When I started doing Instagram (I’m not on it much anymore), I did a lot of various things that helped me get to the 300+ followers I have. These might help:
- Books you’re reading.
While you do want to post things about your own book, you don’t want your whole profile to be everything about your books. This is because a lot of people will begin to view your profile as nothing more than self-advertisements. Which, of course, we’re all trying to do anyway, but in order to find readers, one of the best things to do is to push yourself closer into the reader space.
There is a lot of drama going on between authors and readers, but a part of this is coming from authors yelling at readers for not liking their own books. So, a lot of people are like, “authors shouldn’t be a part of the reader space.” In some circumstances, yes. This is true. But if you’re not critiquing books, bashing people, then it’s harmless to talk about your current reads and growing TBR list. Especially when some of these books are within the same genre as you’re writing.
I’ve done posts where I took a picture of a chapter I’m on with the current bookmark I was using. The one I’m mostly referring to has 10 likes on it.
- Your current writing/reading space.
You can do an aesthetic post where you have everything set up and take a quick picture, or have an interesting background to a book you’re reading. I’ve got pictures of my writing desk, or what I post on SnapChat these days is my computer on the current scene I’m on with my TV in the background with some ambience on YouTube (fireplace, library, coffeeshop, etc.) or at a local cafe. And it also goes with reading as well, like I have a picture on Instagram where it shows a Stephen King novel in the sand at the beach, and the ocean is in the background. It has fifteen likes.
But pictures or videos of you writing, your writing space, etc. can also help. I have a picture of me trying to write in my car on a road trip (I was in the backseat) and the photo is just of my computer/keyboard and my fingers. It has twenty-two likes.
- Something that’s inspiring.
Whether it was your work, a scene, a character, or something, you can take a picture of it and talk about how it inspired it. Like I had a picture (I can’t seem to find it anymore, not sure why) where it was a cabin and it made me think of a story I was writing at the time (murder mystery) and it inspired me to write something and so, I talked about that in the caption. But you could do that with anything, really.
- Goals you’ve met or other types of acheivements.
Word count goals, going on the next draft, setting a release date, anything and everything—if you met a goal of some kind, personal, professional or otherwise, you can use that as a post.
I have a post where I took a picture of my computer (camera looking down) on the epilogue, and I captioned that the first draft was finally finished. It has twenty-five likes.
- A snippet of a scene.
You can screenshot or take a photo of your journal/computer and post a snippet of your story. I have quite a few of these on mine, but there’s one where I was in the middle of writing and it was a death scene, and I captioned it that I was trying to make it gross and disturbing. It has twenty-three likes.
- Bonus: anything else you can think of.
Some people don’t want to post things about their personal life and just keep it completely related to their work, and while you obviously don’t have to, it can help to post other things outside of reading and writing because you can reach a broader audience that way. You do get to decide what to post and what direction you want your profile to go in, so you can do whatever you like.
But this is something I’ve noticed (and done myself) with other authors across social media. They will post things about their own personal life because their profiles are more than just their work. Like, I’ve seen Victoria Aveyard post things like outfit of the day and an interview she had that day or where she went on book tour. Alexa Donne has posted stuff of her cruise. Things like that.
