*All ‘stories’ have been posted to @bcm_centrestage on Instagram and reposted to my private Facebook account*
Day 1 of marketing: 22/02
Using this first post, I managed to get 3/28 to visit our profile. Unfortunately, this is a small amount and many of those who watched the story ended up skipping it. This is not what we are looking to do. So I know that the stories will need to be even more interesting in the future.
Day 2 of Marketing: 25/02
For this next post, I decided to create a poll to ask the audience which acoustic performance they enjoyed the most. This data would then be used to reupload the most popular acoustic performances. I plan to redo this for the bands too. Firstly I posted the polls and let our followers vote for their favourites. I split them into categories of first and second years.
Then I viewed the results and posted the first acoustic performance, using a new transition to start it. Please watch below:
This is how well the post has gone since its upload a week ago. Looking at this, I see that it has drawn some attention to the profile however it has not resulted in any more followers. I am feeling positive though because 44% of the viewers were from accounts not following us, which means that almost half of the reach is potential future followers. How many of these views had been affected by the Stories post I created though?
I would say that a possible 28 out of 63 saw the post because of the Stories post. This is great because it shows that we are creating a wider reach by using hashtags. I am aware that hashtags could be effective because when uploading without, they get less likes than the posts which include various hashtags.
Day 3 of Marketing: 10/03
On IGTV, the video received less views than Meg’s performance. This is surprising to me because overall, during the polls, more of our audience wanted to watch Barbora again.
From here, it seems that many of the people who saw the Stories post visited the IGTV from there but not by clicking the video link unlike 2 people did last time. This is where we are gaining the most views as TikTok only gathers around 2-7 views per video and YouTube is also very limited between 8-10.
Day 4 of Marketing: 16/03
Today, I started a new ‘series’ of Instagram Takeovers. This is a longer length story that introduces our audience to new artists that they might be seeing more of in future. We started off with Alfie, Michael and Jack’s band: The Old Jammers.
I asked them to do a short introduction of who they are and what their band is all about. Then I created a ‘this or that’ to give some more information and reiterate what Alfie explained in the previous video.
After that, I posted a short 15 second video of them performing one of their original songs. On top of this, I added a link to their Instagram page and a sticker for people to rate the song. Their profile received 9 visits from that post. Additionally, 3 people interacted with the sticker and they received varied results (as seen above) but with an average score of around 3/4 of the way up. As this seems to be one of the most successful posts I have done so far, I will take this into account and continue with performance clips.
One problem with this was that due to our low number of followers we cannot be a verified account and cannot post links. This means that many people will ignore this due to lack of effort to screenshot the post and scan the QR code. This is a shame because Linktree is a very good way to share all of your accounts from one place.
Surprisingly, I ended the takeover with a link to one of their posts and although no one clicked on the image, there was one viewer that looked at our page instead. I found this interesting and what’s more, that person followed us.
Day 5 of Marketing: 18/03
On the days of my uploading the story takeover and this post, The Old Jammers Instagram account received a total of 16 new followers. This is wonderful to find out because it means that people are enjoying their content.
As I can see from this post’s insights, 30% of those that saw it were not originally following our account. It was found in 4 different ways: the homepage or explore page as it is better known, by location, from the 30 various hashtags that I used and also by other means (I assume this is via the tagged tab on the Old Jammers Instagram).
Day 6 of Marketing: 19/03
Today, I finally got to post about our new branding! This was an exciting day for me because I have been wanting to properly involve our audience in the big decisions, especially this one, since day one. As I have decided on the blue, black and white theme for this year’s showcase. I decided to keep that theme throughout all of my announcements etc unless its about an artist who has their own branding and colour scheme. This is much more professional. Here is what I posted:
I was proud of this because it was simple but effective but did not get as much engagement as I had hoped. Only 10 people out of 26 interacted with the poll. However, it did come out with a clear winner – Centre Stage.
Day 7 of Marketing: 20-24/03
This week, I have been reposting a lot of The Old Jammers’ sneak peek posts. From these posts, there were no actions taken. I have however noticed that I am getting less and less viewers this week. I think that this may have something to do with a lot of our followers going back to college and school. I need to get back into a routine of posting during our most active hours. This means early morning or late evening.
I have however used today to restart with the linktree as the verification link never came to any of my emails. From now (24/03) it is live and can be used.
https://linktr.ee/bcm_centrestage
Day 8 of Marketing: 13/04
Today I decided to go to the TikTok account that I created for us so that I could post a section of each Acoustic Session and update the branding. I, unfortunately, found out that we had been shadow-banned for breaking multiple community guidelines. I do not understand why this has happened because after reading through the entirety of these guidelines I see nothing that we did wrong. I have appealed this matter but to no avail. I am now awaiting a reply to a second appeal. Hopefully this problem can be rectified but until then, I am not going to worry too much as our other social media accounts are doing well.
Day 9 of Marketing: 14/04
I finally finished uploading all of the Acoustic Sessions videos onto IGTV and YouTube, Kabeer’s being the last one based on the order of votes in the poll.
From these insights into every single post, it is interesting to find that Kabeer’s was the second most viewed despite only being uploaded for a day. His video is also the only one with comments. This IGTV was shared by 3 students on our course and so their posts may have caused some people to engage better.
Another thing I noticed that was rather interesting is that although most people wanted to see Barbora perform again, her video is one of the least popular. As well as this, Meg is the most popular which is unsurprising as it was shared by many of her friends and family and is also the shortest video. Something that I have learned is that in this day and age people feel they have no time and spend any scrolling time they have only stopping for things that interest them within the first few seconds.
Day 10 of Marketing: 20-22/04
Today I reposted some videos by Meg, Kabeer and The Bottle Heads and they received one profile visit in total. This isn’t very effective but it has been in the past so I assume that it depends on when people see it and who sees it as to wether it is content they enjoy or not.
Day 11 of Marketing: 23/04
Today I announced the official date for the showcase, along with the poster. Surprisingly this got no interactions aside from 11 likes
Day 12 of Marketing: 26/04
Today I posted an IGTV of MATFG’s set in November and shared it to the story. 2 people used the story to visit our instagram and the IGTV itself got itself 12 likes and 1 comment. However, the comment came from Ben (the guitarist of the band).
I also reviewed our views on TikTok and found this:
I think that the most interesting thing about this is that are recieving nearly 200 views on some of our videos now, despite the TikTok account ever being promoted elsewhere. This is mainly due to the fact that it was shadow banned for not following community guidelines up until 14/04/21. This was not true – we followed every guideline – but the appeal was ignored so it was difficult considering I could not edit or post anything for a while. I do believe that this had something to do with the fact that I was using the same or similar hashtags in every upload which can sometimes look like it is just an account trying to gain followers fast.
Day 13 of Marketing: 29/04
Today I posted a countdown on Instagram Stories as there is 28 days to go. These countdown timers can be saved by people who view them, to be a reminder when the event happens. I will repost this a few more times to reiterate the date of the showcase and to let people who may have missed it know.
Day 14 of Marketing: 30/04
Today, our level 6 HE Students had a virtual concert (see my case studies tab to watch) and I decided to help them promote at the last minute to catch a few extra viewers. I can not tell by the posts if they did gain any extra views but it did give me an opportunity to direct people back to our November showcase for more music to tide them over before the showcase in May.
Day 15 of Marketing: 03/05
Today I noticed that a TikTok Content Creator (@hollymarieshorty) had posted a story saying she was willing to do page shout outs for £1 on her Instagram and that she would promote on TikTok price to be confirmed in the future. I decided to take this opportunity and she posted a screenshot of our page and a little information about us. Her Instagram (@princess.b4t) has 10.8K followers and I plan to do this a few more times and possibly pay for a TikTok video shout out because she has just reached 1 million followers there and this could be great for us.
Day 16 of Marketing: 04/05 – Star Wars Day
I was personally very excited about today. I know that Star Wars Day is very popular amongst many different people, including myself, and I really wanted to involve that community and hopefully gain their support. So I chose to make a post about John Williams in order to link Star Wars with music. Plus, John Williams is my favourite composer.
I also posted an appreciation video of the Spotify player that was a lightsaber for the day.
Day 17 of Marketing: 06/05
Today, I posted an image of Michael hanging posters and an emoji slider. 2 of our students interacted with the sticker so this post was not very effective with the wider audience. I do however feel that it is important to keep our followers updated on all goings on. So I plan to post about the filming and recording sessions in the coming weeks.
Day 18 of Marketing: 11/05
Today I reposted Niall’s singles to our story. They had been released on SoundCloud this evening and so it was great to get him some additional promotion. He received one direct listener from us. I also had Holly do another paid promotion for us which gained us 2 followers.
12-13/05
Today I posted our newer poster making behind the scenes. Most people absolutely love the poster and 2 people were extremely negative towards it – due to biased opinions of me – which brought the average response down. However, these people have reposted the poster onto their Instagram stories.
Day 20 of Marketing: 14/05
Today I posted a story about Abi and her 2 debut singles. The layout of this story, to me, feels more thought out and professionally put together as opposed to the previous ‘the old jammers’ Instagram Takeover story that I did. This post began by me asking Abi to record a short video introduction to her project.
I then chose a mustard yellow background after discussing the post in more detail with Abi. This conversation grew as I gained information to add to the posts from artwork designs and song names to where and when they would be released.
After this we met in person to add some final touches. Then I asked for a sneak peek at some of her music before uploading the post.
After posting the story, I uploaded a post too.
Abi’s followers increased by 8.6% when I posted these.
Here are the post analytics:
These were successful as many of the viewers (58%) of these posts were not following our account but from my choice of hashtags, shares of the post to stories, and because of it many people visited both the Centre Stage profile and Abi’s too.
Day 21 of Marketing: 15/05
Today, I had another paid promotion from Holly Shortland. From my repost of her shout out, she also received 4 profile visits from my followers. In this one she posted about Abi’s music and that made up for some of the views on her post.
Day 22 of Marketing: 16/05
Today, Daniel Greenhalgh from our Degree, released his latest EP. It featured Abi on drums and so I had to assist with promotion. Instagram does not say if anyone used the Soundcloud link to listen to the EP but I did share his songs to my story along with this:
Day 23 of Marketing: 17/05
Today was the first day of our filming. I wanted to let our audience in the loop about some behind-the-scenes goings-on and felt that this was a perfect opportunity to do just that. I did not sit in on many recordings throughout the two days of filming because I was not needed and it was an opportunity to catch up on some work. However, in the future, I would like to have more input in sessions such as these. I sat in on one session by Alfie and the Bottle Heads. I recorded a little snippet of their rehearsal and then used 2 gifs on the story to show that the camera was rolling. I also shared Abi’s announcement post that her singles had finally been mixed and mastered and are ready for release.
Day 24 of Marketing: 18/05
Today, I had yet another paid promotion from Holly Shortland. She posted a screenshot of our profile and we gained a few new followers (2-3). I also posted a TikTok teaser trailer for Abi’s singles. They were not made by me and I had just reposted them but it received 679 views!
Despite the view count, I don’t think that TikTok has been very successful for the event. If we had used it to promote single artists it may have been different but I have decided to stop using it from now as it is not attracting any new followers or likes.
Day 25 of Marketing: 19/05
I had recieved the photoshoot edited images back today so after sending them out to each student, I posted a couple to my story asking for our audience’s opinions as a preview of who will be featured on the showcase. These gained us one profile visit.
Day 26 of Marketing: 20/05
I posted a behind-the-scenes photo of the whole year group (almost) photoshoot and this, again, gained us 1 profile visit. I think that this means there are some people who were drawn by the high quality of our images and promotion.
I then posted Kabeer’s Instagram Promotion for the release of his single ‘Once Upon A Time’. I used the same layout as the one I used for Abi’s post but I used Kabeer’s Album cover as the background colour match and for the parental advisory sticker he used. The movement in the stories was something I used on Abi’s posts too as it gives it life and does not come across as a wall of text, which can be off-putting to viewers.
This part of the story received similar impressions to Abi and not a lot of audience interaction. I decided that when posting one of the pages from the post that I would upload after this, I would add a questionnaire about the second language in Kabeer’s song. This got the audience interacting and learning more. It proved that they had watched the story and listened to what Kabeer had said.
I then posted to our profile in the same format as Abi.
An extremely interesting thing to note about this is that Kabeer’s post exceeded the success of Abi’s. It reached a total of 113 accounts (61% of which were not already following bcm_centrestage) and it made 16 profile visits happen for us!
Day 27 of Marketing: 21/05
Today, Bradford College Students’ Union (@bradfordcollegeplus) posted a photo of us with our information. It got 19 likes and most of those were people not on our course, this means we reached a few more students.
Day 28 of Marketing: 24/05
Today, I made some story reposts of 2 of our students. Firstly, Abi. She had recorded an interview for BCB Radio: https://podcast.canstream.co.uk/bcb/index.php?id=58944 (48 mins – 54 mins) This was the second of our interviews with BCB – not including the radio shows by our podcast group – but this was the first one that had been advertised correctly and we were informed about.
Then I reposted a behind-the-scenes photo of Alfie’s of the Alfie and the Bottle Heads video recording.
Day 29 of Marketing: 25/05
Today, Isaac decided to release his DOOM Eternal inspired composition early. This was posted to YouTube and IGTV and so I posted a story urging people to watch now and again on Friday. It received one profile visit, meaning it interested someone enough to look more into what we had to come.
Day 30 of Marketing: 26/05
Today, Bradford Music Network posted a story to their instagram, sharing our post of the new poster and tagged us. From my share of this story, Bradford Music Network received 5 profile visits.
Day 31 of Marketing: 27/05
Today, I shared some DM marketing with my family and friends, sharing the poster and a short paragraph of information. This was successful in November so we encouraged each student to do this and we definitely gained a few views from this. However, I did get one piece of Feedback from a student on our degree course:
I agree that it can get annoying and if it had been sent to me I would probably ignore it. So I think in the future I will find a different way to do more personal adverts if I run another showcase like this one.
The college also promoted us by posting to their Instagram and News Feed to promote from their channel.
Day 32 of Marketing: 28/05
I reposted the college’s post to my story to begin a countdown for 8 hours to go.
Abi then took a photo of one of our posters on the wall and posted to her story announcing “tonight at 7pm! and my two singles are released at 8pm :)” then tagged us in it. One person visited Abi’s page from this.
At 4 hours to go, I reposted UAL’s story with a countdown sticker. From this story, 10 people visited UAL’s post and profile to learn more about our showcase.
At 2 hours, I posted this to my feed and story:
This received 8 profile visits to our profile and reached 48 accounts. Only 14% of these accounts were not already following us. However, I think that our reach was less due to the fact that I did not add hashtags to the post.
Then, Bradford Music Network posted to their story with a picture of our poster and I took a screenshot of this to post on our story as well.
I then made a post at 7pm to say that we were live! I did this during the YouTube Premiere countdown, which is 2 minutes long. I was impressed with my work here as it included some names of students, a picture of us all and the logo, the YouTube link and information about the description box.
As it got to 10 seconds before the show, I recorded the countdown. Here’s what it looked like:
Finally, I posted an image of each student in a collage with “That’s a wrap!” written at the top. For the caption, I reused the credits and rectified a mistake that rendered one of the first year students upset. In Millie and the Floor Gang, Thomas Taylor was accidentally replaced with Thomas Hall and we did not pick up on it. So I redid the credits as the Instagram Caption.
This gained us 2 profile visits and reached 55 accounts (23% weren’t following us).
Final Notes:
As I have now finished promoting the event, I have decided that I enjoyed this aspect of the project and would love to do it again. After looking at the account before I took over it, the professionalism has increased dramatically and and we are now being followed by 76 people. This was around 30 at the start.
