Asking This Question Can Improve Your Instagram Strategy
Reposted from the Literary Marketing Newsletter.
Let's say you’ve been on Instagram for a bit, but you want to ramp up your following and build your audience (and have them buy your book, go to your event, make a donation, or take another action). But despite your efforts, you aren’t really seeing your following increase or you’re not getting the engagement you want.
The best question you can ask to guide your Instagram strategy is this: If someone were to go to my Instagram profile and scroll through my entries, would they know who I am, what I do, and why they would want to follow me?
If they can very easily tell that you’re an author who has a book out, a literary non-profit who serves a certain community, or a podcaster who interviews authors in a certain genre, great! But if they scroll through your profile and have to ask, “Are they an author? Or do they post about travel? Or are they a food blogger? What do they do?” then you have some work to do.
Ultimately, this is one of the basics of branding: Consistent messaging.
Bookstagrammers are great at this. Scroll through a profile and you’ll see consistency around what they post and who their account is for. Here’s an example of an account where, when you scroll through, you know exactly what they review and whether you’d want to follow.
Bookstores are typically great at this, too. If you scroll through a bookstore’s Instagram profile, they’re all about the books. My friends over at Newtonville Books are great at this, consistently posting pics from the bookstore, book recs, new releases, and book events. You also get a sense of the bookstore’s personality through their posts as well, and know exactly what you’d get if you went into the store.
But there are still plenty of authors, bookstores, non-profits, and other literary organizations who aren’t consistently communicating what they do to attract their ideal audience. Instead, they treat their social media spaces like a personal account, just posting whatever they want without any clear message.
How can you improve your Instagram strategy so it better communicates who you are and will attract the right audience?
Start with your goals and what you want to accomplish on Instagram. Raise awareness around your literary non-profit? Build an audience and sell your book?
Understand your ideal audience, including what they’re interested in and what types of accounts they want to follow. Are you a horror writer? Your audience then are horror readers and are looking for accounts that speak their language.
Choose two or three topics that will further your goals and that your ideal audience would be interested in. Again, if you’re a horror writer, talking about your book, the process of writing your book, your favorite horror books and writers, themes and topics in the horror genre today — easily recognizable and appealing to your ideal follower.
As you continue to post, keep asking the question, “If someone were to go to my Instagram profile and scroll through my entries, would they know who I am, what I do, and why they would want to follow me?”
