Tag Archives: Facebook

Experiment: Facebook Sponsored Post Boost

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I decided to try an experiment with this past Wednesday’s blog post: on my WBK Facebook page I paid $5 to “boost” the link and see if that gave any benefits, specifically:

  1. Did it increase the number of people viewing my blog post?
  2. Did it increase the number of people who subscribed to my blog or its RSS feed newsletter?
  3. Did it increase the number of fans of my Facebook page?

My baseline averages on various blog statistics are:

  • 17-22 page views on the actual blog site on days I post a new entry (Not counting the  48 hour period when Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman retweeted the post about her musician kerfuffle).
  • 3 subscribers to the blog, 8 subscribers to the Mailchimp weekly RSS feed
  • 77 fans of my Facebook page
  • Between 6-15 “reach” (in how many people’s newsfeed it appeared) per Facebook post. Best recent “reach” was a non-blog link posted on April 6 about “Like farming”, which had reach=515, 62 clicks,  and 31 “talking about this”.

36 hours after I posted the Facebook link and enabled $5 worth of “sponsored” posts, here are the results:

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Friday Tidbits -04-12-13

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I’m offline much of this weekend (starting today) going to Ladies Rock Camp, so here is a selection of tidbits previously posted to my Facebook Page as they didn’t turn into full blog posts:

Quick iPhone tip  If you need to charge up your iPhone while away from your computer and lacking a direct outlet plug, before plugging into another person’s computer make sure to do this: open iTunes on the computer, go to Preferences -> Devices and enable the checkbox for “Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically.” Why? so that things like your voice memos don’t get transferred to their computer!

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Friday Faves (Free-Cheap Edition) 03-05-13

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Free Music Business Book

I’ve just started reading an ebook, The Six-Figure Musician. So far it seems filled with good points about what you need to do to “make it” as a professional musician (spoiler: mostly, work really hard at what you decide you want to do). It is available as a free PDF download from the author’s site (and geek kudos to him for getting the domain name “musicianbook.com”!), or you can buy it on Amazon for Kindle for $4.99:

Free Facebook Newsfeed Optimization

I’m testing a 30-day free trial of a Facebook posting service. PostRocket analyzes the fan engagement data you see at the top of your band/business/etc. Facebook Page and uses a proprietary algorithm to decide when to make posts to the page that maximize your fans’ interaction with them.

To do this you set up several posts in advance and they post those at the times they deem best. And since recent research shows that pictures get more attention than just verbal posts they help to turn the latter into pictures from the site being linked, and let you apply some Instagram-like photo filters and add text into the image.

I didn’t have to give them a credit card to get the free trial, and even after 30 days they have an ongoing free option (which limits your account to managing 3 Pages, and does not give you as much analysis of your posts’ performance).

Pay What You Will Music Downloads

First, if you haven’t seen Amanda Palmer‘s recent TED talk The Art Of Asking  I recommend you do so.

Palmer’s message is that there is no shame in asking your fans to support you, and that while it’s impossible to force people to pay for music they generally will give you money and/or other kinds of support if you give them the opportunity to offer it.

So keep your eye out for performers who offer their music for whatever you are willing to pay. Usually there is an option to stream the music first so you can get an idea about whether you like it –  if you do please consider the time, efforts, cost of musical gear, cost of music lessons, nights spent playing in bars for little or no pay while honing their chops, etc. as you decide what amount to give them for their download.

If you are a starving artist/musician/un-or-underemployed whatever: don’t feel guilty if you can’t toss a lot into their virtual hat – but DO drop them a note about liking the music, and tell your friends about it.

Here are a few musicians with pay-what-you-will downloads:

Amanda Palmer – Theatre Is Evil

Walter Sickert & The Army Of Broken Toys – Soft Time Traveler (just released!)

Jaggery – Private Violence

Ginger Ibex – The Rusty Goat Sessions (disclosure: this is one of my bands!)

Ginger Ibex – Firefly (our 2009 album – following my own advice and just made download PWYW!)

Claim Your Facebook Page Username

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I started to write another post, but when I went to link a Facebook page to it I realized the page owner had not claimed a username for her page.

What does this mean? If you want people to be able to find you easily on the Web, it’s helpful to have an easily-remembered web address (URL). For your own website domain this means you want buy a domain name that makes sense and is easily remembered. E.g., I could have bought the domain name “StuffThatBettyWiderskiKnowsAndWantsToShareWithYou .com”                                     but “WhatBettyKnows.com” is more memorable and tidy.

You don’t have as much control over your Facebook business/band/etc Page address, but you can choose to make it less of a string of random numbers.

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