The more I’ve used it recently, the more I’m intrigued by the ways bands and musicians can connect with fans on Facebook. Unlike MySpace, you can’t send friend requests to random people from your fan page, you can only invite people from your friends list and hope the word spreads. Getting new fans can be difficult and now isn’t the time to talk about this. For now, I’m going to focus on engaging with the fans you already have.

I only know a handful of people who don’t have a Facebook account, which is surely a good thing as there is a lot of potential in spreading the word about your band. Now, I reckon that most people visit Facebook because they are bored or trying to put of doing something important because they’re bored. In other words, people want to be entertained. Now I’m sure you post messages every now and again advertising a gig or asking people to listen to your music – but is that entertaining?

My band have started posting content frequently although admittedly we still have some way to go. One of the things we’ve started doing is a video blog; videos of us messing about, before and after gigs, chatting, letting fans get to know us… and it’s really working. Hits to our page have gone up a fair bit and we’re receiving far more comments than we used to. Interaction is happening on a frequent basis.

Now the example above is just a video of us talking utter nonsense. It’s not even related to our music, but people found this to be of some entertainment and so we ended up with a decent number of comments. By posting a variety of entertaining content you will drive your fans to your Facebook page. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Post videos of you talking, playing, eating… whatever. Make it fun and don’t take yourselves to seriously.
• Post images of you playing live, rehearsing, eating… you see where this is going?
• Link to funny things you find on the internet.
• Post updates about the band that are not annoying. Don’t post endless messages asking people to buy stuff.
• Post ‘Events’ for every gig you are doing. Even if people can’t go, they will be interested in all the various places you’re visiting
• Give your fans something for free once in a while. Free track, desktop wallpaper, anything you can think of.

What’s important now is that your page is fully up-to-date. Make sure when people land on your page they are seeing what you want them to see. Be creative with your fan page and create new tabs with content such as a music player, links to where they can buy your music, up-to-date gigs listings, band biography, links etc…

Hope that’s helpful to you bands and musicians looking to connect with your fans. If there’s one lesson here it’s that whilst you’re busy trying to gain new fans, don’t forget about the ones you already have.