Instagram is currently the best place for musicians to get more followers and exposure.
In this article, I’ll reveal my 4-step Instagram story music promotion strategy that I used to drive traffic to my new track “Club Madness“.
Using this strategy, I was able to gain a lot of traffic, listens and new followers. You can use this method especially when releasing new music.
If you want to learn how to promote & market your music on Instagram check out this article.
4-step Instagram story music promotion strategy
On this marketing strategy we are only focusing on Instagram stories function.
I also recommend to make regular Instagram posts, Facebook posts and other posts on the platforms you are actively using while using this method.
The focus on this Instagram promotion strategy is to build excitement around your music and get more listeners. You will also want to build trust towards your listeners.
When your listeners trusts that you provide good new music regularly, they will get back to you when you release new music.
Step 1
24-18 hours before the release you want to upload your first Instagram story. This story is all about creating excitement around your new release.
The quality of the story doesn’t need to be super high at this point. What I mean by this is that you can for example record a video with your phone while listening your new track.
It is recommended to show your face, but if you really don’t want that’s okey too. Showing face will make the story more personal.
You want to include the exact release date and time of your track to the story. You can write the release time of your track by adding text to the story using Instagram’s own tools while uploading it.
A good strategy here is to also add a release timer to your story. You can add it using Instagram’s tools when you are uploading the story.
Once you have added the timer, people can set a reminder, which will remind them when your track goes live.
I also want to note that sliders on the Instagram stories increases the engagement so you should add at least one slider to the story.
Step 2
When your track is released, you want immediately upload your second Instagram story.
This story should be a high quality preview of your track. You can use the cover picture of your track as the background of the story and play the best part of your new track.
If you upload your track on YouTube, you can also cut down the YouTube video and use it as your story. Remember that stories can only be 15 seconds long.
The most important thing is that the story needs to be a high quality preview of your new track. The goal is to tell people that your new track is out and drive traffic to it.
I would recommend to use sliders and questions on your story. This will increase the engagement of the story and you will get more valuable date about your listeners.
You can just simply add a question and ask, if they have already listened the track.
Make sure to mention on the story where the full track can be listened. You should add a link on your bio which leads to your track. Make it as easy as possible for your followers to listen to your new song.
Step 3
18-24 hours after the release you should upload your third Instagram story. The goal of this story is to engage your audience and ask what they think about your track.
For example, you can record a video while your track is playing on the background and add a question to the story. You can ask your audience did they like the track or anything similar.
You want to really engage your audience and talk to them. Once you got some answer, you can send those people direct messages and talk more about your track or music in general.
This is a great way to connect with your fans and build trust. People will more likely listen to your other tracks, if they actually know you!
This story doesn’t need to be as high quality as the second post, but you should keep your stories always nice and clean.
Step 4
The fourth story should be posted about 48 hours after the release. This post should focus on taking action and giving value to your followers.
For example, you can give something related to your new track for free to your followers, in exchange for their email address, follow, like or anything similar.
You can give them:
- the new song
- midi files
- project file
- stems
- samples
- presets
- run a contest
The goal here is to really engage your followers and give them value. In exchange, you are able to get email addresses, comments, likes, follows, reposts or shares.
I would focus on collecting email addresses, because then you are able to contact your fans later, when you release new music.
Collecting email addresses, likes, comments or anything can be done with download gates. Check out my article about download gates, if you want to learn how to use the effectively: How to use music download gates.
What comes to the actual story, it can be just a picture of the cover art of your track with text telling what you are offering.
Do not push your followers too hard. Just softly ask them get the download, whatever it is.
You should add a link to your bio, which leads to the download gate, where to they can get the files. Again, you should make process as easy as possible for your followers.
Conclusions
Instagram stories is a great tool to get more engagement. If you follow my steps, you will get much more engagement. Keep in mind that you already need to have some following for this to work.
Don’t forget to make regular Instagram posts. You should also upload normal Instagram pictures and videos to further enforce my 4-step Instagram story music promotion strategy.
On this article, I’m only focusing on the story side of Instagram.