The whole dang world uses Facebook. So naturally, musicians trying to find ways to increase sales/exposure/fans have turned to Facebook in droves. To that end, Topspin and Nimbit both offer tools to increase return on Facebook activities. All of Hollow Vixen (not just me) spent some time working on a Facebook strategy that would provide the best user experience coupled with the least amount of “hands-on” management of the page.
Here’s what each company offers, followed by what we decided to do:
Nimbit offers the “MyStore for Facebook” as part of any account. It lets you create an complete Facebook store on a tab in your personal/fan page that is managed primarily from inside your Nimbit account.
Topspin offers “Facebook for Media” which creates a free download or streaming player widget you add to a page tab. It then allows the fan to share the activity on their own wall and/or collect a free download in exchange for becoming a fan of the band. Pretty straight forward re-purposeing of the tools you can use everywhere else. There’s also a Topspin store for Facebook. More on that below.
When the band sat down (with me) to decide what we wanted on Hollow Vixen’s Facebook page, the short answer was everything. Specifically, anything accessible from the website should be available via Facebook. Confined by the limitations of the Facebook platform, this required a bit of creativity and flexibility.
Ultimately, Nimbit’s “MyStore” application offers the biggest “display” for content. This was a plus for the band. Additionally, there’s a complete opportunity to listen to audio, comment, and share the music. All good things. One band criticism was that the storefront was really designed specifically to sell — and not for promotion/streaming/sharing of music. It should be said that those options all exist, but it’s not the apparent focus of the application.
On the Topspin side, Hollow Vixen wanted to include a Facebook for Media option. It’s a more direct opportunity to share music and encourage a viral growth pattern than what Nimbit offers.
The criticism though was that layout on the tab was somewhat limited. It looks like something dropped onto the page instead of something designed into the space. With additional resources (developer/designer help) you can come up with something cool, but with additional help usually comes additional co$ts, and that’s something the guys had to consider. We spent some time and effort and came up with something that mimicked Hollow Vixen’s homepage. It’s not bad, but in this case, Nimbit’s solution worked “out of the box,” and looks totally pro.
But wait …there’s more! Later that same day (over a Skype chat), one of the Hollow Vixen guys said, “gee, I’m pretty sure there’s a Topspin thing for a Facebook store. They mentioned it in the Berklee class.” I had looked through the account, and we’d all been working in the platform the night before, but it wasn’t until I went to Topspin’s knowledgebase that I found a thread on creating a Facebook store. This is the type of option I’d expect to see somewhere on the actual site or at least teased someplace one of us -5- folks (me and the 4 guys in the band…) would’ve noticed.
To create the Topspin store, you first need to get an API authentication key by submitting a help request. So, now, in an effort to display all options evenly and fairly, I’m waiting for someone on the Topspin side to generate that key in order to proceed. We made the API key request at 5:17 PM (EDT). As of right now, 7 AM (EDT), we haven’t gotten it. Soon as we do, we’ll continue with the Topspin store and post it onto our Facebook page.
**UPDATE** API Authentication Key received from Topspin on 6/3 at 2:05 PM (2 days and 6 hours later)
You can visit Hollow Vixen’s Facebook page here. And if you’d like to become a fan, no one’s stopping you. In fact, it’s highly encouraged!
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Addendum: This is where you all go, “gee – he prefers the Nimbit option, what a surprise.” Come on, you were totally thinking it, weren’t you? Well bunky, I’m a step ahead of you. We’re putting all of our options up for you to look/test/compare. Your opinion on which you prefer is welcome and encouraged.
For what it’s worth (and in this case a lot…) the Nimbit option took about 10 minutes to set up – complete. Our attempt at using Topspin widgets to create our own page took hours of effort and the aid of our designer/developer to get the assets to look the way we wanted. The Topspin Store is still a work in progress while we wait for that API key. We’re not choosing one “end result” over the other ’til it’s all up there to look at side by side.
