Using Facebook & Twitter To Promote Your DJing, Pt 2

So you’ve signed up for a Facebook Page and got yourself a Twitter account specially for your DJing (you haven’t yet? Go and have a look at last week’s post to find out why you should, and how to go about it).

Next it’s time to cover some of the basics that’ll make sure your new social media accounts are easy for fans to find, as well as how to make your new social media channels appear really slick and professional.

Getting a vanity URL

You may not have heard the name, but you know what these are. When you see twitter.com/peter morgan (mine) or twitter.com/digitaldjtips (this website), the bit after the “twitter.com” is the “vanity” part of the URL – it’s the bit that makes your address easy to give out to friends and fans.

On Twitter, it’s easy – the vanity URL is your user name. Remember we said make sure your DJ name matches your Twitter name? That’s one reason why. On Facebook it’s a bit different. You can create one for your page as soon as you have 25 fans. Be sure about your choice – you only get one chance to change your “vanity” URL on Facebook.

Creating a custom background

On Twitter, you can have a background that’s been designed for you. Especially if you’re a bit of a designer or have a friend who’s a dab hand at PhotoShop, you can grab and adapt a template online somewhere, or even make your own. Alternatively, you can use a “repeating background”. Today’s video has a couple of sites highlighted in it where you can get this kind of graphic to use on your Twitter page.

Adding apps to your Facebook Page

Unlike Twitter, Facebook allows you to add “apps” to your page.Music players, a calendar of your upcoming DJ gigs, or if you’re an HTML whizz, you can even add whole web pages in custom tabs. There are lots of third-party apps out there for you to choose from. A good start is to look at other pages and see what other people are using.

Creative use of pictures

One neat trick that you can do on Facebook Pages that you can’t do on profiles is have a really long profile picture. See the video for an example from my site.

Another is to use the five pictures that Facebook puts across the top of your Facebook Page to your advantage – you could have five graphics that logically follow on from one another, or even split a long picture into five. Again, see the video for an example.

This week’s video

Check out the other parts in this series:

• Using Facebook & Twitter To Promote Your DJing, Pt 1
• Using Facebook & Twitter To Promote Your DJing, Pt 3
• Using Facebook & Twitter To Promote Your DJing, Pt 4

In next week’s post and video we’ll look at uploading your mix to a hosting service and promoting it on your new social media channels.