Here’s Our Instagram Reels Trend Report for October 2022!

Did you survive the Instagram shut downs of October 2022? WHOA, was there an uproar or what? With two app outages and another that included the suspension of so many accounts, even the bigger accounts were seeing 10k+ drops in followers. 

It all seems to have come from a “bug” according to Instagram, and hopefully steps taken in October ended the frustration. 

We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers. Sorry! 😵‍💫https://t.co/Q1FBOEI97D

— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022

So what are Instagram’s new updates this month? More users are gaining access to the features we mentioned last month – Instagram Topic Tags, Post Re-Sharing and 60-second stories. In addition, Instagram has widely released new updates on Blocking and keeping community members safe. 

There’s also been some whispers of testing for in-app post scheduling, multi-link in bio, AR ads and a new messenger feature called Notes. However, we haven’t seen any of these in action yet. Instagram just wrapped up their 2022 Creator Week, so we’re sure this next month will have many new and exciting announcements. If you’ve seen anything awesome – DM us!

As of October 2022, the following are the most effective ways to use the app and see great, consistent results:

Use Graphic Templates From Apps Like Canva

It’s time to stop feeling bad about using the graphic design templates in Canva. They are literally doing the research on what is performing well on social media for you! We all want to be original, but while growing your author account, focus on the original content of your book imagery, book excerpts & reviews. Canva just had a big announcement on where they’re going in 2023 – and I’m interested to know more about their websites, whiteboards and docs.

Follow the hashtag #NaNoWriMo

It’s NOVEMBER! So let’s take advantage of the #NaNoWriMo hashtag. Find aspiring authors who are also bookstagrammers, engage with them and join in their challenges. One of the best parts of NaNoWriMo outside of the challenge of 50k words, is that so many authors and bookstagrammers host fun challenges and giveaways. These are sure to help you find some community members and ARC readers!

How to Uplevel Your Carousels and Mediocre Imagery

We love telling you all about apps that can take things to the next level. We’ve been having fun with two apps, Unfold and Scrl. Both of these apps have amazing design templates and provide free stock imagery to use within them. It’s also very easy to slightly blur a stock image & add text on top. Scrl is especially cool because it creates your carousels into a collage or magazine type layout. Here’s an example.

Controversial Take: Using AI for Your Captions

When I first heard about using AI for caption writing, all of  the authentic and genuine bells in my head went off. How could you be genuine when you’re using AI? But then, I realized that it is actually easy to use for your social media without taking away your authenticity. I prefer to use AI as a general outline or for calls-to-action because it uses algorithms and trends, which will make my posts seen more frequently on Instagram. Once I see what the AI generator thinks is a trending call-to-action, I then relate my authentic story to match that. Think of AI as a prompt for your social media copy. Here’s how AI can help you: increase user engagement, smarter marketing and content targeting, streamlined marketing, and provide valuable insights about your audience’s behavior.

Speaking of prompts, 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:

Do this trend with three things they need to know about your books.

Shock your readers with this “Hear me out” trend.

Share some of that author or bookworm life with this trend.

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

Grab a copy of your book, manuscript, or e-reader, and snap a video for this audio.

Show off your book or book swag with this audio.

This is a great audio for some b-roll footage of you working on your WIP.

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