With mobile apps becoming easy to navigate, fun for the user, and oftentimes free, taking snapshots of your musical life and sharing them with your fans has become a unique, simple, and cheap way to stay on your fans’ radars. And these apps provide you the freedom to instantly share engaging content whenever it presents itself. One of our favorites here at CD Baby is Instagram.
Instagram is a free app for the iPhone that integrates a wide variety of photo filters with a social component that makes taking pictures fun, and sharing them simple. Instagram links with all your social networking profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, etc) to allow for sharing across various platforms, but it always allows you to choose the profiles on which you want your photo to appear. Playing with the filters is fun (I’m a big fan of the “Toaster” setting), and unlike some other apps, you get to apply the filter after you take the photo, so you can pick the filter that best suits your subject.
Once you choose your filter, sharing the photo is easy: activate the social platforms on which you want the photo to appear, hit “Done,” and Instagram sends it out. The app also features an internal social network, so fans who use the app can follow you using their won Instagram app.
It’s a great way to update your Facebook and Twitter pages simultaneously, and also a quick and easy way to show fans what you’re up to. It’s tailor-made for live-documenting a show, a tour, or a practice or recording session.
Instagram is only available for the iPhone, but Android users can download a similar app called picplz.
Are you using either of these apps to connect with your fans? If so, how have they worked best for you?