AMA.
What's a "Micro-Influencer"?
Someone with 10K or more followers. Approximately 15% of all Instagram accounts. So I'm a "15 percenter"
What's an Instagram?
A window on your baby television that eats time and poops neuroses.
What are you doing there?
Keeping up with my musicians friends, many of them seem to update it frequently and I like to support them. That's the personal account, I don't influence anything there. I'm talking 'bout my other account.
Which is...?
instagram.com/sightreadorg.
It's an account to a) promote my free music sight reading webapp and b) let people practice sight reading while they scroll anyway.
How did you get to 10K followers?
By posting one video (a screen recording of a sight reading exercise) per day for about 6 months.
That's it?
That's it. Not at all high production videos, just one bookmarklet to put a disco-like title atop the video so I can recognize what's what on thumbnails. I didn't chase engagement either. Like for example every Sunday I posted one rhythm dictation which is even less liked by students than sight reading. These had the least views but I kept doing because I (like Paul Hindemith) believe it's an important skill to practice. So yeah, a video a day, whatever feels good that day.
Still doing it? That's a commitment!
No, I took a break after about 6 months and 10.6K followers.
But your follow count is now 10.4K. What gives?
Funnily enough as soon as I stopped posting, IG stopped showing my stuff. There was no momentum, zero, none. Last post was May 31, some comments continued in June, last 3 comments in July. Now it's September. Engagement is gone, I'm pretty sure IG is not surfacing these videos (sorry, reels) to anyone anymore. I assume 200 followers either unfollowed or simply left the platform, or were spam accounts.
Are you bitter? No? You sure? You sound a little bitter.
I dunno, maybe a bit. I was hoping these videos can help sight reading learners for yeeears to come.
Did you get much traffic to your app from your growing influence?
I don't think so. I don't have analytics, just some server logs that I looked at a couple of times when some videos (sorry, reels) reached half a million views. I don't think too many people bothered to go to the app. Some did and send encouraging messages, most scrolled away and stayed on IG.
Any other benefits from the journey to Micro-Influencing?
Yes, the contact with like-minded folks. The comments, few bug reports, feature requests. Fun times mostly. Even the rude comments were funny, sight reading is an inherently unpleasant activity so a bit of self deprecation and fake hate are appropriate. "Misery loves company" says my guitar teacher re: sight reading.
Next?
All this was while I was still generating rhythm-only exercises. Melody generating has been almost there for months, gotta get to it!
AI-generated music?
No, fully procedural. Based on what I've learned in music theory/harmony/etc classes.
AI?
What about it?
Gimme something, no one's gonna read this if there's no AI...
This AMA is over.
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