20 Ways To Grow A Guitar Page On Instagram

What are some of the best ways to grow a guitar page on Instagram?

Most of you are genuinely trying to make it out there and sustain yourselves with the music you make.

That’s the dream!

You do a quick search online on how to promote yourself as a musician and everybody will tell you to use social media as much as you can.

Instagram is one of those platforms where guitar players have huge potential.

Whether you’re here because you want to grow your personal account or a guitar repost page that you own, it doesn’t matter; we will talk about both.

Let’s start…

How to grow a guitar page on Instagram?

Before I start, I want to talk about the terminology that I will use, just so that we’re on the same page.

When I say ‘repost account’ I mean one of those big guitar pages that you see with hundreds of thousands of followers that post daily guitar content. For example @guitarsdaily:

These ‘repost pages’ always upload guitar videos, memes, lessons, and images, and rarely actually own the content, they mostly either get permission from the artist or give them credit for their work on the caption.

Now, when I say ‘personal account’, I just mean an Instagram page that will only be focused on yourself and your brand. For example @giacomoturra:

Personal accounts usually just publish guitar covers, original music, or whatever the artist wants.

Just like with anything, if there is a big opportunity, there is a lot of competition, and on Instagram, you will have a lot of that.

In this post, I will be showing you how to win at both scenarios (both personal and repost pages) and how to use all the traffic you get to your Instagram page, to make money, promote your music, or grow your network of musicians.

Here are some of the best ways to grow a guitar page on Instagram with real followers that actually care about what you do:

1. Use hashtags

If you’re trying to grow a guitar page on Instagram, then hashtags should not be optional.

Instagram has been starting to release search engine-like functionalities in which you can specifically search for phrases, so it’s not only hashtags and accounts what people would be able to look for inside the app.

This is great news for guitar players and musicians in general since it means more ways of getting discovered by new users.

Now, a good way to tell Instagram what your content is all about has always been to use hashtags, and that’s one of the main reasons why you should use them in the first place.

Aside from that, they will really get your content out there, and just like Google does with keywords and websites, Instagram will do the same with your account.

You will rank higher if you are publishing good content and people are enjoying it.

2. Host a few Instagram contests or giveaways

Hosting the right giveaway, at the right time, can take your account from having no followers at all, to having a decent number of new people following you.

To do this, you will need the actual giveaway item and some audience to start with.

You then would just let as many people as people know about it so that they can start entering the giveaway and potentially bring their friends into the contest as well.

But let’s say you don’t have that many followers, to begin with, then it wouldn’t make sense for you to do a giveaway unless you collaborate with an account with a big following so that they promote it for you on their respective pages.

I’m sure you’ve seen it multiple times:

@username is giving away an acoustic guitar, and the only way to enter is by following them and liking their last post. Make sure to go and check them out!

Something similar to that and with the right audience will really boost your numbers.

For example, let’s take a look at a giveaway hosted by @sweeleemusic in 2019:

You can see that all people have to do to enter the guitar giveaway is to follow them on Instagram, like the post, tag three friends, and tell them which finish you’d choose in the comments section.

What they did here was really smart, since, by people entering the giveaway, they get more engagement on the post (with comments and likes), and then they also bring in 3 potential users that could also enter if they want.

But to be completely transparent with you…

A giveaway, if not promoted in the right way, will basically be a waste of time.

If you choose to contact a big page for a promotion, then this will also cost you more money.

People aren’t that nice that they will promote other pages for free.

Plus, you will also have to give away something that’s valuable to your potential audience; something that’s valuable to guitarists.

I encourage you to check out this YouTube video:

HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL GIVEAWAY ON INSTAGRAM (Step-by-step Guide for VIRAL Giveaways) 🔥🎁

She gives amazing tips on how to run a successful Instagram giveaway and shares some tricks to make sure you get as much out of it as possible.

For example, one thing that I truly enjoyed was that she goes over some of the legal stuff that you should know before doing something like this and how you should be very transparent with how you choose a winner.

She also talks about how some of the people that will follow you because of the giveaway will immediately unfollow you after, and how you have a very short amount of time to make a good impression and give them a reason to stay afterward.

3. Comment on other guitar-related content

First of all, don’t spam on other pages, and don’t self-promote while attempting to look like you’re not. People will know what you’re trying to do.

This may sound obvious but the reality of the matter is that by commenting on other people’s guitar photos and videos, you may be increasing your visibility a lot more than you might even think.

Let’s say, for example, that a big guitar page uploads a cool video and you leave a genuine comment. And when I say genuine, I mean something that’s not being copied and pasted and that is actually relatable.

If that same post gets 100,000 impressions, and out of that 100,000 impressions, only 1% of users open the comment section, that’s about 1,000 people that could see your comment and visit your profile.

Of course, those numbers could be less or more, but you get the point.

Now, because we don’t mind sharing the secrets with you : )

Instagram puts the most liked comments first; other features such as pinned comments also allow even more visibility.

What you can do is that, instead of trying to be the top post every time, you can simply reply to the most liked comment or one pinned comment.

This way, you don’t have to worry about commenting on the “perfect” thing, but rather, you just interact with other people.

Being verified also really helps with this, Instagram prioritizes comments that are made by verified users more than those made by non-verified accounts.

They even show a small snippet of comments on our timeline, with mostly verified accounts:

Let’s take a look at one of Fender’s posts:

You can see what I mean when I say that some comments get prioritized.

This is another great way to get more impressions by simply participating in a discussion started by a verified page.

4. Engage with your followers

This is truly one of my favorite tips on this list.

Engaging with your followers is when you start building real connections with your audience.

If somebody leaves a comment on one of your posts, give it a like and reply to it, they took the time to do that, so appreciate it.

Even if it’s just a quick reply, I guarantee you that doing small things like this will go a long way. At the end of the day, is called social media for a reason, we’re supposed to be socializing with each other.

What if nobody leaves comments on your posts in the first place?

You need to create some sort of discussion or have a call to action under each of your posts.

Ask them a specific question about the content you just posted, or say something generic such as:

Tell me what you think about this post in the comments section below! I will be replying to each one of you. 🎸

With that simple statement, you did two things:

• You invited them to comment on your post.
• And you let them know that you will be replying to all of them.

People tend to not leave comments because they don’t know what to say or how what they say will be received.

So this is a great way to break that barrier!

Your followers want to feel that you care about the same things that they care about, and since this is a very hobby-specific niche, then even more.

Why is engaging with your followers important to grow your guitar page?

When somebody that doesn’t follow you comes to your page and sees that you have a community with people talking to each other and interacting, they will be more likely to follow your account.

People love to be part of something.

We unconsciously do this as humans; most of us want to “fit in” somewhere.

So, use that to your advantage.

5. Switch to an Instagram business profile

By having an Instagram business profile, Instagram will provide you with the exact engagement data and analytics of your page.

This will be a great way for you to solidify what strategies are working and what strategies are not.

You will get access to many other options on your profile:

As you can see, on our guitar Instagram page, we have direct access to Promotions, Insights, and Email.

Remember how I mentioned before that you should be testing the number of hashtags that work for you?

Well, by having a business profile you will be able to do that in a better way. And not only that but you can also start adjusting other areas on your page.

Let me explain myself…

For example, if your audience is 80% based in China, and you are in the United States, then guess what, the time that you publish will influence the number of people seeing the post right after it gets posted.

If you didn’t know, Instagram takes how fast and positive the feedback for each post is, as a factor to determine how good that same content is.

Then they feature the best of the best in many places like the explore page.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

The fewer the people reacting to your guitar videos right away, the fewer the chances of getting free exposure from Instagram’s organic reach.

If you don’t get any likes or comments, Instagram’s algorithm will automatically think that what you are posting is low-quality or a lot of people are not interested in it.

Let’s take a look at @guitarbased’s Instagram audience breakdown: 

As you can see from the image above, if we wanted to upload content on a Friday, our audience is most active at 12:00 pm.

Also, 84% of our followers are men.

These are very important pieces of information that we, as content creators, shouldn’t be ignoring.

6. Start paying attention to your Instagram analytics

Growing an audience nowadays is very hard, you need to know who you’re targeting and who your ideal follower is.

In order to know that, you need to track your Instagram analytics.

We just talked about switching to an Instagram business profile.

Eventually, after making this change, you will have a lot of data and information available for you to understand and interpret. Instagram analytics is key in understanding your demographics, evaluating your overall performance, and optimizing your content.

You can use engagement data such as comments, likes, and clicks in order to determine what type of post usually performs better.

If you see that a certain style usually drags more attention, then it would make sense for you to upload more similar content.

We were just showing you some of Instagram’s business profile analytics such as Most Active Times and Gender. But there are so many other things that you should be considering:

Knowing where your audience is located, their age range, the number of accounts you reached, and total gained followers, are some of the things that will allow you to take a deeper look at how your account and content are performing.

7. Upload content that tempts users to tag their friends

This is one of those strategies that are very likely to help you increase your followers instantly.

There is no better way of reaching someone you don’t know, than making somebody who they are friends with, tell them about you.

If you upload guitar content that is relatable, interesting, and fun to watch, then a simple statement such as:

Tag 3 friends that should see this! 😎

…could make a lot of people notice you on Instagram.

Now imagine combining this strategy with the giveaways and contests that we previously talked about.

How so? Well, you could make it so that the only way to enter the giveaway is to tag other friends, and maybe even repost you on their stories.

These are things that will exponentially grow your following!

Now, doing all this is not so difficult, but you have to ensure that the content is right and that you give your followers a way to engage and get their friends to do the same.

If their friends are active on social media, they are probably going to come in and engage as well.

8. Post consistently

A study on 100,000 Instagram profiles by Tailwind in 2017, found that the more often you post, the more likes you get and the more followers you get.

The study established that those profiles that posted at least once a day get more likes and followers than those who post less frequently.

Source: Tailwind Blog

The image above shows some of the exact numbers and metrics that they concluded.

You can see that those users that posted 7+ posts per week saw a 56% follower growth rate, and those who posted 1 post per week only saw 14%.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you are going to get the same numbers if you simply start posting more than 7 posts a week; this just means that generally the more you post the more followers you get.

And of course, things like content quality and post engagement are huge factors that will decide how well this strategy goes for you.

If you are a repost page, this should be very easy, but if you are trying to grow a personal guitar page, then putting out 7 pieces of content a week without sacrificing quality is the real challenge.

I encourage you to start small and then move up to bigger numbers the more comfortable you get with the entire posting and editing process.

9. Get a shoutout from a bigger page

I’m sure you have seen all these big guitar repost pages having something on their bio along the lines of:

DM for promotions.

This is one of the ways in which they make money with their account!

What promotions or paid features basically mean is that you will pay them money and send them a video for them to show their thousands of followers, usually with a tag that links back to your account.

Depending on how big the page is, you will usually have some users come to your own page to check out your work if they liked your style.

But as I said, this will cost you money, so we don’t really recommend it if you’re not willing to accept the risk.

And why is there a risk? You might ask.

Getting featured on these big pages doesn’t mean that you will be an instant sensation.

See, the problem is that since they post so many different people daily, is extremely hard to stand out, which most of the time will cause you to waste your money on nothing.

By the way, here is a post that I know you will find very useful:

• How to make money playing guitar?

10. Use location tags

I usually love to refer to location tags as the 31st Instagram hashtag.

Location tags are one of those ways to grow on Instagram that people often don’t use as much as they should.

See, when people click on any location page, they will get presented with all the posts that were taken at that certain location.

Now imagine you using a different location tag for each post that you publish. As time passes, you’ll notice how your organic impressions will get positively impacted a bit more than expected.

Location tag pages will put your content out there, and people can and will follow you from there too if your content is good enough.

A few of the most used and visited location pages on Instagram are:

• Los Angeles, US
• London, United Kingdom
• New York, US
• Moscow, Russia
• Paris, France

Instagram lets you put any location that you want, without having to be there necessarily. I will just leave it there ; )

11. Join a DM/engagement group or create one

A DM or engagement group is a group of people that like and comment on each other’s pictures so that Instagram features those posts on places like the explore page or simply shows them to more users on their respective timelines.

Why is this even important to talk about?

Well, the formula is very simple:

Likes and comments = explore page = more followers = more likes and more comments = explore page

How they do these engagement groups is very simple too. They just create a group chat and people just start sending in their posts so that others can go ahead and leave a few likes and comments.

If you find it difficult to find one engagement group to join, then I highly encourage you to create one yourself with a few other guitar players that you know.

Then slowly and patiently start adding more people as you all grow together.

12. Add a watermark on your original content

Guitar players usually have a lot of short videos and content that they can share at any time.

If you are posting original content in your account then you should start adding a small but noticeable watermark. Preferably your Instagram username in this format:

• @username

Adding “@” lets others know that this is a username and not just a random name.

For example, let’s take a look at @kfiro’s videos.

As you can see, he has his Instagram username very big on the bottom right side of the screen for every video that he posts.

He even adds a small profile picture as well; we think this is very clever.

Make sure to put your watermark in a place where if you crop it out, the post won’t make sense anymore or it will look oddly centered, that way, whoever re-posts your content must leave your username in it.

If you slowly start to get some eyeballs on your posts, start using good hashtags, and are creative enough to easily get people’s attention, it will be a matter of time before some big page reposts your videos.

Then after that, it will hopefully be a snowball effect, meaning more and more people will start reposting and following you over time.

This is a great way of getting out there without having to do much effort other than creating good guitar videos.

13. Pick a good username

Imagine you see two different accounts, one is @guitarvideos and the other one is @guitaarvidz124258.

• Which one are you clicking?
• Which one do you think most people will remember?

Make your username easy to read and memorize, and trust me, more people will be coming back to your page. Even if they don’t follow you right away, they can potentially come back in the future.

Also, this is usually a detail that most people forget, but having the word “guitar” in your username can help you gain a lot of organic impressions on Instagram and even on Google.

For example, let’s take a look at the Google search results for the keyword “Instagram guitar photos”

All these results that you see, usually change from time to time, but you can really see which accounts are more likely to get some organic traffic from Google.

Even if it’s only 5 people a month, that’s 5 potential followers that they didn’t have to spend any money or time in trying to get them to go to their pages.

This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Now, before you think this is as easy as changing your username:

Ranking on Google or even Instagram isn’t as simple as just having “guitar” in your username. Yes, it helps, but there are other numerous different things (outside of the scope of this post) that play a big role in this.

We are simply showing you that is conceivable, but at the same time is not that simple.

Also, for some of you, your brand name might not really include the word “guitar”, or if you’re going for a personal guitar account, you might just want to have your full name only, and that’s also perfectly fine.

Don’t spend too much of your time thinking that this is a deal-breaker because is really not.

14. Network, collaborate and connect with other guitar accounts

This is very simple, and if you start doing what we mentioned before about commenting on other guitar-related accounts, then you are 50% ahead of everybody else.

The difference this time is that instead of talking to your followers, you will have to reach out to other fellow guitarists to ask them if they want to collaborate with you.

Most guitarists on Instagram are very open to working with other musicians but is just a matter of who reaches out first.

You need to have the right mindset:

• Don’t wait for others to come to you; don’t compete with them, grow together!

If you see that somebody is doing the same thing that you are or have a similar style, and have about the same amount of followers that you have, then both of you could easily create some content together to then share with each other’s audience.

Note: The reason I say that you must have about the same amount of followers is that, for example, if they have thousands of followers and you only have 98 followers, even if you’re not, it just looks like you are taking advantage of them to gain exposure.

Let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario:

• You both have 10,000 followers.
• You collaborate to create some guitar videos.
• And then you both tag each other on those respective posts.

If from each audience, only a small 1% of users follow the other person, that’s about 100 new followers that each of you could potentially gain.

Of course, these numbers are just for the sake of this example, but you can really get an idea of how valuable doing something like this really is.

15. Pick a small guitar sub-niche and then expand

People normally think that picking a small niche is bad and that they won’t be able to grow their brand to its full potential.

You could be that one Instagram page that’s known to be the best at uploading blues music covers, or maybe you prefer to only upload funk music.

What I’m trying to say is, find a way to make yourself look and be different so that when people are searching for that specific thing that you are the best at, they will have no choice but to find you.

And then, after you have a solid base and a good foundation of followers who love your content, then is more than alright to start expanding to other types of content.

16.  Don’t buy followers or likes

This is by far the most horrible thing you could ever do to your account.

Don’t use shortcuts to grow your guitar page or else, you will eventually get banned or shadowbanned (which in my opinion is worse).

Instagram knows when something is not right, and they will spot and disable your account if they see suspicious activities happening.

Plus, all those followers will be fake, and none of them will interact with your content.

These so-called “real followers” services are pretty much worthless for people who are trying to make a name for themselves legitimately.

Just imagine you having 30K followers and getting 9 views on a video with no comments!

This is a position that you don’t want to be in, it looks bad and people can tell you’re not legit.

Your organic reach will be negatively affected, and even if you decide to start doing it genuinely after, it will take you years, if not forever, to get your account in good standings with Instagram again.

17. Post your content at the best times

Just like with many things in life, timing is very important.

If you want as many of your followers as possible to see and interact with the content that you post, then knowing when to publish is a great strategy for you to apply all the time.

You need to understand that there are specific times during the day where it’s better for you to upload your guitar content.

Why is this? Well, very simple, because more people will be on the app at different times.

Some of the best times to post on Instagram are:

• Best Times: Wednesday at 8:00 PM, Thursday at 5:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM, & 4:00 PM, and Friday at 5:00 AM.
• Best Days: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
• Most Consistent Engagement: 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM from Tuesdays to Thursdays; mostly, Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m
• Worst Days: Sundays and Mondays.

* Using Eastern Time Zone for all days

Now, going back to those Instagram business account metrics that we mentioned before:

If you take a look at the numbers that they provide you, you will find out what works for you in specific, therefore, you won’t have to be listening to other people’s advice like this one, and then you can reinforce what is already working for your page.

18. Get inspired by other guitarists and learn from what’s working

One of the very first things that I would say you should do right now is look around for the most successful guitar pages on Instagram to learn from them.

Just type in “guitar videos” or something similar in the search bar, and check out some of the first pages that show up.

A lot of people will debate that you should just be yourself and not care about what others are doing.

I would argue that is fine for you to take a quick glance at what’s working in your industry to get inspired.

Examine what kind of content they post and also try to ask yourself why some of their posts are successful.

After you gain some good insights, mix it with your own talent and creativity, and create a style that’s unique.

Remember this quote by Jimmy Page:

“I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.”

19. Optimize your entire profile

I bet you’ve heard about this a lot of times: optimizing the look of your profile is crucial if you want to be successful on Instagram.

This platform is all about looks, sadly, so you really have to play the game or you’ll lose at it.

When somebody comes to your profile you have 3 seconds to call their attention and make a great impression, if you do, most of them will hit the follow button.

If you don’t, then a lot of them will just leave.

Now, how do you optimize your entire Instagram profile?

You can do a few things:

• Make sure to have a great profile picture, name, and bio.
• You have taken the time to personalize your Instagram story highlights.
• A website is linked to your page.
• And of course, that your content is high quality with a very defined theme.

Let’s take a look at a great example:

As you can see from Nick’s profile, he made his Instagram account a business profile, which lets him add an email button, his location, and a “Musician” category text under his name.

He has an awesome profile picture, has added his full name, and also lets people know a little bit about himself on his bio.

You should definitely aim to have your own profile set up in a similar way, showing professionalism and what you are all about.

20. Be creative and have fun

If a guitar player’s account has 100 followers, and all of them like every post and leave valuable comments, then that is a very successful account.

Don’t get caught up in growing and gaining followers, but rather have fun doing it.

Aside from these tips, there are so many other ways in which you can grow on Instagram that nobody even knows about yet.

So be creative and come up with better ways of growing, cause remember nobody knows you more than yourself.

Also, remember that you are a musician before anything else, so make sure you’re using most of your time to get better at playing, and eventually, people will find you : )

What guitar hashtags are the best for you to use?

If you go to any guitar page on Instagram you will see that most of them are using hashtags.

Just copy a few of those that you see them using very often and are not brand-specific hashtags if you want a quick list to use on your own guitar page.

You can always add some of the ones that you think will better suit your page, for example, if you are in a certain guitar sub-niche, then it would make a lot of sense to include some hashtags from that same sub-niche.

People will oftentimes search and scroll through hashtag pages, so make sure that your content has good quality and that your thumbnail somehow calls people’s attention.

Notice I’m not telling you to clickbait!

I know you’ve also seen people using those big red circles for literally anything. Unless you have a real and genuine reason, don’t do it.

Now, imagine you being the one searching for guitar videos:

• What would you want to watch?
• What would make you click on your own post if you did not know it was yours?

These questions will help you tremendously in defining your target audience and how you approach them in the best way.

How many guitar hashtags should you use?

Instagram’s hashtag limit is 30, so you can use up to 30 hashtags.

That’s 30 different hashtag pages on Instagram that your post could be discoverable by potential followers.

Now, a lot of marketers or Instagram gurus will also argue that you should only use around 5-10 hashtags at a time and that if you use 30 hashtags, you might get shadowbanned.

This is the old debate that nobody will ever know the answer to. Unless you are the actual Software Engineer that’s programming the Instagram algorithm, then all you can do is make guesses.

But this is your best choice:

Don’t listen to them or me, don’t waste your time reading a bunch of articles on the same topic.

Just start posting a lot of good content and use different numbers of hashtags.

After a month or so, you should have sufficient data to conclude what really works best for you in specific, then just go from there.