Today, I did a lot of promotion work to get my accounts up and running. First, I made my first post on Instagram and TikTok! Here is the video on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CMezCdXA761/ and the same one on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@abi.swift.music/video/6940276139411787014?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v2. This is a short clip of one of my song ideas with me in the recording studio. I thought this was a good first video to use as it clearly shows my production style and genre pretty well, and there is nothing too important going on as of yet. The caption says that I am a beginner producer studying music, as I think when people know that I am still learning and in the early stages of production they might become more invested in seeing me grow. I also mentioned that hopefully there should be some great songs by the end of the year in the hopes people will stick around or even come back in a couple of months to see how I’m getting on. I then used hashtags on both social media’s to get my account out there and receive more reach. I also shared the post to my personal Instagram account’s story and 82 people have seen this as of now. The Instagram post currently is doing really well; it already has 39 likes and has gained me over 30 followers!
As well as posting, I also updated my Linktree page. A couple of days ago, it only had my Instagram, College portfolio and Soundcloud, but now it has my TikTok, Facebook and YouTube as well so people can follow these and keep track of my work across mot social media’s. I was unsure at first whether to make a new page for my Facebook account, but I decided to stay with my personal one as I already have a lot of followers on there and I often only use it to promote myself as a musician already (like my band’s work). I had to, however, do some admin work on my pre-existing TikTok accounts like changing the username and profile picture to make it look more business-like and professional. I also changed the profile picture on YouTube and got rid of any things like playlists or liked videos that were previously public; this means my channel looks a lot more ordered and polished. You can find the Linktree page here: https://linktr.ee/abi.swift.music. As of today, my Linktree has already had 18 views, and people have clicked on the links there 9 times; my Facebook and college portfolio being the most clicked links.
I have also looked more into analytics and how to grow my audience. On Instagram, you need 100 followers to see insights into your audience and who they are, so I am planning to reach 100 followers so I can use this feature and evaluate this. I have made a Sprout Social trial account for when I hit 100 followers; this allows you to see things like impressions, growth, clicks, engagements, general performance and the demographic of your audiences on the accounts you have connected. For me, I have connected my Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I should grow my accounts a little more to be able to use insights better and it will become a lot more useful later on in the project as I start posting more. Sprout Social also allows you to post and write comments on your pages, which makes it easier when wanting to post the same thing on all social media’s at the same time. It also has a scheduling feature which means you can plan when you want to post, and when it gets to that time it will post what you planned for you. I want to use this when I have a better idea of my audience and when they are most active on social media. I have requested a demo for the listening feature which allows you to see what your followers are talking about and what they want to see the most. I also made a Mailchimp account, but I found this less useful for what I want to achieve with promotion.
As well as this, I have made some templates that I plan to use for promotion on my social media. They are currently blank but I plan to write and add images to them depending on what I want to promote or post then. As you can see, I have gone with a grey and yellow colour scheme; this scheme is very modern and ‘in’ right now and I think it will make my page look professional and well made. I made these templates on Canva, however, I am also working on one on Photoshop at the moment. These are two templates I plan to work on and eventually use for my profiles. These are a great start, however, if I wanted to make things even more professional such as artwork for a single cover, I could contact someone from the graphic design team to help out, and this also counts as another collaboration for my project.
Next time I promote, I plan to:
-Get in contact with someone who would work with me to create some more professional looking digital work, perhaps someone who would help me create artwork for the singles.
-Carry on creating content and posting on TikTok and Instagram and aim for my 100 follower target on Instagram.
-Make my first post on Facebook to let followers know what I am doing.