Ngl, this may be a sign to make a new Instagram!

So boom I'm a music artist, right? I let everyone know I'm a music artist(stay with me now). Garnered up a ton of speculative support after letting everyone know this very sentimental detail about my existence. All cool! I begin to start promoting my music annnnd I get the engagement of a 40 year old single mom who just discovered Instagram for the first time...

I think that this phenomenon is not exclusive to me. I think that there are probably hundreds of thousands of creatives, artists, and musicians that deal with the issue of low engagement to follower ratio. I'm not here to be a guru about Instagram analytics. I'm not about to tell you that you need to post at 5am on a Tuesday morning during the Winter Solstice in order to get the highest engagement. I'm actually not here to provide you with any advice at all. Nah, I respect you enough for that. What I'm providing is just perspective from someone getting it out the mud.

I said all of that to say that I think that my irl friends and family are holding my current Instagram account back. Here's some context:

I created my Instagram account YEARS ago. I'm talking maybe 6-7 years. When I created it, it wasn't for the purpose to promote myself as an artist. It was solely to connect and share posts with people who I'd known in real life. Over the course of over 6 years, this has garnered me about 660 followers. Whoopty-f*ckin-doo! Problem is that my follower base is SOLELY people that I known. So when it came time in 2024 to present myself as a music artist, the only crowd that I've ever collected on that page is just people that I know. People who have investment in Gerrin the person, rather than Anthony Davv the artist.

Now the way that Instagram's algorithm works now is starkly different than how it worked in the past. The times of chronologically fed posts are over. Nowadays, the virality and potency of your reach feels like a season of f*ckin American Idol. It goes like this:

1. You post the content.

2. The content is "sampled" to a handful of your followers.

3. Instagram pays attention to how your followers initially engage with your followers

4. Depending on the results, your content either gets pushed, or loses momentum.

   
   
   
   

While this process is pretty cut and dry, this has become disastrous during my pursuit to finding my goddamn audience. This means that if I post something; instead of it reaching niches that my hashtags are targeting, it shows up on my Aunt Sheryl or my Uncle Bob's feed. Now Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Bob are very passive instagram users, so they scroll but don't engage with things. They may see something of mines and be like, "Hmm, that's a nice little photo Gerrin posted" and just scroll by. If enough people like Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Bob do this, then Instagram will interpret this as my content not being "worthy" of reaching the next stage of exposure. Thus, slowing down my growth.

Now don't get me wrong, I can give two f*cks about follow count, likes, comments and whatnot. However, I HAVE to give a shit because I want and need an audience as a music artist. It's resorting to me having to slide into people's DMs and essential beg them to like, and engage with my content. Which turns into a bunch of "🔥🔥🔥" emojis in my comments that just looks like a purchased artificial engagement off some rinky dink website. Truthfully, my friends, family, and associates are NOT MY FANS. Therefore, they aren't that engaged with what I'm doing. This doesn't mean they hate me, nor does it mean that they don't like what I'm doing. It just means that they are not obligated to propel me in my endeavor to create music(although it would greatly f*ckin help...).

Conclusively, this is the main reason why I am considering just creating a new Instagram page as an artist. I feel that turning a personal instagram page into a creator page is not the right move in order to reach an audience as a music artist. The music I make isn't objectively bad, however the people in my life are not necessarily my target audience. Sure they may enjoy a good listen or two, but my core audience is out there somewhere. The journey may be a tough one. Starting from scratch on social media in 2025 is a challenging endeavor. However, it could be the right path to success. All I know is that it hasn't got me anywhere doing what I'm doing now.

For those who hate reading, here's a video that captures what I'm talking about:

Later losers!