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October 14, 2020

Maximize Your Audience Engagement With These Instagram Post Tips

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For many artists and bands, Instagram is the social platform of choice. That means that you’re looking to both engage and increase your audience by using the platform. The latest Instagram algorithm closely looks at the number of people who save your posts, however. This trumps any other engagement, so that’s what you should be aiming for. That means that your goal is to create “savable” posts. Here are a few post tips to help you achieve that.

  • Post light, bright images. Images that contain a lot of white space and light tend to perform better. Use an editing app to increase the exposure to lighten it up.
  • Increase the Saturation and Sharpness. Once again use an image editing app to increase both the Saturation and Sharpness parameters, since these tend to help a photo pop off the screen. Remember, a little goes a long way! [This is what I do with all my posts, regardless of the platform]
  • Crop vertically. Vertical images perform better than square images, at least for now using the latest algorithm.
  • Make your captions easy to read. If you’re posting a long caption, the best way is to add a paragraph space after each sentence. To do that, end your sentence with a period, then hit return, then continue on with your next sentence. IMPORTANT: Don’t add a space after the period at the end of the sentence.

If you do decide to go ahead and market on Instagram, be aware of your brand before you begin to post. You want it to be consistent with your other online properties in terms of look, feel and attitude. This is one case where copying another artist who’s successful might not be a good idea.

  • Don’t just post a picture, try to tell a story with your caption. Like with YouTube, you can’t ignore the captions of your images, because the copy gives context to them. They also give you a way to tie an image back to your music.
  • Don’t forget that Instagram is a great platform for contests. A contest might ask users to comment on your photo, share it, mention a certain number of friends, or even share their own photo with a specific hashtag. Many users see these contests as one of the benefits of following an artist or band on Instagram, so don’t worry about bothering people. Try one out, track the analytics, and see how it benefits your brand.
  • Consider collaborating with a popular Instagrammer or influencer in your genre of music or part of the music business. Let them control your account for a day, or ask them to share their thoughts on your music. This could result in exposing your brand to their following and getting more followers as a result. Be aware that some people, artists or brands with big followings actually charge for this, but many want the same exposure as you to to increase their audience too.

Besides TikTok, Instagram is the hottest platform for artists and bands to use, since most of its users are more into music than on other platforms. Use these post tips to make sure you utilize it to its fullest.


You can read more from The Social Media Promotion For Musicians handbook and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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