If you didn’t catch our first two articles on social media, you can find them using the links below. In Part 1, we covered the basics and where to start, which social media platforms to consider and more. Part 2 focuses on getting relevant followers and what makes good social media “good.”
Hope you enjoy!
“The Musician’s Image” is a series on successful musicianship that will consist of three subjects: social media, website and PR/Advertising. This is Part 3 out of 3 Parts covering Social Media.
Now that we’ve got a lot of the heavy lifting done in Part 2, we can focus on some of the other great opportunities and tools that social media provides us.
If there’s one thing that we’d like for you to take from this article it’s this: always put up the highest quality content that you can on social media! High quality content is rewarded with exposure and thus the opportunity to push your page further. Let’s talk about why.
The Algorithm
In social media, the algorithm refers to the way that your feed “behaves,” or how and when you see people’s posts when you’re on the site/app. Facebook and Instagram are usually at the center of this conversation, so let’s use them as an example.
Basically, they no longer show posts in chronological order; instead, they both feature algorithms that act in a sort of “recommended posts” type of way. Generally, posts that are receiving more attention in the form of likes, comments, shares and video views will be found closer to the top of your feed. They have said that they do this as a way to showcase more “quality” content to their users more often, and lends to an overall higher quality user experience. More engagement with a post signals that this post must be of high quality, so the algorithm will showcase that content to the poster’s followers more often and higher in their feeds.
With that said, you should be more focused on releasing “high quality” content than ever before. If you don’t get a lot of action, your exposure to your followers will go down and only make things worse. Make sure that you’re posting content that your followers will like and engage with – that’s the ticket to success!
Furthermore, you should know that the quicker you can get that attention, the better. It pays to have your team members, friends, or any other supporters go and show their support by liking, commenting and sharing your content as soon as you release it. You’ll get a bump in the algorithm, hopefully making your content get shown more often more quickly, leading to even more engagement.
Using Instagram’s Explore Page
Instagram has a phenomenal little feature called the Explore page. Everybody’s Explore page is different and unique to them. It is full of content that IG thinks you might be interested in based on what you choose to engage with, who you follow and what they engage with.
Primarily, Explore is made up of posts that the people that you follow have liked and commented on. This means two very important things to you.
- Explore gives you the opportunity to get in front of relevant people that don’t already follow you.
2. When your post is performing well on Explore, you get shown to more and more people that start the engagement and algorithm boost cycle over, which could cause your post to “go viral” in a small scale sense.
This should be a pretty big deal to you!
There is no way to put yourself on Explore – the only way to do it is for people to engage with your content and quickly. It works in tandem with the standard feed algorithm. If your post is deemed to be of high quality because lots of people engaged with it in a short amount of time, you’re much more likely to show up on people’s Explore. The idea is that those people who do have you pop up on their Explore are likely to be interested in you and your content, and thus can become followers, fans and even customers.
All you have to do is put up quality content. That’s the name of the game! The higher quality content you put up, the more likely people are to engage with it. The more people engage with it, the more you appear on non-followers’ Explore pages, and thus theoretically the more people follow you and engage further with you.
Video
Video is becoming the #1 most powerful format for any industry, and musicians are no exception. It’s much more engaging and entertaining than just photo or text, and it’s actually being pushed harder in front of your audience by social media platforms than photo or text due to their algorithms… that’s right: video will be shown to more people than other types of posts.
For the same reasons that more popular posts get pushed up in the algorithm, posts that utilize video are considered to be much more entertaining than posts without it. These platforms want their users to have a great experience using their platform, so they’re pushing video ahead. If you can get video on your social media, do it!
Do you need high quality content for your social media, website or PR? Access Media is your one-stop shop for video, photo and audio.
We know you have a budget to work within.
Our studio memberships can be just what you need. Memberships start out at only $180 per month!
You can receive up to 20 hours of studio time per month to come record your content with our staff using our equipment!
Learn more…
Social Media Ads
Facebook and Instagram ads are an excellent avenue for any artist. They’re very easy to use, they’re extremely inexpensive and guess what: they really work! You can spend as little as $20 and have your post or an ad that you make shown to over 1,000 people, depending on your audience settings and what content you’re advertising. We’ll be making another blog post soon that will go over social media ads, PR and other ways to get your name out there – so be on the lookout!
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