3 Ways Pandora is #Thriving on Instagram

Who would have guessed? Me, a mathematics major, in a class full of communication students learning about how companies should be using social media. I’m not a big social media person at all, I don’t have a Facebook or Twitter and only post on Instagram about three times a year. Yet here I am, equipping myself with the knowledge to judge other people’s social media use. 

The last four weeks have been spent learning the dos and don’ts of managing a brand’s social media. We covered everything from the ideal times to post to best practices for specific platforms. The first major assignment for this class was to do a social media audit for a brand. The platform I selected to follow was Instagram, for obvious reasons, and thankfully my other two group members were actually familiar with how Facebook and Twitter work. We originally were planning to focus our audit on Coca Cola, however it didn’t take us very long to discover that they almost never post on social media, which is quite surprising to me. The Pepsi group decided they wanted to switch to Spotify so we selected their competitor, Pandora.

Pandora is a music and podcast streaming company that claims to reach 70 million users a month, providing their customers with a personalized listening experience. I personally don’t use Pandora or Spotify, and instead prefer to mooch off of my parents’ Amazon Music account for streaming purposes to avoid listening to ads or paying for my music. I also generally buy physical copies of albums I like and use my portable disc Walkman to listen to music so needless to say I don’t have any kind of bias when it comes to this streaming service. Here are three ways that Pandora is doing a good job using Instagram to promote their brand:

1. Posting schedule

One of the first things I tend to notice when following an account is how often they post. If they post too much that usually results in a swift unfollow and if they don’t post enough their username starts to accumulate dust and eventually will get unfollowed on my periodic unfollowing spree. The sweet spot for gaining and maintaining followers is somewhere in between. In fact, according to Meltwater’s article, “How Often Should You Post on Social Media?,” posting once a day is actually more effective than posting multiple times a day only a few times a week. In this respect, Pandora definitely #nailedit as they consistently posted at least once a day during weekdays. Some days, (usually Fridays) they posted more often, however their usual pattern was one regular post a day with varying amounts of story and IGTV posts. 

2. Linked

The next thing that I looked at during my audit of Pandora was their use of the website link in their bio, which is another best practice according to Social Insider’s blog. Pandora made sure to include the phrase “link in bio” for every single post. In their bio is a very short link pdora.co/LinkInBio that sends you to a page that looks almost identical to their Instagram feed. Clicking on any of the thumbnails will redirect you to Pandora’s website, specifically to the playlist, song, or artist that is mentioned in the corresponding post. This is great if you’re scrolling through your feed and see a new artist that looks interesting to you. Instead of having to go through the effort of looking them up on Google, you can simply search for the post you saw on Pandora’s link and explore similar music on Pandora’s streaming platform.

3. Consistent theme

As someone that spent hours writing business plans every year for my robotics team in high school that had strong emphasis on consistent branding, consistency in the aesthetics of a brand’s social media was something I also focused on. According to Sprout Social’s “5 Social Media Best Practices Every Marketer Must Follow,” it’s important to have a theme as it gives viewers an idea as to what they should expect from the account.  In scrolling back through Pandora’s Instagram, it’s very clear that they have a steady theme. All of their posts are dark colored, full of pops of eye-catching neon purples, blues, and greens.

What do you think?

Pandora definitely has room for improvement when it comes to their social media use, but they definitely are off to a good start. My first suggestion for them would be to actually start interacting with their followers, as this is probably the most important best practice that they are completely leaving by the wayside. Is Pandora doing a good job at maintaining their Instagram in your opinion? Is there another best practice that I missed? Leave a comment below, let’s talk about it!