Do It For The Gram: Tips To Get Your Music Noticed Using Instagram

Today Instagram is a grand marketplace where anything can be promoted. This is an opportunity for independent artists to be noticed without having issues with budget and strategy.

Instagram is hugely habituated with digital arts, like drawing and video content. Music is introduced on the platform as well.

If withdrawing, the strategy of promotion is simplified, the audio content has some complications and specific factors that can make the building of campaigns harder.

Some people think that getting automatic likes on your Instagram can do the trick. At some point, it will help, but to get an organic and successful result, you have to think of many nuances in your tactic. And in this article, you will find useful techniques and ideas to get your music noticed on Instagram.

The great difference between traditional promotion and modern digital campaigns that are supported by social media is that if using a traditional way, an artist has only to reach the recording label, and then the company does all other work by themselves.

And the digital strategy, on the contrary, requires personal work, time, and devotion. In other words, you have to run your promo campaigns almost by yourself. Help usually depends on budget, while co-working with record labels means that you rely on their vision and investments.

Use Stories

Instagram Stories is a delight for anyone who wants to promote a product on this network. This is a perfect format to improve your engagement rate and connect to your target audience.

For you, as an artist, this is an opportunity to make quick updates about much interesting stuff, like:

• Your daily work on the album, EP, or single
• Updates on gigs that are coming up
• New music and collaborations
• Inspirations
• Selling some merchandise
• Having fun with your followers

As you can see, the variety of activities in Stories is quite big. And Instagram offers many tools that help you to complete any goal you need – polls, “swipe up” links, questionnaires, etc.

Your job here is to be consistent and find time to upload new stories as frequently as it is possible. Don’t be afraid to share a part of your life with the fans. Communication is very important to create an influence on Instagram, and people highly appreciate sincerity from you.

Helpful fact: each time you load a new Story, your account icon reappears at the beginning of the line in the user interface. This feature can be beaten only with Live videos that remain in the beginning as long as they are on.

Work On Your Bio

Many artists neglect the importance of this small area under the profile pic. But a bio field, if optimized properly, is a great help to push your production.

There is not much space in it, so you have to squeeze the maximum out of its potential. And first of all, add some personal flair to it.

Many people are giving basic information about the kind of music they perform, or a link to upcoming events where they participate.

But it is boring. To attract more people, you should show some creativeness and add a detail about you that makes you different from others.

There is nothing much to say about writing a bio. But it’s definitely worth putting an effort into it.

Choose Profile Picture Wisely

This small icon is your primary representation in search results and activity like commenting. So it has to:

• Trigger the interest
• Reflect on what genre you play
• Be simple (because it’s very small and something too detailed would be not understandable)

In case if you are running a profile page of the band, the choice is not too difficult to make. You should put your logo or mascot on your profile pic.

Get Inspired By Successful Musicians And Bands

By now it is hard to create something 100% unique, and there is no need to, actually. Take a look at profiles of your beloved artists and learn what they upload, how they communicate with fans, what Stories they post, etc.

Let’s look at the profile of the famous band blink-182. They have placed a logo as their profile picture and that drawing is iconic. According to the style of new singles or albums, its stylistic details can be changed, but the core remains untouched.

The bio contains not only useful link, phone, and mention of the participants. The first line is “Crappy punk rock since 1992” and it brings up the iconic humor that the band is also well-known for, hence setting the mood for all the content they might post.

Tell A Story

That is what social media were created in the first place. To keep your followers engaged, you have to share your life with them.

By your posts that are describing you as a person, not as an artist, are the material for connection between you and your fans. That’s just how it works – people want to feel involved in your life.

And the more information you reveal, the stronger is the connection. People will appreciate your music if they know the background of its creation.

This is called storytelling. By uploading posts, lives, or stories, you share something personal and in exchange, you get more attention to what you produce.

Create The Best Visual Content

Instagram is based on images. Photographs can be a good support for your music. For sure, you have to find the best shots from your recent gigs, studio sessions, festivals, and promo tours.

To do that, maintain friendly relationships with photographers who work on these events, or bring one with you. This is a common practice for many musicians, so if your budget allows you to, you should hire a photographer who will take care to get many shots and videos for your future content.

Also, one of the interesting tricks for your new singles in collaboration with digital artists on Instagram. You will have to:

• Find and follow artists whose style you like and who are open for commissions
• Form and idea for your future cover image
• Contact the artist and get on with the agreement for work
• Wait for it
• Get unique stylish cover for your single
• Use it in your posts

This trick will also attract followers from the artistic sphere, who might accidentally discover your music for their pleasure.

Use Hashtags As Your Weapon

Hashtagging is kind of a sport on social platforms. And for good reason. Right tags are the leverage for grossing a bigger audience and increasing your discoverability on Instagram.

They also work for Insta algorithms that sort out the content to users’ preferences.

To make hashtags work for you, follow simple rules:

• Don’t overload your posts with tags.
• Avoid too general hashtags, like #instamusic or #instaartist. Your content will be lost in the flow of content that is connected to these tags daily.
• Come up with more specific words that are relevant to your industry. Mention the genre of music, kind of instrument you play, songs, etc.
• Use interesting and storytelling tags, like #MusicMonday, #TBT, or other popular challenges and flashmobs

Go Live

Live video on Instagram is quite a fresh type of content, but for you as a musician, this is one of the best formats to use for getting more engagement.

This feature offers you online direct communication through a comment option. You can demonstrate your live singing and performance to surprise and amaze viewers with your skill.

Also, you can go live and start a live conversation in the form of Q&A. As it was mentioned before, communication is important for your promotion on Instagram, so going live is a fine solution for that.

And don’t forget, that live videos are always placed first in line, before stories. That is in handy to attract some attention to you.

Live videos can be saved for later watching, they will be stored in a specific folder in your profile interface. Save your “on-air” videos to engage with the viewers who missed them on time.

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