7 Easy Ideas for Authors to Grow an Instagram Audience

Social media is an extremely powerful tool, but it can also take up a lot of time. And when you’re busy, well, writing your books, you don’t necessarily have that kind of time on your hands. I have good news — you don’t need dozens of extra hours in your week to grow your social media audience.

In the past three years as BookBub’s social media manager, I have over doubled our Instagram follower count. One of the most surprising things to me was that oftentimes it was not the videos or posts I spent hours crafting that did the best for us. Instead, it was the content that hit a very specific need and did so in the most effective and efficient way.

I am going to share with you how to craft Instagram posts that will not only lead to an engaged audience of book lovers, but will also save you time so you can focus on writing.

Tip #1: Use trending sounds

One of the easiest ways to boost your Instagram content is to set it to a trending sound. A trending sound is a piece of music that’s going viral. When you use a trending sound, the algorithm recognizes that the sound is popular, and therefore, it’s more likely to show your post to a wider Instagram audience. With Instagram, you can add music both to reels and grid posts.

Here are some ways to find trending sounds:

• Scroll, scroll, and scroll some more. If a sound is trending, you’ll probably see it pop up more than once in your feed.
• Look at the Instagram music charts. You can do this in a few different ways. My favorite is to head to the Reels tab. In the bottom right corner of the reel you’re watching, you’ll see a music icon. Click on that. If the audio is trending, you’ll see it noted. Click on that “Trending” tag, then you’ll be taken to the Trending charts.

Once you’ve found a trending sound you want to use, take cues from the trending videos under the sound to see what content might do well. Here’s the thing about trending sounds: Some of them have very specific content that goes along with them. For example, a clip from a Hozier song recently went viral and the trend became making a video that featured a moment from your life that “felt like Hozier’s yell” — usually a heartfelt milestone or event.

So, how can you make that relate to book content? For something like the Hozier’s yell trend, you could make a video of yourself holding up your book and caption the video “a moment that felt like Hozier’s yell: finishing my novel.”

Of course, you do not have to use the trending sound the same way other users are. You can just put the sound over another video! Here’s an example of a bookstagrammer who put Hozier’s sound over a video that did not adhere to the trend.

The best part about trending sounds is that they are usually only a few seconds long, so you don’t have to film a ton of content to jump in on the trend! Sometimes, you can even use video footage you already have in your camera roll.

Tip #2: Create short videos featuring your book

By short, I mean SHORT — 15–20 seconds or less! There are few keys to these types of videos:

• Use a trending sound (I sound like a broken record!)
• Keep the hook short, sweet, and CLEAR
• Grab your audience’s attention FAST

Here are a few of my favorite ways to feature books in short videos:

Highlight a favorite scene in the video. Here’s an example from a bookstagrammer using a trending sound. She used B-roll footage for the video (no need to shoot something new!). She had a quick intro to the scene. She highlighted her favorite parts of the scene so it was easy for the audience to read.

The hold and turn — it’s kind of like the bend and snap! There are lots of ways to riff on this style. Essentially what you do is hold your book by its spine, edges facing out, write the hook on the screen, then do a big reveal.

New York Times bestselling author Lyla Sage used this style, creating a reel calling out a particular quote then revealing that it’s from her new book.

Here’s another example where the creator talks about the book over the video — then reveals the cover only at the end. This can help increase “hold rate” (how long the audience stays watching the video), which can help boost the video in the algorithm: It signals to the algorithm that viewers are interested in watching not just the first few seconds of your content, but the whole thing.

The page flip. Again, lots of fun ways to do this video. What you want to do is lay your book flat and then flip through the pages, revealing the cover at the end — OR don’t reveal the cover at all and put the title in the caption.

Here’s an example from BookBub where we called out aspects of the book that readers might be interested in.

USA Today bestselling author Devney Perry featured her new release in a page-flip video overlaid with quotes from reviews.

Those three ideas aren’t the only options for quick videos — here are other examples of short, easy-to-create videos from authors:

Tip #3: Templates are your friend

Templates are not just my friend… they are my BEST friend. They come in handy for content you know you are going to want to recreate or iterate on in the future. For authors, I recommend making a template for:

• Preorder announcements
• Cover reveals
• Discounts or bookstore sales (like if Barnes & Noble has a 25% off sale and your book is included)

Author Brynne Weaver used similar templates for two different posts promoting her preorder, each showcasing a quote from the book in the first image and displaying the book cover, call-to-action, and release date in the second image:

If you don’t have graphic design experience, I suggest using a design tool like Canva to make your templates. Canva is extremely user-friendly, plus they have premade templates you can tweak to fit the style of your brand. Starting out with the image elements and color palette already in place from Canva cuts down on a lot of time.

Tip #4: Variety is the spice of your (social media) life

You know that saying: Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks? Well, that’s how I like to think about posting on social media. Try out different approaches and try them often. If you try posting a quote of your book using a particular trend, but it doesn’t do well, try showcasing the quote in another way. Use it in a carousel, or test a different video style. With Instagram, it is particularly important to vary your content.

I recommend posting at least one of each style of content a week: one carousel, one reel, and one grid post. Ideally, try to post on your account three or four times a week to maintain visibility in the algorithm. Also, there’s no harm in reposting your own content if some time has gone by since you shared that post (or if you shared it on a different platform). Reduce, reuse, recycle.

The same goes for Instagram Stories — but don’t sweat over making new posts specific to your stories. Post your reel or carousel to your story with a simple caption. Post the cover of your book with a link to download. Post a picture of your computer screen while you write. I do not recommend taking the time to make elaborate Instagram stories, because they only last 24 hours (unless you save them to your account highlights). When you have a limited amount of time, you want to spend it on content that is going to live on your page for the long haul, rather than spending it on a post that will disappear and is unlikely to be seen by anyone outside your followers.

Tip #5: Create engaging carousels

An Instagram carousel is a post containing multiple images. Your audience can swipe through the images like a slideshow. Below are tips for creating an engaging carousel — use these as the basis for templates that you can then reuse to save yourself time later!

• Use a big headline and high color contrast on the first slide
• Make sure the font is easily readable
• Use contrasting colors to enhance readability, like white and black or blue and yellow
• Pick a color scheme with no more than five to seven colors
• Add in a few (small) graphics on the first slide, and continue to keep the theme of those (i.e. if you use flowers, keep using flowers) across the slides to make it cohesive
• Prompt your audience to swipe — this helps get the post more visibility because it lets Instagram know that your viewers are interested in ALL the slides

This post tells readers the order in which they should approach author Sarah Adams’s books, and maintains a cohesive color scheme throughout.

This carousel encourages users to swipe to see different book recommendations.

This carousel from author Hannah Bonam-Young leans on aesthetics and quotes, with the book title as a big headline on the first slide. This is a great example of a carousel you could make a template for — once you make the first one, you can reuse these for your other books or with other quotes. All you will need to do to make it unique is switch up the color palette and imagery.

Tip #6: Use captions, hashtags, and links in bio wisely

Captions

I think crafting a caption is the hardest part of creating Instagram posts (and it’s my least favorite component). However, captions can be extremely useful, especially when you want to give your audience the most information possible. It’s been a growing trend on Instagram to post a very brief reel and then direct users to the caption for more information. This is effective for a few reasons:

• Includes more keywords. When you write a longer caption, you can include keywords that the algorithm will pick up on. Make sure you’re intentional about the language you use here for that very reason. For example, if your video is about your second-chance romance book, in the caption you should use keywords like “romance book,” “second chance,” “tropes,” etc. This will help Instagram push out the content to interested readers.
• Increases hold rate. A longer caption forces the audience to stay on your video longer to read it, therefore increasing the hold rate. The Instagram algorithm loves to see when people watch a video for a long period of time or multiple times. And chances are if the video is short, it will loop multiple times while users are reading the caption.
• Downplays your call-to-action. If you’re promoting one of your own books and want to encourage readers to purchase, a caption is a great place to put your call-to-action so that your video or post does not feel too “salesy.” People don’t like to feel like they are getting an advertisement, so it helps to sort of mask your sales pitch in the caption. For example, put something in the caption like “✨head to the bookstore on April 23 when my new book hits shelves.”

By no means does your caption need to be long. If your post does the talking for you, then keep your caption short and sweet. Captions are just an additional tool to add to your Instagram toolbox!

Hashtags

Hashtags help the Instagram algorithm sort and push out your content to interested users — like those keywords you’re putting in your caption. Hashtags are unique, though, in that they collect posts in one place. So if you include the hashtag #books in your post, then your post will be included along with all the other posts tagged #books. Users can click on that hashtag to scroll through all the posts with that tag.

Users can also follow hashtags on Instagram the same way you follow an account. When you follow a hashtag, you then see any posts using that hashtag in your Instagram feed. I recommend using five to seven hashtags per post, with a few of them being broad (like #books) and a few being more niche, like the genre, trope, or topic of your book.

Links in Bio

Instagram is the best social media platform for adding links in your bio because it lets you add more than one. Take advantage of this feature and use your bio to link out to your website, a bookstore, or even a BookBub deal! You can label each of the links so your audience knows exactly what to click on. I also suggest mentioning the links in the text of your bio — for example, you can write, “Check out the links below for more info on my books!”

Tip #7: Share your BookBub promotions!

If your book is selected for a BookBub Featured Deal, share it on your Instagram!

Leading up to your feature, we’ll email you information about sharing your deal, including a tool that automatically generates an image and caption for you to post.

On the day of your Featured Deal, we will email you the link to your live deal on BookBub.com, which will include links to every retailer where your deal is available. Here are some tips for sharing your deal on Instagram:

• Copy the link to your deal, paste it into your Instagram bio, and label it
• Create a post using one of the ideas above — a reel or a carousel, for example
• Don’t forget to use your caption to give your audience the most information you can about your deal!

And there you have it — a few of my favorite tips for growing your Instagram audience that don’t require you to trade in your writing career for one in social media!

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About Emma Leary

Emma Leary is the social media manager at BookBub, where she spends her time connecting with fellow bookworms on the internet.