When your account reaches 10,000 followers on Instagram and you’re utilizing a professional page, you gain the ability to use the “swipe up” action on your story. As a business, brand, entertainer, or artist, this unlocks a lot of potential for cross-promotion. Yours (or someone else’s) Instagram can become a landing page for niche audiences to discover content outside of the platform. Getting swipe-ups from the right profile can be a quick route to some solid exposure.
There could be thousands to tens of thousands of followers that view a page’s stories at any given hour. Then it comes down to the type of content the followers of any big page are used to seeing and how much your content aligns with it. If your music is really pop-influenced or danceable, it’d make sense to run swipe-ups on a popular dancer’s page on IG. But we’ll get more into that. We recently spoke with RMR’s COO Joey Brabo (@JoeyJayping) about some helpful tips for artists looking for a rundown on the power of swipe-ups, how to go about setting up a campaign, and who to try and contact.
Setting Yourself Up For Success
Before you start any swipe-up campaigns, you want to make sure your social media channels are in order. And that your content is stockpiled and ready to go. If you have an album, single, or music video dropping you should book a photoshoot just to keep your timeline busy. Have a few nice shots to throw up to tease or promote the drop of your new release. Save some money for a budget for what comes next: finding the right pages to pay for swipe-ups.
Finding The Right Pages
The next question you want to ask yourself if you haven’t already, is what niche audiences your personal brand represents. These days, you want to promote personal interests on your timeline and story. This way you reach more people and eventually find brand sponsorships. Are you into sports, fashion, weed, comedy, art, animation, dancing, cars, healthy living, traveling, or a quirky hobby? Show these aspects of your life to your fans on your page, and then find semi-big Instagram pages that represent your interests. Semi-big is implying pages that aren’t verified and have less than 250k followers, generally speaking.
Start Getting Their Attention
Let’s say you’re a rapper that’s into men’s fashion. Find a page (maybe one local to your city) that posts about the latest trends. Follow them, like a few photos, leave a comment on one or two that isn’t just emojis, and then send a DM asking for their rates for swipe-ups. Start tagging them in your own posts and showing love to them on your story. Subscribe to them so you can be one of the first to comment on any new posts. Hit them from as many angles as possible, and follow up every few days in the DMs until they respond. Once you get a response, be sure to reply appropriately.
This same rule applies to hitting up hip-hop, EDM, rock, R&B, really any music page. Ex: @saycheesetv, @bars, @ourgenerationmusic, @hotfreestyle, @hiphopdx. If you’re a hip-hop artist, find your local outlet for promoting underground hip-hop on Instagram. Some examples of these include @detroitrapnews, @floridaupnext, @dmvnxt2blow, and @thethizzler.
You can find smaller versions of these pages and ask for their rates for posting on their timeline as well as a swipe-up. Ask for screenshots of their stats for their story views if you’re not seeing a lot of engagement on the posts on their timeline.
The Cost
It should come as no surprise, but the bigger the page is, the more they’re probably going to be charging. If you’re just starting out, you should shoot for people and pages willing to repost you for $30-$60 just to see if it’ll do anything. These swipe-ups could be to your Spotify, Apple Music, LinkTree, YouTube video, or newest blog feature.
When you have a couple of thousand followers, it’s maybe worth dropping a hundred on a swipe up on a bigger page. Typical prices for pages closer to, if not over a million followers may be in the range of $100-$300. Remember, these swipe-ups are only on their story for 24 hours.
Build A Campaign
If you’re trying to promote a specific piece of content over a period of time it’s worth putting together a swipe-up campaign. The process for this includes finding several Instagram pages with over 10,000 followers that will repost you on their story for a reasonable fee.
For a weeklong campaign, it’s good to have at least 4-5 pages that are tagging you in their story. A lot of these pages have access to other big pages (such as weed meme accounts.) This means they will probably have a package deal for cross-promotion across several of their pages. This typically comes for a cheaper price than finding accounts one-at-a-time. See if you can save up your money to get a multiple-post deal from one of the pages. This way they may be able to run swipe-ups over a 3-4 week period.
Repost, Engage, and Stay Active
While all of these swipe-ups are going on and you’re getting tagged, be sure to repost them on your story and say thank you! Encourage your friends to screenshot the post on the page’s story and post it to theirs and tag you. Post more snippets or cool photos to your timeline and encourage people to go listen to your new music and check out your latest video. Go live and talk about how you’re getting all the swipe-ups and promote yourself.
Spending Your Money Wisely
You don’t need to go for broke on your first run. Test the waters and gather data. See how much more attention your next release gets when you spend $100 getting swipe-ups on at least 2-4 pages with 10-30k followers. As we said before, depending on the levels of engagement that each of these pages is getting on their timeline posts is a good sign of how active their followers are on viewing their stories. This is a good sign of money well spent. Take screenshots of everything and run it through PayPal or Cash App. Only work with pages that are consistently responsive and give you clear information. No shady shit.
Swipe-ups can be a powerful tool for any artist trying to gain exposure to a specific piece of content or diversify their own personal brand. As an artist, you should always be thinking of new ways to reach new people and build a more widespread, yet niche, audience. Swipe-ups on Instagram might get you those things quicker if done right. Visit Respect My Region’s Artist Marketing Page for information on our services.
