Do you want to know how to market your magic like a pro using Instagram?
Starting out in the Magic world can be daunting, spending hours rehearsing your craft from playing cards to mentalism. Dynamo to David Blaine you love it all and now you’re at the stage where you want to develop your brand using Instagram.
We’re going to cover a few things you need to share your magic with the world:
- The Instagram Account Basics
- The Basics of Posting
- Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags….
- Engaging your Audience
- Time to get ‘Reel’
Some of these tips will be complemented by an influential Magician’s Instagram account to use as best practice.
The Instagram Account Basics
Let’s talk about profile pictures, bios, when and what to post. Get these basics covered and you have a strong foundation for building a Magic brand on Instagram.
In order to excel on Instagram you need to make sure you have all the basic account information readily available at first glance.
When a user visits your page it is imperative that you answer five key questions immediately.
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
…………… and why?
Your account is a snapshot of your brand and within the first ten seconds of visiting your account you should be able to show:
Who you are, what you do, when they can reach you and ideally get a feel for why you do it.
What kind of magician are you?
Do you focus on ‘sleight of hand’ or are you more into ‘mentalism’ ?
Maybe you collect playing cards.
Your bio should give your (future) followers a good impression of what you do. If you can communicate your value proposition across in a few words that elevator pitch has the potential to reach millions.
Who’s doing it right?
The top search term in relation to “Magician” is Dynamo. We will use Dynamo along with other note-worthy Magic influencers as best practice.
The data shows he is the most searched magician on Google worldwide. So much so that in 2011 we saw a spike in interest globally that correlated to the release of Dynamos tv show ‘Mission Impossible’.
Dynamo gives you a great impression of his personality and work. Not only does he clearly state he is a magician, you can see his upcoming work, where to find it and he has pinned additional information to his bio to give a better representation of his brand personality or the why behind the Magic.
Source: Dynamo Instagram
The Basics of Posting
Let’s take the mystery out of posting.
Are you perplexed by the posting? Scared of scheduling?
Have no fear, you’re in the right place. It’s important how often you post so that your followers see more of your content and get to know who you are as a magician/creator.
According to Shopify 20% of business accounts posted to their Story at least once per week.
We recommend that posting one feed post and two Stories per day is a pretty good bet for growing your engagement.
I know what you’re thinking. “What on earth am I going to post?”.
Little do you know you have all the content you need in the palm of your hand if you work with playing cards that is. In fact, if you are looking for your first premium set of cards check out Warrior Playing Cards. It doesn’t hurt to have a nice set of playing cards to showcase to your audience. You can then collaborate with that artist and grow each other’s brand through affiliate marketing.
Back to posting….
Do tricks, promote any upcoming events you have, share inspirational quotes, interact with other accounts.
Comments are king, the more people comment on your post the more engagement it gets and it will automatically be pushed up the algorithm and shown to more people worldwide. You can even target posts to locations and it is proven that posts with a location get 20% more engagement (Newberry, 2022).
BONUS TIP: Create a consistent posting schedule that is right for you and your brand, don’t jump straight into the deep end.
You need to post consistently yes, but does that mean it has to be difficult? No!
You can download software that will schedule your posts for you, easy as 123. If you are looking for the best FREE social media management software you can see the top list for 2022 here. Special shout out to Hootsuite and Buffer for their user-friendly software!
Who’s doing it right?
Chris shows high-quality, professional-looking imagery which positions him as a professional at first glance. First impressions are important with your content feed. With 1,791 posts over a few years, you can see that Chris Ramsay is very consistent in his posting. His grid is cohesive with a clear Magic theme throughout.
After all, these little nuances are what build the foundations of a brand, Chris Ramsey expresses his work in a very professional and succinct way which displays a strong brand personality.
Remember this: Every good brand has a brand personality.
Source: Chris Ramsay Instagram
Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags…
This brings us to Hashtags, interesting fact the first hashtag was used on Twitter in 2007.
Since then Hashtags have now also become a social media tool used to categorize content across platforms.
In 2022 over 1 billion people used Instagram and in order to tap into that data set you need to utilize hashtags. Relevant hashtags for magicians can be: #playing cards, #magic, #magician, #mentalist, #sleightofhand, #magictricks.
Hashtag use can boost your content engagement to 71% on average (Casanova, 2022). Therefore, hashtag research is important, not only do you want your content to be widely available you also want to make sure that what you post is relevant to the audience. Trending hashtags can boost your popularity.
Looking for a hashtag research tool? Here are five honorable mentions
Engaging your Audience
There are a few things you can do to create an engaging post.
You do not want a one-way conversation with your audience, you are aiming to develop a dialog. Posts that pose a question get higher engagement. Make sure to interact with your audience in the comment section. It’s more important to focus on engagement metrics rather than vanity metrics such as the number of followers or likes.
To learn more about Instagram metrics you can read this Instagram metrics report by Hootsuite.
Of course it is important to grow your followership but you don’t need to break your back to gain 1 million followers in the first year.
If you can gain a modest audience and keep them engaged then you can gain a solid foundation for your brand. You aim for loyalty and it’s much cheaper to keep existing followers than it is to acquire new ones. Tag relevant accounts and people to create a community and increase your posts reach.
A great way to engage with your audience might be the use of an interactive magic trick or as said before, asking your audience a question.
Look at your analytics and see when your audience is most active then schedule your posts around the times they are online. The best Times to Post on Instagram for B2C Companies are Saturday at 11 AM and 1 PM.
Source: (Geyser, 2022)
BONUS TIP: 58% of users say they are more interested in a brand after seeing them on Stories. Learn more about Instagram Stories on Buffer.
Who’s doing it right?
VanishingIncMagic is a great example of how to create engagement. Asking your audience a question that is relevant to your brand will get your audience talking! Questions that might be engaging to your audience could be:
- What is your favourite deck of playing cards?
- What is the first magic trick you ever learned?
- How did you feel the first time you experienced magic?
BONUS TIP: Also, notice how Vanishing Inc use this Instagram post to navigate traffic from their Instagram to their Facebook account. Using multiple channels to tell parts of the same story is known as trans media story telling and it makes quite the interesting read and helps to distribute visitors across your channels for an omni-channel approach to messaging.
Source: VanishingInc Instagram
Time to get ‘Reel’
It is commonly known that reels are an amazing tool for growing your followership and if you are in the early stages of establishing your brand on Instagram then Reels might be a good tool for you to use. Reels started to be used on Instagram two years ago and since then they have blown up. So how do you use reels to grow your followership?
Let’s find out!
Reels are an interesting byproduct of how shortening attention spans have shaped how we do social media. The average social media user’s attention span has reduced to 8 seconds online (Pardon Our Interruption, 2020). These full-screen vertical videos can be up to 60 seconds long which is perfect if you want to showcase your magic skillset, promote your playing cards, do some sleight of hand, and tap into the Instagram for the magic community.
Unlike stories, reels are available on Instagram until you delete them unlike the 24-hour life span of a story. Reels are also favored by the Instagram algorithm which means that your content is more likely to be shown to people that don’t already follow you.
Want to learn how to create a reel on Instagram?
Check out this video here
Who’s doing it right?
One example of a Magician who’s rocking Reels on Instagram is Julius Dein. Upon observation, this London boy rocks up around one to three million views on average per video over the course of a few weeks. Using captivating thumbnails, engaging text pops of colour and exciting scenes this guy ranks top of mind when it comes to Instagram reels!
Source: Julius Dein Instagram
Let’s talk about what we’ve covered, shall we?
Today, we’ve learned that in order to grow your Magic brand on Instagram you need to know a few things:
- The Instagram Account Basics
- The 5 W’s – Who, What, When, Where and Why?
- The Basics of Posting
- Consistency – Eat, Sleep, Post, Repeat.
- Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags ….
- Top 5 Hounourable Hashtag Heros
- How to Create Engaging Content
- Create a Dialog
- Mind Your Metrics
- Time to get ‘Reel’
- Pretend you’re talking to a Goldfish
Now that you know the tricks of the trade; start creating content and get out there!
