Instagram and musicians. Game rules

It’s very important for Ukrainian bands to be in the right place at the right time, moreover with the right people to have at least some chances to reach success. But if fortune does not choose you – do all your best with to develop.

Earlier we wrote about the basic concepts of band's promotion in general, but today we’re going to explain one of the ways to promote musicians with the help of Instagram social media. A lot of creative persons are sure that their music is enough, or uploading some videos on YouTube can make you famous. The answer is: "it is not enough".

PR-specialist is expensive, manager is an idiot and there can be no conversation about producer at all. What do you need to make yourself popular? Of course I won’t tell you a pure 100% receipt about how to become at least somebody in mediaspace. But I can tell about the couple of moments, which could help you to gain popularity step-by-step, maintain the image and to remain interesting.

The Soul Of Your Own Page 

If you have a band and you sing or play the instrument, this doesn’t mean that your Instagram-account must be dedicated only to this activity. You are a person, your music is a product. It’s the very important thing to remember, even if you such a person who cries "I’m nothing without music!", "This is my life". Ideology and self-sacrifice are very god, but business must be structured and consistent. That means the right approach to all the details is necessary. Keep this idea in mind: music is your product, which you need to sell / promote.

Suitably, we divide your personality and music into two Instagram-accounts. I’m not proposing to cut the matter of your life from you. Well, you need to do it, but only on social media. Your personal page is, first of all, YOU. You don’t need to dedicate all posts to music, better show yourself from the other side. What you do except playing the guitar, where have you been to, except the repetitions? Audience must know you as the person, the character, the individual.

You like black humour, don’t you? Share jokes with followers. You adore reading, so tell about your favourite books. Demonstrate something "yours’ except the endless love to music.

The vocalist of the Septa and The Nietzsche bands, Yevhen Tymchyk, does it perfectly. His @abscurat profile is not praises about music but is himself. Eugene constantly jokes, takes funny photos, and the main feature is the signatures to the publications. It’s hard to confuse his style and every time when he posts a photo you can’t wait to read the text to it.

Musicians should work on themselves, develop own media personality, be interesting without the guitar in their hands.

And of course you have this right to remind it in account that you have the band and musical career.

If to speak about your band/creativity Instagram, it should be vice versa there: music, music and a little bit more about music. You can show everything that is happening inside the band in such account. Rehearsal, common tours, journeys, buying new guitar, frames from future clip.

Content, design, hashtags… like, comment + subscription

The first rule: create good content and haters won’t get you. The visual part is the essence of this social network. Of course, not everyone has an iPhone or friends photographers, but the basic image processing skills are familiar to everyone. If you know none of them – learn it. Also you can study staging the frame, it won’t be superfluous.

Those, who are experienced in the Instagram-promotion, highlight the main point for promotion: to publish attractive pictures, to write creative inscriptions and to maintain your account style.

Podol band has the good example of a successful design

They don’t have that many followers, but their account looks stylish, the color scheme is felt.

The number of hashtags matters less than the skill of using them 

Hashtags help to show your own post to other people in the search by keywords. But be careful with what you choose. It’s clear that the first thing to come to musician’s mind will be #music #sound etc. If you start to seek by #music hashtag, you’ll see that there are 270+ mln of publications under this word. And you’ll see that there are no first places for the immediately published photos. The popular ones are those which collected likes quicker. That’s why you will hardly find yourself among them. Namely, popular hashtags are for the popular accounts. If you don’t have hundreds of thousands followers, it’s better to put niche tags, for example, linked to the music genre. Also don’t copy hashtags from post to post, at least alternate their language.

Encourage the passive audience. Stories and live broadcast

Over time, even the most active audience could lose its interest to you or forget to check your profile and like your feed. Do broadcasting to remind people about your existence. Your followers will get the notification about it at that moment. Arrange Q&A during the broadcasts or show how you prepare for the concert.

Don’t forget that there is a difference between your personal and work broadcasting, you can read about it above.

Stories. Talk in it! Don’t shoot faceless street views, concert stages or something like this. And don’t send a picture without a sign or sticker. Entertain people! They have already watched enough of foolish head shakings or regular selfies at their friends’ stories.

You can invent a certain style for such content, too. Maybe, you’ll be making morning weather reviews with interesting comments every day. Don't be afraid to invent your own tricks.

Ads buying waits don’t. Should there be a comma?

Advertisment is the main promotional instrument. It’s very hard to build any business without one. You can think, what your Instagram account is going to advertise but, truly, you’re advertising yourself, your brand, your music.

There are variants of how to set the inside ad with the help of Facebook-cabinet or directly in the Insta account with a couple of clicks. But the difference in the results of such ad will be noticeable. It’s because FB can adjust to the target audience including many account details. And Instagram account cabinet allows you to choose only gender, age and city of the audience to which you will send it.

Advertising on FB and Instagram is more expensive than advertising programs in PlayMarket. Such apps have a free period. Try them, maybe they could cheer you up with the satisfying results if customized correctly.

Connect with your colleagues for the mutual advertising of each other, or buy ads from opinion leaders. And again, don’t forget about your segment. You’ll need a clear plan so that your actions on social network won’t be chaotic and inappropriate.

One of the many videos about Instagram for musicians 

Instagram-plan. Step-by-step moving to the aim

As it was mentioned above – business must be structurized.

Create separate document with the name "Instagram-plan". Fill it in such order:

To understand the idea of your account, you must answer the questions:

1. Why does any user need this page?
2. Which indirect information could be interesting to people?
3. What does a person feel opening your page?
4. What is the color palette of publications?

What I must do in profile:

1. To put Facebook / Youtube / Soundcloud etc. links.
2. To hold to posts frequency 1-3 per week, the best time: 09:00, 11:00, 15:00, 18:00, 20:00.
3. To note band members (on photo), other important people, add geolocation, hashtags.
4. To publish everything with inscriptions / tweets / signs.
5. Stories, at least once in every two days.
6. To make reposts in Stories if somebody notes / mentions you.
7. To advertise your Instagram using word of mouth, to remind about it often and everywhere.
8. To plan out the publications, sharing the upcoming info drives of the group.
9. To put a deadline according to the collection of every thousand of followers. For example, +3000 of followers up to August the 1st. 10. Reach the goal.

Are these all the rules to become an Instagram star?

No. Profile promotion is always a different scenario. It’s not possible to take into account all the nuances in one instruction. Only if this one is made personally for you. The above criteria are the things that you can upgrade, the things from which you can start your profile promotion. The main advice – read about "social media marketing’, watch thematic videos, because new game rules appear every day. It’s important to remain the part of the stream and to try everything possible for your music career. It’s a pity, that music only is not enough to wake up famous. So make sure your music is heard by as many people as you can embrace, and then they'll decide whether it's enough or not.