Even with Instagram’s news-feed algorithm changing on the frequent (like whether to hashtag, or not to hashtag!), when it comes to understanding how to grow our organic audience impressions, one thing hasn’t changed in all this time – the effectiveness of appropriately tagging artists on social media to achieve maximum reach.

Sometimes it can be overwhelming trying to remember everyones @handles, and even the list of all the creatives involved to get your work to this point, but here’s a few methods to help your next hit your intended audience, and ways to curate the perfect post in as little time possible (especially if you’re a producer 10-minutes before a show commencement and need to post something quickly!)

If you’re reading this blog, what’s important is, you are excited to show appreciation for all the hands that helped make the workload light. Even if you unintentionally get it wrong, with the beauty of editable posts on social media, you’re able to adjust and add the creative that was missed. So easy!

How to land on their ‘newsfeed’

With this guide, I’m going to provide a breakdown on who, what, when, and where it’s appropriate to tag your artists, and the ways in which it will help develop your social media presence to attract a more engaged audience, who will be sure to return the gratitude in many ways more than just a simple like/share! The most brilliant way you can reach a wider audience is to utilize and promote the ‘audience’ already involved with your work.

1. Using an ‘Image tag’

Now, you may have a team ranging anywhere between 5 to 20 excited artists. By correctly tagging all the X-number of artists involved, what your doing isn’t just polite and considerate, but it also actively alerts the algorithm to your immediate communities to engage with the content. Let me explain – what an image tag does is create a permanent stamp on that individual’s profile (eg their ‘tagged’ section), which actually boosts the reach of your content organically for the indefinite future, not just your performance season (I’m going to talk about this in detail a bit further down). Remember, we are in this arts career for longevity, not a quick fix, so this permanent (and very free) organic reach is super important to ensure your work is seen across a longer life-span. 

2. Adding a ‘Caption tag’

A caption tag can come in a few different ways, depending on how you structure your image descriptions. To avoid any confusion (and to make sure I don’t forget anyone), here’s the way that I like to do mine. At the very end of the whole caption, after a description or synopsis etc, I’ll provide the list of every role with the assigned person directly following it. This way, I can almost copy+paste an entire show notes program word for word, and add their @tag directly after without any confusion or missing someone.

3. Using ’24hr Disappearing Stories’

You may have seen that both Instagram, and now Facebook, have the feature to share disappearing ‘stories’ that last for 24hours. You can share your permanent post in these disappearing stories as an added way of creating marketing collateral. This tip is a bit cheeky, but say a few nice things, copy+paste the creatives’ tags as added text (ensuring their username is @underlined so it triggers them a notification), and I can assure you, you’ll receive an immediate, absolute guarantee ‘re-share’ on that story. As humans of status, we innately adore having nice things said about us, and the things we contribute to. So, if you’ve worded your text with enough gratitude and grateful inclusion, your crew are sure to want to reshare your affirmation as social-clout to their audience (ultimately sharing the project details with them too).

4. BONUS (for Instagram) Saving your disappearing stories as ‘Highlight Reels’

Disappearing stories serve more purpose than just short-lived promotion. Instagram stories have the ability to be saved as personalised (or categorised) highlight reels. Highlights are a great way for an audience to digest your content in a captivating, developmental, storylike manner. Highlights can also include a lot of external linking, and sticker options, to keep your audience engaged, ultimately spending more time on your profile, and accruing a higher, organic ranking, in the system.

One last insight…

Now, I want to share what’s going to be the biggest and most important factor that I haven’t seen any educator talk about, anywhere yet. Here’s the secret – Instagram have a service that allows you to see on your profile your “most interacted” accounts. That feature roughly shows you 80 users you’re most engaged with (and vice versa). Theoretically, if your theatre show has a producer, a director, a stage manager, a sound designer, a costume designer, multiple actors, a venue, and a photographer, all with profiles that hold on average between 600-2000 followers each, what you’ll end up with is an easily wide, “most interactive” audience, of a couple hundred/thousand users seeing your work. If you tagged those individuals correctly, your audience has just grown from your most interacted-with inner circle, to an untapped number of most interactive users relative to the number of correct profiles you Image Tagged.

How’s that for easy advertising?

Not only for the personal benefits, but the creatives that have worked tirelessly on your project deserve to be recognised, and share joy in the same work that you do. Forget being a ‘tall poppy’ for one second because our industry is all about promoting, boasting, and selling our art. So by forming some well curated, and appropriately credited posts, you’re immediately increasing the benefit for your art and artists, and, we can create a strong industry standard of artistic recognition for our collaborators.