Facebook Page: worth it for blog/podcast?

Thirith

I'll keep this short: is it worth getting a FB Page for a blog and podcast (in this case, it's the one mentioned in my signature)? What would the benefits be? Or would that be overkill if you're not looking for thousands of readers and listeners?

Aldo

Simply put: a facebook page is free. If you want to spend the time to maintain it (respond to comments, share news and add events) then it will never hurt. I think it is a useful way to engage with readers who normally wouldnt comment on your articles. You might find some new readers because their friends liked or wrote a reply to your article on facebook and now its on their wall.

Disclaimer: Im not a social media expert, but have maintained the page of a small charity.

Gonmun

I'm by far not an expert either but we have both a facebook page and twitter account for our podcast and find them handy for interacting with listeners.

We have an email address as well but we've received...maybe 2 legitimate question emails in over a year.

Tomanta

Yeah, Facebook is free. Twitter is free. If you want to interact and grow your audience, both are useful and take relatively little time to set up or maintain; be sure to post when a new blog post or episode goes up and encourage people to like/follow/share. Word of mouth is super important to growing an audience, so give the audience as many ways to do that as possible.

If you aren't concerned with getting more readers / listeners, which is perfectly fine, then the decision is really up to you.

Foomy

I would register social media accounts with the name of your podcast on every service you can think of.

Even if you don't use them past an initial post pointing towards your podcast feed or the other sites that your are active on.

you don't want to come back later if you do become more popular and find out that someone has taken your name and is pretending to be you.

Thirith

Thanks for the tips - great points all round. I've created a FB page now and will look into how best to use it.

WingedWeasel

Thirith, I'm curious how you went about the FB page. I don't use FB myself, but it is something I feel I'm going to need to. However it seemed I needed a personal account then I could create a "company" page for my podcast. Is that the route you went?

Thirith

That’s what I did, yes. Individual people can then be given roles on the FB page: admin, mod, that sort of thing. On the page, you can choose between posting as yourself or as the page.

Thirith

Follow-up question: I'm currently finding things to post 'as the page' and then responding to them as myself (with more actual opinions), to try and get some activity going. Does this make sense or does it just come across as, "Oh, Thirith is talking to himself. It's a bit sad, but hey..."?

Aldo

Thirith wrote: »

Follow-up question: I'm currently finding things to post 'as the page' and then responding to them as myself (with more actual opinions), to try and get some activity going. Does this make sense or does it just come across as, "Oh, Thirith is talking to himself. It's a bit sad, but hey..."?

Yeah I wouldnt bother with that, I think that Facebook filters out your own comments in their tallies. To your friends it just looks weird. You could Like your own stuff with your personal account, because that makes it show up on your friends their Timelines.

An exception I can think of: if you personally are doing something or something happened that has overlap with your private life. Example: if someone does a podcast and you can hear their dog in the background they could respond on their post with a comment about that. It is the kind of peronal flair that makes other people respond or maybe makes them feel better about their day.