How to manage your Instagram DMs more effectively
As an artist, becoming successful will result in your inbox becoming increasingly busy over time. The more people you convert into fans, the more impossible it will be to manage your inbox effectively. One of the main methods of communication that fans use to contact artists is the Instagram private message inbox. In this article, we’ll take a look at how exactly you can manage your inbox to make responding less time-consuming.
In previous articles, we’ve touched on some of the in-built functions that Instagram offers for users to respond to their private messages more quickly. Combining multiple tactics is the best way to ensure that you can respond to a greater number of private messages in a much faster period of time. Ultimately, replying to DMs is not optional, it is an essential part of your social media marketing as an artist.
Quick replies
Firstly, Instagram’s ‘quick replies’ feature allows you to pre-save common replies in order to effortlessly use the same response when communicating with multiple fans. While this feature still requires you to actually navigate to the message and respond, it saves a great deal of time by not forcing you to write out a full response. As an artist, you will receive countless messages from fans praising your live performances. For this reason, it is ideal to have a message already pre-written saying ‘thank you’.
Be organised
As you reach a later stage in your career, you may have already enlisted one employee or even a whole team to manage your social media. If you have hired a PR firm, social media management may even be included in their fee. If someone else does have access to your social media, it is important to organise who is replying to which DMs. You may want to separate your team so that each person manages a day of the week. If there are multiple people answering DMs, it is important to use the ‘flag’ feature to keep hold of messages that require further attention. This way, your message won’t be lost in a mass of new conversations.
Be secretive about using a team
If you do have a team, you can arrange their work to ensure that they are covering your DMs when you’re not able to. This way, people won’t have to wait too long for a DM. But, be careful with this. If you’re on a long flight to another continent and fans are receiving replies, it won’t take them long to figure out that it wasn’t you who replied to them. Something that is extremely important is not letting your fans know that the responses are not coming from you. This can prove highly damaging to your brand and may discourage fans from reaching out to you and engaging with you in the future.
Use emojis to respond
A great way to get your team to respond to messages without misleading fans too much is to encourage your team to respond with emojis. In this case, you can select an array of brand-relevant emojis and make sure your team members stick to them. For example, the heart emojis are great for expressing that you value your fans’ support while using angry or sarcastic emojis can give off the wrong message. Plus, using emojis is one of the quickest ways to respond.
Limit your replying time
If you’re managing your DMs yourself, an important thing to remember is not to lose track of time. It is incredibly easy to get lost in responding to messages and lose a huge chunk out of your day. Naturally, replying to adoring fans is enjoyable and uplifting, so it’s understandable that you would enjoy engaging. When you start responding to your messages, set a timer on your phone that runs out in 30 minutes. Once the time is up, stop responding and move onto another task. Responding to DMs is incredibly important, but shouldn’t take up hours of your day.
Don’t feel pressured
Lastly, don’t let the pressure of responding to every DM provoke anxiety. When you first started out, you probably had no problem responding to every single message you received. The thing is, as you grow in popularity it will become more and more difficult to respond to all of your fans, even those who are the most dedicated. Once you reach a certain stature, fans don’t always expect a response. The important thing when you’re running out of time is not to open messages that you don’t have time to respond to. This could come across as hurtful and could damage your relationship with certain fans. The best thing to do in this case is to avoid opening any DMs that you cannot respond to.
Ultimately, responding to fans isn’t the most important aspect of being an artist, but it does offer you the chance to build a long and meaningful relationship with your fans. Although many artists simply choose to ignore their audience, their fans will never be quite as dedicated as fans of artists who reward them regularly for their dedication. Take people like Nicky Romero, Don Diablo, Steve Angello and Hardwell as an example. These are artists who regularly engage with their fans and reward them with meet and greets. You can only improve your relationship with fans by responding to them as much as possible, so take the time you have available and use it to create a bond.
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