Launched in 2010, the photo-sharing social media platform Instagram has experienced phenomenal growth during its short history. It was bought by Facebook in April 2012 for $1 billion when it had a total user base of just 30 million, but recently reached the significant milestone of 1 billion monthly active users. However, compared to Facebook, relatively few mobile DJs are utilising the platform to market their businesses, which I believe means that it has huge untapped potential.
What Is It? So, first thing’s first, for anyone who doesn’t know, what exactly is Instagram? Well, put simply, it is an app for sharing photos. The word app there is significant, as – unlike other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter – it can only be used on a smartphone or tablet.
Instagram does have a website, but it can only be used for viewing accounts, not for posting content. The great thing about Instagram is that it’s a simple concept, has a very easy to use app and, although it now allows video posts and has received added features such as Stories, it has essentially always retained its primary focus: sharing photos. Who Uses It? Instagram’s global user base continues to grow rapidly, with an increase of almost 400 million monthly users since the beginning of 2017.
What is of particular interest is the demographic of those users. 61% are aged between 18 and 34, with another 17% sitting in the 35 – 44 bracket. This makes Instagram a prime platform for reaching and interacting with potential clients for wedding and engagement parties, as well as 18th, 21st, 30th and even 40th birthday parties. Should I Use It?
As I have already said, I believe that Instagram has a huge untapped potential for mobile DJ marketing. However, it isn’t the right choice for all DJ businesses. I think there are two questions that you should ask yourself to determine if it is right for you. Firstly, who are your target customers?
If you specialise in any of the types of party listed above, then it’s likely many potential clients can be found on Instagram. However, if you focus on the older end of the spectrum – 50th, 60th or older birthday parties, wedding anniversaries or dinner dances for groups such as Rotary or Freemasons – this isn’t the right tool for connecting with your target market. Secondly, are you willing to commit the time to make an Instagram marketing campaign work?
Instagram isn’t a ‘silver bullet’ , simply setting up an account and waiting for bookings to come in isn’t how this works. To make it effective, you’ll need to commit time and energy over By Eddie Short Starting his DJ career in the early 90s at the tender age of 12, Eddie Short progressed from children’s parties through family functions to weddings and corporate events and has since DJed at 100s of events. Eddie has served as Pro Mobile’s editor for 15 years and is passionate about promoting professionalism and excellence in the mobile DJ business.
FOR MOBILE DJS a prolonged period of time to cultivate your Instagram account before it becomes a source of booking enquiries. Setting up an account and posting a few photos but then forgetting about it could actually be detrimental to your business. If a potential client finds you on Instagram, but you haven’t posted for a while they may either infer that you’ve gone out of business or that you’re not very busy as a DJ and therefore not worthy of their enquiry.
How Do I Get Started? The beauty of Instagram is its simplicity, so as long as you have a smartphone or tablet and know your way around it you should have no problem getting to grips with the app. However, as with anything like this, it will probably take you a short while to get used to how it works and where to find everything. Since the app is free and so is registering an account, my advice – if you haven’t used Instagram before – is to start by setting up a personal account.
Use it to post a few photos from your daily life and follow accounts that are of interest to you personally (friends and family, but also businesses – such as restaurants or shops – that you frequent and celebrities who interest you or bands whose music you enjoy). By doing this you’ll not only figure out how the app works and how to get the best photo results, without your ‘test shots’ being associated with your business, but you’ll also get a feel for how other businesses use Instagram (successfully or otherwise!).
How Do I Set Up An Account For My Business? When you’ve learnt your way around the app and got your head in to the world of Instagram, it’s time to create a dedicated account for your business. While some DJs do opt for a single account for both business and personal use, I would strongly discourage it. To be effective, your business posts need to be targeted directly at your potential clients, who won’t be interested in endless photos of your dog!
However, you can still keep a separate personal account and it’s easy to set up the app to allow you to quickly switch between your business and personal personas. The next step is to create a ‘Profile’ picture for your account, which will be displayed as a thumbnail next to each of your posts when they are displayed in other users’ feeds. If you’re a single operator, I’d recommend using a good quality headshot photo for this, while for multi-ops your logo is probably the best choice.
You’ll also need to write a short ‘Bio’ to sum up what your business offers and add a link to your website that will be displayed on your Profile Page (incidentally, this is the only clickable link you’ll be able to post on Instagram, as it doesn’t support links on posts). I’d also recommend linking to your profile from your website and email signature, to make it easy for clients past, present and future to find you on Instagram. Who Should I Follow?
The first step to establishing an Instagram presence is following other related users, whose posts will then appear in your feed. Each person you follow will receive a notification, so hopefully some of them will decide to reciprocate and kick-start your own following who will then see your posts in their own feeds. I’d recommend following some other DJs – especially anyone who you know personally or particularly admire – as well as, of course, our @promobilemag account.
However, I suggest focussing primarily on relevant local businesses – venues you’ve played at in the past, or where you have gigs coming up, and other 27INSTAGRAM FOR MOBILE DJS suppliers who you have worked with such as photographers, caterers, performers, etc. It’s also worth asking future clients when you meet with them if they use Instagram, if they do then ask for their username and follow them to keep connected during the build up to their event as well as after it has taken place.
This is a great way to stay ‘top of mind’ for if they are ever asked to recommend a DJ in the future. What Should I Post? Instagram posts involve either a photo or short video clip (under 60 seconds) alongside a written caption. The photo/video can be portrait or landscape, but the app is optimised for square photos – so sticking to that format is the best bet.
The caption can be up to 2200 characters long, so between around 350 and 400 words, which is quite a lot. This means that a good way of thinking about Instagram is as ‘photo blogging’ . You use a picture to catch attention and then add information and interest using the text portion of the post. This is why I think Instagram is such a powerful tool for mobile DJs; traditional blogging takes a lot of time and so is hard to maintain but Instagram posts are easy to create and post out on the road.
Simply taking a photo at each event you play and tagging the client, venue and other suppliers is a surefire way to build a following and demonstrate to potential clients your pedigree as a DJ. However, the key to fully realising the marketing potential of Instagram is posting content that will give value to your potential clients. This can be done by focussing each post on a creative aspect of the particular event – ideally something that you either came up with or were instrumental in delivering – which might prove inspirational for other potential future clients.
How Do I Use #Hashtags? While posting engaging content is the key to connecting with your existing following, the effective use of #hashtags is a great way to get your posts seen by other users, grow your following and eventually attract new customers to your business. Hashtags work really well in Instagram, so even if you don’t have many followers your posts can get seen by lots of people if you use the right hashtags and your photos/captions are good quality and relevant to the tags you choose.
This is where a combination of diligent research and trial + error comes in; you need to work out which hashtags your potential clients are likely to engage with. For example, if you’re based in Edinburgh and specialise in proms, #prom2018 #promideas and #edinburghprom are likely to be good bets. Whereas if you’re a wedding DJ based in London, #londonwedding #2018weddingtrends and #perfectlondonwedding are good examples. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, although research suggests that around 11 is the optimum number.
How Do I Make My Photos Look Good? Most modern smartphones have fantastic in-built cameras as well as internal processing that allows great photos to be captured by literally anyone. Add to this Instagram’s collection of ‘Filters’ , which can be easily applied to any picture to instantly give it a distinctive ‘look’ , as well as its powerful (but easy to use) editing tools and taking great shots really isn’t that difficult. However, a word of warning.
To project a professional image on Instagram, consistency is extremely important. Don’t be tempted to use a different Filter on every image. Spend some time experimenting (on your personal account) with all of the different Filters and effects – on a variety of different images – but then choose just a couple and stick to using those on your business account to give your posts a visual ‘brand identity’ . What About Stories?
Instagram Stories are different to regular posts in that they are only visible to your followers for 24 hours. Followed users with new story posts appear at the top of the Instagram feed, so they are a good way of communicating with existing followers. However they don’t use hashtags, so are less likely to reach new potential clients. Stories are generally best used for more ‘behind the scenes’ or candid photos – think behind the booth selfies – than more carefully crafted regular posts.
Do I Need To Pay? Instagram does offer paid advertising, but, unlike Facebook, you should be able get good exposure for your posts without paying as long as you post quality content and use hashtags effectively. The key to success on Instagram is consistency, both in terms of the quality and the regularity of your posts. If you are going to launch an Instagram marketing campaign – or if you already have an account but haven’t enjoyed much success with it – my advice is to commit to posting one carefully taken picture with a thoughtfully worded caption at every event for the next six months.
As long as you do your research when it comes to hashtags, remember to tag your venues, clients and fellow suppliers, and remember to focus your posts on what potential clients will find interesting and/ or useful, by the end of this time you should find yourself with a healthy following and that some of these online followers are beginning to transition into real life clients – which at the end of the day is the end goal of any marketing activity!
Statistics sourced from: monthly-active-users/ instagram-global-age-group/ Make sure you follow Pro Mobile on Instagram to keep up to date with everything we do and to get a glimpse behind the scenes! @promobilemag
