Hey all — per a conversation I had earlier this week with Richard at an SCL event, I’d like to make my first official contribution to this group. As the “young and hungry” publicist of the composer world, I thought it would be fun to offer some social media insights every so often.
Social media is becoming more and more entrenched in our society as a source for socializing, news, events, and communities like this one. Accordingly, as people spend more time on sites like Facebook, it has become an increasingly valuable, and perhaps necessary, tool for promotion.
One cool new tool you should all experiment with on your personal or fan pages is FACEBOOK LIVE. This allows you to instantaneously share live video with friends, family and connections. You can control the audience that sees your post, and even test it out by broadcasting to ‘only me’ — full instructions of this are in the link below.
Here are a few ideas of what you could film with a Facebook live video. These can shine a unique spotlight on you, and provide a fun platform to engage with fans, as well as potential employers or collaborators:
~ Studio tour
~ Dissecting a cue
~ Showing a cool instrument, sound or collection
~ Live Q&A
~ Composer tips/lessons
Despite the success of this feature, Facebook is not the first to pursue live video in social media. That would be PERISCOPE, which is now owned by twitter. As Facebook looks to conquer their competitors, they have tweaked their algorithim to heavily prioritize live video in users’ news feeds. This means that doing a live video will have the highest reach and engagement with your fans and friends, as Facebook purposefully bumps it higher that a normal text, photo, link, or video post.
Oftentimes, Facebook will even sends your connections a notification that you are live, as they attempt to encourage you to engage with this feature, and ultimately try it out yourself. Also, the live videos turn into a normal Facebook video afterwards, so people who don’t tune in live can still see your video. And these ‘finished’ live videos are still heavily emphasized in the Facebook homepage algorithm, making this currently the most effective tool on this site.
Please let me know if you have any questions about using Facebook live, or how social media can help for promoting your music and upcoming projects. Volume 2 of the Social Media Diaries will be up in the near future!
