Instagram Tips

from someone who uses it every day

mother.horror

A post shared by Sadie Hartmann (@mother.horror)

I’ve had a dedicated book account for 7+ years. Here are some random notes on how to make the most of this social media platform.

• If you’re an author, it helps to use your name for your handle so readers/fans can find you and easily tag you in photos of your book.

• Use your book title and your name as hashtags for relevant posts and follow those hashtags. To test this, put #stephenking in the search, note all the photos, follow it, and try #dumakey to note all the photos.

• Take photos in natural daylight.

• Post about your book(s) regularly

Use good hashtags #horrorbooks #horrorfiction #newbook #goodreads I’ll show you how much traffic comes in from a hashtag, it’s a lot 6K on this photo:

It’s a social media platform so be social. If people comment, comment back. If they tag you, like the post, or say thanks, engage. Think of the photos/captions on your grid feed as a portfolio and the stories for temporary updates like food photos, hiking, casual shit

• re-share things to your stories that you like, there is an icon on every post that looks like a paper airplane, click that and send other people’s posts to your stories. This helps foster networking like re-tweets on Twitter

• BE INTERESTING oh my god, just be interesting, would you want to engage with that photo or caption? Just look at everything you put out there as a chance to show people what makes you, YOU.

• Do NOT tag people as a way to spam them about your book

• Do NOT follow for follow or ask people to follow

• Do NOT put URLs in your photos, they aren’t hot, nobody can click them or copy and paste them. Links go in your stories

• Watch a YouTube tutorial, here’s a good one for basics: