When it comes to developing your presence on social media, instagram has become one of the best for marketing your music, if you have an audience there. Here we go over some of the best practices for developing and growing an Instagram community.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Instagram can be one of the best social media marketing tools available to an artist or band, providing that your audience is there. Here are a 7 best practices to follow in order to build an Instagram community.
1. First of all, your profile picture and description are important. Make sure to include a profile picture that reflects your band or brand (a logo would be nice), and include a link to your website.
2. Shorten the Links With A URL Shortener. Instagram’s bio description has a limit of 150 characters, so it’s important to save as many characters as you can.
3. Leave Relevant Comments. Comments are much appreciated by the poster because they’re few and far between. For instance, every second on Instagram produces 575 “Likes” but only 81 comments. It’s a lot easier to just click the like button, but comments get you followed back.
4. Use the filters. Believe it or not, filters actually make a difference in engagement. For instance, a study of 6 million posts across 10,000 brands found that posts using Hefe, Lo-Fi, Nashville, Brannan, and Kelvin filters generated 4.5% to 5.6% more engagement than the average Instagram post!
5. Post at the correct times. Mondays and Thursdays tend to drive the most engagement, while between 3 and4 p.m. typically drives lower engagement during a workday.
6. Like with other social networks, the number of times you post per day on Instagram is important. It’s been found that the ideal number is only one to two times per day. You can get away with more on special occasions like an event, but be sure to space out the posts so you don’t overflow your followers feeds.
7. Use hashtags. 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.
Creating and maintaining a flourishing Instagram community takes some time and effort, but it can be much easier than you think by following these best practices.