Active or passive?

There are two types of video content on social media, passive and active. Most musicians tend to post mostly passive content. These posts don’t ask the follower to do anything. Performance videos are a good example of this. While these posts are important there needs to be a balance.

Active posts encourage comments or conversation. These are important because the algorithm is much more likely to show comment rich content to more of your followers and, more importantly, like minded people who don’t follow you.

How the algorithm works

Social platforms make money through advertising. The longer you spend on their platform the more likely you are to see adverts and maybe even buy stuff.

The algorithm is set up to show you, the user, content that keeps you hooked. This might be stuff from people you interact with the most or popular content from people you don’t follow based on your interests.

One of the ways they measure that popularity is with comments. The more comments a post has the more people the algorithm shares it with.

Ergo if your content gets lots of comments the algorithm will show it to more people.

How to get your followers talking

One thing we’re not short of at Monoki is ideas for content that gets results. As well as making videos for businesses and musicians we manage social media accounts too. That means coming up with a lot of ideas.

If you’re a musician and want to get your followers talking, here are three ways to do just that.

Show off your songwriting chops

If you’re a songwriter why not ask your followers to suggest inspiration for your next composition? You could invite them to come up with:

• A title for you to work from
• A subject for your next song
• Key words or phrases you could include

This works well on two fronts. Firstly it invites comments (remember to answer to every post and keep the conversation going with open questions).

Secondly it encourages followers to check back in with you on progress. You could even post regular updates on how the song is developing or invite them to a concert or live stream where you debut

the song.

Musical knockout

Ask your followers to suggest a song for you to cover. You could just leave it at that and pick your favourite or take it up a notch and make it more fun.

Perhaps put two songs up against one another and offer to post a video of you performing the song that gets the most votes at the end of the week. Maybe as a live stream.

Then keep the battle going by pitching the winning song up against another. Repeat the process as many times as you like.

This will help to create a conversation and give followers a reason to pay attention to your content so they get to find out if the song they chose has won.

We actually use this idea for a radio station we manage. It encourages followers to listen at a certain time to find out if their song gets played.

Collaborate

I have to give full credit here to my Instagram friend Semaj Dee who does this regularly with brilliant results. Gary Barlow rather famously did it during the Covid-19 lockdowns too. It's probably easier to list who he didn't duet with but he created powerful 'come back' content as followers were hungry to see who he would collaborate with next.

How to do it

Ask a fellow musician to duet or play with you on a video. Just a cover version will do. I’m pretty sure Semaj creates his videos with Zoom or something similar so it should be super easy to do if you can't meet in person.

For starters this gets you to meet new musicians and, more importantly, their followers get introduced to you and vice versa.

On Instagram you can even share the love further with the collaborate option in tags. Your video then shows up on both feeds and any comments or likes count for both of you.

Turn followers into fans

When followers don't engage with any of your posts it makes them nothing more than a number. If you want those followers to start buying your music or seeing you live (which I’m assuming you do), you need to convert them to fans. In order to do that you need to start talking with them.

These ideas will help you to strike up conversations. People are much more likely to check out your music and, ultimately, spend money with you if they feel they know you.

At Monoki we love nothing more than seeing talented, unsigned musicians grow. If you’d like more help turning your followers into fans come and have a chat.