Here at Cruzine, we custom design and build awesome Facebook pages on a daily basis for bands and individuals. It’s the ideal way to utilise the largest social network on the planet and really engage with anyone who lands on your page. An epic Facebook page is a must for any serious artist as Facebook, alongside YouTube, are the main places where your fans are searching for you outside of your current website.
What’s the point in having a great looking website if when people are looking for you on Facebook they land on an ugly page that doesn’t do justice for your image. It could point to your website, however many Facebookers prefer to stay within the boundaries of the social network and would much rather see what they’re looking for on your page without visiting your website.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t incorporate links to your website and other social networks from this page, but in order to really grab the Facebook surfers’ attention, you need to stop them at your page and give them a reason to look around before they head off elsewhere.
Many successful artists and musicians exploit the power of Facebook in this way and they find that a massive proportion of their fan base will have first found them via the social network. If you can offer enough on that landing page to warrant yourself a ‘like’ then you need to reward the likers by offering more music, videos, and more engagement. This will, in turn, create further likes and from these likers, a solid group of fans will start to rise. Harness the power of Facebook. It’s definitely worth the time and money!
We advise that you get professional designers and developers (very much like ourselves 😉 hehe) to create an awesome Facebook page for your band or artist. However – us being Cruzine and always willing to help – in this post I will explain how you can create one for yourself without the need of a developer and without any previous knowledge of CSS or HTML coding. Basically, if you can use Microsoft Word, or even Facebook itself, then you will be able to create a great looking page for your group. Oh, and I forgot to mention… it’s completely FREE!
Still interested? Read on to find out how
Firstly, as this post from Steve Murphy shows, there are a bunch of great tools that offer you the chance to create your own brand page. Some ask for a monthly subscription, some offer free trials that you pay for once the trial period ends. However, the pick of the bunch has got to be PageModo as it offers you the chance to create your page absolutely free. However, if you wanted more advanced functionality etc. then you’d have to upgrade to the ‘Pro’ version, but we feel for the amount of money – it’s free don’t forget – that it offers the best functions and features on the market.
Most blog posts simply tell you which tools are the best and offer a brief description of each which is okay for finding out where to go, but what do you do once you get there?
In this post, we hold your hand through every step of the way and create a Facebook landing page from scratch and for free. Hopefully, this will set you apart from the rest of the avid Facebook artists out there and give you greater exposure on what is a MASSIVE social stage!
PageModo Bio
PageModo gives you the opportunity to build a great looking fan page for your group or artist and integrate enterprise features within it to bring it up to scratch with your personal website. In it’s most basic form, it lets you create an introductory page which opens the door to your profile. In ‘Modo terms it is known as the Welcome Tab; a space to make an initial impact and give a positive impression to potential fans and followers.
Some of the tools and features available are videos; music feeds; like gates; contact forms; subscriptions; Twitter feeds and Google map integration just to name a few. Please note that some of these functions are only available to Pro Members, but it goes to show what can be achieved from this fantastic tool.
So, here are the steps to getting one for yourself…
Step 1
Firstly you need to create a new Facebook page for your artist or record label; log into Facebook as your personal profile and go to the create page section of the site. If you’re a musician, you’ll want to click on the ‘Artist, Band or Public Figure’ icon.
Once here, choose the category of your artist/band, enter its name and agree to the terms (after reading them thoroughly of course) and click on the ‘Get Started’ tab. Here you will be asked to upload an image, invite some initial fans and friends and fill in your basic information.
Step 2
Now you have a Facebook page for your artist, go to www.pagemodo.com and log in using your Facebook account. Your PageModo account will now be linked to your profile. Ensure you click on the artist page so it is your page that PageModo is amending and not your personal account. One thing to note here is that Facebook have dropped the ’25 likes’ ruling and now let you create your own Facebook URL instantly! So it won’t need to be connected to your personal account.
Once you’re properly logged into PageModo, you will be able to begin creating your template. The first step is to choose your theme. Some of the themes here are only available to the Pro members, however, there are still plenty of free themes to choose from in the list. We went for the ‘Simple’ tab and chose the theme ‘Dance’.
The next stage is to sort out what happens in the footer and below the fold. PageModo has a great feature offering numerous templates for the footer design.
It’s totally up to you which one you choose and by clicking each icon, it automatically updates on the ‘on-screen’ preview. Any changes you make to your design at all will automatically change in the preview feature in real time. Quite a funky feature if you ask us. The footer template we went for was the one which integrated the Google map. For some reason I’m a sucker for a Google map; I often spend my free time wandering the streets of Las Vegas and other major cities via Google Street View, but that’s for another post… probably not.
Once you’ve decided your footer templates, proceed onto the next stage and the system should automatically save your changes. You’ll notice that in the top left-hand corner – as a free member – you have a time limit to complete your page. If I remember rightly, you get around 89 hours to complete it. We did our example in approx. 3 minutes… unless you’re the world’s pickiest person, you should have bags of time!
Step 3
On the following page, you should see the full-screen preview. Each part of the preview is a click-able feature. Clicking these features will enable you to edit them. Obviously here you would insert your pictures, videos, enter text which best describes your artist, insert links to other social networks and link back to your website. The titles of each area can be amended here and different fonts, sizes, and coloring can all be altered in this section. Continuing onto the next stage will save all your details and should show you your previewed design in all of its glory. Here is the snippet of our quick design before we uploaded the final photo into the footer section:
Step 4
Now you have the option to include a ‘Like Gate’. Like gates are excellent tools designed to hide the page from view until the page is ‘liked’. Once the visitor likes the page, they then have access to view what’s contained within.
If anything, like gates, is more to inspire curiosity. More often than not, the visitor will like the page just to have a nosey and if they decide that it’s not for them then they go away (but you keep the like). That said, the majority of the visitors to your page should really enjoy what’s contained within it otherwise they shouldn’t have been looking for it in the first place.
And with artist and bands, like gates aren’t sometimes needed as people will only tend to like your page if they are really into your music. In order to include a like gate option via PageModo however, you need to upgrade your membership to a Pro account. Here’s an example of the details you could enter should you have a pro account. If you haven’t got one, ignore the picture and proceed to step #5.
Step 5
So once you’ve filled in all of your artist’s details and clicked the ‘DONE’ button, the hard work (easy work) has been done. All you need to do is take a look over your preview, amend anything that doesn’t look exactly how you want it and then clicks ‘Publish’. Once you’ve published your page, it will automatically change on Facebook. So in order to see your page in all, it’s glory, simply go to your Facebook profile and refresh the page or click on the new page screen.
You now have your very own Facebook page, in the design you want, at no cost to yourself and in break-neck speed. Obviously, there are many more functions you could add by upgrading your membership to a paid account.
However, we advise that if you’re going to spend money on enterprise functionality to your Facebook page, you should seek professional help. For the same price as a paid-for tool, pro’s will be able to offer advice, assistance and introduce you into the latest and most innovative technology on the market to really make your page stand out from the rest.
Here’s how our page turned out in case you wondered. In a previous post about personal branding I mentioned choosing a name and the name I came up with was ‘Shameful Bob’, so this is the name I used for the Facebook page. He is a fictional character but at the peak of his career! Hence the need for a new Facebook page. 😉
It’s far from an excellent design and could maybe be viewed as a little boring, but seeing as he’s a fictional character and I didn’t really have time to spend on personalizing the page, it hasn’t turned out too bad. It took me just over 3 minutes to create this page and the limit we had in PageModo was 89 hours. I’m sure with a little more time on your hands than I had, you can design and build your very own Facebook page which way surpasses this one and really looks to better promote your brand on the world stage!
Join in the conversation and leave a comment. Maybe even leave the link to your new page! We might just ‘like’ it!
Founder and Editor in Chief of Cruzine.com. Cruziner is also a marketer, writer, programmer, and active strength investor in global cultural change.
