Why You NEED a Facebook Page!

Every Thursday, I find myself incredibly bored while starla heads off the One Hour Compo. I’ve worked in web marketing for a year, and every day I see a video game remix artist or some other musician who’s trying to promote their music, but just doesn’t know how. Just the Tips is weekly-to-bi-weekly article on how to take control of your web presence and promote your brand. I say brand because that’s what you are: A brand that you are trying to sell. Maybe you’re selling it for free, maybe you’re collecting digital downloads, but you are selling your name above all all else. If you are serious about your music, and serious about getting it heard by everyone out there who might want to hear it, these will be some helpful hints to getting the most out of your web presence.

If you’re an artist these days, there’s 2 things that are absolutely required: A YouTube profile, and a Facebook Page. Even more so than a website, these 2 things are going to get you the exposure you want. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t have a personal music website, because you should, but a Facebook Page and a YouTube profile are 2 simple, free, things you can set up quickly and easily. As you can probably tell by the title of the article, today I’m going to focus on Facebook Pages, but in the upcoming weeks expect more tips for setting up a YouTube account. Be prepared to get yelled at if you don’t own a custom domain name for your website at the very least, but again, that’s for another time.

Today, Facebook released it’s new Pages layout, so thought it’d be a good topic to talk about. When I say Facebook Page, I don’t mean your personal Facebook profile. Facebook Pages, previously “Facebook Fan Pages,” are Facebook Pages for your brand. Why is it important to have a Facebook Page? Well consider that over 500,000,000 people were using Facebook by late last year. That’s 7% of the population of the entire planet, and over 25% of the people using the internet. Quite literally everyone, and their mother, is using Facebook these days. So how does this help you as an artist?

  • It’s additional web real-estate. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: There isn’t much legitimate real-estate on the web that can’t be turned into good real-estate. When someone searches your name on Google, you want to have as much relevant information available for them as possible; Facebook pages, personal websites, blogs, twitter, heck even MySpace is bouncing back now a days. So long as you curate your web presence, it can only help.
  • It’s much simpler, and professional, than having people add your personal Facebook profile. You’ll see all the time pseudo-celebrities with thousands of Facebook friends, but what if you don’t want your entire network to know you and your fiancé just broke it off? Or that you’re in the hospital for some embarrassing injury? Or even those photos your friends took when you passed out last night? These things aren’t just embarrassing, but they could be damaging. Sure you can set up lists and privacy filters, and you should regardless. If you do it right, it is much easier, and much more effective to let your Page handle this.
  • It’s very easy to collect followers. Facebook is probably the easiest way for you to get people to follow you, and your music. A simple “Like” and suddenly they’re getting up-to-the minute updates from you when ever they’re on Facebook and, let’s face it, they’re on Facebook all the time. While at work, while at school, on their phone, while driving. ITZ SO EZ. (Note: I’m PRETTY sure you can’t be held legally responsible for someone reading your Facebook updates on their phone while driving, but I’m not a lawyer so this is not legal advice.) You can even embed your Fanbox on your website and collect followers that way. This is infinitely easier than expecting people to follow an RSS feed, or have a twitter account, or even worse, have to continually check your website for updates manually.
  • Social Proof. It’s a proven fact that people are more likely to trust the opinions of someone else they know. Social proof is one of Facebook’s biggest draws when it comes to marketing. Chances are if 6 of your friends are a fan of a certain artist, and you know and trust their tastes, then you may consider listening to that artist yourself. The same goes for your followers and you.
  • Facebook advertising is THE BEST out there. Now you might not be considering advertising yet, which is your own decision. I personally find it acceptable to put away a few extra dollars a month to help promote my brand. I understand it’s not in everyone’s budget, but consider this: Facebook allows you to target the audiences you’re looking for, specifically, and you only pay per conversion. You heard that right, you only pay if someone likes your page, thusly becoming a new follower, and becoming a subscriber to your content. How specific can you get? You can target people who are between the ages of 14 and 30, male and female, in the United States, the UK, Australia, and Japan, who are fans of OverClocked ReMix or ThaSauce Network or deadmau5 or zircon or whatever else your sound is, that aren’t already fans of you. Depending on what you’re looking for your price-per-click will vary, but it will likely be less than a dollar per conversion, you can set a max amount of budget that you have for ads, and they can be started or stopped at any time. Did I mention that every click is a real life new follower who sees all your updates? Yea.
  • Analytics. Analytics. Analytics. What are analytics? Analytics are something VERY important for managing your brand. They are essentially stats that tell you whether or not what you’re doing is working, and how well. Facebook analytics  tell you how many impressions your posts got each day, and also how many actions (likes/comments) each post got per impression. For those who don’t know what an impression is, it’s basically when ever a page loads and your content is on it. So basically how many times your updates have shown up in other peoples feeds. You’ll probably be surprised when you see how much exposure you’re getting through Facebook.

So that’s all I have for you this week. If you haven’t already, hopefully you will go out and make a Facebook Page for yourself right now. Set it up, have fun with it, dip your toe into the waters a bit, and see how it goes. Next week I’ll be telling you how can get the most out of your Facebook page, how to post engaging content, and what engaging content actually is, how to keep people coming back and, most importantly, how to turn this all into ROI.

If you have any questions at all, be sure to post a comment. (and please excuse the forum theme, it’s a work-in-progress.)

Flexstyle releases Eye of the Storm Original Album

Video game remixer Flexstyle has recently an original electronic album titled “Eye of the Storm.” The album is available via Bandcamp and is currently price at $0, but you are free to pay whatever you want for it via Bandcamp’s system.

From the Bandcamp page:

Eye of the Storm chronicles–in audible and written form–the journey of a brave group of travelers through a mighty tempest. This is the fourth album from Glendale, AZ-based solo electronic artist Flexstyle, featuring a collaboration with up-and-coming Boulder, CO-based house musician Hollidayrain and a spectacular remix by Norman, OK-based electro producer PrototypeRaptor, winner of the Weeping Clouds remix competition. Included as bonus tracks (in the album download) are contest runners-up Moar and The Loopkitchen with their excellent Weeping Clouds remixes, along with a Flexstyle remix of Danish trance producer Airdrift’s song “Phoenix,” the original of which is available from Dangerbox Recordings.

As someone who’s a bit over saturated by electronic music, I approached this album with a grain of sand, but was very pleasantly surprised. The album features 17 high-quality tracks available in 320kbps MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and more and is thoroughly recommended for anyone who’s a fan of Flexstyle’s remixes.

Album discussion on OverClocked ReMix
Flexstyle on OverClocked ReMix
Flexstyle on Bandcamp
Flexstyle’s Homepage
Eye of the Storm on Bandcamp

A New Challenger Appears! SEGA Pico

In a recent twitter conversation, it appears SEGA has noticed that there are no remixes of any SEGA Pico games on OverClocked ReMix. Once again, Liontamer set out to rally the troops, and once again the troops fell into line.

We’ve seen a challenge like this in the past, and we got few good mixes out of that. So what will we see this time?

Will it be zircon remixing A Year at Pooh Corner? Will it be Willrock remixing Sailor Moon Sailor Stars?

ONLY TIME WILL TELL, but whatever it is, we’re all win.

Mattias Häggström Gerdt & OCReMix Presents: THE ANSWER – Armored Core Tribute Album –

Anso has been working on his Armored Core Tribute album for quite some time now, and yesterday it was released via OverClocked ReMix. The full includes 11 arrangements from songs throughout the Armored Core series and features vocals by DragonAvenger and Jillian Aversa.

The artist had this to say:

[…] THE ANSWER is for all of you who really have no clue about the ravens, Line Ark, how to build the fastest AC, how to defeat White Glint or Nine-Ball Seraph. You who didn’t get nostalgic when playing the Revolution part of Armored Core: Nexus, who haven’t tried to figured out the vocals for Remember, who doesn’t tear up when hearing ‘Someone is Always Moving on the Surface’ and who doesn’t miss ‘Shape Memory Alloys’ on the newer soundtracks.

Much to my personal dismay it seems Shape Memory Alloys was not actually included on the album; A song that has defined the Armored Core series for me throughout the years. Regardless, Mattias has once again put together an excellent piece of work worthy of praise.

Free Mega Ran / K-Murdock Track in Exchange for a Tweet

Random has recently announced on his twitter that he and K-Murdock have released their newest song TYFL for free in exchange for a tweet.

All you have to do is visit the link, enter your e-mail, send the tweet, and receive a free song! Random has been doing a great job and finding new and different ways to utilize the internet and social networking to promote his music, and this is just another great example of it.

I highly recommend everyone do this. It takes no time at all and you should be willing to grab every free track Random puts out, and spread the word. He’s a great guy and an extremely talented artist.

Bugged Video Game Endings

An interesting conversation started recently on OverClocked ReMix. The thread is about bugs near the end of a game that made them otherwise unbeatable for whatever reason. A lot of people are sharing their individual experiences about bugged save files, but some people have chimed in with actual glitches that abruptly end game play all together. Sephfire, for example, describes a situation where the last boss of Far Cry: Instinct becomes completely invincible and can not be killed. I did some digging and apparently it IS a common problem with the game itself, not an isolated issue.

I know I’ve never run into anything like this, though I did have a similar experience with the beginning of Chrono Cross. Have you ever been trapped at the end of a game with no escape?

DoD Shirt

Dwelling of Duels Gets a Facebook Page, Shirts

Last week, Crimson announced that he had begun accepting pre-orders for DoD shirts. Now today, on their all new Facebook fan page DoD announced that the first wave of shirts had been paid for, and should begin printing soon.

The shirts are available in sizes small to XXXL and are $14 for US citizens, and $17 for international orders.

Will YOU be one of the first to rock an epic Alucard shreddage shirt? I know I will be.

VGMix Coming Back? A Nugget of Hope?

For anyone that doesn’t know, VGMix has been down for quite some time now. Not just VGMix 2, but even the new stand-in VGMix X had disapeared from the internet entirely. virt had mentioned there was issues with the hosting, and the content management system had problems anyway (new user registration had been down for a long time as it was.)

However recently it seems there has been some activity. A nugget of hope in the form of…well, virt’s puggle Nugget. Does this mean the gears are in motion once again? Could we see VGMix 3 finally sometime in the foreseeable future? Hopefully we’ll get more information about this sometime soon.

ThaSauce v4 is a GO!

ThaSauce v4 is a GO!

Finally. FINALLY. After months and months of seemingly not much, ThaSauce 4 is ready for launch. Let me be the first to warn everyone that the site may have some problems, but fixes will be rolling out quickly now that the new site is live.

Some new features include:

  • FINALLY ditching Php-Nuke entirely for WordPress
  • An all new look and feel that will hopefully provide readers with easier readability and navigation.
  • News comments now totally integrated with the forums
  • And many MANY features to come that will totally change how you interact with the site.

Right now the forums are still a work in progress. If you had an account on the old forums, you should be able to log into the new PhpBB3 forums, but they will be VERY ugly. I’m working on it. The PhpBB3 default theme is fighting me tooth and nail, but I shall prevail. Formatting from the forum comments on the site comments is a bit messed up too, but I assure you all this is but the tip of the iceberg!

I also don’t have a working version of Photoshop right now (GASP, right?) so that’s why the thumbnail images look like butt. I’M GETTIN’ THERE.

Thank you, enjoy, and STAY TUNED for more upcoming changes.

GameInformer.com Interviews Powerglove

From GameInformer.com:

If the only thing that comes to your mind when someone says the word “Powerglove” is a failed Nintendo peripheral, it’s time to start thinking differently. Powerglove is also a metal band that chugs out blisteringly brutal renditions of your favorite video game tunes. From Sonic to Final Fantasy IV, from 8-bit to MIDI, no catchy gaming song is left un-metalized.

During the middle of the band’s current two-month tour, I had the pleasure of meeting them for a nice chat over some cheeseburgers. I spoke with Chris Marchiel (guitar), Nick Avila (bass), and Bassil Silver (drums) about their favorite games, the band’s history, fan’s most requested songs, and why they think metal and video game music blend together so well. (Unfortunately, Powerglove’s additional guitarist, Alex Berkson, was unable to make it.)

Head over to GameInformer.com for the full story!