Making It Docuseries: Social Media Strategy

The aim with the project and social media, was to make an informative platform that worked alongside the series.

I would use Instagram and TikTok to make posts that offered stories and tips to users and reel them into the series if they like what they saw. With Canva, I made a lot of carousel posts with lists and this was transferred in video form for tiktok. Some examples of informative posts across both platforms were:

• PRS funds for music creators
• Label services for indie music creators
• What we can learn about artist mgmt from the ROSTR report
• Job opportunity boards for music creators
• Artist manager backstories including those of Wassilm ‘Sal’ Slaiby (Doja Cat, The Weeknd), Jodie Regan (Tame Impala) and Amy Morgan (Glass Animals)
• A basic guide to promoting music on tiktok

Some of the strategies for these content types changed as the project progressed, for example, the first videos I made involved me playing guitar. I did this thinking that I would attract fellow musicians also interested in building their knowledge of the industry. I decided to take a different route for two reasons: I wasn’t persuading users to follow (likely because I was attracting a much different audience) and also because my time to practice guitar parts was taken by other responsibilities.

The response for the posts in general varied, with the music promotion posts collecting the most and likes. This was as to be expected as what I’d seen from my market research, advice for music promotion on socials receives a lot of attention. One surprising tiktok with one of the best responses was the ‘Four things I learnt form my music business degree’ at 1,013 views and 16 likes. This may have been something that intrigued teenagers looking into university paths.

I also made sure to try and stimulate engagement by taking several measures: call-to-actions, story polls, highlights and IG lives

Once the first episode for the series was out, I began to release little snippets and adverts to direct viewers to the series. As time progressed, these clips improved in catching attention. I learnt that certain things like the initial sound, text and visuals needed to be a certain way to gain my viewers interests. For example, the music in the first snippet was just too loud to appeal to audiences.

I even began to use myself as a way to promote the advert. This helped in adding to the brand personality quality which in turn helps to build a connection with the viewers.

Reflective Thoughts

I think I managed the social media side of things well, the content across the platforms were engaging and informational, which was my original aim. From previous social media theory, that is a little old but still rings true, there were several rules that I’d followed including:

Doing social listening beforehand to get to know the community, having an outline of your content ideas beforehand, and delivering content not just promoting your products (Ryan, 2017). Alongside this, shouting out peers in the same field and commenting on current affairs in the industry (Frick and Eyler-Werve, 2015).

The content I made was well informed with the time I spent researching for a lot of them. Additionally, I made sure to optimise my bio to make my stance clear for new followers. All of these techniques resulted in an professional account that has potential to attract a lot of followers.

Ryan, D. (2017) Understanding digital marketing : marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Fourth edn. London: Kogan Page.

Frick, T. and Eyler-Werve, K. (2015) Return on engagement : content strategy and web design techniques for digital marketing. Second edn. New York: Focal Press, Taylor & Francis Group.