Following
on with last Wednesday's post today, we run down some information on Instagram.
Yes, writers use Instagram to promote themselves. There is a whole community of
bookstgrammers out there who use it to promote books.
Instagram
typically is for picture charing, sort of twitter for photos, but you knew that
already. The biggest hurdle with Instagram is the posting platform, your phone.
It is hard to write lengthy posts on Instagram using your phone. It is even worse
to get all the spelling and grammar correct too. But, lucky for us, there is a
tool that helps out much, Facebook Creator Studio.
That
tool will allow you to cut a paste long book reviews, cover release info, book
release info, or even long blog posts into Instagram from your computer. And you can schedule when
those posts are to hit Instagram. So, you can do an entire week posting in an
hour or so, set the schedule, and leave it alone.
Not
only does it do that with Instagram, but it also does the same with your
Facebook pages. So, the Creator can be an excellent tool for saving time. To
use this, you must have Instagram set as s business account. Then you link it
to your Facebook page through Creator.
Instagram,
just like Twitter, needs proper hashtags to get your posts noticed by those
who are looking for it. Here are the
most popular hashtags for Instagram.
#bookstagram #books
#booklover #book #bookworm #reading #bookstagrammer #bookish #booknerd
#bookaddict #bibliophile #instabook #booksofinstagram #bookaholic
#bookphotography #read #b #readersofinstagram #booksbooksbooks #booklove
#bookshelf #instabooks #bookblogger #igreads #love #bookcommunity #booklovers
#bookreview #reader #bhfyp
These
are important. What good does it do to post a review or a cover reveal and not
let people know it is there? Hashtags are your friend, and there are numerous
lists online to help you find them. I have a word file that is just hashtags.
Getting
followers is the tricky part. There are so many people out there doing the same
thing, but you can get them. Author groups are full of people who will follow you.
You can do that o inflate your numbers, but you also need people who will
interact, like, and comment. So, be picky about who you might follow from the
long lists you see in Facebook Groups. Look for the active people, not just
those with massive lists of followers. The drawback, all this takes time. The
upside once you start to get followers and people interacting, this leads to
more. The moral of the story, if you are writing and plan to publish in the
next year, start doing this. Post, book-related memes, post reviews, post cover
reveals for your author friends, post book release info for your friends.
Being a self-published
author is a hard thing to do. Even if you want to become represented by a
publishing house, you need to put in the work. Nearly publisher asks for your
social media contacts. Why? To see if you have a following. These have the potential
to be built-in customers.
Please subscribe to my blog, I post content on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I am using this platform to help out other Indie Authors as I move through the self-publishing maze.
You can find me here as well:
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