This challenge is free for all readers of Too Much by Nicola Washington to join in with. This is the fifth of 7 short emails that will be sent out this week. If you do not want to take part in the challenge, feel free to ignore the series. Normal service will resume on Monday 2nd September 🙂
If you’re not a subscriber and you’d like to receive all of the tasks this week then make sure you hit the pink button. To read all of the WAKE UP posts click here.
Welcome to Day Five of the WAKE UP INSTAGRAM Challenge - a week-long series of 10 min daily tasks to ‘wake up’ your Instagram account and get you back in front of your favourite people after you’ve been on a break.
TASK FIVE
Listen to the audio, or read the instructions below, to join in ❤️
First of all, please let me know in the comments if you know where the ‘specific and limited’ reference comes from. It’s a niche joke so don’t worry if it looks like I’m just being weird - I probably am, which is neat because that’s exactly what I’m advocating for today’s 10 minute task 😉
Today you are going to use Instagram as it wants to be used and you are going to post some Stories that are nothing to do with your writing.
Why?
Stories are only ever around for 24 hours and as they’re only seen by people who already follow you, they’re a relevantly low-stakes way to show your audience some of your personality beyond what you write about.
They’re a great place to start conversations, and to gauge what your core, most engaged audience responds to. This can help them get to know you and vice versa, and might even inform some of the grid posts you create to make them more relevant and therefore valuable to your audience.
When people interact with your Stories they’re also sending strong signals to the algorithm that they like, and want to see, your content which makes it more likely your content will show up in their feed.
BUT…
Writers often tell me they struggle for ideas of what to post in your Stories though so today I’m going to give you a prompt to get you started.
Think of a low stakes topics that you have an oddly specific opinion on e.g where hot tea bags go until they cool down (NOT in the bin); rank ordering different crisps or snacks (Picnics are an elite chocolate bar, I don’t care what anyone says); what kind of mug is to be used at particular times of day/ specific beverages (I have so many thoughts on this and now is not the time or place to go into them) etc.
Choose/ take a relevant image to post to your Story.
Over the top of the picture type, ‘People think I’m weird when I say this but… [insert your oddly specific opinion]’.
Add a poll that give people different options of how to respond: e.g I know exactly what you mean/ what on earth are you talking about, you weirdo
OPTIONAL EXTRA: expand further on your oddly specific opinion by either talking to camera (don’t forget to add Captions if they’re available), or typing your thoughts over some more images. Try to keep it to a maximum of three more Stories.
How does it work?
As I’ve already mentioned this is a great way to engage and interact with your existing audience, and by involving them in a low-stakes conversation they’ll send signals to the algorithm to show them more of your content.
But this is also about being HUMAN. We all have quirks and oddities and it is often these that will help people connect with and remember you in a sea of generic content and busy lives.
Writers also often express a dislike for having ‘niche-down’ their humanity in order to succeed (whatever that means to you) on Instagram. I totally understand this resistance to packaging your whole self into an ‘author brand’ and I also think it’s possible to do both the ‘correct’ thing AND the human thing by using the different content placements that Instagram offers in different ways A.K.A use Stories to be as weird as you want.
I hope you’ve found this useful - let me know in the comments if you have any questions or thoughts. I’ll be back tomorrow with the sixth task of the challenge and I hope you’ll join me!
If you’re joining this challenge late, you can read all of the posts here.
The 'specific and limited' joy of being weird on Instagram Stories