4 Things Music Promoters Must Know About Instagram Geotagging
Instagram is an incredibly valuable and effective social media marketing tool, and while most music promoters already have a regularly established strategy when it comes to the photo sharing platform, they could be leaving out a key piece: Geotagging.
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Guest post by Bill Leigh of Eventbrite
You post on Instagram daily. You feature artists in your Instagram Stories as they tour through. You’ve got a well-refined hashtag strategy and a Get Tickets button featured prominently on your profile.
But are you overlooking one key step in your Instagram strategy?
Geotagging — assigning a location to Instagram posts of your venue or festival — makes it easier to reach your specific, local audience. If you’re geotagging, your posts have a better chance of being found by your fans doing location-based searches. And being found leads to more engagement — and more ticket sales.
Here are four essential things promoters need to know about Instagram geotagging.
1. Geotagged posts get nearly 80% more engagement
A post with a specified location will get 79% more engagement than a post that’s not geotagged. And this increase in engagement is from better-qualified customers: local fans interested in local and regional happenings.
By tagging the same named location as much as possible, you’ll build content and buzz at the location while inspiring others to share their content there as well. Adding your location also helps fans find you in the real world since clicking or tapping on the tag leads to a pinpoint on a map.
2. Geotagging adds photos to a photo map
You can geotag your city generally, or get specific to your venue’s precise address. The advantage of geotagging your exact location is that when fans click or tap on the geotag they’ll see all the photos tagged to that location, whether posted by you or by fellow fans. They may be inspired to join in the fun by posting their own images geotagged to your location.
The photo map also makes it easy for you to interact directly with fanswho come to your shows. For example, you could make it a weekly practice to review all posts tagged at your venue and like, comment on, or repost the best photos.
Tip: if you’re adding photos from home or somewhere else, don’t worry — you don’t need to be in the physical location to use a geotag.
3. It’s easy to set up your venue or festival as a geotag location
If your music venue or festival isn’t on Instagram’s list of suggested locations, you can easily create a new location. Setting up a new location is as simple as posting a check-in status on Facebook using your GPS-enabled smartphone. Here’s how:
- First, on your smartphone, make sure you have location services turned on for the Facebook App. On an iPhone, that option is under Settings>Account Settings>Location.
- Be physically at your venue or festival location. On Facebook, make a check-in post, entering your venue or festival name as the location. At the bottom of the list of search results, tap the option to add a new location.
- Go through the prompts for selecting your type of business (for example, Arts & Entertainment > Performance & Event Venue > Live Music Venue).
- When it asks you for a location, tap “I’m currently here.”
- Publish your status. Now your new location will show up on Instagram.
4. In Instagram Stories, you can geotag with location stickers
Instagram Stories are the future of the platform, so they’re a feature you can’t ignore. You can geotag your Instagram Stories using location stickers. If the location is your venue or festival name, that’s a great way to include your brand directly on your story.
For more ideas on marketing to music fans, check out the 2018 Music Marketing Handbook: The Five Essential Elements.
Bill Leigh is a writer at Eventbrite, where he focuses on helping create successful live music events. He is also the former Editor-in-Chief of Bass Player magazine. When he’s not working, he splits his time between “dad mode” and “rocker mode.”
