How to Set Up and Market Your Instagram as a Music Producer
Instagram can be a powerful way to build your brand and attract people to it. Whether you sell beats, loop packs, courses, or anything else as a producer/creator, Instagram is a great way to get your message out. When people visit your Instagram profile, you want them to be able to know exactly who you are and what you do because they’re going to make a decision on whether or not they want to follow you at first glance. The tips we’ll be sharing below will help ensure that your page is optimized for success!
Profile picture
The first thing you should do is upload a high quality profile picture of your face, not your logo. If you're a producer and you are the face of your brand, showing yourself allows people to put a face to your name. If you have a personality, you want to show that because it will increase your chances of people connecting with you at a deeper, more human level.
Bio
In your bio, you should state what you do (producer, beat maker, etc.) and any noteworthy accomplishments. This could include awards, writeups/articles on big media platforms, and placements that you’ve gotten over the course of your career. You should also mention who you help. For example, if you provide services for artists, you should clearly state it so that you’re able to grab the attention of your intended target market. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that the people who are following you are the ones who will potentially support your business in some way, shape or form. Lastly, adding a call to action in your bio is very valuable. Directing your audience to click the link in your bio can get them to engage and learn more about you. At the same time, this can be advantageous to you. For example, if you offer a free beat or guide, you can collect the email addresses of whoever is interested. This way, you can easily build an email list of leads to market to.
Link in bio
We recommend using a free service such as Linktree or Milkshake, which will allow you to have one link that will serve as an umbrella to multiple links. For example, the links to your beat store, YouTube channel, blog, and additional social media can all live on one centralized page so that you don’t need to continuously swap out the link in your bio.
Consistent posting schedule
In terms of content, you need to post what will engage people and have them coming back. A good rule of thumb is to create content that will either educate, entertain, or inspire. You should be posting this type of content consistently, meaning at the bare minimum, once a day (up to 3 times a day is ideal). You may think that posting 3 times a day is too much, but by doing so, it allows you to catch your followers at three different times because everyone isn't on Instagram at one single time per day.
Hashtags
Another great way to increase visibility outside of posting multiple times a day is to use hashtags. You can put your hashtags either in the caption itself or in an additional comment after you make your post. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post so make sure to take advantage of this because a lot of people discover your content through hashtags while searching through them.
Balance between giving value and selling
Sometimes people solely want to sell their products and/or services, but the more you offer value, the more people want to reciprocate it back. A good general guideline to go by is the 80/20 rule, which means 80% of content should give value by helping people solve problems, entertaining them, or inspiring them. The other 20% should be dedicated to selling/promoting something such as a beat or a loop pack. By sticking with this rule, you avoid spamming your audience. If you were to break down these percentages, assuming you’re posting 3 times a day, you’d have 15 posts from Monday through Friday. 12 of your posts should provide value of some sort to your followers and 3 should be focused on selling or promoting.
Although creating content is very important, you need to engage on it especially when people start to interact with it. With that being said, here are a few ways that you can engage and build community around the content that you're creating and posting on Instagram:
Asking a question at the end of your caption and responding to comments answering it
Engage with the people who engage with you
Go live on IG at least once a week
Post stories on IG
We go into more detail on why each of these ways is effective for growing your community in the video linked above. Be sure to check it out for some valuable gems!
Bonus tip: switch from personal to business/creator account
Switching your Instagram account from personal to business or creator will allow you to have access to tools that can give you greater insight such as the demographics of your audience and analytics of the content that’s performing best on your page. With this information, you'll be able to see what days and times are best to post because it'll show you exactly when people are more engaged with your content. Another great benefit to changing your page to a business/creator profile is that you will be able to take advantage of monetization options (IG live monetization, Reels Bonuses, etc.)
