instagram – Read With River

A Quick Guide to Instagram Etiquette for Authors: Particularly the bewildered, reluctant and, overwhelmed. You don’t need to become an influencer but you really should exist.

Why Instagram?

You’re an author, you’ve spent your life writing and planning for the day when your books are available to the general public, you want to hear from your readers, you want to help your book sales move along. Social media is one of the few free tools you have at your disposal to connect with your readership and your target audience easily and globally. It’s also one of the ways that readers seek to connect to the authors of books that they enjoy, the hand mailed fan letter is sadly a dying art.

Okay, but why Instagram? Why not Twitter or, Tik Tok or, Facebook or, Pinterest? That’s a great question, and each of these platforms have different advantages and appeal to different demographics. Some people manage to juggle a presence on multiple platforms but it’s a lot of work, and it’s likely you will run out of steam. So picking one platform to start out with is more of a reasonable starting goal.

When it comes to responding to a fan base and encouraging buzz and sales, the two platforms readers, reviewers and influencers will be actively looking to reach you the author of the books they’re discussing and showing off, are Twitter and Instagram. There is a healthy Book loving community on TikTok (see New York Times article about Booktok linked at the bottom) but getting on TikTok is more difficult, the demographic is exceedingly young, and the kinds of books people are discussing on TikTok tend to be romance/young adult fantasy specifically. So if you’re a picturebook writer, TikTok is not the right place for you.

It comes down to Twitter vs. Instagram

Twitter is a great place to connect with people within the publishing industry and join in the conversation. Twitter is where you’ll find editors, agents, writers, and everyone else with a stake in the game professionally. If you’ve had a book come out people may discuss it on Twitter and look for you, the author/illustrator, to tag in their tweets. So having a presence here gives you a voice in this discussion with your colleagues. But Twitter is not where you’re going to find your general target audience for the most part.

You will find far fewer publishing industry people publicly on Instagram, but what you will find are your book consumers. 1 billion people use Instagram every month (compared to Twitter’s 330 million) and 80% of those Instagram users will use the app to research products and services. Instagram is designed for showing off luxury goods, books being an enormous niche. If you actually want to help your book sales, Instagram is the app to jump on.

Instagram is a primarily visual platform, influencers/creators reach their audiences with photos and videos, text is secondary. The #Bookstagram world is where you will find the community of people devoted to spending all their time fawning over books. How do you engage with #Bookstagram in an appropriate way? Well, I’ve broken it down for you below step by step…

Set up an Instagram Account: Name clarity is the most important thing, so that you get tagged in reviews, if your name is common add “Author” to the user name. Being found easily is absolutely the most important thing. For your Bio, keep it simple. What did you write? Who published it? One personable statement.

When setting up your author account keep it simple, people need to be able to find you that’s the primary purpose here. If an influencer or reader is sharing your book, they’re going to try and tag you in that review, so when they type your name in it needs to pop up and be clearly you.

Profile photos: Professional headshot is excellent, if you’re a picture book author getting a portrait made of you by the illustrator of your book also works. If you want an interesting photo make sure it’s clear and you’re visible in it.

Some authors do not like to be in photos. I get it, it’s not what you’re here for. But think of this as your ID badge. It needs to look legitimate, and a picture of your garden or your dog just isn’t going to work.

What to post? Profile Grid aka Main feed: Bare minimum, you don’t need to post lots of content. Just put 6-9 photos up to show you’re a real person. You can’t leave it empty, empty is suspicious. Basic photo content: book launch photo, book signing photo, throw back photos, pleasant outdoor scene, surrounded by books, just keep it classy.

If you want to start creating content, posting photos of your life and your work regularly, by all means go for it. But if it’s not your bag, that’s okay. You just need a profile active and professional looking up to respond to your reviewers, to get that professional looking profile you do need to put up a few photos on the page. An empty profile page looks suspicious and people will think you’re a bot. So put a few photos up and call it a day.

This is all pretty easy to navigate if you want to just try looking around but here is my break down if it helps you feel more comfortable:

Profile Grid: Main Feed: These are the photos/videos you see on a person’s profile screen.

Reels: Reels are short form videos, often set to music, currently very popular with Instagram.

IGTV: Instagram TV is where people put up videos longer than 1 minute.

Filters: this is if you have created a software filter program for people to edit their photos in stories, unless you’re a programmer this likely does not apply to you.

Photos you’re Tagged in: If someone puts a post up of you or your book and tags you in that photo, it will appear here. You can adjust your settings so that these require your approval, and if you don’t like the photo you can have it removed.

Home: Home takes you to your main feed screen where you’ll be shown posts by everyone you’re following, and also along the top of the screen you’ll see everyone’s daily “stories” see below for stories.

Explore: This is where you can search for people or subjects using hashtags, Instagram will also show you content it thinks you’re going to like here.

Likes, Comments, Tags: This is where you will have a log of all of the engagement on your posts, if someone likes your photo or left you a comment it will pop up here.

Profile: Back to your main page, this is where you can access logging in and out, switching accounts, and other settings.

Navigating the App: “Stories” top of home screen, stories expire after 24 hours, this is where you share posts, remember to tag the creator with @theirname. This is for more informal content, aesthetic coffee photo, selfie, funny duck.

If you put up a story of your self talking, remember to hit the captions button. There are a lot of possibilities for adding to your stories but one thing to remember is that most people view stories without sound. So make sure any messages appear in writing as well as with sound.

What’s the goal here? Be seen as responsive, polite & personable.

Being likeable may not seem like part of your job as an author. Traditionally, it doesn’t matter whether or not people like you as long as you can write. But in the world of Social Media, authors who spend time making connections with book influencers, are more likely to get talked about. Influencers are more likely to go out of their way to find your other books, more likely to go out of their way to film more content for your books. Think of book influencers as your champions, if you win them over, they will gladly scream your name from the rooftops until you’ve sold out your print run.

If you’ve never opened Instagram up before and have absolutely no idea what’s happening, it’s worthwhile to take a week to just look around anonymously. It will help you get adjusted before you make a professional appearance.

References:

Twitter Vs. Instagram the stats: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-vs-instagram/

Tag: instagram

A Quick Guide to Instagram Etiquette For Authors: Particularly the bewildered, reluctant and, overwhelmed