Building Your Artist Instagram: Final Post

Introduction

I started a project to changing my personal instagram and turning it into one of a professional artist’s. It is important for you to note that I had no experience with social media, and I wanted this project to be a process in which me and the readers could learn together. Every week I chose to do market research on a famous flutist’s Instagram, and create a post of mine in a similar style.

Project Results

After two months of weekly posts, I gained 25 followers. At first, I felt a bit disappointed, as I expected I would gain much more than that, however I did notice a lot more activity on my profile. I had much more likes as well as comments from my followers, meaning that I had definitely engaged my audience. Besides, I believe that if I post more frequently than once a week, I may gain followers faster.

To turn my personal Instagram into a professional artist’s one, the first thing I had to change was to have my account public. The down side of this is that I don’t have control over who is following me anymore, however getting followers is a task hard enough with a public account, hence I believe it is a small price to pay for the faster growth of the artist instagram.

A more professional looking Instagram profile is not all I got from this project. More importantly, I learned many skills that will help me for the rest of my career.

Timeline

I couldn’t start this project with no one else than Katie Althen, (@katieflute). She is a Graduate from Juilliard and NEC. I chose to start this project with her because she is one of the most followed (if not the most) flute themed instagram. After analyzing her profile, I realized how important it is to post content consistently. For the past weeks, I haven’t posted as much as her, but since I was never used to post content on Instagram, I decided to start with one post a week and start posting more frequently as time passes. I believe that’s how every habit should be built.

It is the common knowledge that the first impression is super important and if not given enough attention, it can be the last one. The most important thing I learned this week was how to organize my Bio in order to tell as much information about myself and at the same time make it look as organized as possible.

For the second week, I decided to analyze Nicole Esposito (@neflute). She is the flute professor at the University of Iowa. She was my second choice because besides having many followers too, the nature of her content is similar to what I like to post in my Instagram. The idea of having a highlight folder dedicated only to silly stuff we do is definitely something I will work on in the future, since I like to do many silly things mainly when I am doing something related to flute. This week is when I started using my own hashtag #ivoshin, as I saw Dr. Esposito doing the same with her name.

For the third week, I chose to analyze Denis Bouriakov (@denisflute). This was one of the most exciting profiles I got to analyze because he is one of my favorite flute players. He is also the principal flutist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the professor of flute at UCLA. Most of his content is his recordings of important flute pieces, promoting his YouTube Chanel, which I think is a great thing for me to do when I have more content on my own Youtube Chanel. He also uses hashtags with the word “flute” written in many different languages, which may result in people from those countries to be able to find me.

For the fourth week, the chosen artist was Hélène Boulègue (@Helene_boulegue_flute). In the summer of 2019, She gave one of the best performances I have ever seen in person, so I decided to check what she’s been doing with her instagram, and I am glad I did. Unlike Denis Bouriakov, her content is more varied, with videos and photos of either herself or the scores she’s currently working on. However, what I caught my attention is that no matter what type of content she posts, she always connects with her followers. This was such an important lesson to learn from her instagram because this is the main point of what my profession deals with: Connection with your audience.

I chose to analyze Maxim Rubtsov (@maxim_rubtsov) for the final week. He is the principal flutist of the Russian National Orchestra and one of the most followed male flutists on Instagram. Besides incorporating the idea of putting the hashtags in the comment section, I also like how the instagram is not entirely focused on flute, but we can see many posts which his cat is featured and this gives a different approach to the artist Instagram. I believe that showing things other than only flute stuff humanizes him a bit, since he is in such a prestigious position.

Reflection

I believe I learned much more than what I expected when I decided to start this project. The best thing about embarking in these type of studies is that you start them thinking that you’ll learn a something particular, but that ends up being just a small part of everything you learned. As described in the timeline, most of the things I learned from each of the profiles analyzed were actually techniques on how to use features of the App in my favor, instead of getting ideas for content.

A more professional looking Instagram profile is not all I got from this project. More importantly, I learned many skills that will help me for the rest of my career. Besides, I had a lot of fun during this study and I recommend you to do the same, and this seems to be a good time to do so.

Thank you so much for those who have been reading my weekly posts and stay safe!!