Social Media Page Research & Analysis

For our social media page, we decided to make our artist's account on Instagram. We had several reasons for this, the main one being our target audience. Our artist herself is supposed to be a "zennial" (gen z and millennial cusper) so naturally, our target audience, as also previously discussed during our research phase, is the age group 16-30 (including the secondary target audience). The primary target age group (late teens and early 20s) are significantly more present and active on Instagram. This is also why a majority of artists now, despite having accounts on both platforms, are more active on Instagram because they get greater engagement with their target audience.

Secondly, Facebook appears to have a more conservative demographic and is subject to regulation by media watchdogs to a greater extent than Instagram. So considering our video contains a depiction of a lesbian couple, if it happens to fall under the viewership of people with conservative views (which is most Pakistani Facebook users) it could be potentially damaging for us as and more so for the actors we used.

I analysed a few indie artists' instagram accounts, mainly taking into consideration their theme of their posts (if any), the types of posts, captions and the ways they promote a single or an album.

Cigarettes After Sex

For starters, the band's profile image is the promotional image of their most recent single, so that isone way in which they have tried to promote their song. They also haven't posted any IGTVs, even though a large number of their posts are videos. The purpose of the videos that they have posted however is more so for aesthetic reasons rather than promotional, the most common being posting very short clips of the scenery of the city where they performed.

The theme on their page is quite obvious - simple black, white and grey monotone posts. This colour palette is a signature of the band, and can also be seen in their albums and digipaks. Despite being active since 2015, they actually have relatively fewer posts, which also adds to the minimalist, lowkey vibe they have. Perhaps for the same reason, they hardly have any posts of the band members themselves. This could also be because indie artists don't tend to focus a lot on star image like pop artists do.

Most of their posts are promotional images for announcing the release of songs from albums or singles, or the predicted release of their albums, all of them having the band's name on them. The captions are very straightforward and simple, much like the posts themselves.

Foster The People

They also used the promo image of their most recent release as their profile picture.

Unlike Cigarettes After Sex, Foster The People seem to post far more on Instagram, including stories and IGTVs. The IGTVs include a song and a jam session recording, both aimed at promoting the band. The stories such as the one below, also reiterate their releases in case people tend to view stories more than scrolling through posts. 

During their initial days as a band, their feed had a very clear theme (the white margins at the top and bottom) that continued for a long time. Also, the first posts on the page are of the band itself, but rather than focusing on their own image, it shows them practicing.

Even though their page overall does not have a set theme, their posts do follow a certain pattern and organisation, for instance the promo posts for Lamb's Wool consist of a post containing the official song promo image in the centre, in between similar looking posts showing the art and the song title. On the next row, the promo poster with the single title clearly written is posted in between two clips from the songs visualiser. 

Their page also includes a lot of artwork similar to the one in the last row above, which more than often seems to serve as a way of engaging with the audience and staying relevant, for instance with captions like "How is your sunday goin?" or "Wanna help us name this character? We'll choose from the 3 most liked names in the comments". They also have posts advertising their merchandise such as clothes.

Abdullah Siddiqui

Abdullah Siddiqui is a rising Pakistani indie artist, so it is only a good idea to consider the way he uses Instagram to promote. 

His feed also seems to have a varying theme, such as the following screenshot showing different tracks from an album, with all posts featuring a similar style of art.

His first posts, unlike both CAS and FTP, show neither the artist nor promote a work of his, which may be to make his feed look more real and not entirely filtered.

The captions under promotional posts are also straightforward and follow a pattern, such as coming soon post, the song artwork and release date, and the post for the day of the song's release.

Aside from these three, I went through the Instagram accounts of a few more indie artists such as Clairo, Alvvays, DPR, Men I Trust, the 1975 and Gracie Abrams, to get a more diverse range of ideas of how artists go about their Instagram and promotion through social media. To be honest, all artists have more or less different ways of maintaining their feeds - DPR, like CAS, has a very sophisticated feed, which is almost 100% promotional posts and even includes dividers between promotions for different comebacks. On the other hand, some of their artists' accounts don't really seem to be following a certain theme at all - their promotional posts often can barely be differentiated from regular posts, save for the caption. The following are screenshots from Gracie Abrams and Clairo's accounts, both of which have a very unfiltered vibe that a regular teenager's instagram would have.