It is no secret that Instagram as of late is one of the most popular and most engaging platforms out there for advertising as a DJ. The platform is not just for DJs either. Analyst Adam Levy on The Motley Fool has estimated that companies will be dropping over $2 billion in Instagram Stories ads alone. If something wasn’t so important, then why would companies spend so much money on it, and why are DJs still not taking their profiles seriously?
With over 1 billion active monthly users, ignoring Instagram as a branding and advertising platform at this point is just ignorant.
Despite the insane growth on the platform, I have noticed far too many DJs in the industry not taking advantage of the tools are put in front of them. Brides and other consumers alike can look at your company’s Instagram profile as a visual portfolio or representation of the services and products that your company offers.
So how would you self-check yourself to know if your Instagram is performing well?
Simple.
First and foremost, make sure you have your personal account separate from your business account. There is no harm in putting your own spin or your own personality into your business. However, no one cares about what you had for lunch, or the fact you’re getting your car oil changed. At the end of the day you are running a business, and if you think that you don’t have to hold yourself to a standard, then, unfortunately, there might be a reason why you’re not booked as much as you want to be. Treat your brand with respect and it will pay you back tenfold.
Make sure that you check on your engagement levels. The way I’ve been checking clients and the competition to my clients is that I go and look at the posts on their accounts. If their posts have less than 10% engagement of their total followership then they’ve probably most likely bought followers. Good engaging posts can easily generate a 10% return. So for example, if you have 1000 followers on your page you should be having at least 100 people commenting or liking every post that you make on Instagram. If you find yourself under that number then we need to go and evaluate a few things for example:
- Are my photos high quality?
- Are my photos what people want to see?
- Are my captions clever or thought-provoking?
- Am I using the right hashtags to reach the right people?
- Am I posting at the right time?
These questions point out important factors to consider. After all, Instagram is a photography-centric platform, and if you are posting fuzzy crowd shots from behind the decks from your iPhone 5, people will scroll right past it as it has the same photo quality as if it was shot from a potato.
Your potential clients really don’t care about photos of your gear. As I said before, Instagram is a photography-centric platform and brides simply do not want to see the shots of your speakers, truss, lighting, etc. We sell very emotional services. As DJs, we are celebrating with people for the possibly the biggest day of their lives, and at the end of the day the only things are that the dancefloor was filled, there were smiles all around, and the bride and groom were happy. Your Instagram should only feature photos of people who are smiling, dancing, and having a fun time. If there are no faces in that shot you want to post, then it more than likely doesn’t belong your profile.
Get creative with your captions! Posting the same types of captions for every new post gets boring. Drop in a clever or motivational quote as the caption of your post, or maybe even a snippet of a famous song lyric. You can also tag all the other vendors from the event in the post from the tuxedo rental shop to the caterer and the florist. Not only does it allow you to get more reach by tagging those vendors, but now you are also networking beyond the event itself. Showcasing the efforts of all the vendors who were at the event in your Instagram shows good faith and you’ll more than likely get referred for future events.
Do yourself a favor and study your hashtags before posting. Using the same hashtags for every single post is never a good decision. Sure, you might get more reach using the same old faithful tags than if you didn’t use any, however you’re missing out on the trending hashtags at the moment. Make sure that you go and find the trending hashtags the minute before you make said post. There are plenty of software and services out there to help you with this.
We haven’t even gotten to talk about the stories yet. Up until this point we’ve only covered the Instagram feed, however as alluded to earlier on in this exact article, stories are the place that you can really go and explode your reach. I will have to leave that for my next piece, but I won’t leave you empty handed…
If you made it this far then you deserve a prize, and for those of you who skipped to the end to see if there was an ending point made shame on you. Go re-read this, but here is a golden nugget anyway…
Did you know you can hashtag your Instagram stories? Much in the same way you tag the posts in your feed, you can put tags in your stories as well! Don’t want to look spammy? You can hide the tags in plain sight by changing the color of the text to the same color as the photo or video around it, or cover it with a sticker. You will still get the viral juice even if the tags can’t be seen!