Instagram dancers and TikTok challenges are really starting to take off. If you want to present your dancing online, now is the perfect time. With everyone stuck inside, all you need is a smartphone and the right space to move. If used in the right way, social media is a useful tool for getting feedback, boosting your confidence and preparing you to dance in front of an audience.
How to present yourself
This might sound strange, but it really just means how you connect to your followers. Be yourself, but which side of yourself do you show when you’re dancing? Are you elegant? Fierce? Soulful? Perhaps it depends on the dance.
Where do you film/photograph your content? Try to keep to the same locations and filming set up. If you’re lucky enough to have more than one space, keep your framing and distance from the camera the same for visual consistency.
How do you speak to your followers? You can post short captions. You can go in-depth on the dance you did and what it represents or means to you. You can address your followers to promote engagement, asking a question or giving tips. Do you want to address the audience in a spoken intro, or let your dancing and captions speak for themselves?
Ask yourself these questions and try to keep your posts similar in length and style for consistency. Without being pretentious, this is you as a brand. We know brands by their consistent personality, tone of voice and imagery.
Instagram: private or public?
While this may seem counter-intuitive when building a profile, dancing is personal for a lot of people. Some want a career, others want to express themselves, some do it just for fun. You might even enjoy inspiring others and become a dance instructor. Whatever you get from dancing, you may want to start with a private profile of dedicated followers who you trust, and you know will love your content.
TikTok and Instagram dancers
TikTok and Instagram are getting more popular each day. With everyone at home, they’re fun platforms to interact with and share videos with friends. For a dancer, it’s a great way to show what you can do, gain followers and direct people to your other dance profiles. You have to post fairly often as these networks move quickly and things are soon scrolled by.
There are so many different dances and visual effects used on TikTok, so try to keep yours aligned with how you have presented yourself so far. For example, if you’ve only previously done energetic salsa dancing or elegant ballet videos, that’s what your followers expect to see. There’s so much comedy on TikTok, but it’s actually quite easy to be graceful and funny.
Hashtags
This is an obvious one, but adding relevant hashtags to your videos and pictures will help guide the right people to your profile. For example, #dance has been tagged in almost 100 million posts on Instagram. You can be broad (#dance) or more niche (#dancephotoshoot). Use lots of tags for maximum coverage but add them after your written content.
Gaining followers
Follow and engage with similar pages so that other dance lovers can see your content. You can share feedback or tips if you have the knowledge to back it up. Look up the pages with the most followers and regularly devote a small amount of time to engagement.
Some followers may send you messages. If it’s a polite conversation about dancing or a sincere compliment, that’s great. Anything other than that, it’s best not to engage or just send a polite thank you response. As a general rule, be wary of anyone you don’t know online.
Staying grounded
Don’t let the profile steal your passion for dancing. The actual dancing, the real-life part, is most important. It’s easy to get hooked on feedback, likes and the buzz of seeing your profile grow. Make sure your profile remains supplementary to your dancing career and not the main part.
If you’re younger and considering a dance profile, discuss it with your moms and dads beforehand and share your login info with them. Also, don’t take feedback too seriously, it’s all opinion. The internet can be a nasty place, particularly around dancers, diets and body image. Keep things in perspective and just dance even when there’s not a camera on you.
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