt and see what works best for every specific application. The only thing that they all have in common is that posting or tweeting at the top of the hour (i.e. 8AM), is a lot more effective than anything else. At least that's something solid.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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10 Tips For Posting On Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook Post Targeting Example

Let's face it, you have a Facebook fan page for one reason - to connect with your fans. While I don't believe that there's a one-size-fits-all formula for how this is done, there are some suggestions on how to get not only the best fan engagement, but also to improve your "Edgerank."

What is Edgerank? It's a news feed formula that Facebook has created to determine which stories are the most relevant. The more popular the story, the more likely it will show up on people's news feed. What that means is you have to optimize your content in order to make sure that it will have a high relevancy, and as a result be seen by more people. It's sort of like organic SEO, but just for Facebook.

Here are 10 tips optimizing your Facebook content.

1. Don't Automate Your Status Updates. Automated content sometimes doesn't make it into users news feeds, and the same message across all social networks can result in a lower fan engagement (I'm guilty of this myself).

2. Show That Your Human. How? Thank you fans for their replies, and post things that are more personal occasionally.

3. Post More Photos And Videos. Photos and videos perform well on Facebook and are favorites of the news feed algorithm, but they also grab people's attention a lot more than text.

4. Put Your Fans In Charge Occasionally. Ask your fans questions. Let them decide which song will be the next single, or which video they like best, or the album cover artwork. They like to be involved and the news feed algorithm likes it as well.

5. Target Your Status Updates. If you have fans all over the world, most don't need to know about a local or regional gig or release. Target the appropriate posts as tightly as you can to the area necessary to get the word out (check out the post targeting example on the left).

6. Ask Questions. Posts that include a call to action get much better engagement than those that don't.

7. Watch You Post Frequency And Timing. Don't overwhelm you fans with too many posts. One or two a day seem to be the best frequency. I've written a lot about timing your posts in the past, and all studies prove that it's important.

8. Have A Consistent Voice. It's important that the voice remains relatively the same in all posts so the fans don't get confused and concentrate on the voice more than the message.

9. Diversify Your Content. A combination of how-to's, artist or band trivia, breaking news, polls, fill-in-the-blanks, photos and videos, or third party content keeps it interesting.

10. Track The Performance Of Your Posts. Watch for trends and feedback/comments from your fans and adjust your posts as needed.

Just to be clear, the tips in this post are from an article by Ekatrina Walter of Intel's Social Media Center for Excellence. I've modified it a bit for the music space, but the points are still hers.

I know that your thinking that this is yet one more thing to consider when posting, but if you're doing it right, it shouldn't take much extra time. Just keep the 10 tips in the forefront of your mind when composing your Facebook post, and the rest should take care of itself.

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The Best Time To Tweet

If you're using social media for promotion, then the timing of when you do it is critical. Do it when most people are busy and not paying attention and you'll never get your message in front of them.

In a post a while back, I showed where the ideal times for Facebook posts were at 11AM, 3PM and 8PM Eastern time. Now a new study shows that later in the day is the best time to tweet as well.

According to Dan Zarrella, a researcher at Hubspot, who looked at millions of tweets and showed their results in a webinar entitled "The Science of Timing," the later you tweet in the day, the better. The reason is that from 2PM to 5PM your followers are more likely to see your tweet because there are fewer things demanding their attention. In fact, 4PM was deemed to be the best time of the day.

Zarrella also found that the weekends are great for tweet attention as people are more relaxed and aren't conflicted by work. The other thing that was interesting was that he also found that tweeting the same link multiple times a day is an effective strategy, and unlike excessive emails, people don't seem to mind. I know this for a fact because I've been tweeting my blog post links twice a day for a while now and can see the positive results.

Finally, Zarrella has also put together a nice page called TweetWhen that will analyze your last 100 tweets and tell you when the best times for you to tweet are. Mine's at 7PM on a Friday night so you can expect it then.

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How Many Friends See Your Facebook Posts?

Robin Davey posted an interesting article on Hypebot yesterday called "Only 10% Of Your Friends See Your Facebook Posts, And Only 1% Like It." The underlying premise was that the number of Friends that respond via a "Like" is small, so as a result, Facebook posts are just marginally worth it.

Robin used the empirical evidence he received by a post on his  personal wall asking his friends to "Like" it, and received about a 10% response. He determined the 1% portion of the article by looking at the following (an excerpt from the post):

"The Black Keys have 800,000 fans and they get around 800 likes per post, although they did reach 7,000 when they said 'Lotsa Grammys".

Justin Bieber has 22,000,000 fans and gets between 25,000 and 50,000 likes per post.

Mumford and Sons have 1,300,000 fans and have recently pulled an impressive 17,000 likes on one post that simply said, "TOUR!!!"

But how impressive exactly is that?

Well the Black Keys, at 800 for the less popular posts, works out significantly below 1% of their fans choosing to like it, and just under 1% for their most popular post. Bieber's rampant fans achieve similar numbers. Mumford's impressive number is actually only just above 1%."

I think the flaw in this thinking is that if someone doesn't register a Like, then they're not actually reading the post at all. We all know that's not the case, and in fact many of us see and react to posts without actually registering a Like.

The reason why an artist should continue to post without worrying about getting Likes is the same reason why advertising works - it's all about the impressions. The more impressions, or views, the more likely the viewer will take some action, like download some music, go to a show or buy a T-shirt. 

As long as the information you post is valuable to the reader in some way, it's worth doing because you're reaching him in some way. In other words, it's nice to be "Liked," but it's not necessarily a sign of a successful post.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Best Time Of Day For Facebook Posts

If you just attended my AES session on Social Media For Musicians And Engineers or read my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, you know that I'm big on social marketing via Facebook and Twitter. While you might be writing the best, engaging posts, they do you no good if there's no one reading, so the question then becomes, "When is the best time of day to post to Facebook?"

Now comes a study from the social media company Vitrue that looked closely at the viewing habits of Facebook channels of selected companies and brands. The study was conducted over a period of 3 months and looked at more than 1500 brand streams, 1.64 million posts, and 7.56 million comments. Shares and "likes" were not included in the study. Here's some of what they found.

• Usage is highest at 11AM, 3PM, and 8PM ET.

• The biggest spike occurs at 3PM ET on weekdays.

• Wednesday at 3PM is the busiest period of the week.

• Fans are less active on Sunday.

• Post that occur in the morning tend to perform almost 40% better in terms of user engagement than those in the afternoon.

• The top of the hour (:00 to :15 minutes) sees more interaction than other parts of the hour.

• In what seems to be a contradiction, 65% of users only access Facebook when they're not at home or at school, which means in the evening.

Remember that these are the findings of a three month period and by no means definitive, but it's a good place to start when setting up your Facebook posts.

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Follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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