Here’s Our Instagram Reels Trend Report for February 2023!

As Instagram focuses on becoming more interactive and less on chasing TikTok’s footsteps, you’ll find that your Instagram strategy should have an increased emphasis on community building, connection and behind the scenes looks into your author life. Instagram stands out as a powerful visual platform that allows authors to share their work and connect with potential readers in a unique and engaging way.

Today, we want to dive a little more into the conversation around follower counts and engagement metrics. The most obvious metric to measure an account’s success, has always appeared to be follower count. In our minds, the number of followers should equate the number of potential reach you have, right?

That’s not actually how the Instagram algorithm works, unfortunately. Organic reach is hard to come by among your own followers and playing the trending game is far from what most authors want to do. So, let’s just ignore the number of followers we have.

Yep, Raewyn is recommending you to ignore it and here’s why – it’s not any indication of how much reach, engagement, or sales you’re going to get. In fact, having a higher number of followers could be hurting you if they’re not your target readership. So repeat after us: Less follower numbers, more targeted followers equals more presence and reach for your ideal reader.

Which leads us to our current best practices.

As of February 2023, the following are the most effective ways to use the app and see great, consistent results:

Delete Followers That Aren’t Your Target Audience

We go over this in WIP School Q&A sessions all the time, how do you know who is your target audience? The easiest way to do this is to first, identify if the account is a spam or bot account. Delete those accounts right off the bat. Then, look at your other accounts. Are they obviously someone you would want to read your book (reviewers, posting about your genre, etc)? Yes, they stay. No? Then you do a little digging. Send them a DM and ask if they’re a reader of your genre. This gives you the added bonus of a personal connection.

Don’t Buy Verification

In February, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram announced more information on verification. You can read all about it here. The gist is that it will help Creators establish their presence. The real life application seems more like the old practices of buying followers or clout. As an author, having a verified account won’t help your sales and it won’t help your readers love the books you write. It’s also not likely to stop the spammers from duplicating your account and pretending to be you.

Use Canva Bulk Create

Did you catch our special WIP School and Women in Publishing Summit Canva class last month? If you did, you know all about how helpful Bulk Create is. If you didn’t, here’s a little how to. In Canva, create a template for quotes or reviews. Under apps, search Bulk Create. Upload a CVS file, or type in under what you want to include under an A1 TEXT title. Copy and paste as many as you want into this. Once you’ve clicked next, follow the directions to connect the elements. Once you click create, it will create a brand new document that you’ll just have to clean up the sizing and spacing on. Here’s a video walk through.

Speaking of creating engaging content, if you need some Reels ideas, check out our Reels subscription where you’ll get 4 Reels ideas with step-by-step instructions specifically for authors!

 

Reels & Trends to Try This Month:

A great and easy to use trend for any sort of video. 

Use this for a #fridayintroduction style post getting behind the scenes on being an author or something specific to your genre.

Try a “Talking Head” style video and use the caption sticker or an app that captions your video for you.

 

Here are a few examples of trending audio ‌we’ve enjoyed:

This is a great versatile audio to show off your book, a favorite, or some BTS.

This audio is great for non-fiction authors.

This is popular among the reader community right now.

Want to uplevel your IG reels game? Grab an IG Reels planner, designed by our IG manager, Raewyn!