Instagram has become one of the best social media platforms through which to reach profitable music fans, but a key part of marketing and promotion is the proper use of hashtags. Here we look at how determine which are most effective.
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Guest Post by Bobby Owsinski on Music 3.0
According to Nielsen Research, if you want want to reach music lovers, Instagram is one of the best platforms to use for promotion. Why? Well first of all, Instagram users are huge music fans, and spend 42% more money on music and listen 30% more than the general population. In fact, the typical Instagram user spends a surprising $269 per year on music, which is about twice as much as the average music fan that subscribes to a streaming service. That’s what makes Instagram promotion so valuable.
Hashtags are an essential part of Instagram marketing and promotion, so it’s important that you’re familiar with how they work on the platform. Contrary to all other networks, on Instagram, the more hashtags you use, the better. That’s because hashtags are the primary way you build a community on the platform. Believe it or not, between 7 and 11 hashtags get the most engagement, according to most studies.
That said, make sure you do some research as to which hashtags you’ll use. Hyper-focused hashtags will put your images in front of a more interested audience. That means that you should use hashtags relevant to music, and to your music and brand in particular.
Three ways to search for new hashtags include hashtagify.me, websta.me/search, or picodash.com. Some of the most popular music related hashtags include:
#music
#musician
#musicians
#musicproducer
#musicvideo
#musicman
#musicismylife
#musicianlife
#musicmonday
#musicstudio
The best hashtags for getting new followers are:
#love
#instagood
#me
#tbt (Throwback Thursday)
#cute
#follow
#followme
#photooftheday
#happy
#tagforlikes
Finally, don’t forget to include a custom hashtag of you or your band, if your following is large enough, and consistently use it on all your posts.
Hashtags constantly change in popularity depending upon the current trends, so make sure you do regularly searches just to be sure that you’re using the best ones for your posts so that your Instagram promotion remains viable.
You can read more from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and my other bookson the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com or Lynda.com.