How to create a Facebook Page for your band

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I’ve heard from a lot of friends in bands that it’s “impossible”, “frustrating”, “irritatingly laughable” to set up a Facebook Page for their band. Well, I thought I’d take some of the mystery out of it and create an in-depth walkthrough of the process.

Introduction

Facebook Pages are created under your personal Facebook account. Don’t worry, they are kept very separate in the grand scheme of things, which may actually be what makes Pages so difficult to create in the first place. Once your Page is created, you can add other admins such as band members, managers, etc. through their personal Facebook accounts as well.

In order to continue with this walkthrough you must log in to your personal Facebook account. Logged in? Ok, let’s do this!

Getting to the right place

This seems to be one of the more difficult pieces of the Facebook Page creation puzzle. Let’s make this super easy and just click the following link: http://facebook.com/pages/manage. You may also want to bookmark that URL since Facebook doesn’t make it readily available from your personal user page.

Once you’ve arrived on that page, click the “Create Page” button on the right side.

Type of page and authorization

There are three types of pages : “Local”, “Brand, Product, or Organization”, and “Artist, Band, or Public Figure.” You will obviously want to chose “Artist, Band, or Public Figure.”

Once you’ve made your selection, a drop-drop menu will appear. In this drop-down menu there are two possible choices for you: “Band” or “Musician.” Choose one and move on.

At this point you get to type in the name of your band, authorize the Page by “signing” it, and move onto the next step.

Note: The other day I attempted to create a page for my new band and after submitting, a message came up saying they would “not allow it due to it containing a word or phrase that is blocked.” If this happens to you, simply contact them and they will (most likely not) resolve it for you.

Filling out your profile

Once your Page has been created, there are some basic things you should do right off the bat. One of the first is filling out all of your pertinent band information. To do this, simply click the “Info” tab in your main Page navigation and then click “Edit Information.” The following form will appear.

Make sure that you fill out both the “Basic Info” and “Detailed Info.”

After you finish filling out that information, click “Save Changes” and then “Done Editing.”

There is one other thing you should fill out before we move onto the next section and that is the “Write something about [your band name].” on the left side. This is a great place to put your Twitter URL, webstore URL, or home page URL.

This would also be a good time to add some photos. Make sure they’re nice and organized into albums. Go on, I’ll wait…

Adding your discography

Ok, ready for the weird part? Facebook allows you to add your discography to your Page, but this is not where you upload songs. You can add an album and that album’s tracks, but you cannot upload those songs for your fans to listen to. We will, however, get to that part in the next section.

To add an album, we need to enable the “Discography” app. To do this, go to the front page of your Page and select “Edit Page” as shown below.

You will see a list of different applications that you can add to your Page. The very first app under the Applications listing should be “Discography.” Click on the little pencil icon in the top right corner of the Discography box and then select “Edit.”

You currently don’t have any albums, so let’s create one!

Fill out all the necessary information!

Once you’ve added your album, you should add the track names!

Go through and repeat this process until all of your albums have been added. Now we’ll move onto adding the actual songs so your fans can listen to your music.

Adding songs

This is where you can actually add music to your band’s Page. Though the process is a bit of a chore and doesn’t allow you to link to your previously added discography, it does allow you to give your fans a way to listen to songs.

Step number one is locating the “Music Player” app. If you’re still on the discography page, there is a group of icons in the top right corner that looks like this.

If you’re back on your band’s main profile page, simply click “Edit.”

Locate the “Music Player” app in the list, click it’s pencil icon, and then “Edit.”

Let’s add some tracks! (Hint: Click “Add a track”)

Before your tracks are made available to the public, your page must be verified. In the meantime you can still upload the tracks.

Once you’ve uploaded a track, you can fill out it’s information. This is where things start to get confusing. “But Andy, I already added my discography! Can’t I associate these tracks with the albums they belong to?” I’m sorry to say that as of right now you cannot. I really hope Facebook makes the necessary changes and starts catering to musicians more than they currently do.

Now that all of the songs you want on your profile are uploaded, it’s time to verify your account. Though, you could have also done this before uploading songs. It’s up to you.

Grabbing your band’s custom username (URL)

This might prove to be quite annoying/frustrating for you. In an effort to prevent username squatting, Facebook has put limits on who can create custom usernames/URLs and who cannot. This being a new Page, you will probably have to wait.

I’ve heard that you have to get 1,000 fans before you’re given this ability, but then we (Bandize) were able to grab ours after just 200. I don’t know if that’s because we’re not a band or not, but it’s something to consider.

To check your availability, go to the following URL: http://facebook.com/usernames. Once you arrive on that page it might tell you that you already have a username set for your personal account, but you’re currently only concerned with your Page’s username, so click “Set a username for your Pages.”

To get more information on usernames for Facebook Pages, check out this official Facebook post: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=91106469821.

Has someone already scooped up your band’s custom username/URL? If you can prove that it’s your intellectual property, click here!

Publish your page!

All this would be for nothing if you don’t make your page available to your adoring fans! To do this, simply go to the front page of your band’s Page and find the link that says “This Page has not been published. To make this Page public, publish this Page.”

A few extra ideas

Add a “Fan Box” to your other social networks and/or web sites! This can help drive fans to your Facebook Page. You can find the “Fan Box” link on the front of your profile page.

If you’re willing to spend some money, you could create some Facebook Ads that will directly target potential fans based on keywords you define that are featured on their profiles. I will hopefully post a more detailed explanation of Facebook Ads in a few weeks.

Wrap it up

That should just about cover all the basics for now. I encourage you to explore Facebook and make it work for you.

You can now update your Facebook shows directly from Bandize! That’s right, update your Facebook, Myspace, and PureVolume accounts from right inside Bandize!