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.
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