You know your music festival attendees spend a good portion of their time on Instagram. So, your team shares updates and posts videos to your profile, interacts with your followers, and ramps up excitement for event day by using Instagram Stories, a feature that alone boasts more than 400 million users every day. Our marketing experts have put together five engaging Story ideas to help you tap into that audience and grow your festival’s following!
Featured artist takeovers
Excite current followers and draw in new audiences with artist takeovers. Invite some of the biggest names from your festival lineup to take over your Instagram Story for an hour so they can interact with fans and respond live to their messages for the duration. For even more buzz, encourage your takeover artists to preview some of their latest tracks or reveal a portion of their setlist during the takeover!
Poll, slider, and questions stickers
Enticing your audience to interact with your Story is a great way to encourage them to really absorb your content. Welcome these interactions with some of Instagram’s helpful Story tools. Create a poll to request fan opinions or tease a new announcement (e.g. “Should we announce another headliner tomorrow?” with “YES” or “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” as poll options). Use the emoji slider, a widget that can be slid from left to right indicating low to high, to invite fan input on merch designs (e.g. “How fire is this festival tee design?”). And use the new questions sticker to invite fan questions, which can then be anonymously re-posted to your Story along with your answer.
Lineup announcements
Build anticipation for your festival by sharing your latest lineup announcements to your Story. Be sure to tag the artist so they can share it to their own Story, and use the band’s official hashtag so those following it will be exposed to your post as well. To further ensure your announcement catches your audience’s attention, be sure to include Instagram’s music sticker feature to play a selection of your artists’ biggest hits within the post!
Contests
Turn your followers into an army of brand ambassadors by running Story-based contests leading up to your festival. Post an image of your festival poster and have your followers share that image to their Story and tag your event. At a designated time, randomly select a winner to receive a free pair of VIP tickets! The Story shares will expose your event to each of your contest participants’ followers, and, by tagging your festival in their posts, their followers can easily locate your account. Plus, having those entering tag your account is a simple way to locate all of your contest entries! Just be sure to remind those entering the contest that their Instagram profiles should be publicly visible to ensure their entry is counted.
Go live with select performances
Once your festival weekend arrives, keep those who couldn’t attend engaged by sharing live videos of your most exciting performers. You can share this content to your Story once the live feed ends, and you can choose to keep it on your Instagram profile permanently by including it in your Story Highlights from this year’s event. Sharing live performances and other on-site and behind-the-scenes content will show non-attendees what they’re missing out on, and will provide attendees with an immersive reminder of why they’ll want to return next year!