How To Set Up Your Facebook Artist Page

As one of the most visited websites in the world, Facebook is used daily by pretty much everyone – and that includes jazz promoters, agents, journalists and record labels. So, it’s important that when they search your name on the site, they find a dedicated Facebook Artist Page, not just your personal ‘friend’ page.

In this article, I’ll take you step-by-step through the set up process. Feel free to use the comments section if you have questions.

Why Build a Facebook Artist Page?

A Facebook Artist Page is FREE.

And, set up correctly, it is a great place to showcase your music to a captive and targeted audience.

With the many free widgets and plugins available today, you can easily pull in your music, videos, tweets, upcoming shows and mailing lists onto your Facebook page – not to mention sharing news, photos and press with fans at the touch of a button.

A dedicated Facebook Artist Page lets you connect quickly with friends and contacts and, through them, reach more like-minded music fans. There are also many ways to reach new jazz audiences by engaging with festivals, venues and other music-related pages on the site.

Essentially, a Facebook Artist Page is a no-brainer if you are looking to grow your profile and reach more fans and industry.

Setting up your Facebook Artist Page, Step-by-Step

1. Log in via Desktop or Laptop

   Log into Facebook on a desktop/laptop (not mobile) with your personal email/password

2. Click ‘+ Page.’

   This will get you started with creating your Facebook Artist Page.

   

3. Add required info

   Choose your page name, category (band/musician) and add a short description. This should be the key part of your bio – the 2-3 sentences that best sum up your project and make people want to listen!

4. Add images (profile & cover)

   You can now add your profile picture and cover photo. You can use a free online tool like Canva to design a perfectly-fitted cover photo like the example here.

   

5. Hit save – your page is ‘live’

   That’s it, part 1 complete! There’s of course still work to do, but your page is now published on Facebook and you can start to get to work on it.

 

 

 

 

Getting your Facebook Artist Page Fan-Ready

Once you’ve created and published your basic page, there are a few things that you should take care of before you start shouting about it and trying to get visitors. Here are a few…

• Add a button

There’s an option near the top of your page to ‘add a button.’ This is generally used as a ‘call to action’ – or, in other words, to tell the visitor to do something.

In my experience, going straight for a sale (ie ‘book now’ or ‘shop now’) is a little hasty; try a ‘learn more’ button leading to your best video or your website (assuming that is up-to-date and does everything it should do!)

Of course, you can update this whenever you need to keep things fresh.

• Create a post

  Ideally, you want people to arrive at a well-designed page with a long history of interesting and engaging content. But if this page is brand new, you gotta start somewhere!

  So take a minute now to write your first post.

  Ideally, make it something which isn’t going to be out of date in 24 hours’ time. For example, maybe you can upload a music video or write about a release that’s coming in 3+ month’s time.

  

• Update your about section

As well as tweaking the bio you’ve already added, you can add contact details, website, email and other information about the project.

• Add photos & videos

Facebook is a very visual platform these days, so it’s important to have your best photos and videos available directly there. If you’ve already got promo photos for your project, upload them. For extra bonus points, you can start to organise these photos into albums.

Same goes for videos: it’s important you upload them directly onto Facebook, rather than linking people to Youtube.

• Invite friends

Once your page is looking presentable, don’t wait around to start growing it: use the ‘invite’ button to ask as many of your close friends and family as possible to get things moving.

Growing your Facebook Artist Page (next steps)

Of course, these steps have you covered just up until the point of having created your Facebook Artist Page and laid some good foundations. 

Now it’s up to you to come up with a plan for creating and regularly posting content that’s going to engage your followers and encourage new people – both fans and industry – to check out your music. 

Once you’re familiar with the basics, I’d recommended checking out this guide to 12 quick tips for your Facebook Artist Page. 

For a little extra motivation, you’ll also find various interviews with music industry guests who’ve touched on the importance of social media.   

And, lastly, if you’d like to turbo-charge your efforts and get some one-to-one feedback on your plans, check out our 10 Day Facebook Engagement Challenge which you can get started with right now…

Happy Facebooking!