How to Get More Likes

Every band, company, and organization out there asks themselves how to get more likes on their Facebook pages, blogs and other social media outlets.  The answer varies from spamming current followers to spread the word, to adding tags and keywords that will attract everyone, despite not having the content they are looking for. Be ethical in your attempts, provide relevant content and push it to an audience you think will truly enjoy it.

For a band you will want all your fans to follow all your outlets and that can be done by giving previews of special content from all your sources. Leave a link and a few lines from a new blog, on your Facebook. Or direct blog followers to a video only hosted on Facebook fans only page. Be creative in pushing people to other sites and then pulling them into a committed relationship such as pressig the like or follow button. Make sure you offer ways for them to share or easy buttons to other sites.  For instance you can use a Twitter button on your blog that will automatically Tweet a link to your blog to that persons followers. It is easy to install just by going to here. You can do the same things with Facebook buttons and other social media sites.  Having these follow buttons available makes it as simple as a click to become a follower on other sites.  It takes five minutes to add to your blog and can result in hundreds of effortless new followers.

As a new band you will have a lot of people searching for you the first time on a site like Google. You want to make sure to use keywords effectively so that all of your sites show up on that first page.  What are Keywords? Good question, without giving a detailed speech that goes into SEO marketing, keywords are simply a phrase people plug into Google to find webpages with relevant information.  So for your band you'll want to use your band name but maybe something extra to draw in people looking for live music in the area which I will go into a little further in a minute.

Everyone has their preferred type of resource site, some use Facebook, others websites, and some like Blogs or profile pages on Reverbnation or videos on YouTube.  Make sure all your sites use keywords that will push them all to the top page of Google.  So if your band is named Magnus Pym, it might be beneficial to add the word band to your keyword phrase.  People searching for the band will initially search for Magnus Pym until they realize they are getting results for a detective show.  Instinctively they will add the word band or music after Magnus Pym. Putting this in the title section of websites, and use it for tags will result in getting the search results you are seeking.

I've discussed this in past blogs but you can also use keyword phrases to attract new fans. Use Googles Adwords tools to discover good keyword phrases to use in things like your bio, blogs, and descriptions. A few years ago I was designing a website and writing a biography for a local band who had great appeal to the general music lover who goes out just to see new live music.  I wanted to capitalize on that, so using the Adwords tools I was able to discover that several thousand people locally searched the keywords 'Milwaukee Music" each month.  At the time few sites were using these keywords together, so it was implemented into the bands biography and website title.  The trick is to make these keywords feel natural in your content, you can't just throw it between sentences, you must work it in.  For example: Band X is a great addition to the Milwaukee Music scene. The band dove right into the competitive and diverse Milwaukee Music scene.

It is important to maintain your keywords, if one big company starts using the same keyword it could easily push you pages away on a search engine.  Prime example, Summerfest finally started to use SEO and yanked the example keyword phrase and now dominates the top search results with it.

The best answer I can give to someone on how to get more likes, is to create a good foundation online. Utilize the one click buttons to share and follow, think outside the box when construction keyword phrases to incorporate into your content and make sure to include discriptions and tags to everything you post.  Don't just supply content that tells fans what you did that day, talk about the lighthouse in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin you visited after playing at Ziggy's Corner Pub. Or take a photo of Loveless Cafe' outside of Nashville Tennessee, and a video of you failing at wake boarding at La Jolla Beach in California.  Tagging these videos and pictures and using the long tail keywords in your blog will attract people who might get side tracked from their original search to check your music out.  Capitalize on things that interest you and your band, you never know who else is searching these things because they sparked interest in them.  It is just like a normal friendship, it usually starts with a common interest.

Increasing Traffic to Your Bands Content

Facebook has been the leading place for fans to interact with bands for a few years now, but some fear with the Timeline template being put into place will make it more difficult for fans to navigate through a bands page. Facebook also limits what bands can put up, they can't sell items on the actual page, and there many rules revolving around content and contests.  Avoid the hassles and start giving fans a nice alternative with a good old website. This is also a great way to attract new fans using the science of SEO, Search Engine Optimization. It sounds scary, but you do it with a little reading up.

If you have a band name that is borderline trademark infringing on another product or company, you are going to be competing to be at the top of a Google search.  For example the band Sunday Sunglasses.  Working with them, one big challenge was utilizing SEO while still using a flash based point and click designer. The reason for SEO for this band was to get above the Sunglass Company with the same name. Luckily that company is not very active online, so using the keywords of Sunday Sunglasses in the landing page header was all it took to get up in the top five search results. Same with tagging YouTube videos, now they show up in searches so its important to put tags on all your videos.

Most of the time you want to try and attract people who may be searching for you or something, but they don't know your band name.  For example with Sunday Sunglasses, they are near the city of Milwaukee and of course they play music so we did  some research and at the time thousands of people were searching on Google "Milwaukee Live Music" so we decided to use that as our main keyword phrase.  That way when people search that phrase, our site would be on top.  We put it in the bands biography, put it in the header, and other places as naturally as possible.  At the time, we made it to the front page.  Sadly it has been a year since working with this band, and Summerfest found the keyword useful to them as well and now they dominate the search results.  Which is why SEO is not just a one time thing you do to a website, you have to stay active with it, get other websites to link to your website as much as possible. Keep up on the frequency of the searches for your keywords and update them as necessary.  Click here for a great site to teach you more about SEO techniques to get you started.

If a website really isn't a priority for you, you need to maximize your YouTube channel. Remember only your fans will be searching for your name, so broaden the words that define you. If you are an acoustic artist, putting that definition in your title, description and tags could increase your views.  Cover songs are also great ways to get new fans, but do the audience a favor and clearly put that it is a cover song and not the original artists.  I've worked with artists who have done this, and the actual band discovered it and put it on their favorites list. How great of an honor is that, and the traffic impact is amazing.  Here is a video about a publi speaker who goes around discussing SEO for bands, he gives some great tips in his video.