"Using" Facebook?

[andrew.fulton]

So I clicked the couple of buttons it takes to set up a Facebook page for my comic, uploaded a logo, and now I am at a complete loss as to what to do with the damn thing.

If you have a promotional/non-personal facebook page what do you do with it? I am looking for some examples of fairly low-impact, low-maintenance ways to make it at least a little bit interesting and/or useful as a promotional tool.

I realise I can post something when a comic updates, but I am already doing that through rss, livejournal, twitter (2 accounts) and my personal facebook page so I pretty much have that one covered.

What else is there?

Oh, and the page is here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mumblier/110532985669725 go friend it or whatever. If I get enough people I'm told I can take the numbers off the end of the url, which would be nice.

[antains]

Andrew,
I've set up a couple for folk music duo Braemar and their Lochaber No More show. They used the sites to post documentaries and other video clips about their shows.

The sites also get used for announcements, which have generated feedback.

The good part is the updates that Facebook send to you about the activity on the page, which allows you to track how the site is received, liked, unliked, etc.

In terms of comics, Paul Bedford set up one for The List and BMB runs one for works. BMB, like you, posts to his own page, as well. It may seem like double-handling, but it helps in promoting to people who may be associated with the fan page and not him and vice versa.


Ant.

[andrew.fulton]

Thanks.

I'm not super against using it for posting updates, just hoping to find something more interesting to do with it.

[Frank Candiloro]

I have a facebook page for my own stuff as well as my webcomic (The Adventures of White Wolf). Although it might take a while you can get quite a lot of people around the net joining up, which gives you a lot of exposure to your work, which is always nice

If you can afford to/be bothered, you can make an ad for it and advertise it, you'll be surprised just how many will join up!

Using the tracking and other things, it also gives you a good idea of the type of audience that likes your work. Of course you don't always know the reason why certain people like a fb page but still, it's something I guess.

[BMB]

Yeah I have 2 accounts, one as myself where I say stupid stuff trying to be funny to my chums and another as BMB the artist, not the person. I figured people who like my comics etc don't really need to know some of the more silly non art stuff I do so phased most of my 'fans only' friends over to BMB off my private account. Except for people I'd met, I figure real life contact means something.

Maybe do something similar in that MumblierFB can become a general 'All Things Mr Fulton Art Related', so any fans will have a one stop place to follow your stuff. It'll also mean you'll find yourself with more material to update it with rather than just Mumblier specific stuff.

I quite like FB in that I can do a lot with it, I looked at starting a blog but after a few months older stuff gets tedious to get to, especially images, whereas with FB I just have a different album for each project etc and update whenever.

I know how you feel about going to 20 different places to say you've updated, but you never know which site is the site the person will see you on. I never use RSS or Twitter myself, so when starting both of those I felt like a big fat phoney.

[AndreiB]

No experience here, but I've seen some interesting stuff being done.

The Gestalt publishing Rombies facebook page has done a callout for people to submit photos of themselves dressed as zombies so they can feature as extras in the next episode. It really has been a wildly popular idea and even generated a quirky news article in the state daily paper. Why not do a public callout for people to be extras in crowd scenes or something like that?

The second idea would be, if you do upload pages, upload them as separate panels. The resolution is no way as good as it should be on facebook, and your art will look uglier on it uploaded as whole pages.

Finally, the 'notes' application can be used as a production blog to let your readers know where you're at.