If you're interested in the potential demise of Facebook marketing for bands and why you may be seeing much less in your news feed in the coming weeks, then come on in. This is fairly serious.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3_VBnx72nw[/youtube]
That's Petey G of Red Seas Fire telling it like it is about the recent rash of fake Facebook likes; one dude in front of a camera with a message, but not really. What you just saw was the cry of an innumerable amount of bands across the social media platform as they're getting punched right in the gut. It's a serious issue that's going to have an effect on how wide spread any given band's output will be, as well as the legitimacy of any band. Petey did a damn good job talking about the repercussions of the issue to the point where anything I would have to add is just mindless repetition. In short, the video says-
- Fake likes are profiles generated to like your page. These profiles will not only like your pages, but related pages that did not ask or pay for the fake like.
- Facebook posts reach a small percentage of fans to begin with, and the fake likes will take away from the already small percentage of fans that get to see posts.
- The likes reduce legitimacy of pages (fake likes generally come from certain cities. When these cities are seen to be the majority of a pages like, along with a ton of likes and very little interaction, it's a potential giveaway. Keep in mind the key word there is potential).
- The likes also hurt bands who are trying to get signed or are trying to play shows. If a label begins to look into a band with x00,000 likes and realizes they're mostly fraudulent, then what does that say about the band? The label likely doesn't know if they're just victims or if they're actually buying. Same goes for shows. If a promoter books a band with x00,000 likes and sees they're not drawing any crowd, it's the same negative mark on the band's reputation as the label situation. Nobody wins.
So what can you do? Simple; hover over the "like" button on whatever band pages you like and click on "show in news feed." If it's still giving you trouble, like more of their posts so Facebook will be more apt to put it in your feed. It seems like such an easy solution, and it really is. Obviously this doesn't stop fake likes, but every little bit to hold on to real fans getting posts helps! While we're talking about likes, why don't you like Metal Injection on Facebook by pressing that like button in the right column.
As of September 2012, Facebook said they will be starting to clean up on fake profiles. I'm not entirely sure how large of an operation that would be, so one can only hope that they're currently in the process of doing so. Just as a fan, I hate this. I want to see the bands and labels I love succeed more than anything, and I genuinely hope Facebook can crack down.
