Ok ok, the title is kind of clickbait. This blog is actually going to be a deep dive into a piece of work I did with the Leeds International Piano Competition. It’s going to involve some strategy and a fair bit of data, so I needed something to grab your attention and make it interesting. But, before we get into the nerdy stuff that I will love, here are the headlines of what was achieved in 6 months with zero marketing spend.

• 20,003% increase in monthly video views

• 1.5 million video views per month across all socials

• 55.5% increase in total followers

A year after this project, the strategy and the impact of socials saw the Leeds International Piano Competition increase the audience of the competition from 6 million to 10 million.

OK, so there’s all the sexy headlines done. It’s time to break it all down to see how it worked and what other arts organisations could learn from the success.

I regularly get adverts from orchestras and other classical media accounts when I go on social media. Over the last year, I’ve been bombarded by a new trend. A type of advert that is truly, astonishingly terrible.

I’m not talking about something complex where the strategy behind the advert isn’t working. I’m talking about bad adverts that create broken posts that would never be clicked on. They are as effective as the orchestra setting its marketing budget on fire. These, are terrible Instagram story adverts.

Now, Instagram stories are a great way to engage with your existing audience, connect to new people, and push events as they have the feature to include a link. But to be effective, these need to be engaging, interesting, and bespoke. As people consume Instagram adverts at speed, they also need to hook people’s attention. The adverts I’m talking about are far from this. Take a look…