Opinions/Criticisms on my Author Instagram (payment)

I have an author instagram that focuses on my writing and my WIP. It’s to grow excitement for my book when it’s finally finished and to show off some of the world for a future fan base. It also keeps me busy.
However it’s not popular at all and doesn’t get activity. I understand my book is not published and isn’t going to draw a lot of people in for a few posts. What are some ideas to help it grow? What would interest you? Would you follow this instagram?
I’m not great at social media and I’d love to learn how to get better + some other stuff like mine.

For real opinions and thoughts I’d be willing to read someone’s first few chapters or something along that line so it’s fair for both parties. Let’s have a good conversation.

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Have you seen this yet? There might be other YouTubers who’ve made similar videos, but I didn’t search. Good luck with your IG! ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ

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(I didn’t mean for this to be so long, but I really got into it :stuck_out_tongue: )

I looked at your IG and idk why you’re not getting any comments. (Also I realized I was following you :sweat_smile: Not ignoring you. I follow over 1000 people and over 1000 people follow me, so I sometimes take a moment to go through my list to interact with some people I haven’t interacted with in a while. Now you’re on the list.)

How often do you post? How often are you on IG? And then do you comment on or react to other people’s posts when you’re on (and this doesn’t include viewing people’s stories)? Sometimes that can affect your reach.

You seem to be posting what anyone else is posting like character intros, aesthetic boards…

One thing I might do, if I were you, is plug in the name of my book in as many posts as I can. “In THIS BOOK TITLE, a GENRE story, there’s a mystery surrounding these two girls…” And if you don’t want to give your book title away so soon, call it Project something. Project Purple or whatever you want. Soon people will get familiar with your book, Project Purple.

I try to at least put the book title in as many posts as it is natural and the genre if I think I can fit it in. I try to assume that people coming to my profile have NEVER seen any of my other posts. I assume that those who find my posts have NOT been following me from the beginning of time. So, I think it’s good if you try the same.

Although your character posts are good, you could help your viewers by including more information. Imagine you happen to find a post and it’s about some character they made up. You might be confused as to what it’s about. Is this their character? Is this a real character? Is this a fanfic? When you can’t find the information in the post, you might not engage. Especially with short attention spans, users of social media need all the information right there. Or at least some of the information. At least the title of the book. If not, at least the genre.

Sometimes I say, “In my YA dark fantasy book, Pinti is a clan leader and she has to figure out how to be a clan leader for the first time.” And sometimes, “In “Lunar Heart, Shadow Bound”, Pinti adores her sister. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for Tendri, but sometimes Tendri bugs her.”

I see some people who post things assuming that the person who sees the post is a long-time follower. That’s okay sometimes, but other times you want to appeal to the masses. The masses want to feel included to want to follow you. It’s fine, I think, to repeat some information.

Have you ever participated in challenges? Reading, writing, or bookstagram? That can help increase your reach for the moment, and then you can continue interacting with those people afterwards.

One thing that I noticed you haven’t done yet that you could do is show snippets. Some people don’t like showing snippets because they don’t want to show their story in its various stages. Idk if you’re one of those people, but I think it’s fine to show a story in various stages and to be honest, the people who read are taking in so much information, they’re not gonna remember if the snippet you showed them three months ago was edited. And if they do notice, so what? That’s more fodder for conversation.

When you show snippets, I recommend one or two sentences. Some people do a paragraph and it becomes small, so it’s hard to read and too much text can be scrolled away. If you don’t think you have meaningful, deep, heartfelt scenes to share, try sharing dialogue. Out of context dialogue. I think dialogue is easy for people to read. You don’t have to put character names even. I haven’t figured out what kind of dialogue gets a lot of engagement, but you can experiment.

Also, a recent thing I learned is that your profile needs keywords. I changed my profile. You should check out @ lemon.friday for advice on IG profile writing. What you do is put keywords in there so people’s search will pick you up. What you have now won’t get you much engagement. Also, apparently, not many readers know what “WIP” is so maybe not put that in your profile either :wink:

You should really check out lemon friday. You don’t have to follow all of their advice because it can be overwhelming :sweat_smile: Just look at the advice on the profile for starters. I think your content is fine.

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Hey there, I saw your post was better suited for Wacky Classifieds and moved it there!

– Joy :darkbunnylord:

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This was insightful thank you. I’ll be checking in on that lemon person too.

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You’re welcome!

Yes, check out lemon friday :grin: :lemon: About payment, you don’t have to :blush: Good luck on your account and remember to have fun with it :wink: If you have any more questions and want to chat, feel free to send me a message!

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Hey! I’m a marketer by day and I absolutely love digging in to see why things aren’t working. :wave:

I love your feed. SO many nice posts! The art is amazing and I lovelovelove your highlights icons. They look so great! There are a feeew things I want to touch on real quick if you’re still looking to get your IG rolling!

Consistency

Thiiiiis is a big one. Last year IG was BIG on having creators use all post types, every week, including specific days (i.e grid posts on Mon-Wed, Reel on Tue, stories on Thu-Fri). Posting frequency adds up and if you don’t want your page to be flooded, you can go through and archive once every so often (I do this sometimes). Aim for at least a few posts every week. If you can’t commit to that, you can look at scheduling platforms like Postoplan (the one I use), or even Meta’s own free one. :slight_smile:

Community

I see you aren’t really following a whole lot of people, so I assume you aren’t really active on the platform. Try spending some time each week going through one of the tags you want people to find you in. This is helpful in different ways - first, you can start following creators who are like you, second, you can nyoink ideas from them, and third, you can genuinely make some friends. This doesn’t need to be a huge undertaking either, just 5, 10 minutes once a week giving some genuine, thoughtful comments to authors who are doing the same as you.

Captions (and CTAs)

Try jazzing up your captions a bit with fun CTAs. IG prefers people who get lots of interaction in the first few hours, so ask questions, get people’s feedback. Leave open ended questions to get even more feedback, or ask people to tag friends. Hashtags are important on IG, too - https://inflact.com/ is a nice hashtag searcher. If you use a scheduler like Postoplan you can ‘save’ hashtag lists to easily drop them in, or you can save them to your notes. Here’s what Postoplans looks like

There are certain tags that are shadowbanned, though, so take a look if you’re concerned.

Post types

Video is still dominating :') I LOVE your video you most recently posted. Why not try your hand at one a week? There’s also… uhm. Hacks? to create a TON of videos in a short time frame that can be posted whenever. It can be tricky making video, but I think Canva is kinda easy. I use Premiere Pro, the videos in this screenshot took me all of 10 mins to make, haha. Don’t just fall back on those though, pepper them between genuine content about your books!


You can also batch create social media images too, either on your own or buying a pack. This is some of my November batch I made with RelayThat.

I thiiink that’s about it, your grid looks amazing! It’s just about spicing things up a little :slight_smile: <3 If you’re struggling, there’s free resources out there to help you with your schedule. I even have a Romance book schedule guide with post captions + hashtags available on CreativeFabrica (free with a sub, or included in my Romance templates)

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