Robots can be tremendously successful in social media.
Lil Miquela is currently one of the most popular virtual influencers on Instagram.
She was created in 2016 by a company called Brud, in Los Angeles, and she is entirely computer-generated. But don’t let that fool you: Even though she’s a robot, Miquela has a strong personality.
She is 19 and has Brazilian and Spanish roots. Miquela is a singer who uses her social media to discuss travel, fashion, art, and lifestyle. The virtual influencer has 2.5 million followers on Instagram. Among the brand that she worked with are Prada, Off White, and Samsung.
And if you, like me, are amazed by the potential of the virtual influencers, there are some social media lessons that we can learn from the young Miquela.
Create a Good Bio
The bio is the first thing we see when we find a profile on Instagram. It is like the introduction of a text — it needs to make the user curious enough to scroll down and keep consuming your content. It’s the only opportunity to make an excellent first impression.
The picture below shows Miquela’s bio:
There are some elements Miquela uses to make a great bio:
- Picture: Her profile picture contrasts with the pink circle of the stories. This contrast creates an interesting visual effect that attracts attention.
- What to write on the bio: She uses the bio to reinforce her values through the #BlackLivesMatter movement and to communicate that she supports @plus1org and @musicares.
- The power of links: Miquela announces that her single, “Hard Feelings,” is out. She has a compelling call-to-action, followed by a link at the end that directs followers to platforms in which they can listen to the music.
- Personality: “Change-seeking robot” demonstrates her uniqueness. She is a robot, and this makes her authentic. Miquela uses it to build her storytelling. She’s not a regular robot: she’s a robot on social media. At the same time, she’s not a typical influencer either, because she’s not human.
How to Sell
Miquela is not only a virtual influencer, but she is also a singer. Her account on Spotify has almost one million monthly listeners.
Her Instagram account is one of the ways through which she promotes her songs. The promotion strategy is very robust and includes storytelling and most of Instagram’s other features.
Repetition
The most substantial aspect of Miquela’s promotion is repetition.
Considering that Instagram is a fast platform, repetition is crucial for an effective campaign. The same message gets across on multiple posts. Here’s how she promoted her latest song, “Hard Feelings”:
- Different versions: “Hard Feelings” had three releases so far — the single, the music video, and the remix. She brings novelty to the same song, which keeps the audience interested.
- Multiple posts: Since July 25, every single post on her feed references her song, “Hard Feelings.” That’s so far 22 pictures and videos, only on her feed.
Using multiple features
By promoting the song in different features, it’s simple to use the repetition strategy.
- Link in bio.
- She uses multiple videos and pictures on the feed.
- Her strategy includes both stories and story highlights.
Storytelling
Whenever Miquela releases a new single, she develops a story behind it.
For the song “Speak Now,” she recorded an IGTV telling the story of how she recorded the music video with her ex. She says the experience helped her to overcome the breakup.
It becomes more than just music — it’s part of her personal story. This strategy works very well for other artists, such as Taylor Swift.
Story Highlights
Let’s analyze Miquela’s story highlights:
Here’s her strategy to produce excellent content for the highlights:
- Visual identity: Every cover has the same visual identity. Each one is a picture with a black background, with colorful icons. This way, it’s easier to build appealing visual content and to maintain consistency.
- Titles: The titles of the highlights are in caps lock, which makes it easier to read. Besides, they are short — each of them in only one word since there’s little space there.
- Music: All highlights refer to Miquela’s music. She heavily uses this feature to promote her work.
The following picture is an example of what type of content she uses in the story highlights:
It’s easy to see that Miquela uses multiple features:
- Swipe up: She uses the swipe function to promote her music.
- Music: Miquela added her song to the “music” feature that’s available.
- Icons: At the bottom, there’s the “swipe up” icon. This feature is a part of Miquela’s informal language, and this one is a clear call-to-action.
In other stories on the highlights, Miquela uses other features, such as reposting, short videos, pictures, and even texts for more serious topics. However, most of them are related to her music.
Adjust the Language to the Audience
This advice is as old as social media, but still overlooked by content producers: speak the audience’s language.
Unlike other platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram offers fast and entertaining content. Miquela understands this and has developed a very informal style.
She expresses this informality in three ways: captions, comments, and videos.
Captions
Miquela writes captions to every single post. She uses them to promote her sings — as seen before — and to connect with the audience.
Take this picture as an example:
In these four lines of text, the influencer uses multiple elements to reinforce her message:
- Slang: “GTFO” and “y’all.”
- Emojis: She uses emojis at the end of the text.
- Extended words: “Byyeeeee.”
Comments
The comments section is also essential for Miquela’s interaction with the audience. The picture below is a video in which she provides a sneak peek of her latest song, “Hard Feelings”:
Precisely like the captions, the comments also have some lessons:
- Reply: Miquela replies to comments of the audience, which increases engagement.
- Language: The style of the comment is remarkably similar to the caption. She maintains the same form of communication.
- Emojis and abbreviations: Both elements present in the comment that make it informal.
Videos
Instead of long IGTV videos, Miquela focuses on short videos on her feed.
- These are mostly related to her music — either short video clips or calls-to-action. They are part of an overall strategy to promote the songs.
- By making short videos, she gets the message across more directly.
- Short videos are more engaging because they are faster to watch.
- It keeps communication informal.
Other Features
Instagram is a platform with multiple features. Besides the ones mentioned previously, here’s how Miquela uses IGTV, location, and stories.
IGTV
IGTV is the least used feature in Miquela’s strategy.
Since March of 2019, she has only posted 15 videos. As mentioned previously, she prefers to focus on short posts on the feed when it comes to videos.
Here are some lessons from this:
- Intention: Miquela’s videos are short, and most of them have the intention to promote her music. When planning the content production, it’s best to take into consideration the overall strategy — in her case, to sell the music. Posting on IGTV simply to have content makes no sense.
- Focus: Miquela uses most of Instagram features. The fact that she doesn’t use IGTV too much doesn’t matter, because she has plenty of good content for the other features, such as highlights and the feed.
Miquela is the perfect example that each influencer has a different niche — and, thus, different strategies. While other influencers use IGTV in their approach, Miquela chose another plan, and it works well for her.
Location
Miquela always uses exciting locations for the posts on her feed.
She’s not afraid to get creative. Locations became a supporting tool to promote her music, and don’t refer to physical locations.
Some examples are “Somewhere Out There,” “Middle of the Dessert,” and “My Own World.”
Stories
Stories are another Instagram feature that Miquela uses well. For the everyday stories, not the highlights, here are the different uses:
- Calls-to-action: swipe-ups and links.
- Reposting: Miquela often shares pictures from fans listening to her music.
- Mixed content: both videos and pictures.
Overall, it feels like she uses it mainly to promote her music. The focus, however, is on the highlights instead of the everyday stories.
