Facebook page analysis

My original Facebook plan is here I choose to keep the post separate because of how long each is.  

My Facebook Campaign is over; it was a fun experience and I learned a lot about myself and social media as I managed this page and a few others over the course of the semester.  I ended with 205 likes and a pretty good following of engaged people on the site. Yes, Grandma was one of my biggest contributors, but I managed to gain some people from an ad who have continued to liked most my posts since liking the page. 

I captured two of the three demographics I had hoped I would reach, by the end of the semester. The three demographics were:Grandmas, Small Business Owners and Young Music Teachers. 

The demographic least engaged was the business owners. 

Here were my proposed demographics:

Grandmas - While grandmas - age 45-65 and over - was one of my largest demographics, 

Bell - 65 and retired - enjoys having people over for open houses and gatherings. She is always looking for background music to play during parties. Bell uses social media to keep up with the grand kids and to pass along political propaganda supporting her political view points.

Male Business Owners - The male business owners were my weakest demographic, yet I still managed to gain a small following. Allen - 45 and works 40 plus hours/week - a small business owner who spends many hours at a computer doing payroll and other mundane tasks - doing as much of the business legwork himself as well. During the long hours sitting at his computer, Allen likes to play background music to keep him going. He is not the very active on social media but does follow a few people who share a few common interests.

Band Teachers - The majority of band teachers are male, so it is not a surprise that the male 18-24 year olds were larger than the females in this demographic. Male and female combined - this was my largest reached group - but also happens to be my largest personal friend circle. This fact makes me wonder how accurate the results truly are (I do know every band teacher and band teacher wannabe in the city). 

Mrs. Jay - a 24 year old school teacher - teaching music at an inner city school. She struggles to find composers that her students can relate to while providing a positive learning experience through classical music. Unlike the celebrities of "pop" music - her students' preferred listening choice - she is always trying to find a composer who is cool enough to keep their attention, while keeping the integrity of a classically trained musician.

As you can see the large chunks of people that liked my page were near or inside my target demographics.  

There are also fans on the page that claim a language other than English as their first language. Tamil is an African language, statistically small and an unimportant group in language statistics. The fact that I was able to reach people that may not speak English, shows the power of the language of music.  

My most popular posts were the Exclusive Facebook posts - my page was the only place they would ever hear the posted music. This demonstrates the need for people to feel included and close to an artist. If the content on the page is nothing special, they will not be engaged and will continue to search for another place to get this "fix." Asking questions did not go over as well as I had hoped. I either got no response or friends acting more as trolls - it was all in good fun. I did notice that unless the post had music understandably, my fans did not want any part of it. 

At times I reached more people than had liked my page - coming from the help a share - but a few times the post was never shared and I still managed to reach over my original like amount. 

I bought about half of my likes - but it was worth it. 

Part of why this ad was so successful was I started it the day of the Super Bowl

I discovered that people would visit my site, check out new posts and listen immediately - not waiting around for it to appear on the Newsfeed. After trying a wide range of different posting times, I learned that my best shot to reach as many people as possible was to post in the early morning - people could look at it when they wanted, even if most the viewing happens in the evening.

Over the past few weeks my page numbers have decreased, with a few spikes. Most of it is due to the lack of posting. As school activities got crazy, I did not post as much toward the end of this assignment. Another reason is because the majority of my posts are piano compostions my fans are getting tired of just piano. My saxophone video went off the charts, but when I returned to the piano - even though the quilty of music went up - the numbers continued to decline. Since my posts were not everyday, I did not keep the audience engaged which in turn made my later posts less effective. Also, fans were not as impressed with compostions that took a few days to write vs. writing music every few hours.

This was interesting to me because I posted my music to bunch of different sites, all linking to facebook and apparently nothing came out of it.

My original plan did involve more videos to show the process but due to time, it was difficult to find a videographer and also get the sound quilty I wanted/needed for videos. Guess I need to invest in a GoPro. 

The greatest lesson I learned was that consistency matters. When posting on a daily basis, the audience was much more engaged in the material I had to share -  even when it was sub-par. I compared this to a more random posting - every few days - and daily was much more effective. The rule: In Social Media, absence does NOT make the heart grow founder - because someone else will take your place in the World Wide Web.  

I would do two things differently if I were to start the page over:

1. I would be more social.

I have always been more reserved about sharing my personal life. Posting publicly to a site is not my norm but to be successful on Facebook that is how you reach your audience. When I posted day to day, I got a few likes/comments but the next song I posted seemed to benefit from me giving away some of my social currency.

2. I would have an archive of music ready to go.

This page was based of my 30 Days of Improvisation. While that was a success, it became a struggle to write music for fans to hear. To promote oneself or another personality, having a completed portfolio of work to fall back on for any artist - when time does not allow for creativity - is essential.