Instagram Contests by Soniq Stars
I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: we tried the contests on Discord and it didn’t work. You, as our community, are more than aware of this and you know that we did everything we could to try and playtest the whole Soniq Stars thing before it’s greatly anticipated release, which is still months away.
More importantly, however, we realized that the idea wasn’t bad, in itself; the problem lay with our platform of choice.
So what did we do? We sat down, discussed and realized that Instagram is a much more appropriate environment for a music contest. For one, as a musician, I know a lot of peers who rely on Instagram for content posting. In fact, my very band is looking to start posting recording bloopers and actual song promotion on Instagram, as soon as we come up with our band name.
But what does all of this mean for Soniq Stars? More importantly, what does it mean for the contestants?
Why Discord didn’t work
If you wanted to post a YouTube of yourself singing, you’d have to join our Discord, share everything on social media and rely on our cozy, tight-knit, closed-in community at Soniq.
Why IG is OG
A Discord contest doesn’t get you instant following; it gives your audience an incentive to go follow you. An Instagram-based contest exposes you to the public, not quickly, but simultaneously and directly!
You apply for our Instagram contest by uploading an IG video of yourself performing music and hashtag and mention #soniqstars2018 and @soniqstars. We will then validate and check your account for authenticity and, if everything is okay, we will upload your video to our SoniqStars Instagram page.
This means that your application video stays on your profile, as a regular video (where you’ll get your likes, comments, etc.) and the actual contest video will get you additional exposure on the SoniqStars Instagram page, where the likes will be counted as votes! It’s essentially advanced exposure — something that we definitely couldn’t help you achieve on Discord.
The user experience
In order to help you realize the benefits of Instagram over Discord from the user’s perspective, here’s a comparison:
Discord:
Step 1: Post a YouTube video of yourself singing
Step 2: Join our Discord, which is something of a process
Step 3: Adjust to using Discord
Step 4: Want to invite your friends to like your video? Good luck, they also have to make a Discord account and learn how to use channels.
Step 5: Share everything on social media, which is just another headache
Step 6: Get votes from our cozy, tight-knit, closed-in community at Soniq
Step 7: Check in with Discord, even if you don’t typically hang out there
Instagram:
Step 1: Post/record a video of yourself singing using your smartphone.
Step 2: Add #soniqstars2018 and mention @soniqstars.
Step 3: Follow the SoniqStars Instagram page
Step 4: You’re job is done. We’ll do everything else.
Optional: Promote yourself, add other hashtags that’ll get you noticed, post on other social media channels, whatever; you know how Instagram works!
It’s so brilliantly simple that we all collectively started banging our heads against the nearest respective wall for not coming up with this idea earlier. Seriously! Contests on Discord? What the sweet Beelzebub were we thinking!?
Rewards
Oh, and the rewards? Yeah, they remain the same:
In case of a tie, all tied contenders get the full reward for a particular place.
Oh, and yeah, plus $256 to pay out the the 4th through 30th contestant (other than the first 3 places) based off of their number of votes (in percentage).
That’s right, the first 30 places get rewarded!
All of these prizes will be paid out in SONIQ using the exchange rate at the moment the contest ends.
