Instagram Social Media Strategy by Brands: LALAL.AI
Combin Blog is starting a new column dedicated to the brands whose Instagram accounts we like.
Once a month, we'll talk about a brand's Instagram social media strategy and walk through its Instagram page's strong and weak points. This time, we're starting it rolling with our friends – LALAL.AI, an AI-powered music source separation service and talked to their social media manager on how the team has come up with the content and how they manage their social media presence.
About the Brand: LALAL.AI
Who it's for: LALAL.AI is an online tool for musicians, seasoned and aspiring alike – sound designers, producers, DJs, composers, singers, and simply those who can't live without music.
What it does: The tool allows users to split audio and video into eight stems: vocal, backtrack, and six instrumental stems, namely bass, piano, synthesizer, drums, acoustic and electric guitar.
Therefore, the tool is useful for creative minds when producing beats, mashups, and karaoke tracks. Many of the LALAL.AI users leverage the service's functionality when learning to play a musical instrument or mastering their skills of playing one.
Social platforms: As part of their social media strategy, the LALAL.AI team uses multiple social platforms to reach as many target audience segments as possible. Apart from Instagram, a primary social media marketing asset, the team uses Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and even WeChat!
💡Suggested read: TikTok Marketing: An Ultimate Guide
Instagram marketing goals: Since the LALAL.AI team considers Instagram as the most crucial element in their social media strategy, they have a pack of monthly, quarterly, and yearly objectives that are needed to be achieved with social media marketing efforts.
The LALAL.AI social media manager prioritises the increase in ER, ERR, website traffic, and reach as well as the growth of followership. With Instagram marketing, LALAL.AI wants to increase brand awareness and lead followers to their website to grow conversions and sales.
We'll touch upon this in detail a bit later when talking about the LALAL.AI's Instagram marketing strategy, so keep on reading!
💡Suggested read: 8 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic with Instagram
LALAL.AI Social Media Strategy on Instagram: Interview with the SMM Manager
LALAL.AI is relatively new on Instagram; its account is about a year old, and it's being promoted predominantly by organic means.
What made us make this post is that although LALAL.AI hasn't got large followership just yet, the account has been steadily growing throughout this time.
We've asked a few questions about how the social team comes up with the strategy, what tools they use for SMM, and what tips they'd suggest for successful Instagram marketing.
Do you have a detailed SMM strategy for LALAL.AI's Instagram?
Yes, we have a simple Google document with an entirely written social media strategy for all of our socials. There, I keep track of metrics, KPIs, goals, and tactics to meet these goals. What's more, detailed positioning, tone of voice, SWOT analysis, and unique selling points are also there as well as promotion tactics, competitors analysis, target audience, and content calendar.
I constantly update this file, adding new things: if we meet the goals, I put new ones, regularly audit the current strategy, and analyse current results based on relevant stats.
Are there any tools you use for social media marketing?
I use Combin Scheduler to post feed content and stories when I physically can't be online since I'm based in Europe, and our audience is diverse, with the biggest part of it being from the US.
Beyond that, I use Combin Growth for interaction with new audiences that are not following us yet and tracking the stats.
💡Suggested read: How to find and engage Instagram competitors’ audience with Combin Growth
SEMrush is another tool I use to check the performance of the account, track the metrics, and perform competitive analysis.
Speaking of the stats and KPIs, how do you track the performance of your content and the strategy? Which metrics do you find the most representative?
Apart from SEMrush and Combin Growth, I use Google Analytics to see the entire picture of the social media marketing performance.
In terms of Instagram, the primary metrics I base my decisions on are reach, number of followers and how quick it grows, number of unfollows, video views, Love Rate, Talk Rate, ER, ERR, CTR, and LTV.
ERR = Reactions (likes + comments + shares + saves) ÷ reach * 100%
Love Rate and Talk Rate? Never heard of these! Could you elaborate?
Love rate estimates how attractive or loved your account is and is calculated as follows:
Love Rate = (Likes from one post ÷ number of followers) * 100%
Thus you'll get the percentage of love for your account 😊
Talk rate is the so-called sociability rate; in other words, these are comments in a recalculation of the audience's size. This is how you find it:
Talk Rate = (All comments ÷ number of followers) * 100%
The higher percentage you get, the better.
Which promotion tactics do you use to grow your brand's account on Instagram?
We're all for organic and legit ways of growing our Instagram page, so I don't use things like mass following or giveaways. I reckon these might diminish the ER and the reach of the page. Besides, after several tests, I realised that the conversion to website visits is low after giveaways and mass following.
So far, we don't use paid social ads either, but planning to start soon. At the moment, the most optimal way of promotion for us is influencer marketing, partnerships with other brands that share our target audience, and appealing content.
We don't disregard good old ways to promote the LALAL.AI page organically using different location tags in each post, leveraging relevant hashtags, and alt text in posts.
⚡️Use alt text for the optimisation of your Instagram account. It will allow audiences who don't follow you to discover your content when they search for similar posts.
Apart from feed content, we pay much attention to Reels and stories.
Do you face any difficulties when creating content for Instagram?
The most complicated for us is to create entertaining content because a product with such functionality as ours is relatively new on the market. LALAL.AI is the world's first stem splitter that supports eight stems for extraction! It has no direct equivalents, so it's quite tricky to come up with content, considering there are no references.
How do you come up with captions for posts?
The primary rule when making up the captions for Instagram posts, in my opinion, is to keep them plain and concise; otherwise, nobody's going to read them.
If I want to colour my captions emotionally, I use emojis. I also try to keep the titles engaging and intriguing to draw as much attention as possible. Sometimes, I custom fonts for titles which can be found on Combin Scheduler and in multiple other resources.
Which content performs better? Do you have any regular content topics?
According to the stats, polls, and interactions, the LALAL.AI audience on Instagram mostly loves to watch educational and insightful content. So I'd say that videos that influencers and musicians make about LALAL.AI are top-performing among all content types.
Speaking of the LALAL.AI content for Instagram in general, we regularly cover music industry news, remind our audience of events and holidays in the music world, and make lists with top chart songs of the week.
We use our own original content that we create for multiple platforms like our blog and a YouTube channel and post it on Instagram for repurposing and cross-promotion.
To entertain the audience, we often create games like 'Guess the track' in stories playing a backtrack from a song (extracted with our tool, of course) and regularly create polls and quizzes.
One of the goals we manage our Instagram page for is sales, so we don't forget to tell the followers about our tool and how useful it is: we publish testimonials and product reviews, publish articles and media features of LALAL.AI.
But I don't post the same content on each of our social media channels. I keep in mind the interests of the audience of each platform in our content strategy as well as the peculiarities of content on them, and upload content accordingly.
We don't typically use cross-posting. For instance, our Twitter audience loves mems and short news; meanwhile, on Instagram, Reels and videos are better.
You use Reels. How do they perform for LALAL.AI?
Instagram Reels is a relatively new feature on Instagram, but it has already gained popularity among creators since it's quite like TikTok, the most downloaded app of the last two years or so. Videos on Instagram have a huge potential for engagement, so it's wise to use them.
💡Suggested read: How to Make Instagram Reels: An Ultimate Guide
In Reels, we post entertaining content from TikTok but without a TikTok logo, publish videos made by influencers for our brand, and create original educational content specifically for Reels.
According to the recent stats, content on Instagram Reels gets 22% more engagement compared to regular videos on Instagram.
As for the tips and tricks about Reels, I'd suggest you should post them regularly and as often as you possibly can; ideally, several times a day. Keep your videos engaging with a clear CTA inviting viewers to visit your website, profile or leave a comment to discuss something.
Don't worry if your videos don't go viral and don't rush to delete them – they might need a bit more time to attract viewers and likes.
Do you have a content plan?
Of course! It would be chaotic without it, so I have a Google sheet with content planned for a month where I write down my content ideas, dates and, together with our design team, create content for Instagram in advance.
Do you leverage user-generated content? If so, how well does it perform?
We do. LALAL.AI is lucky to have plenty of users who love to share how they use our product in a video or stories. They often tag us on their profiles, and we happily repost the content.
💡Suggested read: How to Leverage User-Generated Content to Boost Traffic and Sales
I'd say the UGC performs quite well in our case because other users see that we don't sponsor these posts and stories. Regular musicians and creators, not influencers, share reviews of our tool for no reward and show how the tool helps them, which surely attracts other people and makes them want to try the tool.
Which weak points of the LALAL.AI Instagram would you highlight, if any?
It's disappointing that sometimes there's less engagement than I expect, meaning that followers don't like to comment on posts, but I'm working on it and trying to create more engaging content.
Another thing I'd mention is the reach of stories which I'm now striving to increase.
Which brands' social media accounts do you like in terms of their SMM efforts?
I like the Twitter account of ProductHunt – they post engaging tweets about fantastic products and apps that are submitted to their service.
On Instagram, I specifically like @dennysdiner for their bright visuals and all types of posts you can possibly imagine – from entertaining to educational ones.
@puravidais an excellent example of incredible stories and an appealing brand philosophy: happiness is in simple things.
Which SMM trends and tactics for 2023 would you highlight?
Short, engaging videos like those on Reels and TikTok are definitely not going anywhere.
News jacking is also a winning strategy since news, well, always is news. Other things that will be commonly used are personalised content, vibrant design, and partnerships with influencers and brands.
💡Suggested read: Advice of the Combin Design Team on how to create smashing visuals on Instagram
Lastly, what would you recommend to brands and other SMM managers regarding Instagram marketing?
It goes without saying that each business account should have a detailed strategy to clearly see where it's heading. Strategy is precisely the thing that will take your efforts to the next level, so you should always plan and analyse. Another vital part is to stay on top of trends. The world is changing rapidly, so if you don't tailor to novelties, you'll be several steps behind brands that do.
Don't be shy to seek advice from colleagues outside your team: exchange ideas and even create content together. Your social media is how the brand is presented to everyone else outside your company: clients, competitors, and just those who pass by. One social media manager cannot and shouldn't be responsible for the entire company's image on socials, so it's fine to talk to your teammates and enquire how they feel about the content and the whole brand image. Brainstorming allows you to come up with the most brilliant ideas.
And lastly, don't cease learning and enhancing your SMM skills!