Is Facebook Or Twitter Better For New Musicians?

For the last few years, musicians have been advised to set up a Facebook and Twitter account as soon as they start up their online promotions. And while that is still good advice, after you've secured your name on each of these platforms, most new musicians won't get much use out of a Facebook page while they're still starting out.

As you can probably tell from the above, I feel Twitter is by far the better platform of the two for new musicians to start out promoting their music. It'll get you more fans, and it will help bring in genuine and tangible results. Facebook? Not as much. Today I'll show you why I think this is.

Twitter is a MUCH more powerful tool than Facebook for new musicians. This guide shows why! – Tweet This

P.S. This guide isn't me saying “don't use Facebook” as it does have it's uses later on in your career. It's me saying “when you're starting out, Twitter is a lot more helpful for getting your name out there than Facebook”.

Why New Musicians Will Find Twitter Easier To Promote With

There are a good few reasons why Twitter wins in the Facebook vs Twitter wars. Below I've listed five of the biggest ones.

1. People Are Open To Talking More On Twitter

The first reason I suggest you focus on Twitter when marketing your music, is because of how easy it is to connect with other people. You can simply search for people who are talking about something relevant to you (e.g. your genre of music or a musician you're similar to), and get involved in the conversation. If what you're saying is of interest to them, there's a chance they'll go on to check out your profile and possibly listen to your music.

You can also follow people with relevant interests as well. What happens when you do this, is a % of people will check out your profile. If it looks like you're someone they'd be interested in, they'll follow you back and in future see your updates.

Of course, when you do this you'll have to converse with people who are likely to be interested in your style of music. If they're not, there's no point following them. You'll only be wasting your time and essentially spamming people who have no interest in what you have to say.

I've talked about this and some other good Twitter promotion tactics in this guide on Twitter marketing, so have a look.

On the other hand, with Facebook you're pretty much reliant on getting likes from people who have already heard about you before, and want to like you on Facebook. It's not possible to find and talk to new people who are interested in your type of music, as you'll often get marked at spam and Facebook will threaten to delete your account. Not something you'll want to risk if you ask me.

2. Facebook Costs Money (While Twitter Is Free)

So I just said you can't really get new fans on Facebook unless they've already seen you somewhere else before. Well, that's not exactly true. You can find new fans on Facebook, but it's going to cost you. That's right; the only way to have people find out about you via Facebook marketing is by paying for these new ‘fans'. So if you haven't got the money to buy your way in front of people who are into your genre of music, then Facebook pages, while you're just starting out, isn't going to be much use to you.

But let's say you do decide to go down the path of buying fans (genuine ones, not fake ones) and from your adverts manage to get 1000 new people liking your page. Does that mean you'll be able to reach these 1000 fans now whenever you want? Well, not quite…

3. Facebook Stops Your Message Getting Seen

When people ‘like' your Facebook page, that doesn't now mean they'll see all of your updates. Instead, Facebook says they only show the most relevant results. And unless people have clicked, liked or shared a few of your posts, you won't be seen as one of the most relevant results for those users.

As a new musician, you aren't going to be getting lots of likes and shares. So you're not going to get seen by many people on their timeline. In fact, chances are each post you create is only going to get seen by a small percentage of the people who like your page. About 5% – 8% if that. And if your post has a link in it, even less (they make it so links get seen by a lot less people then text updates).

Twitter on the other hand allows anyone who's online at the time to see your status update. No hiding it; if your followers look at their feed they’ll see your Tweet. Nice. And something that should be standard if you ask me.

4. There Are Tools To Help You Grow Your Twitter Profile

As I mentioned above, Facebook frowns on you talking to people you haven't already known for a while. Twitter doesn't, as long as you don't do it in a spammy way. So generally, you'll want to use Twitter to find and create new fans.

While this can take a while to manually build up your targeted base of followers when you're starting out, there are tools you can use which will allow you to speed this process up and still get high quality results. A tool that no longer works is the tool I personally use to build up my Music Marketing World Twitter page, as well as a few other profiles over the years.

Tweet Adder basically makes it easier to find people relevant to your genre of music, and interact with them on a personal level. It also makes it easy to find and follow relevant people, remember who you've followed, and unfollow those who aren't interested in what you have to say.

I've been using Tweet Adder on different pages for years now because it works and it works well.

5. Twitter Is Quicker And Easier To Update That Facebook

One final reason I recommend starting out using Twitter over Facebook, is because it's easier to update and get started with. There are good Twitter apps such as ‘Hootsuite' and ‘Buffer' that make things super easy on this front.

While these two tools can also help with your Facebook updating, the fact that Twitter only uses 140 characters means you can quickly send out a Tweet without thinking too much about it or having to take time out to find something to say. You can just do it on your phone quickly when something pops in your mind.

It's also easier in the sense that you don't have to worry about posting too soon after your last post, and wondering if you'll get penalized for doing so. Simply post any time you want, and it'll get seen by all those who are online around the time. If you post two posts on Facebook in short succession however, the first post you made won't get seen by as many people as it would have.

Conclusion

So those are five reasons I feel it's better for new musicians to promote their music on Twitter over Facebook. I would still suggest you sign up a Facebook account and post to it, but promoting on Twitter is what you should be focusing on more, as this will give you more results for your efforts.

Don't get me wrong though, I suggest you still create a Facebook page and link it to your website etc so people can like it. That said, apart from the odd update which you have also shared on Twitter (word it differently though as what works on Facebook is different from what works on Twitter), that's as far as your early Facebook efforts should go.

But what do you think? Do you agree? Or do you feel Facebook is better to focus on for new musicians? Let me know in the comments. 🙂