Every successful record label out there will tell you that having the right marketing strategy and branding will make a major difference in helping you find the right artists. However, the luxury of super creative resources and a massive marketing budget is rare, especially when you are a small record label.
Fortunately, the growing popularity of Instagram among artists and musicians has made it a great platform for marketing and promoting record labels. In this blog post, we present a guide on how you can effectively use Instagram to find the right artists and promote your services to them.
Use compelling visuals that make you stand out
Instagram is a visual medium – even when promoting music, you need to keep this in mind. Because no matter how great your music might sound, people will never know unless they click on your posts. For this, you want to post something that stops users in their tracks as they are scrolling through their Instagram feeds.
For this, we have a couple of pointers that will help you create eye-catching visuals for your posts:
- Be sure to use high-quality images – don’t upload pictures that are too dark, unprocessed, or blurry.
- Make sure that you focus on the right elements. For example, if you are publishing album art, make sure that the album title and artist’s song are visible and readable.
- Utilise a graphic design tool to minimise the effort of editing pictures and making them look more appealing. PosterMyWall is a graphic design tool that has tons of premade templates that you can use to prepare your next engaging Instagram post. For instance, you can check out their album cover art templates if you are looking to announce the launch of an album soon.
- Take inspiration from other record labels and see what is working for them – especially if they are in the same niche as you. You don’t have to copy them but evaluating how they are presenting themselves can help you build a brand image of your own. For example, here is a high-engagement post about a new release from Warp Records:
Make use of the right hashtags
No matter how old they are, hashtags are still a highly effective method for reaching new potential artists and fans with your posts. Hashtags are particularly helpful if you are just starting to build an Instagram following since they help you establish a niche audience.
Statistics show that posts with at least one hashtag receive up to 29% more interaction than posts with no hashtags. This means that there is a high likelihood that artists and users will find and interact with your record label if you use the right hashtags.
Here are a few tips to get you started with hashtags:
- How many should you use? The maximum number of hashtags allowed on Instagram is 30. However, the ideal number is around 10 – 15 when you are building a following. Using too little will hurt your chances of coming up in relevant searches while using too many will come off as spammy so it is important to find the right balance.
- What hashtags should you use? It is important to align the hashtags with the type of music that you work with typically. Your hashtags should reflect your brand’s persona as well as its music. For example, if your record label works primarily with indie bands, you can use specific hashtags like #IndieMusic and #IndieRock. However, in addition to this, you should also add some generic music-relevant hashtags to increase your chances of being found. So for instance, you can add a #LiveMusic hashtag for live videos, or a locations/artist name hashtag when it is relevant to your post.
- Where to get ideas from? If you are struggling to come up with hashtags, you can make use of an online hashtag generator such as Inflact’s Hashtag Generator. Such tools help you generate hashtags against keywords that can help you pick up ideas on what to add to your Instagram posts.
Share your music on Instagram stories
Hootsuite statistics indicate that Instagram stories are used by more than 500 million users every day. This makes Instagram stories a great opportunity for record labels to promote their music and services.
The beauty of stories over normal posts though is that you can add direct links to them. This makes it very simple for users to access whatever you link to – be it your business’ website or the YouTube video for your latest release.
Not just this, but Instagram stories also make it super simple to take feedback from users. You can add an emoji slider or a poll to your story to find out what users think about your record label and your music.
Just make sure that you use some eye-catching images coupled with good hashtags to make your posts more clickable and discoverable. For the images, you can make use of one of many music poster templates that are available at PosterMyWall to create some engaging visuals.
Here is a good example from XL Recordings on how you can use Instagram stories to promote and link to albums and new releases.
Win at marketing with Instagram
Instagram offers a lot of great opportunities for musicians, artists, and record labels to be more connected with their target audience. By following the strategies that we have shared in this blog post, you can get started and start winning at Instagram marketing.
But remember to keep it simple and set achievable goals for yourself when getting started with Instagram marketing.
