Paying Facebook Pages To Promote

In the underground metal world today, bands are valued mostly by the amount of likes they have on their Facebook page.. A band with a minuscule "like count" on Facebook is seen "not as good" as a band that has a larger "like count." Even if the likes on the latter are false likes, they are still portrayed as real, thus providing the band a facade of being the better band. With that being said, it gives smaller bands the drive to gain more likes on their Facebook page. Which leads them to promotional Facebook pages with a medium to large "like count."

There are several dozen, or hundred, promotional Facebook pages out there that aim to assist the bands in getting recognition on the Internet. As an example, these are the large promotional Facebook pages as of this writing: Total Deathcore, Pure Deathcore, BeheadingTheTraitor, and Duckcore. To my knowledge, they promote bands' music for free. This is how it should be, as bands have enough financial trouble without having to worry about paying someone to post a Facebook status.

The way those pages conduct promotion is not what all promotional Facebook pages follow. Some with less amount of likes will charge bands to promote their music. The bands will pay this fee, because they believe that their content will reach a lot of new potential fans. However, this is where they're wrong. Let's say there is a promotional Facebook page that has 30K (30,000) likes. When a band views the page, it is safe to assume they would like their music posted on that page. The Facebook page charges $20 per post to promote a band's music. With the illusion of potentially reaching 30K new fans, the band pays the fee and sees that the Facebook page posts their music. Unknown to the band, the post only reaches about two to five percentage of the 30K likes the Facebook page. So in reality, the post only reached around 150 to 500 potential new fans. This is without using Facebook's feature to "promote post" with currency. Also, this example is presuming the Facebook page has "true likes" which were not purchased by the Facebook owner. If they were purchased, the band's post would reach 150 to 500 fake Facebook profiles. In that case, the band would leave empty handed.

The two reasons I felt the need to write this article is because I see a lot of bands wanting to reach new fans, and will jump the gun and pay these type of pages for promotion. The second reason is that bands need to be more knowledgeable with the networks they're using, how they work, and who is the best to go to. They could go to a dozen or so other pages and those pages will post their music free of charge. So bands, look before you leap with your money for promotion, ask questions, find out what the page you're potentially going to pay actually can do, and be smart about the whole thing.