I'm about done with Facebook "pages" as a band promotion tool. I hate it when bands ask people to "like" them at shows. I've done it myself, and it always felt cheap.
Likes are basically meaningless. For one thing, you can pay someone to up your likes through fiverr.com. For about $15 you can have as many likes as a well-established, nationally touring band. It's also standard to ask your friends and family to like your page to help get it off the ground. Then, I assume, you will also like their pages for products and services that have nothing to do with your life. I know that I like some things I know nothing about - my aunt's therapy practice, for example. On the other side, I also see really well known bands with very few likes. When I look at a band page, and I see a lot of likes, my thought is: "they must have spent a lot of money/energy getting likes", not "wow, a lot of people like this, I should check it out!" A better use of money would be to do direct advertising on Facebook. As far as building a fan base, I believe that's going to happen best with quality shows, good press, a website, and a newsletter.
The latest part of this is that FB now wants bands to pay to send out messages, unless fans have gone in and subscribed to status updates (which many will not know how to do/find time to do). Personally, I think this is the final nail in the coffin for FB pages as a promotion tool. I don't visit pages, and I am not going to go through every band page I like and subscribe to updates. I'm over it.
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