5 Proven Steps For Promoting Music On Instagram

With its vast user base, Instagram is the perfect platform for promoting your music and finding new fans, but standing out can be a challenge. Here we look at five proven steps for promoting your work and gaining traction on Instagram.

Guest post from Modern Musician

Wondering what are the best ways to promote your music on Instagram? Here’s 5 proven steps to get you started.

Instagram is the perfect platform to promote your music. It is a great way to find new fans and grow your fanbase. However, with over 800 million monthly active users on Instagram it can be hard to stand out.

Here are 5 tips to help you successfully promote your music on Instagram. 

1. POST REGULAR QUALITY CONTENT

Instagram’s algorithm favours regular content and engagement.

This means that if you post regularly, say once a day, and fans are liking and commenting on your photos then Instagram will prioritise your future posts to appear at the top of your followers’ feeds.

But the question is how do you get more people to interact with your posts?

Use longer captions – By writing a slightly longer caption you are encouraging followers to spend more time engaging with your post meaning they are more likely to like or comment.

Interactive content – Ask questions, encourage your followers to comment. Ask them what they would like to hear or see. By doing this you are influencing the algorithm to work in your favour and your post is more likely to appear on the explore page.

Post quality content – You’ve heard the phrase “quality over content” a million times before but the best thing you can do is find the happy medium. Remember your fans followed you to keep up to date with your music. So post about music! Let people know what you’re up to and what you’ve been working on.

Have you been recording new songs? Offer an exclusive sneak peak in a video! Have you been playing shows? Let the world know with an action shot of you on stage!

Bonus tip: TikTok is another platform that’s helping artists to promote their music for free: Learn how to go viral on TikTok.

2. DON’T BE AFRAID TO HASHTAG

It’s totally normal to feel worried that using hashtags in Instagram captions might look a bit spammy. However you shouldn’t ignore such a key feature of the app. After all, they are there for a reason! 

Instagram recently introduced the ability to allow people to follow hashtags. This means your post could show up on someone’s feed who doesn’t even follow you! This is a great way to find potential fans who will love your music.

So what are the best ways to use hashtags successfully?

Use the right amount of hashtags – You can use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram captions but this doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Studies suggest using 5-11 hashtags will give you the best engagement rates.

Trial and Test – Have a look to see what hashtags other successful musicians on Instagram are using. Take a note of them and use them on your own posts. If they don’t seem to be working, you can try new ones. The suggested tags are a good place to look for new ideas!

Keep them concise – Instead of using a random selection of hashtags, do your research and choose the most relevant and niche ones.

For example #songwriter has over 248,000,000 posts meaning yours could get lost very quickly. Whereas #songwritersofinstagram has only 23,000 posts so your post is much more likely to be found by potential fans and therefore a much better way to promote your music.

3. CONTESTS AND GIVEAWAYS

Holding a competition or giveaway on Instagram is a great and easy way to organically grow your following and promote your music. This is a great marketing trick especially if you have an upcoming release or show and need to create a quick hype.

Offer incentives – The trick to running a successful Instagram giveaway is to have great rewards in return. You could offer to give away a few CDs, merchandise or even free tickets to your next gig.

Create the rules – How do people enter your contest or giveaway? Here are some examples you could use:

1. You must be following me to enter!
2. Tag your friends in the comments.
3. Share this post to your Instagram story.
4. Leave a comment telling me what your favourite song is and why!

By using these rules, your Instagram giveaway will gain you new followers and boost your engagement rates. And don’t forget to create a special hashtag for your giveaway!

4. INTERACTION IS KEY

This one is a little more time consuming but if you’re really serious about growing your fanbase and boosting your numbers, you can’t ignore this step. Here’s what you need to do:

Follow accounts similar to yours – Take the time to look through various hashtags on Instagram to find other musicians similar to you. Follow them, like and comment on a few of their photos in the aim that they will do the same to you.

Follow their followers – If you find a musician who is absolutely killing with their Instagram game, there’s nothing to say you can’t piggy-back off their followers. The probability is that if someone follows an account similar to yours then they will want to follow you as well! Make sure to like and comment on a few of their photos as well.

Quick tip: Find a community of likeminded artists, follow them on social media and they are most likely to do the same. Remember, we’re more likely to succeed when we support others. 

Join our free Modern Musician community on Facebook to connect with likeminded artists.

5. INSTAGRAM STORIES

The final tip is don’t overlook Instagram stories. According to recent studies, 500 million people use Instagram stories every day. To stay relevant you need to be updating your story at least once a day or if you can, multiple times a day.

Here are a few ideas of what you should be posting on your Instagram story:

Post a cover or original song – This is the most popular thing that musicians do on Instagram stories. It’s the perfect way to get feedback for a new song and then you can add them to your Highlights on your page.

Running polls – Asking for your followers’ opinions makes them feel appreciated and prompts them to interact with your content.

Do a Q&A – Another fantastic feature on Instagram stories is the ‘Questions’ button, allowing your fans to ask you questions and boost your engagement rates.

If you follow these tips then you will start to see an organic growth in your numbers on Instagram. These tips and tricks will help to provide you with loyal and engaged followers who will support you and your music career.

With all that said, it’s easy to get bogged down in numbers and although you definitely shouldn’t ignore them, it’s important to focus back to your intentions. Why do you want to grow your fanbase? Because you love what you do and you want to make it your career.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help independent musicians make a sustainable living from their music careers, you can apply for a free strategy session with one of our artist coaches: 

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