How to Hype Your Music and Brand with Instagram
Growing a fan base, and a loyal one, is no easy task. However, once you have the fan base, something equally hard to do is to keep their attention. In today’s fast paced digital world with a million brands, musicians, videos and everything else fighting for attention, it is important to keep in front of them with excellent, engaging content.
However, given that your main content is your music, and you are obviously not composing one song per day, you need other content to fill the gaps.
What we have noticed is that many artists have a problem with not only producing engaging content to fill the gaps, but producing the right content for the right channel.
For instance, they way you should promote yourself on Twitter is different from the way you would promote your brand on Instagram. So we are going to help you with some ideas and techniques to help you produce quality content and engage your audience.
The first and maybe most important content you should be producing is your own original content. Basically the content of YOU. Show your fans and followers who you are as a person. People love living vicariously through other people. I know of a few people that have created pretty substantial followings by simply “portraying” a certain lifestyle.
Not that we think you should fake it, but you’re probably doing some pretty cool stuff that your audience would be interested in. Share that. Take videos and images of you working on music, going to shows, equipment you’re working with etc.
Whatever you think relates to your music and brand. And don’t be afraid to actually “frame” a picture. That means putting some thought and idea into it, and for lack of a better word, produce it. It doesn’t need to be spontaneous all the time. Believe me, even though it may appear very spontaneous, many popular Instagram accounts are putting a lot of thought and work into their photo’s and videos.
It is not a bad idea to come up with a consistent theme for your content. For example, every week you share your favorite track of the week, or video yourself giving a quick music production tip of the week. Anything like that is great for your audience and amazing for establishing your brand and yourself as a leader in the space.
The second kind of content you should be sharing is third-party content. It can be a funny meme, inspirational and cool quote. Whatever you like and you think your audience would like as well. Sharing is caring.
However, an important and beneficial rule is; if you’re sharing a third party photo, especially one you got from another Instagram handle, make sure to give them credit, or whoever created the image credit. That goes along way in Instagram etiquette, and many times will be reciprocated with a like, a follow, or even better, them sharing your content.
Last but not least is self promotional content.
This is where your music comes in. After all this is the whole point of growing your fan base, so you can have people hear your music, come to your shows, and support you. If you have been consistently growing and entertaining your audience with fun and engaging content, when you do make those promotional posts, they will be well accepted.
However there is a line you don’t want to cross. Even if you were the biggest music producer in the world, no one wants to constantly be marketed or sold too. If every post you are making is a sales pitch, like “download my track”, “follow me on soundcloud”, or “come to this event”, you are going to have a very tough time creating a following. But just the opposite is true as well, if you’re not sprinkling any of this content into your mix, what is the point of growing the audience in the first place?
We hope these tips help you build amazing content which leads to a thriving engaged audience. One last thing to keep in mind is to be consistent. Consistent interaction with our fans with result in consistent growth of your fan base. Sporadic posts, however, will only produce sporadic results.
Good luck!
