How to promote a single on instagram

How to promote your music on Instagram: 5 essential tips

Words By Guest Contributor6 mins

With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is bigger than any stadium you’ll ever play. This makes it an important space for musicians who want to not only connect with their fans but also reach new ones.

Instagram is a great platform for music promotion, hosting photos, videos and shopping content. It allows you to post pictures from your latest gigs, upload clips of music videos or concerts (sound on!) and embed links to your merch right in your photos and stories.

Think of Instagram music promotion not as a chore but as another way to interact with your fans, grow your audience and get your music out there. Read on to learn about the perks of using Instagram as a musician and how you can get started.

Using Instagram for music

Social media allows you to connect with people all over the world and build a loyal audience that’s into your content – which, in this case, is your music.

Most Instagram users are between 18 and 44 years old. A very similar age range comprises the majority of music streaming service users. So, if you have a Spotify profile, it only makes sense to take advantage of Instagram’s reach to connect with potential fans.

No matter your target audience, you’re sure to pick up a few loyal followers on the ‘gram. A social media presence builds a more fulsome brand, allowing followers to connect with the people behind the music. Instagram is the platform to keep your fans informed on the latest from your band – and it’s perfect for your next marketing campaign, too.

5 tips for promoting your music on Instagram

Ready to learn how to promote music on Instagram? Use the following five tips as your guide.

1. Create a compelling bio

Your Instagram bio is your page’s first impression. You may only have 150 characters to work with, but you can do a lot with them. Use your bio to establish your brand and share new music promos or dates for an upcoming concert. If you have an Instagram business account, add your contact information and location in your bio so clients know where to find you.

Your bio can include a link to anything you want – but bios have a one-link limit. So get a Linktree URL that lets your followers branch out to all the other sites that make up your web presence. We even have a special link that connects with Spotify.

2. Use hashtags

Find new organic followers using relevant, industry-related hashtags in your bio and posts. When Instagram users search for these tags, they may stumble across your band and discover your music is just what they were missing in their playlists.

3. Interact with followers

To grow a more intimate connection with your audience, respond to your fans’ praise in the comments section, even with just a like. There’s nothing cooler to a fan than feeling seen by a musician they admire. And stay up on your direct messages – there may be business inquiries in there. We’d argue that one of the best ways to promote music is by keeping your fan base and industry admirers close.

4. Post Instagram Stories

Post videos of shows and music videos to your Stories. As a musician, you want your audience to be able to hear – and not just see – your content. Add some behind-the-scenes insight, like a jam session or your songwriting process, to connect more deeply with your fans. If you want to monetize this space, post about album sales, merch, and tickets. Drop a link to your ecommerce page on the products you have for sale.

5. Use Instagram Videos

Using Instagram Videos, you can share more than just a quick clip of your last live performance – you can post up to 60 minutes of it. Dedicated fans will love the opportunity to dive deeper into your content and see what they missed at your last show may just inspire them to buy a ticket to the next one.

How to make an Instagram marketing strategy

Once you’re a pro at Instagram music promotion, it’s time to monetize. Here are some tips for developing a marketing strategy that gets results.

Set goals: Before you begin, know what you want to achieve. If you’re looking for more fans – which leads to more listens and ticket sales – maybe you want to partner with an influencer or another artist who can expand your reach by talking up your music. If your goal is to sell merchandise, you have to think about how to drive traffic to your ecommerce site. Knowing what you want to accomplish will give you direction.
Configure an editorial calendar: Schedule your posts so your content is consistent and your fans don’t experience a lapse. A tool like Hootsuite – which allows users to manage their content on major platforms and schedule posts in batches – will help you stay organized, especially when it comes time to launch new releases and get your audience excited about your latest songs.
Build a consistent brand: Your music may be so good that tickets practically sell themselves, but it doesn’t hurt to have an irresistible brand. Your Instagram account is a part of your branding, so be sure it aligns. Use your logo, colors, and fonts consistently. Instagram is a highly visual social media platform. Put this to your advantage by publishing high-quality, aesthetically-pleasing posts.

Get to posting

Social media is an excellent tool for music promotion and Instagram is one of the most popular platforms. If you don’t already have an account, it’s time to make one. If you do, make it even better.

Instagram is a visual platform, so strong visuals are a must. Get creative, incorporate your songs and fill your fans’ feeds with curated, brand-specific content. But don’t forget Instagram is just one tool in your arsenal – be sure to use your platform to uplift the rest of your content by linking to other social media and sites in your bio using a Linktree URL.

Credits

Words By Guest Contributor

6 mins

7 Tips for Promoting Your Music on Instagram

Throughout the last two decades, the music industry has dramatically changed especially in how we can publish & promote our music.

Before the digital age in the early 2000s, musicians are tied in what we can call the label infrastructure that typically goes like this: a musician gets noticed by a label (can be a major or indie label), the musician get signed, and then the label would handle everything from recording the single/album to publishing the music to promoting it.

What about today? While the infrastructure is still there for celebrities and grammy-winning multi-platinum musicians, the rest of us must be creative and juggle with all the different tasks. Besides the obvious music creation and recording, an emerging musician must also handle and oversee everything from graphic designs, getting gigs, website development, and maintaining their online/social media presence.

This is where Instagram as one of the biggest social media platforms comes in. It’s no secret that the primary target market for any music regardless of the genre, tends to be younger people below 35. 31% of Internet users aged 18-34 and 32% of users between the ages of 25 and 34 are active on Instagram. Also, there is almost a 50-50 ratio of male and female users on Instagram.

Another key reason why Instagram is a great platform to promote your music is the fact that it’s really versatile: you can choose between ‘traditional’ posts, IGTV, and Stories, and various advertising options.

But how exactly can we use Instagram to promote our music? Here are our best tips.

1. Optimize Your Instagram Bio

Unfortunately, not too many independent and emerging musicians paid enough attention to their Instagram bio. Your Instagram bio can be a very powerful platform to introduce yourself and engage your fans. Here are some tips on how to optimize your bio:

Informative and Engaging Story

Admittedly, we are not given a lot of room in our Bio, as we only get 150 characters and nothing more.

Thus, it’s very important to use them wisely.

Although we can be creative and use all kinds of different approaches, here are a few ideas you can try:

Describe your music. As a musician, it can be hard to objectively fit your unique sound into a single genre, but you should try.
You can talk about the most relevant and recent things you’ve done with your music (currently recording, released a single, on-tour, etc.)
Include achievements, awards, and career highlights if you can. Be honest and make sure that your achievements are valid.
If you’ve been reviewed by prominent media or influencers, you can also include this information in your bio.

Also if you are a band with multiple members, you can include the members’ Instagram handles

Use an Effective Link

You can only use a single link in your bio, so you can choose to include one of these following options:

Your website
Spotify or YouTube channel, or your other social media profile
Landing pages where fans can directly purchase your music, ticket, merchandise, or other items
A lead magnet page, where the visitor can download your music or video in exchange for their contact information (email), useful for email marketing purposes

Remember that you can change the link to include from time to time depending on your needs/current campaign. For example, you can include a link to the most recent interview from a prominent media.

Your Profile Picture

Since Instagram is naturally a visual platform, it’s fairly obvious that we should have a compelling, well-taken (or if it’s a logo, well-designed) profile picture. Your display picture should reflect your story and your genre, as different genres or sounds might have unique visual aesthetics as their identity. Of course, you can always use the out-of-the-box approach and be creative.

Billie Eilish is an example of an effective Instagram profile, linking her YouTube channel (where her music is), emphasizing her really young age as the main focus of the bio (which is what she’s known for), and great use of profile picture.

2. Diversify Your Posts

Above, we have mentioned how Instagram is a very versatile platform where we can use various forms of content to reach our audience, from Posts to Stories to paid ads and IGTV. However, the ‘traditional’ Posts alone can be approached in various different ways with several different types of content:

Photos and Images

Instagram is originally a platform to showcase photos, so it’s only natural that you should use this type of content. You can use photos and images in creative ways to indirectly promote your music, for example by posting a really interesting image that is related to your song, and then include the link to download/stream your song in the caption area.

Videos

You can post up to 60 seconds recorded or live videos in Posts (not to be confused with videos in IGTV and Stories, which we will discuss later on. Videos can be a very attractive medium to promote your music and engage your audience—especially since you can include your music with the video—. Don’t forget that you can also use a still image with a snippet of your music if necessary.

Also, most users scroll their Instagram feed with muted sound by default, so use subtitles with your videos to allow people to consume your content when they are in a public place without headphones.

Text

Yes, you can post textual content (i.e. blog) on Instagram in your captions. You can include a maximum of 2,200 characters in your captions—that is, around 300-450 words including spaces—, so it’s not that bad. If necessary, you can also write the blog post elsewhere and then upload the screenshots as an image Post.

On average, captions of 1,000 to 2,000 characters are the most effective for engagement.

There are actually a lot of people who read your captions if the content/story is engaging. For example, you can use attractive photos of your latest concert and then write a short blog post telling an interesting story that happened at the same concert.

Good usage of captions by Khalid to build anticipation for his new song.

3. Using Stories and IGTV To Showcase Your Music

Instagram Stories

Throughout 2019, Instagram Stories has been one of the most important platforms on Instagram both for personal and marketing usage. Instagram reported half a million daily active Stories in January 2019 (that is, both viewing and creating), so it’s a very effective platform to reach your audience.

You can upload up to 15 seconds worth of video in Stories, and throwing out the right 15-second part of your song can effectively engage your fans (for example, your attractive chorus, hook, or drop).

You can also promote various things related to your music in Stories such as:

Upcoming gigs, fairly obvious
New releases of your single, music video, album, etc
Throwback content by engaging your fans with older songs from your back catalog
Promoting your merchandises
Running polls, hosting giveaway quizzes and Q&As to engage your audience

Stories disappear after 24 hours (unless you keep them), you can be more experimental and use the trial-and-error approach when promoting in this medium.

Also, one of the key advantages of using Stories is that the notification is placed at the top of the Instagram feed, so they are more noticeable. Yet, nowadays more people are using Stories, so you still have to combat all the noises and saturations. Make sure to use attractive visuals, appropriate hashtags, and location tags.

IGTV

IGTV essentially allows us to upload longer video content, up to 10 minutes for regular users and up to 60 minutes for Instagram verified accounts. Also, IGTV is uniquely designed for vertical videos.

IGTV in the Instagram ecosystem is fairly new, being just a little over a year old. However, it is widely considered as the strongest competitor of YouTube as a video streaming platform, although it is still quite far off at the moment.

You can obviously upload a full song or even a full music video on IGTV, depending on your objective. You can also upload various content like Q&A sessions, vlogs to showcase the behind-the-scene progress of a song/album, and various other approaches to engage your audience.

Effective use of IGTV by Keke to promote her live performance and weekly show.

4. Use The Right Hashtags

Hashtags are a very important element of Instagram as a social media platform.

Instagram users often use hashtags to find new content, places, and artists/musicians. Also, Instagram’s algorithm utilizes hashtags to recommend content to its users based on their past shares and likes. If Instagram doesn’t change this key algorithm feature in 2020, it’s going to be even more relevant amidst the saturation of the platform.

You can technically include 30 hashtags with every post—including hashtags you add within the comment section—. In general, you should aim to include at least 20 hashtags with each post. For Stories, you can include 10 hashtags per story. So, the big question is, which ones?

You should definitely aim for the popular hashtags like #music, #pop, and any hashtags for your genre(s), as well as hashtags like #InstaMusic, #MusicMonday, and similar ones. Be creative and do your research, so you can find both popular and niche hashtags that can help you reach your audience.

A social media management tool such as Mention will help you to identify the most trending and relevant hashtags in your industry.

Staying up-to-date with the current trends, and probably even create your own trending hashtags will be the secrets in Instagram marketing success.

5. Use Ads and Sponsored Posts

One of the best usage of Instagram ads to promote Portugal.The Man’s show back in 2018.

Organic reach is declining on social media. In some ways, social media marketing is slowly becoming a pay-to-win.

Instagram is no exception, and by converting your Instagram account to a business account, you can now invest in Instagram ads, allowing you to engage a wider audience and reach new fans.

There are several different options for Instagram Ads: single image, video, carousel, and Stories.

It’s virtually guaranteed to generate results fairly quickly, the main challenge in advertising on Instagram—and other social media networks— is managing costs: it can be extremely expensive if you are not careful.

So, the main thing to focus on here is how we can reach as many people as possible with the advertising while spending as little as possible. Specific to the purpose of promoting your music, there are two different factors to consider: targeting, and the content of your ad.

Targeting: that is, finding the best possible audience to display your advertising
Content: publishing an engaging post that can attract the target audience defined above

You need to get people to stop scrolling and click on your ad. While the most obvious thing is to simply use your music videos as the Instagram ad, remember that most people watch videos with the sound turned off. So, unless the visuals of your music videos are really attractive, they might not click on the ad even if your song is really good.

So, you might need to edit the music videos to incorporate attractive graphics, logos, typographic designs (i.e. like lyric videos), and other elements to capture your audience’s attention. This will include using engaging captions to the snippet.

If you’ve been mentioned by respectable media, sites, or influencers, you can use this within the caption. If not, you can mention famous artists with similar sounds as yours inside your caption, for example, “Sounds like…”, “for fans of…”, and so on. Pair this with the right targeting to display your ads to users that are following this particular artist, and they might be more likely to click on your ads.

End Words

There are certainly other methods you can use on Instagram to promote your music, but as you can see from, Instagram can be a very versatile platform to introduce your work to more people, and especially to engage with your fans (and potential fans) in two-way communication.

Check out our massive Instagram Engagement Report and discover the best time to post on Instagram.

How to promote music in Reels ♫ IMI.Journal

Reels is a new video content format on Instagram that became available in Russia this summer. At IMI's request, Mikhail Mazunov, music manager and founder of Mishas Tips YouTube channel, talked about how to use Reels to promote music and artist accounts.

What is Reels

Basically, Instagram copied the TikTok format and brought it into their ecosystem. Now users of the social network can create short videos ranging from 15, 30 and 60 seconds, using various editing tools, music and effects.

Why Reels Matters to Content Creators

Promoting a personal Instagram account is no easy task. The fact is that Instagram cuts the coverage of posts in the news feed and the authors have to use paid advertising tools to show the content to the target audience and sometimes to their own subscribers.

But with the advent of Reels, the situation has changed dramatically:

Instagram has a separate smart feed for Reels, which individually selects content for each user. Imagine you are watching TikTok inside Instagram. Recommendations include videos from both accounts that the user is following, as well as videos from other content creators. This is the main advantage - Instagram gives free coverage and promotes copyrighted content within the social network ecosystem. This is fundamentally different from the traditional scheme, in which content is visible in the news feed only to your subscribers.
Reels is integrated everywhere: in the news feed, in the "Interesting" section, in the selection of content by hashtags. The new service is now a priority for Instagram, so the company is interested in distributing content from Reels.
Instagram promotes content from Reels for longer than classic posts, which followers see on average for 24 hours. This is probably due to the fact that so far there are not enough videos in Reels and therefore Instagram offers to watch the created content to a wider range of people.

Let's compare the average number of video post views in the News Feed and the number of Reels views for two artists.

For example, Niletto's last 13 video posts have collected more than 315 thousand views, 13 Reels videos of the same artist - 1,330,690 views. Singer Glucose has the following figures: a little more than 246 thousand views on video posts, and 561,200 views on Reels videos. Thus, Reels brought Niletto almost 4 times more views compared to video posts, Glucose - about 2 times more.

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A post shared by Ivan Dorn (@dorn_ivan)

However, it is worth noting that in the case of Niletto, the number of views of 5 out of 13 Reels videos exceeded the number of subscribers.

So Reels is now a key tool for increasing personal brand awareness for artists and other content creators on Instagram. Through interesting content in Reels, new people will learn about you, and if they like what you do, they will subscribe to your page. Once you have an audience, you can convert it into sales of your music and merchandise using all available Instagram tools (posts, stories, live streams, IGTV and Reels).

How to promote music through Instagram Reels

The first thing to do is make sure your music is available on Instagram. Most distributors deliver music to Facebook and Instagram automatically, but there are also companies that charge a separate fee for this service or ask you to take additional steps. Keep this in mind so that at the time of the launch of a new release, your music will be available on Instagram and users of the application (including you) can use it in their videos.

There are three main ways to promote music through Reels:

Create Reels by yourself by adding your music to the videos. You can choose any section of the track under which you will shoot a video. This will allow you to test different pieces of music and see which ones work best in Reels.
Negotiate with other authors to create Reels for your music. This is a common TikTok promotion method, and Reels is no different. Learn how to promote music on TikTok here.
Ask your followers to create videos in Reels with your music. This strategy works well when releasing new tracks. You can come up with mechanics (certain movements or actions) that your subscribers will use when creating their own videos.

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A post shared by 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐀 (@creamsodamusic)

Several rules for creating and placing Reels

Decide on a theme for your videos before you start shooting for Reels. Firstly, it is easier to create a content plan. Secondly, the target audience is more likely to subscribe to an account dedicated to a specific topic. Thirdly, the Instagram algorithm will understand who likes your content and will make more accurate recommendations for your target audience.
Check out the Reels feed. Spend time researching the content that makes it to the recommendation feed. This will help you decide on the music in the videos and choose the desired filming format.
Try to hook the audience from the first seconds. To promote your content on Reels, it's important that it gets viewed. The greater the viewing depth of your videos, the higher the chance that these videos will be recommended to other users.
Create content that people can share. For example, make a video about a topic or issue that brings your target audience together. If your videos are shared, it gives the algorithm a signal that you have interesting content and should be shown to even more Instagram users.
Consistency and optimization is the key to success. Create a content plan and decide on a posting schedule. The more content you create, the more likely you will be in the eyes of your target audience. Once you've posted a few Reels, analyze which video formats are getting the most engagement and tailor your content plan accordingly. To get analytics, use the statistics tools that are available on Instagram for accounts of the "Business" and "Author" types. You can change the account type through the settings.
Use hashtags in your video descriptions. Now Instagram is pushing content from Reels to the top of the results for a particular hashtag, which will also help to get even more coverage.
Add captions on top of your videos. Instagram users often watch content without sound, so video captions can help grab the attention of the target audience and engage them in the video. Keep in mind that the captions should be visible when users view your Reels from the News Feed. The fact is that in the feed, videos from Reels will be displayed in proportions of 4:5 instead of 9:16.
Designate covers for your Reels. You can choose a screenshot from the video or create a separate cover and upload it from your smartphone. Clip art will appear in both the News Feed and the Reels Feed. If someone visits your profile, the cover image will help to attract attention and increase the number of views of already published Reels.
Post Reels in your newsfeed. This way you can remind your audience of yourself. In addition, if your subscribers support the video with likes, comments and reposts, this will increase the chances of a particular video getting into recommendations.
Post Reels to stories. This will give even more coverage to the video. In addition, Reels can be placed in stories directly from the news feed. And if you add one of the stickers (for example, "Poll"), this post will get even more coverage.
Adapt existing content. If you have any video content (a music video or a recording of your live), you can adapt it for Reels and publish it.

Video version of our manual can be viewed here:

15 Tips for Beginning Musicians

Sleepless creative nights have paid off - you have the first track with a cool name and a shimmering horizon of possibilities in your hands. And then you get into a stupor: what to do next? Catch 15 simple but important tips on how to get off to a good start with your new musical project.

1. Remember: your first demo might suck, and it would be really cool if someone told you about it. Do not bet on the opinions of friends and family: they love you, so they will not say anything bad about your work. Better upload your work to the same Reddit - local experts will objectively evaluate your work.

2. Create accounts on all key social networks (Instagram, VK, Facebook) and supply subscribers with products of your creativity. It is important to make regular updates: post demos, post photos, stories from rehearsals and performances - don't let your communities drag on mud!

3. Find a medium that will be interested in your music and try to promote your music through this medium. Roughly speaking, try to get into the “format”: in the black metal community, no one will appreciate your neo-pop.

4. When you post your music on social networks, remember that the news feed will absorb your content very, very quickly, so send your creativity to friends directly and ask them to stir up a repost or two. There is nothing shameful in this!

5. Leave comments under the records of other groups, projects and musical communities: what if someone who clicks on your nickname will fall in love with your music? This method is suitable for both VK and Facebook with Instagram.

6. Don't forget about video: it's by far the most effective way to get people's eyes on your art. Cool and non-trivial visual = excellent promo and guaranteed feedback.

7. Recorded an album, single or EP - upload it to Bandcamp and Soundcloud. If this is your first release, then it's better to place it on Bandcamp under the marker "name your price" - so the listeners will be able to support your debut with specie. There are popular platforms on Soundcloud (The Artist Union, Supportify, Hypeddit) that automatically repost your track for Free Download - so you can spread like a virus.

8. You just need to be on Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify, Yandex. Music, etc. Do not be lazy and upload your music to streaming services (aggregators do this, which we wrote about in detail here). After all, at any moment you can be "shazamed" and check your music - be available to your potential listener!

9. Send your music to all known music publics and communities in VK and Facebook. If sending tracks to the "suggestion" did not give any result, write to the community admin. Don't be afraid to take the initiative.

10. When looking for a place to release your music, look at music portals and magazines. For example, punk punk can be sent to the Maximum Rocknroll punk zine - maybe you will be lucky and your work will be on the waves of American radio.

11. Don't forget the record labels. Submit your music to all music venues that suit your style and wait for feedback. Of course, Sony Music Entertainment can't be taken lightly - start with smaller corporations. For example, concentrate on Belarusian labels, and if you really want to root your music abroad, pay attention to the label of the same Dorn - SOYUZ sent their tracks here and ended up on the Masterskaya label.