Social media promotions for books are the trend of the year and Instagram is one of the top social media networks to engage in. A lot of people from the younger generation are active on Instagram and it is time to take advantage of it.
Here are some tips to make the best out of Instagram for your book promotions.
Collaborate with Book Bloggers
If you just browse through any hashtag related to books, you can see a lot of book bloggers on Instagram. They call themselves the ‘bookstagrammers’. These book bloggers post images of the books they have read, its review and their recommendations. If you scroll through the comment section of any of these kinds of posts, you can notice that many users are discussing and expressing their opinions on the books. This is the perfect gold mine for the authors to make use of.
If you are able to collaborate with any of the popular book bloggers, then you have the chance to increase your readers by a great extent. The followers of these book bloggers take their recommendations very seriously and if you can even get a mention in their Instagram story about your book, it is a bonus for you.
What’s more is that these book bloggers take beautiful images of your books along with their well-written reviews and this will help you land more readers or at the least increase your leads.
Use Hashtags Wisely
Instagram runs on hashtags. Usage of hashtags could make or break your followers. It is important to use the pick the right choice of hashtags which can get you noticed. It doesn’t mean picking all the highly used hashtags in your posts. Your posts can get lost in the midst of these high volume hashtags.
You can choose a mix of high volume, medium volume and low volume hashtags in combination for your posts so that it gets recognized in all categories. Use only relevant hashtags according to your posts and the type of audience you wish to reach. Do not copy and paste the same set of hashtags for all your posts. Instagram keeps track of all the hashtags you use and if they identify that you have been using the same set of hashtags for all your posts, then they could temporarily suspend posting which can greatly affect your marketing. Therefore, use a combination of hashtags in rotation based on your research.
Post Often and Be Regular
The more often you post, the more you will crop up in the feed of your followers thereby gaining your posts attention. The Instagram algorithm works in such a way that the posts from the accounts more liked by the user will be displayed often in their feed. If a user likes a lot of your posts but if you post with a considerable gap, then the user would have moved on to liking posts from other accounts which will reduce the frequency of your posts on their profile.
To be seen on the feed of your followers regularly, post often and be regular in it.
Engage A Lot
If anyone comments on your posts or sends a message about one of your posts, be polite and acknowlege them. See what most of the readers discuss about and try to strike up a conversation on a few topics. This will place you on the radar of the readers and will increase the chances of them buying your books.
Use Sponsored Posts
If you want to get a particular post to get noticed in front of your target readers, then you can use sponsored posts option. You will, of course, need to spend a bit on boosting the post but the amount you spend will be worthwhile when compared to the exposure you get. While using sponsored posts, it is important to pay close attention when you are customizing the reach of the posts based on the audience you are targeting.
