How Does Instagram Help Musicians?
Instagram offers Musicians the potential to reach a wide audience, grow their following, and to increase their popularity. Musicians need to have a great strategy in place to promote their brand and music on Instagram successfully. Learn how Instagram helps musicians.
We live in a world where social media platforms are at the forefront as a means for musicians and bands to promote their music and increase their popularity globally. With that said, Instagram alone had over 2 billion active users in 2022. [onfollow] With that number, there’s a large potential audience waiting to know you, to hear your music, and to become your fan!
Musicians like celebrity Ariana Grande who was reported to have over 187.5 million Instagram followers [onfollow] in 2020, have successfully used Instagram to promote their music and brand, and to increase their fame and fanbase.
If you’re a musician and you’ve never had an Instagram account, you may not understand the value that Instagram can offer you. You may not know how to use Instagram for your benefit as a musician.
Instagram is an incredible social media platform to express your vibrant musical creativity visually. In this article, we’ll have a look at how Instagram helps musicians. We will also give you some tips to effectively use Instagram to promote your music and brand.
How Musicians Use Instagram
The aim of most musicians using Instagram is to connect with their fans, promote their music, and become popular in their niche music arena.
Well-known musicians also use Instagram to share their news with their large audiences, such as announcements about upcoming shows or new album or track releases.
It helps to build anticipation and excitement amongst fans.
Musicians and bands use Instagram for “brand” promotion through visual content marketing. They post images, short videos, and live streams of them making music in action, behind-the-scenes footage, daily life, and so much more.
Instagram is a great platform for musicians to show fans a more personal side to their lives and the creative processes behind their music creation. Instagram allows musicians to share their creative expressions with their fans.
Photo by Hailey Reed on Unsplash
Why Should Musicians Use Instagram?
It’s important for musicians to use Instagram to connect with their fans who actively use Instagram. Musicians should ensure that the vibe of Instagram aligns with their persona, interests, and goals.
Instagram is an excellent social media platform for musicians to get their name and music before a wider audience. It’s a game-changer for music promotion.
It helps increase your popularity as a musician, thus increasing your album, music, and concert ticket sales. Instagram offers musicians the opportunity for creative expression and to give a face and story to their music.
Musicians need to have a strategy to increase user engagement with their accounts, extend their reach, and increase their visibility on the platform. This will lead to the increase of their Instagram followers, popularity, and successful music promotion.
Increasing user engagement with your account means getting more Instagram likes and Instagram comments on your content, and more Instagram views on your video content.
Instagram is also a great social media platform to record and document a musician’s or band’s growth and story over time.
A great idea for musicians and bands is to download all their content posted on Instagram onto their device to use this content elsewhere for promotion and as a backup.
There are free Instagram downloader tools available online to help you download your content directly from Instagram to your device.
Have a look at the free Instagram downloader tool available on the Skweezer.net webpage. Musicians are also able to buy promotion and engagement solutions on Skweezer like Instagram comments, Instagram likes, and Instagram views to boost their account engagement rates.
Instagram Tips For Musicians
Here are some tips to “tune up” your Instagram account as a musician to reach a wider audience, gain a large following, and increase your popularity on the platform:
Optimize Your Profile
Musicians should change their Instagram accounts from personal accounts to business accounts. This provides access to the Instagram analytics and insights feature, which is helpful.
Optimize your profile by completing your bio to briefly let users know who you are, what music you make, where you are, what makes you unique, and any upcoming concerts, events, tours, and music releases.
Try to use bullet points and keep your bio updated. Your bio is usually the first thing users see when viewing your account.
Choose a profile picture for your account that accurately reflects who you are as a musician or the image of your band. Use creative or professional photos of you or your band or logo that still look good in a small size on your account.
Instagram allows you to only list one link in your bio to promote yourself, your band, and your music. Use a smartlink like Linktree to provide one link in your bio that will direct your fans and followers to a page with multiple links on it.
These links can include links to your website, music store, landing page, your other social media accounts, and even to allow followers to stream or purchase your music on platforms like Soundcloud or Spotify.
Post High-Quality Visual Content
When we are dealing with Instagram for musicians, you need to remember that Instagram is mainly a visual social media platform. You need to actively create and post high-quality visual content to increase user engagement, such as more Instagram comments, Instagram likes, and Instagram views. Visually tell your story as a musician to promote your music.
Keep your content consistent with your or your band’s brand identity. Consider all aspects like color, framing, lighting, subject, purpose, and most importantly, what you wish your fans to feel or think about your content.
Keep your images and videos crisp and uncluttered. Content ideas include:
Images or videos of you or your band
- Your fans at your concerts
- Your instruments
- Your lyric or music sheets
- Rehearsal sessions
- Behind-the-scenes footage
- Music tour footage
- Album designs and brand logos
- Glimpses into your personal and family life
- Anything else linked to your music.
Mix It Up With Different Content
There are various different content formats you can use to post on Instagram like carousel posts, Live feeds, Reels, Stories, and videos.
Musicians should use all of these formats to promote your music on Instagram and to connect with your fans.
Carousel posts enable you to post multiple images from a single event in just one post. Bonus, the Instagram algorithm loves prioritizing carousel posts with high engagement. Definitely use Instagram Stories to share snippets of your daily life as a musician or what your band gets up to daily.
Get creative with fonts, stickers, music, and tags in your Stories. Up user engagement in Stories with the links, poll, emoji slider, quiz, and question features. Save your Stories under themes on your profile with the highlights feature.
Instagram Reels are trending, and these short-form video clips are great for showcasing your musical talent or band in action in a creative way. High-quality Reels are far more entertaining for users than still-life posts.
Reels provide fantastic video editing features to make your short videos top-notch. Use your own original audio tracks for your Reels as a way to further promote your music.
Fans want to see their favorite musicians and bands live. Instagram Live enables your fans to get as close as possible to the real experience from wherever they are in the world.
You can do this by:
- Live streaming your concerts
- Engaging with your fans and followers by answering questions
- Promoting upcoming shows
- Doing Collabs
- Holding music release events
- Showing your fans what happens backstage in real-time, and more.
Let your followers know beforehand that you’ll be going live at a certain time to build up hype for your live stream.
Engage With Your Fans
As a musician, it’s truly rewarding to engage with your fans and get feedback. Imagine your fans’ excitement when you engage directly with them.
Acknowledge and respond to user comments promptly. This will prove your authenticity, build loyal fan relationships, and attract more followers.
Use Great Hashtags
In your bio, use a relevant hashtag to define your music genre, like #rock, to increase your visibility in searches for that genre and to let users know what type of music you create.
Use between 3 and 10 trending hashtags per post and vary them each time. You can use tagsfinder.com or hashtagify.me to help you with hashtag ideas for your posts.
Consider Your Analytics
You need to keep on the beat of what will make your Instagram account successful. This involves analyzing your fan base demographic and other important factors.
Besides Instagram’s own business insights tool, check out soundcharts.com, which offers Instagram analytics and insights tailored specifically to artists and music professionals.
Photo by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash
The Finale: Instagram Success For Musicians
Instagram provides musicians with a fantastic opportunity to truly connect with their fans on a much deeper and personal level.
It’s also a great way to promote your music and reach a wide audience. Instagram success for a musician should also equate to an increase in music, album, and concert ticket sales.
It’s great to let your fans see your own musical creativity and a more personal side to you or your band. Use the tips we’ve provided to amp up your Instagram account as a musician and to increase your Instagram followers. We hope you get your Instagram rhythm with ease.
