My Instagram isn't working, and here's 4 embarrassing reasons why...

Are you doing these 4 things? Here's why your Instagram might be underperforming for your book sales

Have you watched any films from the 90s recently?

We watched Honeymoon In Vegas last week and there was lots to love about it: Nicholas Cage, Sarah Jessica Parker, one-line gags, Elvis references galore, and lots to hate: outdated values, sexism, cringe-moments-a-plenty, but it was the opening titles that took me down a rabbit hole of why my Instagram isn’t working for me in the right way at the moment.

The opening titles were shown over an animation that was a cute little cartoon, and as this YouTube shows, they lasted over 4 minutes!

Over 4 minutes!

In films today, you’re straight into the film with the credits at the end and Netflix even has a ‘Skip Intro’ feature. (At least, I think it does, I haven’t had Netflix for a while.)

And it got me thinking about headlines. How our attention span is so much shorter now and we need to get to the point quick. Super fast. SUPER, SUPER FAST. Otherwise, people scroll past.

No one has time to wait 4 minutes for you to get to the point anymore. In fact, Instagram posted that the first few seconds are the most important, and they’re introducing a new metric called ‘view rate’ to show what percentage of your audience watched after the first 3 seconds.

3 seconds.

That’s tough.

And so your headline, the first thing they see and hear in those precious 3 seconds needs to work so very hard. And so, whilst those 4 minute opening titles were on, I had a look at my headlines on Instagram, and was sorry to see that they are very much left wanting.

The problem I have, and I’m guessing you might be the same, is that my attitude to Instagram is that it’s mostly used for fun.
Sure, it works for getting subscribers, and I love chatting to friends, fellow writers, readers etc, and it’s a place I like to hang out. Scroll a bit and waste precious time.

I’ve had it years and love talking about books, writing, fashion, coffee…and will often go against my own advice and whip up a reel, story or post, in the spur of the moment if I have an idea.

And this is great fun, and in that respect, it is working for me.

I’m building a community, building subscribers via the platform on here, posting about my writing and being more visible, but it’s gone to being really slow growth.

I realised, with all the changes on Instagram, I haven’t changed my strategy.

I know this because developing content strategies is my expert skill, but, I’m guessing like you, my internal dialogue around Instagram goes something like,

‘my Instagram should show all sides of me! It’s no fun with all the boundaries. I found a bargain of a dress the other day, lemme share that on my stories in case anyone else wants one. And OH! How cute is my dog right now? Lemme share that…’

Sigh.

Remember the days when you could be all of the things all at once and the algorithm would still show you to the right people?

We all know its not like that anymore, the amount of changes being pushed out on Instagram is insane, but, I’m about to write a series of novels that I want to self-publish, so things must change.

You see, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, as it makes me sound like I’m a bit full of myself, but being a traditionally published, I’ve been a bit lax about all that side of things, mostly leaving it to my publishing the marketing team there. I’ve done bits, but nowhere near enough.

And if I want to up my reach, I need to put into practise what I preach. I’m going to be documenting the whole thing on here, showing what works and what doesn’t, but as that’s quite vulnerable, it’s only for paid subs.

It’s also worth mentioning, that these books are very much just an idea. I haven’t started writing them yet, know very little about the plot, but one thing I do know, is that it’s pointless writing these books if I don’t have people who want them, so I’m building up an audience and writing them at the same time.

And I’ve decided to start with Instagram as a way to grow this audience for my, as yet, unwritten books.

I’ve looked at my Instagram with social media strategist hat on, roasted my lazy mistakes and here are the 4 huge ones that I’m constantly doing incase you’re guilty of this too…