Instagram has become the foremost popular social media platform for musicians; it's incredibly feature-rich and allows you to interact together with your audience and build new fans like no other platform, so here’s our greatest tips to urge more fans and promoting your music on Instagram.
1. Upload Best sort of posts with high quality
Although originally a platform for people to point out off their photography, Instagram has transitioned it to becoming an incredibly versatile social media platform, as you'll publish your content and obtain your message across in numerous ways.
a. Images
This is what Instagram was made for, you'll post photos of you with a caption underneath, otherwise you can use Canva to place text over your image if you’d wish to post a message or a quote.
b. Videos
These are the second hottest posts on Instagram, but can have a tremendous impact, especially as you'll get someone’s attention so easily with a fast-paced video. Don’t forget that the majority people scroll their feed with the pontificate by default, so we recommend subtitling your videos before you post them so people can follow along albeit they’re scrolling Instagram during a public place and haven't any headphones.
c. Blog post
Yep, you'll blog on Instagram! You’d be surprised just how often people will read your captions if you'll tell a compelling story. you really have a 2,200 character limit for your captions, which is quite enough for you to upload a photograph which is critical to you and take a lover on a journey by writing a brief blog post. If you would like even more room , you'll upload a screenshot of your blog post which has been written on the notes app in your phone.
2. Use Hashtags
For your posts to urge maximum reach, you ought to be using a minimum of 20 hashtags on each of your posts. the utmost number of hashtags you'll use is 30 for every post, and ideally you ought to be coming on the brink of this.
How to find the proper hashtags to use
There are two primary ways for you to seek out the foremost effective hashtags, using hashtag tools and also watching other successful accounts and trying theirs.
Hashtag tools
There are many tools out there which may recommend hashtags for you to use. Our recommendation is Display Purposes which allows you to input a series of relevant phrases and it'll suggest the foremost appropriate related hashtags for you to use. you'll trial and test various phrases to ascertain which hashtags work best for you.
Similar artists
Just like creating a content strategy designed for an emerging artist, you would like to try to to an equivalent for your hashtags. Find artists who are receiving organic engagement on their posts and appearance at the hashtags they're using and test them on your own posts.
When you’re typing in your hashtags on the Instagram app, don’t be fooled by the figures that crop up which tells you ways often they’ve been used, the amount of posts that a hashtag has doesn’t mean it’s frequently searched, so you ought to have niche hashtags which have people searching it instead of a hashtag that everybody uses. If you've got the budget there's a platform called Sprout which can actually tell you which of them hashtags are becoming you the engagement, however you'll need to buy this service.
3. Use ads and sponsored posts
When you convert your Instagram account in to a business account, it allows you to spice up your posts to succeed in a wider audience and gain new fans.
The secret hack to ads is really the content you promote instead of the targeting. you would like to be ready to create a post which can make people that haven't heard of you stop scrolling and notice , so if you’ve created a video it must grab people’s attention within the primary 3 seconds. you'll do that by having something happen within the first frame of the video or using text banners with a clickbait title. Instagram usually tries to limit your exposure when using an excessive amount of text, but in our personal experience we’ve found if you promote via the app itself they have a tendency to allow you to through.
If you’d like more detail on using ads you'll read our other article on promoting your music on social media.
Don’t just promote your music videos
Imagine people are scrolling, what would make them stop and notice of your ad?
In 2019 artists are now hooked in to ‘views’, it’s almost become a second currency within the music industry. And if you would like to spend your money on getting your view count up then social media platforms will much oblige, but you would like to form sure those views are put to good use.
Musicians often invest their hard-earned money on a high budget music video and panic that nobody goes to ascertain it, in order that they spend money by uploading the music video on to Instagram and running it as a billboard , but the difficulty with this is often that a music video isn't getting to stop people from scrolling then hear your music.
Most people are scrolling Instagram with the pontificate , and albeit they need the sound on they’re not usually within the right mentality to take a seat and hear a replacement track. If you think that about the days you spend on Instagram, you haven’t dedicated an extended period of your time to spend thereon , usually once you open the app you’re anticipating to consume the content for 20-30 seconds then you log off , which suggests that trying to urge people to concentrate to your music when they’ve never heard of you is useless.
If you’d wish to promote your music video you would like to edit it down in to a brief clip and add logos and text over the highest to feature credibility or entice someone in to listening, perhaps you’ve had previous press which might add credibility, otherwise you target people that are fans of comparable artists then list those artists on the video with the title “FOR FANS OF: ” which can make people stop and listen.
4. Direct Message people
You need to be taking advantage of this feature while you continue to can with the foremost effective strategy. This feature often gets abused by people posing for shout outs or for a follow back, but the simplest possible outcome is for an account with an outsized amount of followers to use your music within the background of 1 of their posts or Instagram stories.
You can DM your existing fans to update them on your latest releases, or maybe find people that have commented on posts from similar artists to yourself, and send them a polite DM making them conscious of your latest track.
As well as sending DM’s to people, you'll use the Instagram Discovery feature to discuss posts by similar artists, but don’t beg for people to follow you or hear your track, add value to the conversation and if your point is robust enough people will naturally inspect your profile and provides you a follow.
5. Offer people your music to use in their stories for free of charge
Content creators are always trying to find music to use without the necessity to travel through complications like royalty collection, so offering your music to them to use royalty-free can get your music heard by millions.
To find these people, simply find hashtags like #makeuptutorial #inspirational or #motivation and find people that create videos who get thousands of views and have up to 2 million followers.
Here’s our suggested template for reaching bent these people:
Message 1
“Hi [Account name], I absolutely loved your [mention a video and specifically something you liked about it].
Message 2
I’d like to give something back to you, I’m an artist and have a track which is basically beginning , you’re welcome to use it in one among your videos!”
After this engagement they're going to usually offer you an email address to send the mp3 to.
6. Have your Socials in your Spotify account
Spotify may be a fantastic music discovery platform which may help drive traffic and fans and that they have now released a feature to permit you to feature your social media links to your Spotify profile. this suggests your fans know exactly where they will find you after they’ve discovered your track on a Spotify playlist. Your social media can act as a “catch net” for fans to make sure they don’t forget you and you'll quickly make them conscious of future releases.
7. Stories and engagement
Your objective to promoting your music on Instagram is primarily to realize more followers, which is strictly what your end goal should be, but you shouldn’t neglect the opposite aspects involved in building an audience.
You have to convince those potential followers that your account is worth following which suggests once they look on your profile they will see:
a. Engagement from your existing followers
People wish to get reassurance from others and do an equivalent , in marketing it's a well known topic named social proofing, which suggests that if people see others following or engaging with something, others are likely to feel reassured that they’re making the proper decision by following you. If you only have a dead account where you post the simplest images and videos but receive no comments, then people won’t be persuaded to follow you.
Engagement doesn’t arise due to the post itself, there isn’t a hack to receive constant engagement on your posts. It comes with time and nurture to create a rapport together with your fans who are conversant in your content tolerably for them to go away a comment by voicing their opinion, supplying you with support or tagging their friend in your relevant post.
Just because stories aren’t permanently on your feed, that doesn’t mean that you’re not contributing to your feed.
You need to nurture your audience and condition them to interact together with your account, and therefore the best thanks to this is often through Instagram stories. In stories you'll have polls, host Q&A’s and also opinion sliders which all allow your audience to interact with you by supplying you with feedback and influencing your content. As your followers are going to be interacting with you daily and you’re proving to them that their votes count and you acknowledge their feedback how it influences your future content, they're going to become familiar with interacting with you so once you do post on your feed they’ll engage with you there too.
b. there's a robust community
People wish to desire they’re a part of something (or a community), so you would like to form people desire individuals instead of just numbers, you'll do that by responding to each single comment. albeit a number of the comments you receive within the early stages are from bots, still reply as this increases the engagement and displays to your potential real followers that you’re willing to interact , and if they were to go away a comment you're likely to reply.
c. there's content people would really like to ascertain more of
Gaining followers isn’t about looking cool, people don’t follow accounts because they're visually pleasing, nor do they plan to hear your music because you’ve given them a dig in your bio, they appear to ascertain if your account are some things they’d wish to be involved also as whether your content are some things that they’d wish to see more of. People hit the follow but to not reward you for having an excellent page already but because they shall consume more of your content. If you're creating content which has an ongoing story or theme which tells your audience there's more to return this may get people to hit the follow button once they encounter your account.
8. Serve your existing followers
There is no stronger sort of marketing than word-of-mouth, and other people like to share hidden gems with their friends, not simply because your content or music is sweet but because they need to convince their friends that they’ve got great taste and a talent for locating things that you simply would never have found.
Too many artists spend their entire time trying to realize new followers instead of nurturing the subsequent they have already got . How often does one DM your existing fan base, or reply to all or any of their comments?
By making your account a tremendous thing to be a neighborhood of, the new followers will come naturally.
9. Create an ongoing theme and message
In order to make content which individuals want to ascertain more, you would like to possess an ongoing theme, your audience must know what they’re buying in to. Therefore, you would like to possess an ongoing theme or message which your audience can purchase in to. If you’re a musician who plays multiple instruments, you'll build your audience through creating content for an audience curious about musical instruments, an example of this is able to be HANNIE who managed to accumulate 300,000 followers combined through creating content around their songwriting, production and instruments, you'll check read more about them here.
Using a KISS strategy (keep it simple stupid) this may allow your audience to simply identify your themes and messages and know exactly what they’re getting to be seeing show abreast of their feed after they’ve hit the follow button. These themes and messages are often anything you wish , here’s some examples:
– Inspirational content where you create music to be played over inspiring videos.
– Political, environment or for a cause sort of content where your content stands for something which can attract others who have similar beliefs to follow.
– Documentary style content which features a strong story line of your journey as an emerging artist.
– Educational content teaching your audience new skills like live production or songwriting sessions.
10. Don’t act like you’ve already made it, act like an emerging artist
Most musicians when they’re just starting out aren’t sure what they ought to be posting on their social media so seek inspiration from other artists, their initial instinct is to travel to established artists who have already made it and touring globally to ascertain what quite content they’re posting. the matter with this is often that you’re assuming that this content is that the sort of content that made these artists successful and build a following, but the reality is a longtime artist needs a technique which works for a longtime artist, and an emerging artist needs a technique for an emerging artist. once you have a worldwide fan base, it doesn’t require an equivalent sorts of posts to urge engagement, people are getting to engage and show up to your gigs anyway.
As an emerging artist, you can’t fool your audience in to thinking they’ve encounter a longtime artist, it doesn’t take much information to spot that you’re upcoming, whether it’s your number of followers, people that show up to your gig or streaming numbers on Spotify. What you would like to know is that it’s okay to be emerging. There are tons of ‘early adopters’ within the music industry who get a true leap out of finding talented musicians who are yet to grow an enormous fan base. They even proudly share the music with their friends as they’ve discovered yet one more new gem. These are the people that give new artists a platform and help spread the word to a bigger audience, however if fool your audience in to thinking you’re big, you won’t attract the first adopters and people who you are doing attract won’t be willing to share your latest tracks.
When you’re creating your Instagram strategy, you ought to constantly be asking yourself “What will make someone who hasn’t heard of me stop scrolling and consider following my account?”, because tour dates, Spotify screenshots and clips from your latest music video isn’t getting to cut it.
11. Give to your audience instead of take from them
It’s unfortunate to mention , but people when using social media have a “what’s in it for me?” thought process, and that’s something you've got to affect . this suggests to urge someone’s attention you would like to be giving them something. you would like to supply your audience something reciprocally for his or her attention, whether it’s educational, an extension of their views/opinions, a documentary or your content is funny or inspirational.
By asking people to concentrate to your music you're actually takingfrom them. Often musicians think that they're giving to people as their music is free and in fact is worth taking note of , but the truth is that you’re taking from people, you’re taking over time from their day and for somebody to offer up 3mins of their time to concentrate to your song you would like to possess convinced them over an extended period of your time .
This is a difficult concept for many people in marketing to know , however it's absolutely the foundation of a social media strategy, and if you’re getting to take one thing faraway from this text it might be now .
12. Have Amazing Visuals
It’s important to form your posts as visually pleasing as possible. As Instagram may be a platform founded upon the concept of uploading photographs, this one comes obvious to most of the people , however usually subsequent step for people to realize this is often to shop for expensive photography equipment and hire graphic designers to form your account look as aesthetic as possible, but this is often unnecessary.
You don’t got to invest in high end equipment to form your posts look amazing, actually for social media purposes research has shown that a basic smartphone camera can actually outperform the highest of the range iPhone during a blind test, meaning that to impress people together with your images you don’t need the simplest equipment.
The same goes for editing software, for many people Canva is one among the simplest free tools out there to make social media posts to capture your audience’s attention and promote your music. Canva is totally liberal to use and has some amazing templates which can allow you to make visuals, tour posters or album covers without the necessity to rent a graphic designer.
BONUS: Things to avoid
Buying followers
We understand the temptation to shop for fake followers, tons of individuals tell us that it’s to form their account more ‘credible’ as nobody goes to follow an account which only has 60 followers, but the matter is that if you purchase fake followers than you’ll severely limit your chances of getting your posts pushed out by the Instagram algorithm.
Instagram determines the standard of your post based upon the engagement it receives in reference to what percentage followers you've got , so if you've got 100 followers and 10 people like your latest post, that’s a tenth engagement and your post is probably going to point out abreast of more of your followers news feeds, but if you've got bought 1000 fake followers and 10 people like your post, that's a tenth level of engagement so your posts will remain hidden.
Follow/unfollow
We don’t recommend follow/unfollow, it’s almost like buying fake followers except they're real accounts, but a follow back isn't as valuable as a replacement follower, it means they follow people easily, are probably following tons of accounts and thus not very engaged within the content on their news feed.
For follow/unfollow people often use bots, again we severely recommend against this, but if you’re getting to roll in the hay we can’t stop you and you'll also confirm you’re using the simplest bot for doing so. It’s called Growbot and may be a Google chrome extension which you put in , but don’t say I didn’t tell you it'll be useless!
Begging
Even on our own account, we frequently receive comments on our posts from artists posing for shoutouts or a follow back, but this is often a useless strategy and if it were to figure you aren’t receiving top quality followers who are going to be evangelists for your music.
This is similar for people posing for others to discuss their latest post, this method is ok if the post has relevancy to the conversation, you furthermore may got to give the audience context in to the post they’re getting to see on your profile and why it'll add value to the conversation.
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