You may remember Kurt Walker from his recent posts, 9 Ways To Market Your Book With No Money and 7 Things to Do Before Your Book Is Released.
Kurt is a digital marketer and a college paper help writer at Easyessay.org. Besides that, Kurt is a guest blogger at AustralianWritings, UK.bestessays.com, and Superior Paper writing service. Kurt specializes in email and social media marketing. He is the father of three kids and a passionate New York Knicks fan.
Today, he’s sharing with us some ideas on promoting books on Instagram. As Instagram is one of the social media I’m least familiar with, I was keen on finding out more about it. I hope you find the post as informative as I did!
How To Promote Your Book On Instagram
Writing a great book is difficult, but it is only a beginning. You also need to spread the word about it and get the world acquainted with your masterpiece. Luckily enough, there are many ways to promote your latest novel, with Instagram marketing being one of the most effective channels.
Instagram is the fastest-growing social media globally. It attracts more than a billion users who enjoy consuming visual content. This offers you a chance to find and approach a whole lot of potential readers.
Here are 10 simple steps to promote your book on Instagram.
1. Create a Business Page
Instagram marketing is not something you should do through a personal account. You should create a business page instead.
A business page gives you a wide range of additional possibilities to promote your works, including powerful advertising and analytical solutions. Do your best to optimize the page:
- Write a nice description about yourself
- Add contact information such as email addresses
- Leave a link leading to your website or an online store where users can purchase the book
2. Start Early to Build Anticipation
The post-publishing period is not when you begin to promote the book.
On the contrary, you have to start well in advance in order to build anticipation among target audiences. The idea is to make readers expect your novel and inspire them to buy it as soon as it is published.
3. Post Content Consistently
Another thing you should keep in mind is to post fresh content on Instagram consistently.
This is important because people and organizations publish almost 100 million photos and videos on Instagram daily. It’s a lot of content and the only way to make fans remember you is by publishing new posts every day.
A good thing is that you can use all sorts of content ideas to keep the followers interested in your Instagram page. Even if you hate the idea of sharing personal information and your everyday life, here are some other options:
- Post small paragraphs of your novel
- Show fans some behind-the-scene photos
- Publish images of your favorite books
4. Use the Right Hashtags
Hashtags are the core of Instagram marketing, so you’ll have to identify the best solutions for your campaign.
First of all, you should come up with a few book-related hashtags to make the novel memorable before publishing.
Secondly, use hashtags that are common among writers worldwide. Here is a handy list of the most popular ones, to get you started:
- #AskAuthor
- #amwriting
- #writerslife
- #wordgasm
- #wordporn
- #EBooks
- #Creativity
- #IndieAuthor
- #AmazonKindle
- #eReaders
5. Let the Audience Contribute to the Process
Another thing you can do is let your readers contribute to the creative process with useful ideas and suggestions.
A favorite tactic is to publish a few book cover options on Instagram and then ask followers to share their opinions or vote for the favorite visual.
It’s an excellent way to engage the audience and also to make them feel acknowledged and appreciated. You can also invite the audience to leave reviews about your previous works. This is how Papersowl review and many other analyses appeared online.
6. Organize Instagram Contests
Speaking of user engagement, Instagram contests are by far the best way to encourage followers to interact with your content.
All it takes is to invite users to design book-related content or write a nice comment.
In exchange, offer readers a small incentive. It can be a signed copy of your book or a chance to meet the author in the coming weeks. In each case, you should expect a whole lot of fans to respond and take part in the contest.
7. Take Advantage of Live Streaming
There is one more engagement opportunity that you should not miss: Instagram users love watching live videos and posting comments on the go.
You can take advantage of this tactic to read small parts of the new novel and tease the audience.
8. Announce Author Events
Author events must be an integral part of your marketing strategy, but you have to promote them across all channels of communication.
As one of the most popular communication tools, Instagram is not to be neglected here.
Use the platform to share the news and let the audience know where and when to meet you. You should also add location tags to each post because it helps local users discover your content and, hopefully, visit your event.
9. Don’t Forget to Advertise
Instagram offers business pages a comprehensive advertising platform that you can and should exploit to approach the target audience. The system is based on three targeting solutions:
- Core audiences: It enables you to target users based on demographics or interests. For instance, students looking for custom papers can be targeted easily because they already looked for phrases such as help with assignment, assignment help, or simply assignment.
- Custom audiences: This solution makes it easy to approach users who already established some sort of interaction with you. For instance, an agency like RushEssay will target Instagram users who already checked out their best paper writing services or custom writing offers.
- Lookalike audiences: There is also the option of targeting users similar to your existing readers and who share the same interests.
10. Analyze Your Activities
Many Instagram marketers neglect this tactic, but you shouldn’t.
Instagram analytics allows you to identify high-performing activities and eliminate features that prove to be useless.
That way, you can adjust the strategy and make your Instagram campaigns better and more productive.
Conclusion
If you don’t believe social networks have anything to do with book promotion, think again. More than a billion Instagram users represent a huge base of potential readers.
In this article, you learned the 10 most practical ways to market your novel on Instagram.
Have you ever used this social platform for self-promotion? Let us know in the comments!
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I know Instagram has a wide range of audiences with the help of your article I’ll try to publish some of my books. Thank you so much, Kurt.
Glad you found it useful, Hugo! Thanks for reading 🙂
Very useful tricks you are write here which are i used to promote my business… thanks Nicholas
Thanks for this post
A pleasure 🙂
I loathe the gubbins of platforms. My intense dislike for learning how to chew another ones gum. Delivering another mixed up flavour that is harder to chew than the last. Don’t they know? those they’s … who make each one harder than the last. If they each used the same way to make things work, we (the royal we) would stick, keep using and maybe even be liking. But this helps, so thank you. Now if you know where to get that little blue link that says comment here … right under the tiny share buttons on my blog. The elusive thing up and disappeared,
disappeared from where it sat for three years, well that is the sort of gubbins I dislike. Quirks and hiccups that make you spend hours of wasting writing time to try and correct, mostly I can’t. But eventually some helpful knowledgeable blogger/Author that can … deal with gubbins, shares the how and saves the sanity of un technological nitwits like me. X happy 2020 st Nic.
Glad I could help, even a little bit. Loved the gum metaphor 😀
As for the “comment here” link, what’s your blog?
Thank you so much for this!
Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Very useful, Nicholas!
Thank you so much, Traci 🙂