The Mysteries of a Writer's Instagram
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My email has been full of how to harness social media for the upcoming year. It’s exhausting. I delete the emails before I even open them. Does anyone need more stress right now? Hell no.
Before I confuse anyone, let’s be clear about the fact I’m still learning. I’ll show you what I do when I remember to do it. Got to be honest in saying, I try to be consistent. But I miss sometimes. I’m human.
All the calls to engage and connect with readers on various platforms scares the pants off me. Strangers in my private space aren’t a warm fuzzy. If I had to pick one to learn, I would go with the more visual medium.
Instagram is my speed. I love dogs. That’s what hooked me. They offered beautiful and funny dogs. Sucked me right up. Immediately I started collecting beagle dogs in my feed. Next, I started taking pictures of my two. Nice people who loved animals and had fun. No brainer.
I still have that beagle feed. It’s my space for taking things down a notch. But, I knew I wanted to do more.
I had some art friends who were doing only art pictures in their feeds, so I opened a new account and started posting arty type things. There was nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t feel the same happy with the new feed. Plus, I had an inkling I might be missing something.
While I was percolating about what to do social media, I caught a live eight-week course On Instagram for Writers. It was so good. I will not reteach that class. That’s not my skill, but you can go over to Ninja Writers and look into what they offer. I think they have a $10.00 workshop on getting started on Instagram.
Photo by energepic.com from Pexels
As part of the course, we were asked to look for examples of other writers on the platform. Try it yourself. Think about your niche and do a search. Might be a spoiler, but I’ll say results are abysmal. I’m in love with alien romance at the moment. The search turned up two of the authors I enjoy. Cynthia Sax and Evangeline Anderson. Later, I found Grace Goodwin.
None of them have very many followers. Right around 2k for all of them. Most of them only post once per day. Grace Goodwin’s feed is a sales ad. Not much to connect with but her books. Cynthia Sax is about the same. She posts captions about her life. It’s a stab at being more personal.
Four or five months ago Evangeline Anderson started hitting Instagram hard. She’s been branding more. Making these posts with video. Her face in a split screen and the other side is some hunky man candy. Nothing like a hottie with no shirt and low rider jeans to spice up your day. This is also on brand. She writes sexy books. She has been very consistent. Plus, fun. There are some sales ads, but you don’t mind because there is another post with a hot man. I’ve not asked her what she’s doing. I’ve wondered if she hired a social media manager. Whatever got her here, she has the most followers of the three writers. You see her face, then you make a connection, and you buy her books, then you come back for more.
The number one advice I could give writers is to be more than a sales ad. Be as open as you want to be, but be real. It’s fine to push your books, but there needs to be more to engage with.
Here are some practical things I’ve learned from various classes:
Make a business account. If you already have an Instagram account, you can change your account type in the settings.
Be consistent. People expect content from you at regular intervals. Some writers only push Instagram when they have a sale or a new book. You can do better than that.
Start with photos. There are other things to do on Instagram, but first take photos.
Learn to leverage hashtags. There are several places you can learn from. Ubersuggest is the most straightforward. Dig around over there and see what you can figure out.
After you’ve conquered photos, you can lean into Stories. These are short burst videos that disappear after 24 hours. You can play with how you look, what you have to say and lighting, video and such. I’m not comfortable with them being about me. I love having them be about one of my dogs.
Reels are Instagram’s attempt to keep people from being on Tiktok all the time. They created a place for short videos. I’ve got to confess. There’ve been days when I lose an hour or two watching doggy reels. It’s one of the first things I do in the morning. I need a giggle or an aww to start my day. Then I watch it before I fall asleep. A good laugh before bed.
Create a visually pleasing grid. This has been hard for me. Getting a consistent color or coordinating colors isn’t something I'm good at. I’ll need to work on that.
That’s some broad strokes for anyone who hasn’t played around on Instagram.
Let’s talk about what I’m doing over there right now. Three days a week. M, W, F, I post beagle photos. Funny or just a sleepy puppy and such. On Tu, and Th, I post first lines from books I’ve read. It has been a challenge to get traction for first lines. What hasn’t helped is the dearth of good writer content on Instagram. I’m not sure if I want to post blog announcements. That’s a future thing I’ll need to ponder.
Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels
Last, you need a scheduler. There are gazillions. I recommend Later, Plann (what I use) and Hootsuite. I schedule a week out. That’s my brain speed, but I know some who set up an entire month of content in one big go. Maybe that’s faster. I’ll have to try it sometime. A scheduler also lets me look at my grid outside of Instagram. I still struggle, but it's helpful.
Once you’ve been around Instagram a minute, you can start trying to gain more followers. I’ve tried a few things, but I’m don't want to spend all day on Instagram. Well, I do, but I want to be watching dog videos. One of the best places I can send you is over to this guy. The $1.80 is a strategy many use to grow their accounts. I will warn you, it’s tedious as hell.
I want to throw one more author in here. Sarra Cannon. Her Instagram is gorgeous. Her branding is on point. She does photos, videos, carousels, and stories. Her feed is about her and her writing and her books. It’s delicious. She doesn’t write in my niche, but I don’t care. She’s engaging with readers and gathering a huge following.
I’m sure I’ve not covered everything even in this long a post. Social media changes every day. New features, new ways to reach people and new ideas for how to grow your audience.
Being human may be the biggest takeaway from all of this talk of social media and the weighing and judging of other people’s lives. We’re all just trying to figure it out. Be gentle and kind. It’s free and spreads good vibes.
I’d love to hear how others are leveraging Instagram. If this article helped you, let me know so I can keep making this type of content in my regular rotation.
P.S. Everyone is hailing Pinterest as the next big thing for authors. Yeah, I’m going to need a class on that.
