Is starting an Instragram account only for writing worth it?

HD Simplicityy

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I'm told on a discord server for writers having an Instagram account is useful for building a community of writers. How accurate is that? I started a blog in late September this year to give my hand at that kind of writing. See if I can build my name and voice with it, alongside writing projects. I'd rather not start yet another social media account to keep track of yet another website. But...if this can work, I would consider it.
 

Elenitsa

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Every year it's another flavour. I have tumblr and twitter and they don't help me much. I tried a newsletter and I am doing something wrong with it, so with that I gave up. I keep - and I can keep - a FB page and a blog and this is it. I guess an instagram would be another thing difficult to keep up with, and not too useful if wanting national follow-up, not international.
 
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I dont understand the appeal of IG. I mean, beyond that the new world is populated by shameless narcissists. Its a visual medium. I dont get the draw. Everyone wants to replace FB with it, and while i understand the need to find an alternative to the outright frustrating and vile FB, IG is not it. What will a writer get from a purely visual medium? Aside from say, someone truly famous like Stephen King showing people how he lives. With evil FB at least you can post content and links. You can communicate.

Further, i am vehemently against any medium that actively works to shorten attention spans; snapchat, Twitter, IG, etc. THAT... is not doing any of us old-school artists any favors...
 

HD Simplicityy

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Helix: I can look. Given it's a place to post more visual stuff, yeah....I don't know how it could help me. If others have had success, that's sweet. I hope that at least my blog can bring me something.
Elenitsa: Agreed. I have a Twitter and have posted links to my blog posts since starting to post in Late September. Nothing that I can see has come from it. I've gotten maybe a tiiinsy bit more attention for it from Facebook and bringing it up on LinkedIn.
Adversary: Also agreed.And short term attention spans...yeah.

If my blog doesn't gain me any substantial traction, then I'll consider putting it away until it could work. Or keep at it hoping it does work. So from this I'm getting the idea to post links where I have been, and including Discord.
 

-Riv-

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Helix: I can look. Given it's a place to post more visual stuff, yeah....I don't know how it could help me. If others have had success, that's sweet. I hope that at least my blog can bring me something.
Elenitsa: Agreed. I have a Twitter and have posted links to my blog posts since starting to post in Late September. Nothing that I can see has come from it. I've gotten maybe a tiiinsy bit more attention for it from Facebook and bringing it up on LinkedIn.
Adversary: Also agreed.And short term attention spans...yeah.

If my blog doesn't gain me any substantial traction, then I'll consider putting it away until it could work. Or keep at it hoping it does work. So from this I'm getting the idea to post links where I have been, and including Discord.
CathleenT uses Instagram as part of her writing platform, but I can't find the thread where she was talking about it. :cry:
 

Helix

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The really important thing to remember about social media is the social bit. I see far too many writers on Twitter, f'rex, just sending their 280 characters out into the aether, without engaging in or encouraging interaction.
 
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lizmonster

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Social media doesn't usually bring you readers. Readers will find you on social media. If that's what you want - and I think it's a valuable thing - then it makes sense to keep up with what's popular, and at least do some investigation. If a social media platform is successful, it's because the users are getting something out of it, no matter how odd it may look from the outside.

I'm not a big Instagram user, but my understanding is Instagram stories are fairly easy to compose. Anecdotally, I see more and more of the people I follow on Twitter post a quick blurb and a link to Instagram, like people do with blogs.

I dont understand the appeal of IG. I mean, beyond that the new world is populated by shameless narcissists. Its a visual medium. I dont get the draw.

It's not entirely visual, as I mentioned above. People will post a single picture with a much longer post beneath it. It's microblogging, really.

As for the new world and narcissists...hang on, lemme find my hat. :Lecture:

My 14-year-old is very much an internet baby, and I have to poke a little at your choice of the word "narcissists" because I think it's unfair. While we've all seen the pro and con news stories about social media, I've seen it do some wonderful things. The Kid has a real community on line - people living all over the world who share similar struggles, cheer for each other, hold each other's hands when things get rough. And never forget that what looks like narcissism to an outsider may be the result of much angst and struggle for self-confidence.

What's interesting is how flexible The Kid and her friends are about how they communicate. Most of the community formed initially on Wattpad (including some of her IRL friends). Lately they've abandoned Wattpad for Discord. A lot of them are on Instagram. (Very little Facebook and Twitter for this generation - I suspect they find the platforms insufficiently interactive.) They move en masse from platform to platform, depending on what best suits their needs. There's very little brand loyalty; it's all ubiquity, and ease of use. (Skype and Facetime are reliable dinosaurs in this ecosystem, but if video chat gets easier to deploy, that will likely change as well.)

It's all well and good to be grumpy about learning something new (I've poked half-heartedly at Instagram, so I'm definitely one of the grumpy!), or to be bothered by how you perceive people are using it. But if you want your online presence to be effective in any way at all, you need to be discoverable. You need to have a presence where the users are, and it doesn't matter whether or not they're where you think they ought to be.
 
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veinglory

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I am a writer, and I have instagram, but I use it to look at and share pictures. I struggle to see how it is a natural place to share writing. I rarely even look at the picture captions or comments. In the feed you can;t see more than a line or two of them anyway. It would be like using Pinterest to share writing.
 

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It's not entirely visual, as I mentioned above. People will post a single picture with a much longer post beneath it. It's microblogging, really.

You know... I do that! I'll post a video, and then a fairly wordy description under it... and EVERYONE jabs me on it. I've never seen anyone else actually make much of a post under the pics... just usually a pile of useless hashtags or emojis. But... i dont play on IG at all, so i dont really know what goes on there. I have an IG account, and i post on it fairly regularly (when my work requires). But mine is private, maybe 40-50 followers, and i only started it because i have one friend who lives nowhere near me, who critiques my (day job) work, and i quite literally have NO other way of sending him videos. The others just kind of found out about it. People have been telling me to start an IG/Youtube account for years now, as i do some crazy shit, but i like to be anonymous online. I dont like this virtual reality, and i dont want to support it. But hey... thats me.

As for the new world and narcissists...hang on, lemme find my hat. :Lecture:

My 14-year-old is very much an internet baby, and I have to poke a little at your choice of the word "narcissists" because I think it's unfair. While we've all seen the pro and con news stories about social media, I've seen it do some wonderful things. The Kid has a real community on line - people living all over the world who share similar struggles, cheer for each other, hold each other's hands when things get rough. And never forget that what looks like narcissism to an outsider may be the result of much angst and struggle for self-confidence.

What's interesting is how flexible The Kid and her friends are about how they communicate. Most of the community formed initially on Wattpad (including some of her IRL friends). Lately they've abandoned Wattpad for Discord. A lot of them are on Instagram. (Very little Facebook and Twitter for this generation - I suspect they find the platforms insufficiently interactive.) They move en masse from platform to platform, depending on what best suits their needs. There's very little brand loyalty; it's all ubiquity, and ease of use. (Skype and Facetime are reliable dinosaurs in this ecosystem, but if video chat gets easier to deploy, that will likely change as well.)

It's all well and good to be grumpy about learning something new (I've poked half-heartedly at Instagram, so I'm definitely one of the grumpy!), or to be bothered by how you perceive people are using it. But if you want your online presence to be effective in any way at all, you need to be discoverable. You need to have a presence where the users are, and it doesn't matter whether or not they're where you think they ought to be.


No... i'm talking NARCISSISTS. Your kid doesn't sound like one. I'm not one (and i do the same thing as your daughter). But man... maybe i just know a lot of them... but they are everywhere on line. Look at me. Look at me. PLEEEEEEAAASE for the love of fucking GOD... LOOK AT ME!!! Ugh. Its the psychologist in me, but still... its epidemic. Seriously people, hug your children more. We need to fix this.


One of these days i'll bite the bullet and make my account public and collect the followers, but i cannot fucking handle spam. I Loathe it. And i see a lot of it on friends accounts ('Hey, nice video (that i didn't watch), please, follow our page!'), so reacting to that might do more harm than good. Haha.
 

CathleenT

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Uh, sorry Riv, but I don't have Instagram. I have Pinterest, which rocks for fantasy writers--not sure how well it does for other genres. But I'd choose Pinterest for any genre over Instagram. People shop a lot on Pinterest. That doesn't seem to be what they go to IG for.

In case this matters, this topic was earnestly debated on the old kboards earlier this year, and the consensus from folks who sell a whole lot more books than I do was "Don't bother with Instagram." Or at least, don't bother as part of your writing funnel. If you like IG, by all means have fun with it.

Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, along with a blog, should be enough for any sane person. And I have the first two on a scheduler, along with a lot of "if this then that" protocols to automatically share my blog posts. Don't let all your writing time get sucked away into promotion. You'll be pissed about that later, or at least I was. :)

ETA: It's worth noting that over 90% of Pinterest users are female. That's fine for me--most of my readers are women--but if you were writing in a male-dominated genre, it would be unlikely that Pinterest would be worth the effort.

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, but on the Science Fiction and Fantasy marketing podcast (https://www.marketingsff.com/), concerning social media, the three hosts seem to use Facebook the most, although it doesn't sound like they expect that much out of it. The hosts now have large enough audiences that they mostly just seem to email their lists, although I believe they've done some paid promotions as well. Anyway, I don't listen as much as I used to, but I learned a lot from this show.
 
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-Riv-

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Uh, sorry Riv, but I don't have Instagram. I have Pinterest, which rocks for fantasy writers--not sure how well it does for other genres. But I'd choose Pinterest for any genre over Instagram. People shop a lot on Pinterest. That doesn't seem to be what they go to IG for.
:)
That's probably why I couldn't find the thread where you were talking about IG. :roll:
 
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HD Simplicityy

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Well alrighty then. I'll stick with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Discord. I'll build my blog up and post stuff and hopefully....people may like it.
Truth be told, I hardly read any other blogs save for maybe two..? But I rather put my time to finding a small number of blogs and contribute to my own writing than spread out too far. Too many websites gets far too overwhelming.
Ohh...thats right. So I don't have any story "finished" or published. Just a few things I've made for classes or on my own time. If I make a section for my blog to post some pieces, I doubt I'd get those same ones published. For those that do that, are you okay with it? Sorry if this has been brought up before. I wouldn't know; I've not searched through the previous years to locate similar threads.
 

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Unfortunately, it's hard to attract a lot of readers to your blog for fiction. The only time I was able to do that at all was when I was involved with a group called Blog Battle, and we all competed for votes from anyone who checked in that week. And the resulting blog volume wasn't huge--about a thousand visitors a month.

My most visited posts are usually nonfic, mostly about writing, although my comma blogs show perennial interest, which makes sense. A lot of people need to know how to use commas.

I got a lot of hits on my social media posts, which were very popular, but I'm not sure if it netted me much from a "building a reader base" perspective.

I've blogged short stories, which I write a lot less of now, and since then a lot of it is notes to myself. Stuff I've learned and don't want to forget. I figured other people might want to know some of the same things.

Lately (as in this year), I've been trying to at least make it clear that this is a fantasy writer's blog, but I don't know if that's mattered much so far. But I've said all I have to say on social media, which was my most popular topic. I've moved onto promotions because that's what I'm working on now. And I get okay volume, but the main thing is that what I'm writing has to at least be valuable to me. That way I know I'm not wasting my time, which helps me keep doing it.

ETA: OP, why LinkedIn? It's fine if you use it for some other reason, but I've never heard of anyone having writing promotional success from it.
 
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Cal_Darin

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What's interesting is how flexible The Kid and her friends are about how they communicate. Most of the community formed initially on Wattpad (including some of her IRL friends). Lately they've abandoned Wattpad for Discord. A lot of them are on Instagram. (Very little Facebook and Twitter for this generation - I suspect they find the platforms insufficiently interactive.) They move en masse from platform to platform, depending on what best suits their needs.

Yeah... I work with high school kids and I started one of those facebook fundraisers for our team (we're an unfunded club program). Told them I'd send them the link so they could share it and maybe get some more support.

When they stopped laughing, they told me none of them had one.

Then one of them told me that if I showed my facebook to the cashier at the movie theater, I'd get a senior citizen discount...
 

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Yeah... I work with high school kids and I started one of those facebook fundraisers for our team (we're an unfunded club program). Told them I'd send them the link so they could share it and maybe get some more support.

When they stopped laughing, they told me none of them had one.

Then one of them told me that if I showed my facebook to the cashier at the movie theater, I'd get a senior citizen discount...

And yet... most of them are still on it... Maybe its kinda like the Yellow Pages in the early 2000's, people laughed, but most still kept one around.
 

HD Simplicityy

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I mentioned LinkedIn because people I've talked to said its a good idea to have a blog for my work. Figure I can post there.

Crap. so is a writing blog just not worth the time? Should I simply use it to post writing that won't make it through to a publisher? Ugghh....well...I've sort of already ran in to the problem of not knowing what to write at times.
 

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Of course we kept them around. They were good for chocking up car tyres, uh, ripping apart in fears of brute strength, and I'll think of another use in a minute...
 

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Of course we kept them around. They were good for chocking up car tyres, uh, ripping apart in fears of brute strength, and I'll think of another use in a minute...

The springs blew in an old armchair I had. Jammed a couple of nice, thick, Yellow Pages under it, and everything stayed in place until I could get a new chair.
 

lizmonster

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I mentioned LinkedIn because people I've talked to said its a good idea to have a blog for my work. Figure I can post there.

LinkedIn isn't what I'd call a vital social platform. I very occasionally see people post links to LinkedIn blogs on FB and Twitter, but I don't know anyone who just browses LinkedIn for blog entries.

Crap. so is a writing blog just not worth the time? Should I simply use it to post writing that won't make it through to a publisher? Ugghh....well...I've sort of already ran in to the problem of not knowing what to write at times.

If you're imagining that writing a blog will bring you hundreds - or even scores - of buyers for your published (or eventually-published) work, then yes, it's probably not worth your time. What you must have, IMHO, is a web page, with a domain similar to <yourauthorname>.com, that has links where people can purchase your published work. What else you put there - biographical info, pictures of your cats, a regular blog, free fiction - is up to you.

In general, people aren't going to go to the internet and say "oh, I think I'll rummage around the web for random writers." They're going to hear about you somewhere else, and google your name for information. You want to make sure they can find that information easily, and that it's information you want them to see.

As to how readers hear about you? Well, that's the puzzle, isn't it? And AFAIK there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. A self-published erotica author is going to approach the issue much differently than a trade-published lit fic writer. And while social media might not get you readers directly, it can absolutely expose you to people in your niche who've done well.

But in the end, what will get you readers is books, and that's where the focus needs to be.
 

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I mentioned LinkedIn because people I've talked to said its a good idea to have a blog for my work. Figure I can post there.

LinkedIn is helpful if you are looking for a job, especially in marketing or IT. It's helpful if you're an HR person, or maybe, a freelance writer. But it's not going to help you sell or publish books.

Crap. so is a writing blog just not worth the time? Should I simply use it to post writing that won't make it through to a publisher? Ugghh....well...I've sort of already ran in to the problem of not knowing what to write at times.

You might want to take a look at this threadand others in the Book Promotion Ideas and Advice forum.

If you don't actually want to blog there's not any point in it, especially if your book isn't about to be published.

I'm going to move this thread to the Blogs and Social Media forum; it's not really a BWQ.
 
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CathleenT

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I can't tell you if it's worth maintaining a blog or not. A lot of that depends on you. How consistent will you be? How entertaining? Will you solve problems for other people? Those things get you readers and a certain amount of volume, over time.

I had a lot of things that I wanted to say. Initially, I posted every day for about a month and a half, which isn't a bad thing to do to jump start your blog. This year after my Christmas post, I'll have 21 posts for the year, with a lot more volume.

The main thing for me is not to say anything unless it's worth reading. What you don't want, IMO, is your substandard stories posted. This is the public face that you show to the world. If I go to your blog and read a story that's so-so, that's what I'll think your writing standard is.

My recommendation for blogs is WordPress, but people like other platforms, too, like Blogger. WordPress gives you a lot of formatting options, like having a landing page, which is something a lot of people recommend if you're a writer. If people click on your site, the first thing you'll want them to see is your books, once you have them pubbed. That may not be critical now, but your blog is something that grows with you. Mine has gone through a bunch of revisions.

But whether or not you blog, it's likely you'll need to do something. Social media, promotions, book fairs and cons--generally speaking, you need to get your book in front of readers in some fashion. Not everyone has to do this--books sometimes do still take off with little assistance from the writer--but you really increase your odds of not languishing in obscurity if you get proactive about being visible.
 
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HD Simplicityy

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To the recent replies: I don't have any book in mind that I'm writing. Short stories for now, or novellas, and a single player game concept. I started my blog to try a new kind of writing, explore it from my perspective, talk about game writing, development, and possibly add reviews. I have a section in mind for my projects once they're either finished or for those that I won't plan on publishing. Would I garner a huge community? Probably not. Something smaller most likely.
I tried WordPress a couple years ago and didn't much like it. Far too confusing to learn and build. I tried Wix and have since liked it. My initial plan was to post anywhere from 1 to 3 times a month, with most likely a few hundred words per article. Or something smaller and more numerous.
 

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I've found very useful the advice in
How to promote your book like an intelligent human being and not an SEO Dweeb

It's short, clear, practical. Plus there are some smart additional posts - except for an idiot SEO professional trying to drum up business.

Lizmonster's and CathleenT's posts are gold. Reread them if you haven't already.

To emphasize what others have said: Social media accounts are next to useless for selling our works. Give up any dreams of having much promotional success with them.

What SM is good for is to establish a circle of friends with like interests who will support you and you them in the cold tough business of the profession that our natures have forced on us: author.

Whatever SM platform you use you must have a web site. You should start one as soon as you decide to be a professional writer. It takes time to learn the technical and more importantly the ARTISTIC sides of a site. You should have a decent one BEFORE you need it to communicate about your new works.

It should have a short bio and can have info about the worlds and people in your books (or not). It can have blog part of the site, but don't add a blog to your site if you can't find something short to post once every week or two. If you have any obsessions which are also likely to show up in your stories you'll almost automatically often find something to blog about: events, books, videos, movies about WHATEVER: horses, dogs, murders, sailing, space travel, gothic fantasy, etc........

In years to come it will be a central location for the fans you will build up to find out the latest news of your work.

The platform matters less than that you manage to create a site that is attractive and easy for your fans to find stuff. Look at my site referenced in my sig which is WordPress based. Look at Cathleen Townsend's which is Pinterest based. (https://www.pinterest.com/cathleen_townse/boards/) Look at Nora Robert's site which hosted on a dedicated server. (http://www.noraroberts.com/) Look at your favorite author's web site.

But most of all follow Steven King's advice: Read much / write much. Especially WRITE MUCH. It will be your books which sell your books, including your previous books. My latest book took off like a sugar-stuffed kid on a skate board. Which none of my previous books came close to doing - until my latest book called readers of that book to them.
 

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This is a very interesting thread. I recently set up a twitter and instagram account. I have no idea what to do with IG but Twitter has been nice to me so far. Nice in the sense that I've found the writing community there to be receptive. I am not about gaining huge numbers of followers but I do know that having a social presence matters. I am introverted by nature and have a hard time talking about myself or what I am working on but I do enjoy having the ability to respond to something someone said and retreat when I need to (by retreat I mean simply closing the laptop).