The days of free organic reach have been well behind us. Basically, ancient history at this point. Although the perception of how TikTok serves content to users seems to be more favorable, the complaints have more so been with Instagram and Facebook (both owned by Meta of course). To be fair, the YouTube algorithm doesn’t share your new video uploads to all of your subscribers either.

What can musicians do to overcome this challenge with algorithms? Or is it even the source of the problem in the first place? In this blog, we’ll explore that and cover a list of tactics for you to try and “beat” the algorithm.
 

What purpose do algorithms serve and how does it work?

 
I won’t go into what an algorithm is as I’m sure everyone reading is well aware of what it is, or at the least, understands how it impacts (ruins) your social media experiences as the creator.

However, I really want to emphasize an important point that gets lost in the conspiracy theory that platforms intentionally suppress the reach of certain types of posts (i.e. sales related posts). I touch more on this on another blog and explain what I believe to be the real problem.

Algorithms serve a key role in helping to provide a positive user experience on social media platforms because it addresses the problems of content saturation and low quality content. (No, I wasn’t paid by any of those platforms to say that.)

Back in the days, the newsfeed on platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, would show posts in chronological order. This was around 10 years ago before we had the number of users and content creators we have today. The more you would post, the more visibility you received. There were businesses and creators scheduling like 8 to 10 Facebook posts a day!

Algorithms were introduced in social media as a way to address the problem that we would see today… an overload and saturation of content. One of the goals of the algorithm was to encourage/force creators to only make high quality posts/content that followers would want to see and engage with.

For the longest time, the algorithm was a big mystery. People wanted to know how it worked in order to try and game the system or “beat the algorithm”. Although we didn’t know all the exact signals and ranking factors they use and weight it plays, we’ve had a good understanding of what the algorithm looks for.

In an effort to be more transparent, Instagram eventually published a blog in 2021 explaining how their algorithms work and have since updated it recently. This has given us a bit more clarity on how they rank posts and determine what gets shown in the various parts of Instagram (Newsfeed, Stories, Reels, Explore). More importantly, it has given us guidelines on what we can do to improve the reach of our posts.
 

What does it mean to beat the algorithm?

 
It’s important to first define what “beating” the algorithm even means and why so many musicians constantly seek out this information in frustration.

In social media, it’s being able to dramatically improve your organic reach to your followers on a platform for free and not having to use their ad service to get your posts seen. You can look at it as making the algorithm your friend. If you post the right video at the right time, you may see an outburst of views and engagement as the algorithm continually pushes your content to non-followers. I helped create a few viral moments for an artist thanks to the algorithm and you can read more about that campaign here.

This is particularly true when trying to sell something that would benefit you financially. The long, commonly held belief (conspiracy theory) is that the algorithm used in these platforms will automatically suppress the reach of these types of posts in order to force artists to spend money to reach their followers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true, but I arrived at a different conclusion.

I truly do not believe it is possible to “beat the algorithm” on any consistent basis, but there are definitely things you can do to improve your chances of getting better organic reach with your posts. Some of these tactics are features that these platforms intentionally created to help you beat the algorithm.
 

Tactics to improve your chances of “beating the algorithm”

 
Here is a list of tactics you’ll want to consider when developing your social media strategy and posting on social media if you want the best chances of getting free organic reach. It’s going to be a mix of things to do for more immediate results as well as for the long term. These tactics were not for a specific social media platform, but a lot of them are with Facebook and Instagram in mind.

1. Don’t publish “low quality” content. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. This is the low hanging fruit that everyone should be reminded of. Don’t post things half assed without much thought just to get something out there on social media. Quality matters! This does not mean it has to be “professional” quality. If you’re posting a dark, blurry photo of something that doesn’t even have a clear subject, don’t expect to get much engagement. If you post a busy, ugly graphic full of text, don’t get mad that the algorithm is shadow banning you. If the video audio has obnoxiously static noises and you can’t even make out the words, that will not get reach because people will scroll past it.

2. Ask or incentivize followers to turn on post notifications or add you to their ‘favorites list’. One sure way to get your posts ranked on top of someone’s newsfeed is asking followers to ‘turn on the notifications’ to get a push notification whenever you post. All the major platforms have this option to some effect. By default on Instagram, followers will only get a notification for some live videos. You can also ask them to add you to their favorite’s list which allows all your posts to be at the top of their newsfeed. Some of your biggest fans may have already done this on their own without you asking. I know I’ve done that with my top favorite artists. However, you may have to incentivize them to do so. Maybe if you did a random giveaway for show tickets or merch. Or you can announce a limited edition merch drop coming soon so “turn on post notifications for my posts and add me to your favorite’s list to to be the first to know before it sells out.”

3. Pay attention to what’s trending. Always keep an eye out on what’s trending on social media and in the news. Each platform will have their way of informing you of what’s trending. You also see search trends on Google. Whether it’s a new challenge or capitalizing on a story going viral, you want to take advantage of the increased wave of attention and try to ride it if it makes sense for you. This is also a great source of ideas for creating content to help build your fan base.

4. Vary the content mediums. The general consensus is that video content is generally more engaging than a photo. They’re both equally effective, but it really comes down to what your goals are with a post. If you’re trying to get more shares and reach new potential fans, then video would work better. Even a funny, motivational or relatable text quote graphic (for example, a screenshot of a tweet) can be highly engaging and shared. But the reason why you want to vary your content mediums (photo, video, audio, text) is because not all of your followers are the same. More specifically, not everyone that follows you is a die hard fan. Some may just casually know of you while some just like you for something that’s totally unrelated to music. This is why content variation and consistency is key. In the same token, not all of them prefer to engage with videos. Some may have a stronger history of engaging more with photos so the algorithm will more likely rank photo posts higher in their newsfeed. Because every fan is going to be different in how the algorithm understands their connection to you, you want to make sure you’re not limiting yourself to one medium.

5. Optimize your posts. Very simple and basic. Do your best to optimize your posts with a good caption that is appropriate, engaging thumbnails, include emojis, add a location if applicable and tag the appropriate people if they are actually visibly in the post. Never randomly tag people in your posts as that can be grounds for a penalty in the algorithm.

6. Send the right signals. Using hashtags, location tags and keywords naturally (as in, don’t force or overdo it) in your captions to signal what your content is about so that the algorithm can suggest your posts to the right people. These platforms want to use every little detail about your post from the text in the caption to the actual media contents to understand what it is about and who would be interested in that topic.

7. Optimizing your video content for a short attention span. For short form videos, you can optimize it in how it is edited by getting into the action quicker and avoiding long intros. If you’re posting a snippet of your music video, don’t start at the very beginning and jump into a chorus or the most visually interesting part. You may also want to consider doing things at the very beginning to get attention like a video effect and stop the scroll. This also means you are using text captions in your videos, which have become more increasingly popular in TikTok and Instagram the past few years now. Many people will actually watch with the sound off because they may be in the situation where they can’t have the sound on.

8. Post at the “right” time. Timing is everything. You’re never going to get it right every single time. With some trial and error, you’ll eventually get a good feel for what is optimal. Every social media audience is different so the best times are not going to be the exact same for everyone. But whatever you do, do not delete a post if you’re not seeing engagement right away. It’s better to leave it and post it another day and time. You wouldn’t want to make the mistake Noah Kahan almost made when he nearly deleted the TikTok video that eventually went viral. For help and guidance for how to find the best times to post on social media, you can refer to my blog.

9. Post multiple times. Depending on what it is that you’re posting and what your objective is, it makes sense to post the same piece of content multiple times. I wouldn’t do it back to back but I would experiment at different times and days. Because so many factors are involved, you can’t just assume that something doesn’t do well because of the “algorithm” or your content sucks. Also, don’t forget to give your content time to run its course. Because recency plays a role in how content is ranked, at least with Instagram, wait at least 12 to 24 hours until posting anything else after.

10. Try long form captions. It’s true that most people generally don’t read very long captions. And yes, a lot of the posts that I see that get tons of engagement or often very short and snappy, witty captions. But long form can work in certain situations too, especially for good storytelling, so it’s worth testing it out with the right post. Also, take into consideration that the algorithm uses the text in captions to help understand what the content is about so it knows how to better serve it to your followers.

11. Limit flyer-like graphics for promo. Although it can be useful to promote or inform your followers about a new show or merch, they traditionally don’t get much reach or engagement. One reason these don’t do well is because it looks like an ad with the text. Secondly, especially for show flyers, it’s usually only relevant to a small segment of your audience so it’s easy for them to just gloss over the post (unless you’re announcing a general tour with multiple dates). There are exceptions of course, especially let’s say you were added to a big festival for the first time and you’re sharing how excited you are. There’s no avoiding these types of flyer graphics since it’s still a staple that promoters and venues will create and use regularly. What I would suggest is to find a fun or creative way to use video to communicate the same message. This can be a fun skit or even a simple selfie-style video.

12. Do collaborative posts. The power of collaboration with another artist or creator is always a great way to generate engagement for both parties and increase reach while cross promoting to each other’s audiences. Maybe you’re actually doing a song with another artist and you created some video content to promote it. For something like Instagram or Facebook, you want to make sure you add the other person as a collaborator on the post so the post can show up on their profile as well. Be sure to coordinate this effort so that they can accept the collaborator invite. This will increase the chances that the post will get more engagement since it will be seen by both audiences and climb in the algorithm rankings

13. Stir up controversy. Unfortunately, we know that negativity, drama and controversy gets a lot of attention and engagement in social media. This plays well into social media algorithms but it’s not something you’ll want just for clout. It can maybe work if done in a fun and not so serious way.

14. Use carousel posts. It’s been well documented that whenever you post multiple photos or videos in a single post on Instagram, the algorithm will show multiple slides to your followers if they don’t engage with it initially. This means you get multiple opportunities for fans to engage with your posts and potentially help to boost your post in the algorithm. A common type of a post is an image dump where you just post a collection of photos, sometimes even random ones that all don’t go together. You can also do a slideshow type of post where instead of each individual photo being on one slide, you can have part of the next photo on the same slide so you have to slide to see what the rest is and so on.

15. Reposting viral videos. This one is a bit tricky. Reposting someone else’s content on your own account has become more common on social media. At least on Instagram, this is how many of us like to share content we like and not just repost to Stories. We know this works really well for engagement because these are proven videos that went viral after all. Anecdotally, I’ve seen posts that follow the viral video get a boost in the algorithm. But the issue will always come down to the ethics of using other people’s content for your own personal gain without getting permission. Most, if not all, artists I’ve seen do this will credit the original creators in some way but I doubt permission was always granted.

16. Encourage interaction in your posts. This is nothing new, but use your caption as a way to encourage interaction. It can be as simple as asking a question or asking them to tag a friend. If you’re on Twitter, let people know you’ll be answering questions for an hour or so. It’s something I see some of the established artists I follow do quite often. Other captions that encourage interaction include “caption this” or “wrong answers only” to go along with a fun photo of yourself. Maybe even offer a reward for the best response. One thing I will caution about is the specific language you use in your captions. Many years ago, Facebook and Instagram would limit organic reach for posts that asked followers to like, comment or share in the captions. I’m not sure if this has changed since, but it’s something to be aware of.

17. Respond to and like comments within the first hour of a new post. As soon as you make a new post, be on stand by and respond to comments as soon as you get them. Of course, this assumes you get comments depending on the quality and timing of your posts.

18. Go live. Going live on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, has lost a lot of its shine since the pandemic in 2020. Before that and the rise of TikTok, these platforms were giving creators a major boost in the algorithm which brought in a lot of engagement for live video content. The replays were even getting more reach. Nowadays, it’s still a great way to get engagement as people who happen to be on their phones will pop in to see what’s going on. At least for Instagram and Facebook, going live is the only thing that will notify your followers with notification by default. Plus, I feel there will be less algorithm bias since they can’t judge what the video is about beforehand.

19. Use engagement tools. Instagram allows you to add mini polls and a question box to do Q&As in Stories. The polls are great on Stories because you can see how specific people respond. That way you can DM them directly to follow up on their answer. Basically, you want as many followers to interact with you in any way possible, no matter how big or small. Whether it’s a comment on a post, a DM that you respond to or even a poll response.

20. Get fans to your email list. A good way to beat the social media algorithm is not to have to deal with it in the first place. This means building that relationship or incentivizing followers to sign up for your email list. To be clear, you still may have an algorithmic element to deal with using email marketing (avoiding spam filters) but at least you’ll have a better chance to reach fans directly. Start with the basics of having an email sign up link in your “Link In Bio” (i.e. Linktree) and on your website. Here are tips on how to build an email list.

21. Strategically share your interests. A few years ago around 2021, the Instagram and Facebook algorithms started leaning more towards interest-based signals in response to TikTok. I remember noticing more and more Reels were showing up in my newsfeed from people who I didn’t follow but were things that I may be interested in based on who my friends were engaging with. As a musician, there’s nothing wrong with just posting music-related content with the occasional personal post on social media. But as a brand, it may be beneficial to experiment with sharing other aspects of yourself like hobbies or other interests you’re passionate about.

22. Be careful with sharing links to other platforms or even mentioning other platforms in the caption. This is one of the more old school tactics or tips when Facebook was the top social platform attention wise. We were advised not to link out to other competitors like YouTube because Facebook wants to keep their users on their platform. They would de-rank posts in their algorithm when you would link out to YouTube to encourage creators to post the video content naivety for a boost in the algorithm. In a similar vein, you don’t want to repost your TikTok videos with a watermark to Instagram or vice versa for similar reasons. To maximize organic reach, post the content natively. Avoid mentioning other platforms with text on a video or in a caption.

23. Create a broadcast channel on Instagram. Instagram’s latest feature allows you send mass direct message updates to followers that opt in and bypasses any algorithm! The feature is called ‘Broadcast Channels‘ and it can be publicly visible for followers to join. When you send a message to your broadcast channel, fans will receive an Instagram notification and view the message as a DM. You can even create multiple channels for different topics or areas of interest (Music, Tours, Merch). As of this writing, it looks like most accounts should have access to it so here’s how to do it.

24. Follow your fans? This is more experimental but hear me out. The algorithm takes into account engagement history a fan has with all of the things you’ve posted. They also factor in your potential relationship with the person. If the algorithm thinks a follower is a friend or family, they’re more likely to show your posts in their feed. I imagine the big signal they determine this is by seeing if both people follow each other and/or have exchanged DMs. I’m not saying you should follow all of your fans but it’s something to think about.
 

Conclusion

 
Musicians and creators hate the algorithm as much as I hate trying to spell the word. But, my personal perspective on it is don’t get too caught up with the algorithms and let it dictate your life and business. You can optimize and prepare the best you can but there’s no sure shot way to bypass the algorithm. There are just so many variables and you can only control so much. Plus, algorithms are always going to be tweaked and there’s no way to know what has changed.

The post 20+ Tactics for Musicians to Beat Social Media Algorithms in 2023 appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Whenever a musician posts about tickets to an upcoming show or new merch, there can be a noticeable dip in engagement and organic reach compared to other types of posts. I’ve seen it happen firsthand many times. Does this always happen? No. Have I seen sales types of posts do really well organically? Yes.

The commonly held belief is that social media platforms will intentionally suppress the organic reach of any posts that involve trying to sell something to force creators to buy ads to reach their followers.

I hear about it all the time within my circles. I’m no stranger to conspiracy theories myself but I also strive to be objective as a mediator-type personality and a professional in the industry.

Although this line of thinking makes a lot of sense and it’s hard to argue against this belief considering that’s their major source of income, there is also another major factor at play.

As much as we hate big corporations and the profit maximization motive that drives them, it’s also VERY possible that typical sales-type posts are inherently not as engaging. It’s also not something people will eagerly share with others either.

The algorithm wants to get posts and content in front of people that will likely engage with it so people continue to scroll and get bombarded with ads. If the initial response to a post is poor, the reach potential is going to be limited. Presentation can play a role in this as well, especially if a sales post comes off too much like an advertisement or busy flyer with a lot of text.

There are definitely exceptions like when an artist is announcing new music, a tour or even merch for the first time. If you’re announcing new music with the cover art, chances are that’s going to do well. These are definitely sales related things that fans typically get excited about from artists.
 

Not all followers are paying fans.

 
A big factor to consider is not all of your followers are paying fans, let alone super fans that will engage with everything you post.

Getting someone to start spending money on you is still a commitment not all followers are ready to consider. It is like expecting anyone who shows interest in dating you is ready to sleep with you or get married.

If you think of marketing as a funnel, the part of your fan base that is ready to buy or take action is generally going to be much smaller like the bottom tip.

On social media, you have to consider that all your followers are in different places of the fan journey. I follow plenty of musicians that I would never spend money on and have no problems scrolling by their sales related posts. While with some other artists, I will buy anything they release despite it taking me many years to get to that point.

It is your job as the creator to make and share content that helps them build a stronger affinity for your brand and ultimately care about what you’re selling.
 

We’ve been conditioned to tune out anything that looks like an ad.

 
Another angle to this is that the average user does not want to always be sold something on a social network that is often used as a form of escapism and social interactions with friends. The mindset or intent of the typical social media user isn’t to buy or spend money.

For decades, we know that people tend to tune out to anything that resembles an ad. We go out of our way to skip ads or fast forwarded through them. This behavior has been going on for decades on network TV and it has not changed online or on social media. Honestly, when was the last time you shared a regular ad post on social media?

So is it fair to say now that sales-related posts (with the primary goal of getting someone to spend money) are inherently not engaging? When ads are in the form of funny or entertaining commercials, we’re more likely to tune in. Maybe the lesson here is if you’re going to try to sell something, try not to make it look or feel like an ad?

At the very least, I hope that musicians will consider that the problem isn’t solely the algorithm looking for keywords in the caption to suppress the organic reach. The fact is, we will never know if algorithms have been programmed to de-rank posts based on certain words or intent.
 

If you can’t beat the algorithm, just pay!

 
The best way to get more reach for your sales-type of posts is to buy ads. Many artists refuse to pay to get better reach and engagement. The frustration is understandable but as musicians, there are some expenses you just have to pay to keep your business operating.

After all, the business model for social media platforms is to build a product that millions of people want to use and spend time on so they can gather all that data and charge businesses to reach certain people with ads.

Here are 3 situations where you want to pay for ads:

• You’re trying to sell something that would generate profit (shows, music, merch, membership).
• You have a post/content that is performing very well organically and you want to boost the success to reach more people.
• You want to test content that is meant to reach new people to grow your fan base.

If you really don’t have the budget or don’t want to pay, you’ll have to rethink how you approach sales post and be more creative with the content. The best type of ads are the ones don’t look like an ad. I notice more artists and entertainers will use short form video to disguise promotion for an upcoming show as a fun skit or funny bit.

At the end of the day, you don’t see Ford or McDonalds complaining that they have to pay money for ads on network television or social media. It’s the inherent cost of running a business when your audience spends time on property or networks that you don’t own.

Remember, social media is rented space even though you think you own your profile, the data and the right to reach your followers for free. These platforms have the ability to delete your profile and access to all of your fans. It’s more reason to build your email list or private membership community and take full ownership of your fan relationships.

The post Are Social Media Algorithms Intentionally Suppressing Sales Posts To Screw Over Artists? appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

For musicians, a big part of marketing is accessibility. Whether it’s at a live show or on social media, you want to meet fans where they are at and make it as easy as possible to support you.

With Instagram being one of the top social media platforms for musicians, setting up the Instagram Shopping feature is a great way to do this. After launching in 2019, Instagram Shopping has become more widely available now for most business account users.

Unfortunately, the process to get set up can be a bit confusing. In this blog, I will go over all the steps in detail so you can get Instagram Shopping up and running on your Instagram account.
 

What is Instagram Shopping?

 
Instagram Shopping is a feature that allows you to create a shop page where fans can easily buy your physical products directly on Instagram. You can tag individual products in your newsfeed posts and stories so anyone who clicks it will be taken to a link to buy it. Activating this feature will also add a ‘View Shop’ button on your Instagram profile as well.

The process of getting this feature requires a bit of work and some patience.

Here is an overview of the individual steps:

1. Check that you meet the requirements below.
2. Make sure your eCommerce website already has products for sale and fans can make purchases there.
3. Connect your Instagram account and Facebook Page to your Business Manager account.
4. Verify the domain name for your eCommerce website in Business Manager under ‘Brand Safety’.
5. Create a shop and catalog in Commerce Manager.
6. Add products to your catalog in Commerce Manager.
7. Customize the layout of your Instagram Shop.
8. Add a collection with the products you added to your catalog.
9. Publish your shop and wait for Facebook to approve your account.

Step 1: Check Requirements

 
Before getting started, you should check to see if you meet all the requirements to use Instagram Shopping.

– Is the Instagram Shopping feature available in your country? If you’re not in the U.S., click here to see a list to see if you can use Instagram Shopping.

– Do you have an eCommerce website on a platform like Squarespace or Shopify? You can only sell physical products on Instagram that are currently on your website. Additionally, you will need to verify your domain name to prove it is yours. This means you will need to have backend access to your website or know someone who can access it for you.

– Is your Instagram account type a Professional or Business account? If it’s personal, you would need to switch it to a Professional/Business account. Click here for instructions on how to switch.

– Does your eCommerce website comply with Facebook commerce policies? As long as you’re selling physical products (not digital or services) that are typical merch items from your website, you should be fine. Otherwise, you may not get approved during the review process. Read their commerce policies here.

– Does your brand demonstrate trustworthiness? Facebook just says you need an authentic, established presence that may also include maintaining a sufficient follower base. They don’t get into any details, but assuming you’re not a new artist with a brand new account, you should be okay. Otherwise, you may need to be active and age your account.

If you check all the boxes above, then you should be ready for the next steps.
 

Step 2: Setup Your Facebook Business Manager

 
To get things started, you need to gain access to your Business Manager account.

What is Business Manager?

 
Chances are you have a Facebook Business page as an artist. For example, like this. That Facebook page is managed by an umbrella/overhead account called Business Manager.

Facebook Business Manager is a tool to manage and organize all of your Facebook business-related assets in one place. Think of it as a master account that oversees your Facebook page, Instagram account, Ads Manager, etc. It allows you to grant your team members or collaborators access to your individual business assets.

It can get a little confusing because there are 3 other “manager” accounts under the umbrella of Business Manager – Ads Manager, Events Manager and Commerce Manager. The only two we’ll be working with in this guide are Business Manager and Commerce Manager.

Technically, everyone who has a Business Facebook Page should have a Business Manager account even if you’ve never used it. If for some reason you don’t have it, you can follow these directions to create it.

For this step, there are two important actions you need to take in Business Manager.

1. Connect Your Facebook Page and Instagram account to your Business Manager account
2. Verify the domain name of your eCommerce website

1. How to connect your Facebook Page and Instagram account to Business Manager

 
First, you’ll need to link/connect your Facebook Page and Instagram account to your Business Manager account.

From the Business Manager home screen, go to ‘Business Settings’ by clicking the gear icon on the bottom left corner.

Business Manager Home Screen

On the left side menu in Business Manager Settings, you will see ‘Pages’ and ‘Instagram Accounts’ under the ‘Accounts’ tab.

To connect your Facebook page, click on ‘Pages’ and then the blue ‘Add’ button. Select ‘Add a Page’ then type the name. You can only add a page if you’re currently an admin for that page.

Next, to connect your Instagram account, click on ‘Instagram Accounts’ then the blue ‘Add’ button. Hit ‘Connect your Instagram Account’ and you’ll be asked to log in. If you’re successfully, your Instagram account user name should be listed.

2. How to verify your domain name in Business Manager account

 
Second, you want to verify the domain name of your eCommerce website. To do this, go to the ‘Brand Safety’ tab on the left side. Click on ‘Domains’ then the blue ‘Add’ button to get started. Type in the domain name of your website and hit ‘Add’ again. You’ll be prompted with the next step.

The main action you will need to do is add a specific line of code (meta-tag) inside of your header tags for your website. This is the most “technical” part of the process, but it should be fairly easy depending on what website platform you use. If you paid someone to create and/or manage your website, they should be able to do this step for you easily. Otherwise, you can do it yourself with some direction.

If you have a Squarespace or Shopify website, see instructions below. For any other website eCommerce platform, you’ll just have to search Google or YouTube on how to add code to header tags for your respective platform.

Once you add Facebook’s meta-tag to your website, you’ll hit ‘Verify Domain’ back in Business Manager. If you did this correctly, it will show green verified text next to your domain name.

Squarespace Websites

 
For Squarespace eCommerce websites, log into the backend of your website. From the home screen, go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Advanced’ -> ‘Code Injection’. On the top, you should see ‘Header’. Copy and paste that domain verification code in this section and save.

Where to add the meta-tag for Squarespace websites

Shopify Websites

 
For Squarespace eCommerce websites, log into the backend of your website, which should be: https://yourdomainname.myshopify.com/admin/ (replace yourdomainname with your website). From the home screen, click on ‘Online Store’ on the left hand side. It should drop down a menu so click on ‘Themes’ on top. For ‘Live Theme’, click on ‘Actions’ then ‘Edit code’.

On the next page, you should see a folder called ‘Layout’. Select the file ‘theme.liquid’. Locate the header tags as pictured above. You’ll paste the domain verification code from Business Manger between these 2 tags. Make sure you’re not pasting it between another block of code.

Once you add the code, hit the green ‘save’ button and you’re all set to verify the domain back in Business Manager.
 

Step 3: Create a new catalog and shop in Commerce Manager

 

Once you’ve added your Facebook and Instagram accounts to Business Manager and verified your domain name, the next step is to create your storefront and catalog. This done through the Commerce Manager. A catalog is essentially a database or spreadsheet of different products you want to sell through your Instagram Shop.

Once you’re in the Commerce Manager home screen, you’re going to click ‘Add Shop’. Select ‘Instagram’ and hit ‘Next’ where you’ll see the following page:

‘Business Information’: Use an email address that you use for customer service or general inquiries with the public.

‘Sales Channel’: Make sure your Instagram account is displayed.

‘Products’ Catalog: They automatically generate a catalog name for you. You can change it to something more specific like “Merch”. Facebook recommends only creating one catalog for your account.

‘Checkout Method’: There are two options. You can either have customers check out on your website or on Instagram itself.

Checking out on your website is the easiest and quickest option to set up, which is what I recommend, but it’s not the seamless experience you ideally want. Being able to check out on Instagram is very convenient for fans because you can make purchases right inside the Instagram app. However, there are requirements you have to meet in order to activate this feature. One of them being you have to be based in the U.S. There are also fees involved when checking out on Instagram. To see what you need in order to checkout on Instagram, you can refer to this page.

On the next screen, select the countries or regions you ship to.

Type in the domain name of your eCommerce website. The reason why we verified the domain first is because you can only input a domain here that was verified in your Business Manager account.

Lastly, check the box that says you agree to their Seller Agreement and click ‘Finish Setup’.

Once you create your store front and catalog, you will receive an email saying your commerce account and website will be under review. They say this process can take up to 4 weeks.

In the meantime, you can go ahead to the next step and add products to your catalog.
 

Step 4: Add products to your catalog

 
In the previous step, we created a new shop and a catalog where we can load products you intend to sell on Instagram. Now we’ll go ahead and add each individual item in the catalog.

To get started, go to your Commerce Manager page. Click ‘Add Items’ from the Overview screen and it will ask for your preferred method:

There are four general ways to add products to your catalog: Manual, Data Feed, Partner Platform and Pixel.

I’ll only touch on the main two. You can add them manually one-by-one or through a Partner Platform where you connect your eCommerce platform to your Facebook Business manager account. This allows you to automatically import and sync products to your Instagram Shop.

Please Note: You need to make sure anything you add to the catalog is already active on your website. You are only allowed to sell physical products in your Instagram Shop that are already available on your own website.

The big platforms that have this partner platform integration are Shopify and WooCommerce, but you can check this list to see if your platform is supported. Because the eCommerce website we are using is Squarespace, it does not give us the Partner Platform option so we will do manual.

Instagram recommends adding at least 4 items for better customization of your store front.

For each item, you’ll need the following:

• A photo (ideally a square one)
• A short description
• URL link to the product on your website
• Price

Once you added all the details for your products on each line, hit ‘Upload’ to finish this step.

Down the line, if you ever need to go back to add and remove products, just go to your Commerce Manager and edit your catalog.
 

Step 5: Customize the store front

 
Once you add products to your catalog, the last step is to customize your Instagram store front. This is only optional, but you should still check it out and see if you might want to make any adjustments to how your stop will look to your fans.

To get started, go to the ‘Shops’ tab in the Commerce Manager. On this screen, you’ll see the status of your shop. If you’ve been approved and your shop is published, it’ll say “active” under ‘Status’. In the meantime, you can hit ‘Edit Shop’ to customize your Instagram shop page.

On the left hand side, you can customize and organize the layout of your shop based on the different element types (Promotion Banner, Dynamic Product, Carousel, Suggested for You…”. By default, Instagram will turn on the optimize layout option for you so you won’t be able to move any of the elements. In my opinion, you really don’t need this setting on as it rearranges the products and collections uniquely to the user based on their interests and past behaviors on the app.

Click the ‘optimize layout’ switch once to disable so you can move the elements up or down by dragging the 6-dots on the left side. I also think you don’t need most of these elements either so you can hide them by clicking the eye icon on the right side. You can click on each one to see what it does.

The main step you might want to do here for your store front is ‘Add collection’ to group certain products together in your Instagram shop. It’s not necessary but it’s a good way to keep your shop looking organized.

Under the carousel element, click on the button that says ‘add collection.’ All you need to do is name the collection (maybe you have merch tied to a specific release) and select the individual products in your catalog that you want to include in this collection. When you’re done, just hit ‘confirm’.

You can always go back and tweak it how you want after you’ve been approved and your shop is live.

Since you won’t be able to publish the shop here so once you’re done, just hit ‘Save’ and ‘Exit Builder’.
 

Step 6: Wait for approval then publish your shop

 
In order for your Instagram Shop to go live, it needs to pass 3 reviews:

The review process was first triggered when you created the shop and catalog. They say it can take up to 4 weeks, but it only took a few days for me. If everything goes to plan, you should receive the following email that says you’re ready to start selling:

The final step is to publish your shop. You can either click on the link in the email where it says “publish your shop” or you can just go directly to your Commerce Manager to do it there. Publishing your shop will trigger one last review (technically the forth one), but should only take a few minutes.

Keep in mind that your Instagram shop is something that they will evaluate every month to make sure everything is in compliance to their policies. They recently added a new tab called ‘Account Health’ in Commerce Manager to see your current standing.

With all out of that out of the way, you’re ready to use Instagram Shopping!
 

Step 7: Promote your Instagram Shop and products

 

Once you’ve been approved, the ‘Shop’ button will be live on your Instagram profile and you can start tagging individual products in your newsfeed posts and stories.
 

How to Tag Products in Your Newsfeed Posts

On the last screen before you share your post, you should see an option below where you write the caption that says ‘Tag Products’. Simply tap where you want to add the tag on your photo and select the shop source that contains the products you want to tag. You can tag multiple products in a single post, but as a best practice, only tag the products that are actually in the photo.

For a single image post, you can tag up to 5 products or a total of 20 products in multiple images inside a carousel-style post.

For videos over 20 seconds, you can tag individual products or collections by pinning them to specific parts of videos.

You can also go back and edit previous posts to add product tags.
 

How to Tag Products in Your Stories

 

You can find shopping tags in the Sticker tab where you edit your Story. There are 3 sticker options that you can link: Individual products, collection and the entire shop.

How to Tag Products in Reels

 
Similarly to your standard newsfeed posts, you can tag products and collections towards the end screen after recording your Reels video.

The post How to Sell Your Merch Directly Through Instagram Shopping (Guide for Musicians) appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Now with over 1 billion active monthly users, Instagram has become one of the most important social media platforms for musicians, especially younger generations. It’s such a versatile platform with plenty of functions and settings that the average user might miss.

In this blog, I will cover Instagram tips, tricks, tools and tactics from the most basic to more well-known ones to maximize your presence and fan engagement on Instagram.
 

Leave a Note

 

This feature on Instagram allows you to leave a short note or a song snippet that sticks on top of people’s direct message page for 24 hours. It will also display on the top of their profile picture from their main page.

As an artist, this could become a good way to remind others of a new release or an upcoming show. Currently, only those who follow each other can see these notes so it limits the potential reach this has but things may change in the future. However, this hasn’t stopped artists from using it as a promo tool as it is.

Add Lyrics to Your Songs In Instagram Stories

One of the newer features on Instagram Stories is the ‘Music’ sticker that adds lyrics to your story from a song you choose. There’s a good chance your music doesn’t have lyrics to show, but here’s how you add them.

When you upload your music to your music distributor (CDBaby, TuneCore, DistroKid), make sure to opt-in to Instagram & Facebook monetization which allows your music to be used in Instagram Stories.

Facebook and Instagram pulls lyrics from a third party site called MusixMatch. In order to add lyrics to MusixMatch, you need to verify your artist account on their platform. This allows the lyrics you input, to be the official lyrics.

Go to their website and follow the steps here:
https://about.musixmatch.com/artists/verified-artist

Once you are verified, you’ll sign in and add lyrics to your songs by clicking the ‘add lyrics’ or ‘+’ by the names. They will show specific guidelines, so make sure you follow them.

Once you submit lyrics to your song, there’s a MusixMatch app where you can listen to the song and sync your lyrics to the music. Go on the Musixmatch app, find your song and click on ‘Sync.’ You basically tap the button when the lyrics should be coming in.

It may take some time for Instagram to pull the info from MusixMatch and have the changes live in Instagram Stories.

Other Notes:

• Musixmatch should pull your new releases from Spotify and Apple Music. If your music is not on musixmatch.com, you will need to email them at artists@musixmatch.com with Spotify and Apple Music links to your release.
• Make sure to input the lyrics accurately the first time around, because it can be annoying to fix and redo. The same goes for syncing the lyrics to the song. Once the song is synced, there’s no way to redo without having to email them and have them start the process over.
• If there are instrumental gaps between lyrics
• It can take days and maybe even a week for song lyrics to show in Instagram Stories so be patient.
  If your song lyrics actually contain the word “lyrics,” it may be flagged as spam and not save to the website.

For more on leveraging song lyrics in your marketing, you can also check out this blog.
 

Sell Merch Directly on Instagram

Instagram Shopping is a feature that allows you to tag merch items you are selling in your Instagram photos, videos, Stories, Reels and IG Live so fans can buy products directly on Instagram or get linked to your online store to buy it. It basically creates an online store front right on your Instagram profile.

It is a bit of a process to set up and there are some requirements that need to be met.

Convert to a Creator Account

One of the first things you should do, if you haven’t already, is convert your Personal account into a Creator account. Instagram now has two types of Professional accounts and the Creator account was made for artists, musicians, influencers and other public figures.

A Business account used to be the standard for anyone that wasn’t using it for only personal use, but now it applies more for retailers, local businesses and organizations.

Creator Account gives you:

• Access to growth metrics in your analytics.
• A ‘Promotions’ button to easily pay to promote your posts.
• An action button to your public profile. The most relevant action button is ‘Email’ unless you use a service like SuperPhone where you can have people call or text you.
• Separate tabs for direct messages (DMs) to make it easier to manage higher volumes of DMs.

Link Sticker in Instagram Stories

Update: The swipe up function has been retired and replaced by a link sticker. You can add a sticker to your Stories that users can click to take them to another website.

As you may already know, you are only allowed one active that can link outside of Instagram, which is on your Instagram bio. You can’t even share a clickable link in your post captions. The only other way to show links is using the Link sticker in Stories. The best part is this feature has opened up to everyone. You no longer need 10k followers like the the original swipe up required. It makes it so convenient and useful to link your fans to your videos, ticket links and merch.

Here’s how to do it: Take a photo or video in the Stories screen. Click on the sticker icon on the top.

Tap the link sticker with the chain next to it. Type in the URL you want people to go to when they tap the link. Click ‘done’ when finished then post your Story as you normally would.

Bonus Tip: You can place a GIF sticker over the link sticker and have the GIF sticker be clickable. After adding the URL to your link sticker, pinch it down to its smallest size on your Story and add a GIF sticker. Search something like “Tap Here” or “Buy Now” and find something that could cover the link sticker completely. Now after you publish your Story, your fans can tap the GIF sticker to go the website in your link sticker.
 

Add More Links to Your Profile

We all know that you can only have one active URL at a time. A common workaround is to use one of these free link services that allow you to display multiple links from the URL in your Instagram bio.

Once you create an account, you will copy the URL they provide and insert it into your Instagram bio. Now when someone clicks on it, it will load a simple page with other links in it. You can include a link to your website, your latest single, music videos, merch or a newsletter sign up.

Schedule Posts to Instagram from Desktop / Laptop

Instagram is known as a mobile app, where all your photo and video posting is done from your phone. Now, you can actually post from your computer to Instagram. Better yet, you can even schedule posts, which is something you generally couldn’t do in the past on the mobile app.

To get started, you’ll need to go to Creator Studio and link your Instagram page to your Facebook page.

https://business.facebook.com/creatorstudio

From the main screen on Creator Studio, click the Instagram icon at the very top, next to the Facebook icon. If you haven’t connected Instagram yet, it will prompt you to do so.

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Create Post’ button on the top left to start your post. Currently, you can post to the Instagram feed and IGTV with Creator Studio, but not Stories.

Captions operate and format the same way they do on the mobile app. Hashtags should be included in the caption since you can’t comment on Creator Studio. One of the benefits of posting through Creator Studio is that it will tell you how many characters, hashtags and mentions you’ve used in the post.

To schedule the post, click on the arrow icon next to the ‘Publish’ button, and it will ask for a date and time.
 

Adding Line Breaks to Your Bio

As discussed above, Instagram will not format your text the way you want it and allow line breaks. Normally, if you do line breaks or an empty line using the ‘return’ button, it doesn’t stick in Instagram. It ends as one big paragraph.

1) Use a Notes app – To format your bio the way you want, first type and format it in another app like Notes on an iPhone. Copy and paste it into your Instagram bio section and save.

2) Use this web app – Type your bio formatted the way you want in this web app. Convert it then paste it into your Instagram bio.

https://apps4lifehost.com/Instagram/CaptionMaker.html
 

Request Verification for Blue Check Mark

 
You can now manually request a verification blue checkmark on your Instagram profile to show people you are official.

Go to Settings -> Account -> Request Verification

Just keep in mind that this is for more established or recognized public figures. You can read more here.
 

Post Notifications

You can be notified with a pop-up notification on your phone whenever someone posts on Instagram. Fans may naturally do this for certain people they follow. Encouraging fans to turn on notifications whenever you post is always helpful for getting any engagement boost in the news feed.

One way to encourage this is to offer some giveaways that require followers to respond as quickly as possible.
 

Hashtag / Location Tools

 
By now, most people on the platform understand the importance of hashtags for visibility and exposure on Instagram. You can use up to 30 hashtags in a standard post and 10 in a Story. Just keep in mind that only 3 hashtags used in Stories have the potential to show up in the hashtag Stories feed.

You also have the ability to geotag your posts and Stories so others can see what you’ve posted when they click on the location. Locations that are searched for will also display posts that were tagged.
 

Follow Hashtags

 
One of the newer functions of Instagram is the ability to follow hashtags. Doing so allows posts to show in your feed from others using the hashtag you are following. Followed hashtags will also show as a bubble in your Stories feed up top. This is a good way to keep tabs on local hashtags that are relevant to you as a musician, or tied to a community you want to engage with.

Or maybe you have your own hashtag associated with your brand, whether it’s your name or tagline, that you want to follow.
 

Link Hashtags and Other Accounts in Your Bio

 
You can include hashtags and other Instagram accounts in your profile bio so they are clickable. This is just a convenient way to link to other artists or accounts you may have. You might even have your own branded hashtag you want to display.
 

Appear in More Search Results on Instagram

The ‘Name’ field in your Instagram bio is actually searchable, meaning Instagram uses what you type here to display results in their search function. You can add other words in the ‘Name’ field so that someone searching for that word will be more likely to see your profile. Just keep in mind the character limit is 30.

For example, if someone types “bay area singer” in Instagram’s search function, your profile will show up if you put that in the ‘Name’ field of your bio.
 

Change Display Font on Profile

You have the ability to change the fonts displayed on your profile. It’s a good way to show some uniqueness for your branding, but don’t overdo it.

Planning Out Post Layouts

 

Having a clean grid of photos when someone lands on your Instagram profile can create a positive impression for your brand. However, it may not be easy to see how your posts would look as a whole. There are a number of apps that help you visualize and plan your posts out.

Add a Clickable Link in IGTV Post Descriptions

 
Links saved in IGTV video descriptions are now clickable. You don’t need a certain amount of followers as it works for all users. The only drawback is that viewers need to expand the description box by clicking on it to see the link.
 

Post IGTV Preview in Your Feed

 
If you want to post videos over 60 seconds, use IGTV and post a preview to your Instagram Feed. Don’t forget you can link people to your IGTV videos in Stories, even if you don’t have 10k followers.

As of right now, you can’t use IGTV posts or previews in Instagram Ad campaigns.
 

IGTV Supports Landscape / Widescreen Video

You can now upload videos that don’t take up the full screen vertically. If you upload a typical landscape 16:9 video, you can tap the square corner icon on the bottom right corner in IGTV to change the screen orientation to widescreen. Before this change, your IGTV video had to be shot or rendered at 9:16 vertical video to fill the screen.

Read more about this update here.
 

Repost Other People’s Content in Your Newsfeed

 
Instagram does not have a native share function that allows you to post someone else’s content to your own feed. There are a few apps that allow you to do this, but the one I have used is Repost app.
 

Share Posts into Your IG Stories

 
Instagram algorithms dictate what people see in the feed based on a number of variables. One of them is engagement. This means not everyone will see what you’ve posted. A way to drive extra views on a new post is to share it to your Stories. What people will commonly do is find a way to tease or entice people to click the post to create some urgency to see it.

This is great for sharing other people’s posts you like into your own Stories. I like to think this is Instagram’s way of allowing users to share other content and posts.

Here’s how to do it: Click on the arrow button underneath the photo or video, next to the like and comment button. It will ask you if you want to share to your stories or share it with other users. If you share it your Stories, you can add text and stickers before posting. Anyone that clicks on the post in Stories will be taken to the post.

Upload Multiple Stories at Once

 
If you’re posting multiple Stories to Instagram, you can load up to 10 photos or 15-second video clips at once so you can edit and publish in bulk. You can edit each Story one at a time.

Here’s how to do it: From your Stories camera screen, swipe up to show your photos and videos from your camera roll. Click the multiple image icon in the upper right hand corner first, then select the clips.

Note that if you select a video clip longer than 15 seconds in this mode, it won’t automatically split them like it normally would if you didn’t use this feature. Hopefully, this may change in the future. In the meantime, the workaround is to load a longer video clip up to a minute into Stories, then download each individual 15-second clip.
 

Hide Posts Without Deleting Them / Archive Old Posts

 
Once you post something, you don’t have to delete it if you don’t want it to be visible in your profile. You have the ability to archive posts so you still have access, and even bring it back another time. For musicians, I like to hide flyers after an event is over. Having a bunch of flyer posts on your Instagram profile is not attractive so this is a good way to hide them.

To archive, click on the ‘…’ in the upper right-hand corner of your post and select ‘Archive’ to hide it from your profile.

To view all your archived posts, click on the 3 line icon in the top right-hand corner of your Instagram profile and select ‘Archive’. By default, it should show you archived Stories. Click the word ‘Archive’ in the top middle, then select ‘Posts’ to see archived posts.
 

Control Photos and Videos You’re Tagged In

 
There’s actually an entire section on your profile that shows content that others posted and tagged you in. Swipe left twice on a profile page to see.

By default, it’s set to ‘Add Automatically’. Some people may not always like what they are tagged in so you can actually approve anything before it displays in this section.

To do this, go to your ‘Settings -> Privacy -> Tags -> Toggle ‘Add Automatically’ off. Below this option, you can manually select individual photos or videos to hide in the tagged section of your profile.

When someone tags you, you’ll get a notification. Go to the post you were tagged in and click your username tag in the post itself. You can also click the top ‘…’ in the upper right-hand corner of the post and select ‘Post Options’ to add to your profile.
 

Disable Activity Status on Instagram

 
By default, if you’re using the Instagram app, others will see ‘active now’ under your name on the direct messaging page of the app. If you’re away, it will display when you were last on Instagram. It’s a convenient way to know who’s active on the Instagram app so you can reach out to them with a direct message if you need it.

Some people don’t want others to know this, so you can easily turn it off. If you switch this off, it means you can’t see anyone else’s activity status.

Settings -> Privacy -> Activity Status -> Show Activity Status

You don’t have to worry about the public or any of your followers seeing this unless you’ve accepted their message request in the ‘Message Requests’ tab. Otherwise, people who you follow that you follow you back will see this.
 

Quick Tips

• Carousel Posts: Creating a carousel post (where you can post up to 10 photos and videos in a single post) is a great way to get engagement. The reason why is because Instagram will automatically show different photos and videos in your follower’s newsfeed if they don’t engage with it the first time. I’ve seen this myself a number of times where I would scroll past someone’s carousel post, then another photo/video in that same post will pop into my newsfeed later.
• IG Live Notifications: Whenever you go live with IG Live, all your followers will get a notification by default (unless they turned them off). If you hop on someone else’s IG Live as a guest, your followers will also get notifications. This makes IG Live an effective tool to get people attention and cross-promote audiences without having to worry about their algorithms.
• IG Live to IGTV: You can now post your IG Live videos directly to IGTV so people can re-watch anytime. Be sure to share the IGTV video to your Stories after your livestream is done to get more views.

The post Instagram for Musicians: Tips, Tricks, Tools and Tactics You Might Not Know appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

According to a Nielsen study commissioned by Instagram from 2016:

• IG users spend 30% more time listening to music on a weekly basis in comparison to the general U.S. population, and they’re more likely to be listening to pop, hip-hop/rap and R&B.
• Instagram users are 42% more likely to spend money on music during the year, in comparison to the general population’s annual music spending habits.
• 90% of Instagram Users Stream Music, compared to 76% of the general population.

While it’s easy to get caught up in wanting more followers, I think it’s worth pointing out that there may be reasons why people may not follow you in the first place.

If you’re having trouble getting more followers, here are the 10 most common reasons why people aren’t following you.
 

1) You have an incomplete profile.

 
I want to start with this because it’s the easiest thing you can take action on. Every space you can control on your profile is a chance to convince someone to follow you. If you’re missing a bio or not writing something useful (which is what I usually see), that’s 150 characters you’re not using optimally.

It’s all about first impressions. If someone lands on your profile, chances are they’re going to see your name, profile image and your bio first. Make sure to maximize this opportunity.

If music is something you want to do professionally, you want people to take you seriously. You need to be able to communicate why you’re someone they need to follow. An incomplete profile is not a good way to convince people to follow you.

2) Not focusing on branding.

 
If you haven’t thought about branding, that’s a big mistake. Although it’s great to share your music, provide updates and engage with fans, you want to be able to use your Instagram account as a tool to define and develop your brand. The two key ways this is done is through your bio and the things you post.

The problem is many artists don’t invest time to incorporate their brand in their profile as a way to stand out.

Your profile bio is an opportunity to communicate what you’re all about as simply and clearly as possible. You don’t need to get too elaborate, just be straight forward. I’m sure you’ve seen people list points about who they are using emojis. If you clearly state who you are and define aspects of your brand, it’s easier for people to decide if you’re who they want to follow. Look the following as an example:

Here’s an example of an optimized Instagram profile from Butterscotch.

Outside of the bio, you have a few design elements you can control and customize on your Instagram profile:

• How your photos and videos are displayed in the profile grid and the Instagram Highlights circles above it.
• Create a consistent feel and theme with your posts. One way is to use photo filters on all your posts to give it that consistency.
• If you have Instagram Highlights, optimize the cover photos on them so they match your branding.

3) Your content sucks.

 
Posting photos and videos are the lifeblood of an Instagram account. Unfortunately, content creation can be difficult to do. Some people really have trouble knowing what to post. If you don’t have or show promise of good content, there’s no real reason to follow you if you’re still building your brand.

One of the big reasons why your content is not attracting followers may be because you’re not thinking about how your posts look in your profile. A common thing I see a lot is too many promotional posts (like flyers and repetitive cover photos). If you don’t have some strategy in mind, it’s going to look like a mess.

Another common reason it may be unappealing is that you’re not providing value. Content often is meant to achieve certain goals through your posts – education, entertainment, inspiration, perspective, informing, personality or connection. If this is lacking, it’s going to be harder to get followers.
 

4) You post poor quality content.

 
Instagram is a visual platform. When people are scrolling through their feed, you want people to stop and pay attention to your post. Of course, no one expects everyone to have the most professional photos or videos. But if you’re photos are blurry, out of focus, too dark or overexposed, your content becomes very unattractive in the feed.

Now, you don’t need to be a visual expert, but you want to be viewed as a professional musician. Often times, poor quality visuals communicate amateur.

Even though as the artist, you will have others capturing content for you, you need to have some base understanding of what is good and not good for your image. Read up on photography basics so you have certain standards and criteria when you have others doing it for you. The photo and video quality of the average smartphone can be really good for most of your social media needs as long as you know the basics. However, it would be wise to invest in paying others to capture high-quality content for you.
 

5) Not using hashtags or using too many hashtags.

 
Hashtags are essential for your posts and account to be discovered on Instagram. If you’re not getting followers, it may be because you have no way for people to find what you have to offer.

Not only does it help when people browse specific hashtags, but they can also be useful in helping you get exposure on the Explore tab of Instagram.

Even though your limit is 30 hashtags per post, you only need to focus on the highly relevant ones. Don’t just use the broadest and popular hashtags!

The other problem is posting too many hashtags or hashtag stuffing. Not only does it look messy and unprofessional, but you also risk getting shadowbanned.

Although shadowbanning is not confirmed, there has been suspicion by many in the online marketing community of such a thing where Instagram makes your post less visible without letting you know if it suspects you of spamming through excessive use of hashtags. The general consensus is to change up different combinations of hashtags in each post. If you haven’t been getting followers organically through hashtags, you may want to see if you’ve been shadowbanned.

6) You underestimate the importance of a caption.

 
When you post something without a caption, it looks and feels very weird. You rarely ever see it so it looks very out of place. If you post a lot without captions or even just a couple of words, it shows that you’re lazy or don’t care.

At the very least, you should at least write something relevant to what you’re posting. A good caption doesn’t have to be long. Sometimes it makes sense to only use a few words. Incorporating longer captions or long-form posts are great too if that’s something you’ve tested to work.

The idea is you want to provide context around what you’re posting. Use it as an opportunity to tell a story, document your journey as an artist, show your personality, inspire others or provide insight. Your photo/video work goes hand in hand with your caption. They compliment each other.

I find that writing a caption can be time-consuming so plan ahead.
 

7) You don’t respond or engage.

 
The last thing you want your social media accounts to be is a one-way broadcasting tool. Accounts that do this are not attractive to follow.

Earlier on in your career, you should respond and interact with as many people who comment or message you. Not just on your own posts, but other people’s content as well. The power of social media is in two-way interactions and being personable.

You don’t have to be friends with all your fans, but you want to build relationships and show that you’re a real person. When potential new followers see that you’re active, it makes it more inviting to click ‘Follow.’

As you become more established, you’re less expected to interact as you become busier. However, you still want to show that you’re active and that you care about your fans.

It’s also in your best interest for visibility to engage with the way the Instagram algorithm work. Engagement on your posts helps to signal that your post is good and should be displayed to more of your followers.
 

8) You follow way too many people.

 
Having a lot of followers gives the perception that you are socially validated by others. On the other hand, when you follow a lot of people that are very disproportionate to the number of people who follow you, that gives off a bad impression.

If you have 500 followers and you follow 5,000 or the maximum of 7,500 (done over a long period of time because Instagram does have hourly limits to fight against spam), it looks suspect and desperate. It looks like you’re a spammer or a bot.

If your strategy to gain more followers is to follow as many people as you possibly can to see who follows you back, you may be more of an annoyance and people won’t want to follow you.
 

9) You’re not posting regularly.

 
People generally like to follow accounts that are active. If your last post is months old and possibly weeks apart from the last thing you posted, then that’s not a good sign to show that you’re active. This is not to say you should post a bunch of random things every single day. You should always prioritize quality over quantity, but take the time to plan and strategize.
 

10) No Patience.

 
Lastly, building a following is not easy work regardless of where its at. In our fast-paced, instant gratification society, we want success to happen quickly. When we become impatient, it can get us to make poor decisions like spamming people or even buying fake followers.

It’s crucial to understand that people generally want to follow accounts that they see potential value in. Building value for yourself as an artist and brand is going to naturally take time so that’s why patience is key.

In my next blog on Instagram, I will talk about the right way to get more followers.

The post Instagram for Musicians: 10 Reasons Why People Aren’t Following You appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Having a large fan base may help you sleep better at night as you anticipate your fans turning into buying machines. But before you purchase a money counting machine, stop, and think: how many are actually your true fans?

Just as important is the question, how can you tell if they are loyal fans that can support you financially for the long haul?

After all, there’s such an oversaturation of good music and entertainment out there, it’s difficult to keep a person’s attention for a long time. Just because someone hits the like or follow button, it doesn’t mean they are a fan for life. You have to know how to follow up on the relationship to keep it going.

You may be wondering, if likes, followers and subscribers are not the focus, how can you quantify your fans’ dedication?

Engagement.
 

The Importance of Engagement

 
This is probably not the first time you’ve heard this term and there’s a good reason for that. Your success as an artist is going to be dependent on how well you can keep an audience engaged online as well as in person.

Your fan base is a long-term commitment. It’s the same reason an artist who barely gives half an effort, won’t make it big. There’s a lot of patience and perseverance involved in building and more importantly, maintaining an interactive fan base.

You can fake how many social media followers you have, but you can’t fake the engagement levels. I know it’s easy to get caught up in the vanity metrics of how many people you have following you on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Even bookers and talent buyers have caught on. They know better than to just look at the social media following of an artist or brand when determining their ability to draw a crowd.

While growing an audience is important, it is not the be-all end-all number you need to focus on as a musician.

Engaging with your fans is about getting them to interact with you and deepening your connection with them. Your brand – what you stand for; your reputation; what makes you special – matters most because it’s how people will decide if you are worth their time and if they should put forth the effort to connect with you. A lackluster or muddled brand may not build the emotional connection that is needed to keep their attention.

Since most of you are not marketers or have any desire to be one (thanks for the job security), I will briefly go over how you can gauge your audience’s engagement. Don’t worry, I will keep the math very minimal.
 

Facebook

 
Facebook provides a metric they calculate and update on every Facebook Business page called “People Talking About This” that indicates the level of engagement for that page. It takes into consideration various interactions such as likes, shares and comments during a 7 day period.

You can see this number on any Facebook Business page, even those that you don’t manage or have liked.

To see this number, click on the ‘Likes’ tab in the left-hand column on the ‘Home’ tab of a Facebook page. You can also click on the actual number of likes on the right side of the page. As far as I am aware, you can only see this on desktop and not a mobile device.

Once you have this number, divide it by the number of Facebook page likes and multiply by 100 to get the engagement rate. The formula looks like this:

(People Talking About This / Total Facebook Page Likes) x 100 = Engagement Rate %

I consider 1% to 2% pretty damn good.

To put your engagement rate into perspective, let’s look at one of the hottest rappers in the game right now, Chance the Rapper.

People Talking About This: 100,722
Total Facebook Page Likes: 1,294,739

(100,722 / 1,294,739) x 100 = 7.9 %

He’s at a 7.9% engagement rate!

Obviously, with his popularity, he’s going to have a higher engagement percentage than most indie artists. If you haven’t already done so, go to your Facebook page and calculate your engagement rate to see where you stand.
 

Instagram

 
Unfortunately, there’s no easy number to look up on Instagram like there is for Facebook. However, if you converted your Instagram account into a business account by linking it to your Facebook page, you will get access to some analytics, or ‘insights’ as it’s called on Facebook and Instagram. Unlike Facebook, these engagement numbers are only viewable if you have access to the account.

To access the insights dashboard, click on the graph icon in the top right-hand corner of your profile page. From here you can access some useful information about your followers, impressions, top posts and ideal post times.

 
To view the insights for an individual post, click on ‘View Insights’ below the picture or video. Keep in mind this only works if a post was created after converting your Instagram account to a business account.

Once you click, you’ll see 3 numbers:
Impressions: the total number of times your post has been seen.
Reach: the number of unique accounts that have seen your post.
Engagements: the number of likes and comments on a post.

To calculate the engagement rate for this post:

(Engagements / Total Reach) x 100 = Engagement Rate %

What’s a good engagement rate for Instagram? Out of these 3 social media platforms, Instagram tends to see higher engagement rates on average than Facebook and Twitter. Back in 2014, Social Bakers released some data that found the average post engagement for the top 25 brands they tracked on Instagram was 3.31%. I would use 3% as a good benchmark to measure your engagement rate. However, Instagram has gone through some changes that caused engagement rates to decrease since then.
 

Twitter

 
Just like with Instagram, Twitter does not provide engagement rates that the public can view. However, you can see your average engagement rate for the past 28 days in the ‘analytics’ dashboard.

To access Twitter analytics, click on your profile image in the upper right hand corner. In the drop-down menu, select ‘Analytics.’

 
From here, click on the ‘Tweets’ tab up top to show the performance numbers for your previous tweets. There should be a column labeled ‘Engagement Rate’ that calculates the percentage for each individual Tweet. Also, next to it is your overall engagement rate for the past 28 days.

What’s a good engagement rate for Twitter? In 2014, according to Social Bakers, the average Twitter engagement for the top 25 brands they tracked came in at about .0007 or .07% for a Tweet. For simplicity sake, let’s say 1% is considered good.
 

Conclusion

 
Using these engagement numbers will help you determine the health of your audience based on their interactions with you. It may not be realistic for you to constantly track these numbers, but I suggest auditing yourself every few months to see how you are doing. Record the numbers you are using to calculate your engagement percentage so that you know if you are improving week over week or month over month.

At the end of the day, no matter how many social media followers you have, if they’re not engaged or paying attention to you, then the audience is not doing much for your career.

The post Stop obsessing over social media follower numbers! Focus on this instead appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Yes, I’m a big Snapchat fan. It’s fun to see personal, in-the-moment peeks into the lives of my favorite artists and celebrities. Personally, I think it’s a great tool for indie artists looking to engage their fans in a more raw and intimate platform. However, it’s not for everyone. Maybe you think Snapchat is a fad and not worth investing your time in as an independent artist. Now that Instagram has one of the core features of Snapchat, maybe you are considering trying it out. The goal of this blog is help you decide which platform is ideal for you moving forward.
 

Brief History

 
Before jumping in, I always feel context is important. These platforms have some history that explains this tech beef that’s been going on. Here are a couple points you should know:

Facebook tried to buy Snapchat

In case you didn’t know, Facebook (who owns Instagram) tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion dollars in 2013. As I write this in 2016, Snapchat is valued between $18 to $22 billion. Ever since Facebook failed to buy them, they tried to imitate Snapchat in different ways that did not work out. Facebook even created their own version of Stories but decided not to release it. Instead, they let Instagram take the first big blow against Snapchat.

Snapchat is currently the fastest growing social media platform

Snapchat’s growth has been impressive. According to a study by Infinite Dial, Snapchat usage in the last year (2015 to 2016) went from 17% to 23%. To put into perspective, Twitter use grew from 15% in 2013 to 21% in 2016.

Despite being more popular for teens and millennials, there’s no denying the power of Snapchat. As a brand, it offers a unique experience that other social media platforms out there didn’t offer. Snapchat is now used more frequently (8%) than Twitter (5%) and Pinterest (4%), which have been around much longer.

When comparing time spent on each app, the average Snapchat user spends 25 – 30 minutes a day on the app. On the other hand, the average Instagram user spends 21 minutes.

Make no mistake, Instagram is the other hot social media platform boasting 500 million monthly active users. Its usage has grown from 19% to 29% between 2014 – 2016. Snapchat and Instagram fight over a similar core user base (ages 16 – 24), with Instagram having an edge on the older end of millennials (ages 24 – 34), so it’s no wonder they are in competition with each other.
 

Why would Instagram copy Snapchat’s core feature?

 
As I’ve mentioned, Snapchat has picked up a lot of momentum this past year and is looking to take the next step for mainstream appeal. It’s working to expand outside its core user base of users ages 18 – 24 to include members in the 24 to 34 group. From this perspective, you can see this copycat move is a well-timed attempt by Instagram to steal some thunder and try to slow Snapchat’s growth.

The large appeal for Snapchat has been its ephemeral posts that you can only see once when sent privately and lasts for 24 hours when posted in your story feed. As indie artists, this gives you the opportunity to create and share stories that use a strong psychological trigger called FOMO (or fear of missing out) for fans to see your content. Fans will feel a sense of urgency to watch your Snapchat stories, assuming you are putting together cool content that appeals to them. With Instagram Stories in the mix, artists can now take advantage of this same benefit on a platform you may already be comfortable using and have a strong following on.

According to Instagram, one of reasons why they decided to mimic Snapchat was due to performance anxiety. Platforms that have public timelines and visible engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares) create a performance anxiety for certain users. There are people out there, especially the younger age groups, that will delete posts if they do not get enough engagement within the first several minutes of posting them. By addressing this issue with Stories, Instagram felt it will encourage users to share more content when they don’t have to worry about what others think. Content that disappears in a short amount of time create less pressure for people who are self-conscious about the likes, comments or shares their posts receives.
 

Differences between Snapchat and Instagram Stories

 
Before laying out the differences, here’s how both features are similar. They operate in the same basic way with 10 second video clips or photos strung together like a slideshow. (Update: Instagram Stories allows you to record up to 15 seconds each clip as opposed to Snapchat’s 10 seconds.) Stories only last for 24 hours once they are posted, but you can always save them to your phone. You have the ability to see how many people have viewed your stories, but that number is not publicly displayed.

Here’s how they differ. Although Instagram Stories is a direct rip off of Snapchat’s core feature, it’s still bare in terms of options. Snapchat is known for the unique (possibly annoying for some) features like lenses (face filters), geo filters and stickers. The combination of these things give you a variety of ways to be creative with your storytelling. On the other hand, Instagram Stories gives you a small selection of color filters to change the look of the video or photo. You can also overlay text and draw in different brushes.

A recent added feature on Snapchat, called “Memories,” allows you to add saved content from your phone and insert them into your story. This is something Instagram doesn’t do.

In terms of usability, Snapchat is a bit less user-friendly and less intuitive to navigate. Instagram still has the upper hand in this respect. Chances are you should have an Instagram account already so you’ll learn how to use Instagram Stories pretty easily, especially if you have experience with Snapchat. To post a story, you just swipe right on the home screen of the app to pull up the camera to capture a video or photo story. Stories from everyone you follow are posted as circles on the top of your news feed. You can also go to an individual profile and click their profile image to view their stories. Anyone can view your Stories on Instagram (as long as it’s not private) even if they do not follow you.
 

The big advantage Instagram has over Snapchat

 
As an artist, this is what you probably will care about the most. One of Snapchat’s biggest limitations has to do how people can find you within the platform. Currently, there’s no easy way for someone to search or find you in the app. If you search for a celebrity, it will list the user as an “Official Story” to show it’s an official account. Otherwise, someone will just have to hope your artist or band name is the same as your Snapchat user name.

Because of the lack of a discovery feature, it’s harder to build a Snapchat following without having an audience following you on another platform. One way you can build your Snapchat audience is to cross promote on other channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even your website. However, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have announced that they do not want you to promote their competitors and have set policies against it.

With that said, Instagram has an advantage because you should already have an audience that can see your stories. Even non-followers can see them. As an artist, you can now reap the benefits of this engaging feature on a platform that allows you to be more accessible and easily found.
 

So which one should you use?

 
Depends. It really comes down to what your current goals and priorities are as an artist or musician. Remember that the true power of social media in general is in nurturing the relationships with your fan base by being authentic and personable. In my opinion, this is where Snapchat excels at. But as a more private and intimate community, it’s not as easy for new fans to find and follow you. Snapchat helps to deepen your connections with fan to build loyalty but it does not widen your audience.

If you already have a strong Snapchat following, I see no reason for you to invest too much time in Instagram Stories. This applies for a small minority, as it’s generally harder to build a Snapchat following without a large audience on other social media platforms to cross promote on.

If you do not have a strong Snapchat following,you should try to give Instagram Stories a shot. There’s no harm in testing, especially when you should already have an audience on Instagram. If you’ve never used Snapchat before, I definitely encourage you to try out Instagram Stories to at least get a feel for this popular feature. Not sure what to post? Try observing and seeing what others are doing first.

If you’re still trying to grow an audience and fan base, your priorities should be on other platforms like Instagram. Instagram Stories allows you to reach a larger audience on a platform that makes it easier to find you.

Lastly, here’s an interesting stat to keep in mind. Snapchat users (ages 13 – 24) were asked early in 2016 which social media platform they follow the most celebrities on. Here were the results:

1. Instagram (25%)
2. Twitter (23%)
3. Facebook (19%)
4. YouTube (12%)
5. Snapchat (10%)

I’m sure most of you reading this would not identity as a celebrity, but it’s a close enough category right? Instagram is already a strong platform for indie artists so the introduction of Stories can strengthen this bond.
 

Conclusion

 
It’s still early so we’ll have to wait and see how people respond to Instagram Stories. I’ve been watching Instagram Stories closely on my personal account to see if artists, celebrities and personalities are using it. There’s one particular artist I know who made a Snapchat account months ago but never used it. I see now he’s using Instagram Stories. Could that mean something?

We’ll have to see how Snapchat responds to this news. The biggest knock on Snapchat has been the limited ability for users to find and discover new accounts to follow built into the app. It’s possible that fixing this will be their next move.

Maybe there is more up Instagram’s sleeve, so let’s see what happens.
 

My Question for You

 
Which of the two are you currently using? Which do you like better, Instragram Stories or Snapchat?

The post Which is better for Indie Artists, Instagram Stories or Snapchat? appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

As you would imagine, this creates a lot of pressure for independent artists to bump up those like and follow numbers to influence a favorable perception. After all, you want people to have a good impression when they land on your Facebook or Instagram accounts.

Especially when starting out as an indie artist, I know it can be very tempting to boost your social media numbers when it can cost as little as $5 on some third party websites. With it being such a huge business, buying fake followers for your social media is more accessible and easier than ever. Even for those who have been in the independent game for years, the thought may have crossed your mind at one point. It’s frustrating to not see your fan base grow at the pace you hoped for. As a last resort, fake followers feel like it can help get you over the hump.

As someone who has seen a client get caught for purchasing fake social media followers and have it blasted over the local news, DON’T DO IT! Why? Buying fake fans does more harm than good and the gamble is never worth the risk.

Please note: There are legitimate ways to pay money to increase fans and followers within the platform itself, but I’m referring to using shady third party sites and services.
 

My experience with fake social media followers

 
Although I won’t say any names, let’s just say a high profile client (not music related) I have worked with in the past was busted and ridiculed for purchasing fake social media fans. To be clear, it was not my idea nor would I ever support such a thing, but it was done without me knowing.

I wish I could dive into all the details because it was interesting to see the fall-out from behind the scenes. Not to mention seeing all the damage control that this organization had to do was quite amusing. How bad did it get?

It was a disaster. The integrity, trust and credibility of the organization were heavily scrutinized, which gave the competition a huge leg up. Yes, it even was discussed in the local news for a couple of weeks while they become a joke on social media. In addition to the mockery, it also racked up some big costs for reputation management. As you could imagine, what this organization hoped to accomplish did not succeed.

Here are the 4 reasons why buying fake fans and followers is not a good idea:
 

1. You will lose trust and credibility if you get caught

 
“Your music sucks so bad that you have to pay bots to like your songs?”

That’s the type of stuff you’ll read if you were to ever get caught faking the funk. Of course, this assumes you have a reputation in the first place for people to even want to make it a big deal. The more established you are, the bigger the risk and more fuel for the haters. Most likely, it won’t be as extreme as my example but still. It’s not like there’s a public wall of shame for people who got caught buying followers that get publicized for the world to see.

On the other hand, it would be an embarrassing situation to be in for your current fans. It could lead them to question other things about you. Did he really write that song? Is that really her singing? No matter how you slice it, buying fake fans shows how insecure, impatient and impressionable you are as an artist.

Just remember that being authentic is huge in a culture driven by superficiality. To me, authenticity is such an important branding element that you do not want to risk compromising.
 

2. You will dilute the reach and engagement rates of your social following

 
The more technical reason why you don’t want phony fans is it just fills up space but does not do anything. Well, what it does end up doing is diluting your reach and engagement rates.

What more and more people are starting to learn is that there are algorithms in place that determine who sees your posts in their newsfeed. Facebook use to be the most well known for it as it’s been going on for years now, but Instagram and Twitter have adopted some form of it more recently. For example, if you post something on Facebook, only 1% – 2% of your fans will see your post organically. With fake accounts liking your page, you make it harder to reach actual people who like your music.

The other side of it is the lack of engagement. The most important thing you want to gain out of social media fans is to have them engage and interact with your posts. Engagement is what helps to make social media followers convert into loyal fans who will buy your stuff. The way I see, it’s one of the major keys to building your brand and developing connections with your audience. If you buy a lot of fake fans, you get no interaction from them, which throws off your engagement rates.
 

3. You will probably lose them anyway

 
Social media channels are constantly cracking down and purging fake followers from flooding their platforms. These fake accounts that are being created to inflate a person’s follower numbers are done in ways that violate the terms of services for their respective channels.

Most importantly, it’s in their best interest to get rid of fake accounts to preserve the accuracy of their data and the integrity of the platform. Remember that social media platforms are businesses too that make money off advertising. It doesn’t instill confidence for other businesses to pay money to use their ad platform if it’s reaching bots and not paying human beings.

When Instagram did a fake account purge, Justin Bieber made headlines for losing 3.5 million “fans” the following day. Other artists and accounts suffered hits too. This is not to say that all these people purchased fake fans, but it shows that these social media channels are proactive about the problem.

You may argue that these fake likes don’t cost much so it’s not a big loss even if Facebook or Instagram got rid of them. But it still damages your brand integrity and makes your fans suspicious of your intentions.
 

4. It’s easy to be found out

 
As suave as you try to be, you’re not fooling anyone. The thought of buying a few hundred, or even a thousand, social media “fans” feels reasonably low enough to not raise any suspicion. After all, I can’t imagine a no-name artist buying millions of followers and thinking they can get away with it. The outcome from either option will still leave a lack of engagement, or sign of actual human life, on your social media channels. When you have an ungodly amount of followers, people will notice and think either:

1. You have fake accounts following you to give the appearance of popularity where there really isn’t any.
2. Either your music or social media skills suck so bad that no one cares enough to interact with you.

Either way, people are not leaving with a good impression.

It’s so much easier to find out now if someone has fake fans with some tools and a little investigating. You just have to ask yourself, is your reputation and integrity worth all the trouble?

I’ll show you how you can go about detecting fake followers. You can look at it two ways. First, you’ll see how easy it is and it will discourage you from doing it. Second, you’ll see how someone can tell if you have fake followers to see if you can get away with it. It’s your career, not mine so do what you please, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!
 

How to Find Fake Followers

 
Now that you know why you shouldn’t buy fake fans and followers on social media, here’s how you can detect them. I’ll go over how to do this with the following 3 platforms.

As I mentioned, it’s all about engagement. One way to tell is to see how many fans or followers they have on that particular platform and see if that number matches up with how much engagement their posts are getting. The one thing bots and fake accounts can’t do is engage. So if someone has 10,000 fans and the last comment they got was from 4 months ago, you can make a good bet that a lot of these followers are fakes.

Keep in mind that every account is going to have some small percentage of fake spam accounts, but it does not mean they purchased fake likes or followers.

Facebook

There aren’t any tools out there as far as I am aware that will automatically detect the number of fake accounts on your Facebook page. However, you can inspect one area on someone’s Facebook page that can give you clues about the legitimacy of the audience.

On the artist’s or band’s Facebook page, there are two sections you can click to lead you to analyze their likes and engagement. (See Photo Below) You don’t need to “like” their page to see these numbers, nor do you need a Facebook account to see it. If I come across an artist page that bought fake likes, I’ll be sure to use it. In the meantime, I’ll use my favorite group Atmosphere to show what to look for.

Please note: I’m not implying that they bought fake fans. I’m only using them as an example of where to click to examine their likes.

Once you click on either link outlined above, you’ll see these two sections that are potential signs of buying fake likes:

You use to be able to examine who has liked the page to see who was following the account but it looks like that was removed. However, you can do that with Twitter and Instagram.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the easiest platforms to detect if an account has a lot of fake followers.

These tools make it easier to identify fake and inactive accounts. Try them out for yourself:

You can also manually click on their Followers list and examine who’s following them. Here’s a list of what you can look for determine which profiles are fake:

• Spammy names, Twitter handles or profile pics
• The account only has retweets, no original tweets of their own.
• The number of people they are following is disproportionately higher than the number of people following them.
• “Egg” profiles that look like brand new accounts with no profile or cover photos.
• Fake accounts are always going to be bought in bulk so you’ll see similarities in how they are created that give it away.

Here’s an example of a Fake Twitter account:

This fake account was found on this person’s followers list. Tell me if you notice anything suspicious about all his other followers: https://twitter.com/AsherOakthorn/followers

Instagram

You can follow the same strategies from Twitter on Instagram. It’s not as easy to look through someone’s followers, but there are some tools you can use.

IG Audit (FREE): https://igaudit.io/ (This tool has discontinued unfortunately…)
 

These are paid:

https://hypeauditor.com
https://www.fakecheck.co
https://fakelikes.info

Just keep in mind that these tools are not going to be 100% accurate. I’ve tested a few accounts that don’t buy followers and gotten scores over 70%. Some accounts that I’ve suspected to contain fake followers that were bought scored below 50%. Examining engagement trends is going to be big sign.
 

Conclusion

 
If there are any numbers you should really focus on, it isn’t your social media fans. I know, I get it. The numbers make you feel more validated.

It’s easy for someone who may be a casual listener to just like you on your Facebook or Soundcloud account, which is fine. But don’t assume that all fans are the same or equally valuable. Your social media accounts should not be used to determine the number of your true loyal fans. Social media is more about nurturing your fan relationships so you can potentially convert those casual listeners to becoming the life-long fans you need to sustain a career in music.

What you should really focus on is building up the numbers of email subscribers. It’s not as easy, but to me, that’s a better measure of your loyal fans that are more likely to buy from you and see your shows. Those numbers aren’t going to be sexy. because no one else will see them but you.

In a future blog, I will share what are the best strategies to build up your social media numbers organically so stay tuned!

The post 4 Reasons Why Not to Buy Fake Fans and How to Spot them appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

As an independent artist, you put so much time, money and effort into your art and the content you create to promote it. Naturally, you want every post to have as much reach and engagement as it possibly can, regardless of the platform. The hope is that there’s a magic time that we can all just aim for and not have to worry if people will see it. Unfortunately, with how the algorithms work on social media platforms these days, it’s providing to be more challenging then ever.

So what are the best times and days to post on social media to maximize your post potential?

BUT…

There are recommended days and times that top marketing experts have found through research and analysis. The best times I put together below account for all industries, not specifically for musicians and artists. The most recent research that I use below comes from social media management platform Hootsuite. They analyzed thousands of social media posts on all the major social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter) to come up with these conclusions.

Keep in mind: The drawback to posting at these “best times” is that other people, who share this knowledge, are doing the same thing. This means there’s increased competition for attention in the news feed, which can decrease your post’s chances of getting noticed.

Here are some ideal times and days to test out for each platform. Even though it says PST (Pacific Standard Time), use your time zone or even more importantly, the time zone of your audience.
 

Instagram

 
New for 2023:

• Monday: 9am PST *
• Tuesday: 9am PST
• Wednesday: 9am PST
• Thursday: 8am PST *
• Friday: 9am PST
• Saturday: 10am PST
• Sunday: 10am PST

* Best for the week

Previous best times: 8:00am – 9:00am and 5:00pm – 6:00pm

Previous best times on each day:

• Sunday at 5:00pm
• Monday at 7:00pm (Worst day of the week)
• Tuesday at 10:00pm
• Wednesday at 5:00pm (Best day of the week)
• Thursday at 7:00am and 11:00pm
• Friday at 1:00am and 8:00pm
• Saturday at 12am, 2am

TikTok

• Monday: 1pm PST
• Tuesday: 2pm PST
• Wednesday: 1pm PST
• Thursday: 7pm PST *
• Friday: 2pm PST
• Saturday: 9am PST *
• Sunday: 1pm PST *

* Best for the week
 

Facebook

 
New for 2023:

• Monday: 10am PST *
• Tuesday: 10am PST *
• Wednesday: 10am PST
• Thursday: 11am PST
• Friday: 11am PST
• Saturday: 8am PST
• Sunday: 10am PST

* Best for the week

Previous best days and times:

• Best days and times: Mon to Fri at 1:00pm – 4:00pm
• Traffic generally builds up: 9:00am until lunch
• Top day and time: Wednesday at 3pm
• Worst times: 8:00pm – 8:00am
• Saturday & Sunday best times: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Twitter

 
New for 2023:

• Monday: 7am PST
• Tuesday: 7am PST
• Wednesday: 10am PST
• Thursday: 11am PST *
• Friday: 9am PST *
• Saturday: 9am PST
• Sunday: 9am PST

* Best for the week

Previous best days and times:

• Best days and times: Mon to Fri at 12:00pm – 3:00pm
• Best general times: 12:00pm – 1:00pm and at 6:00pm
• Traffic generally builds up: After 11:00am
• Traffic generally fades: After 3pm
• Top day and time: Wednesday 5:00pm – 6:00pm
• Most popular time: 12:00pm – 1:00 pm
• Highest tweet volume: Between 11:00am – 1:00pm
• Fewest tweets sent: Between 3:00am – 4:00am
• Worst times to tweet: 8:00pm – 9:00am
• Times to avoid: After 3:00pm on Friday

Alternative Strategy: Use these times as a guideline, not as law. Experiment with posting outside the “best times.” Generally, there are going to be two social media traffic rushes in a typical workday – the lunch rush and after-work rush. I would definitely encourage testing out the evenings after 8:00pm or even early mornings, like 7:00am. After all, people often check their social media accounts when they wake up as well as before before bed. For one artist I work with who is based in California and has a predominate fan base on the west side of the United States, we found good results with posting around 7pm on Monday through Thursday. Although there may be fewer people on, there is also less competition for attention and your post has a greater opportunity to gain momentum on Facebook or Instagram. In other words, don’t let the “best times” limit the possibilities.
 

Other Factors to Consider

 
If you want to get a more accurate estimate for your own specific audience, here’s the long answer.

The problem is there are a lot of variables that go into what makes a good social media post reach its full potential. When you post is only one variable in the equation.

Here’s a list of other factors that influence post reach and engagement:

• Type of post (image, text, video)
• The quality of the post (Does your content interest your audience)
• Platform you post on (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)
• What you write as a caption or tweet
• The day of the month or year (accounting for seasonality)
• When your competitors are posting. When I say competitors, I don’t mean just other music artists. Competition can be any other businesses, friends and family all fighting for your fans’ attention.
• Geography (Do you have fans in other time zones to account for?)
• The platform’s algorithm

I know we all want shortcuts to save time, but here’s the mindset you need to understand if you want to maximize your social media potential.

Every audience or fan base is going to be different no matter how similar the music or genre is. Of course, there is going to be overlap and patterns relating to geography, demographics and lifestyle. Start with the recommended times above but also think about who your fan base is and their lifestyle characteristics.

As an oversimplified example, if your fan base is high school kids in the same time zone, chances are you may want to post around 3:00pm when school gets out during the weekday.

If your fans tend to be working adults that work 9 – 5 jobs, you may want to test posting during lunchtime or in the evening after 6pm.

Ultimately, the best way to go about finding your best day and times for your audience is to experiment with different posting times each day and track the results. Use the analytics and insights these social media platforms offer to help you figure this out.
 

How to Find Best Posting Times Using Meta Business Suite

 
If you want to find the best days and times to post on Facebook and Instagram, you can use Meta Business Suite. They will provide the most active time for a particular day based on your audience activity. This is assuming you have a Meta Business Manager account linked to both your Facebook page and Instagram account. You’ll likely need to use a desktop to access this information as I have not been able to use their app due to an error.

1. Go into your Meta Business Suite account and create a post. Under ‘scheduling options’ right before you can post, select the ‘schedule’ tab and you should see a button that says ‘active times’.

2. Click the ‘active times’ button and a window will pop up to give you suggested days and times that your audience is most active for the platform you’re trying to post on. If you selected both Instagram and Facebook to post, it will show recommended times for both platforms.

How to interpret this:
At the very least, you want to use the active days/times they provide as a starting point for testing. Also, try posting an hour before or after the suggested active times to see what happens.
 

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