Today, I started work on promotion. I made an Instagram account called abi.swift.music. I really like this name as it is simple, easy to remember and clearly tells people who I am and what this account is for. I made a profile picture and a bio that explains what I am doing and who I am. It also gives links to my personal Instagram if followers would like to see more of my content, and a link to my band’s Instagram account for the same reason and to show my experience as a musician. Then, I made my account into a business account, which means I have a ‘musician’ title on my page, see insights into my audience and gather some basic analytics on my account reach and engagement. I also have put my personal email as a button on my bio as I think, as a business account, it makes everything seem much more professional and real. I haven’t posted on the account as of yet, but I definitely plan to in the coming days once I have all of my social media accounts up and running. You can find the Instagram account here: https://www.instagram.com/abi.swift.music/?hl=en
As well as creating an Instagram account, I have also made a Linktree account. This is a website where you can create a page that stores all links to your other social media accounts and streaming services in one place. Then, if you put the Linktree in your social media bio, followers or people who come across your account can easily look at everything you do and put out. Because my presence will mostly be online, I think having a Linktree is important because people can see my online activity and what I post through these, and it is much easier than having to remember a username or copy a link. Linktree allows you to see how many people click on the link over time, which his great for analytics. You can find the Linktree page here: https://linktr.ee/abi.swift.music
As well as both of these, I have created a series of 30 hashtags that relate to my work, for use on Instagram. 30 is the maximum amount of hashtags you can use on one post so taking advantage of this will be crucial. I can then use these underneath my Instagram posts to reach more people and get more traction, especially as my account has just begun. The hashtags will relate to music, production and where I am based, for example: #producing, #ableton, #singing, #bradford #student and many others.
Next time I work on promotion, I plan to:
-Create more social media pages such as Facebook and TikTok, and put these on my Linktree.
-Promote my Instagram by making my first on it and sharing the account to my personal account’s story.
-Start practising my digital artwork by creating some mockups on Canva and Photoshop so I can post these to my social media.
-Look further into social listening and how I can improve my analysis of analytics. I could research sites like Sprout Social and Mailchimp to see if they are what I need.