This month's must-have tools, tips and tactics for smarter book marketing
🤳THE GRID, September: post ideas for everyone to use, need-to-know Instagram updates, and more resources to support your book marketing
Hello! Welcome to this month’s edition of The Grid where I round up a bunch of useful things to help you promote your work and get more readers. Please share this post with anyone you think will find it useful ❤️
Psst… make sure you read to the bottom for some post ideas you don’t want to miss 😉
👀 In case you missed it…
There are seasons when time or creativity are in short supply and what you really need is a list of ‘plug and play’ post ideas to keep you moving forwards with your book promotion and audience building.
In September I put together this list 👇🏼 of 23 proven post ideas
Another list is on its way in October to keep you covered for Spooky Season 🎃.
To receive that collection of fresh and effective post ideas curated especially for authors and writers become a member of Too Much Instagram by upgrading your subscription 👇🏼
🎁 A FREE WORKSHOP for all readers
Instagram Intention setting for Q4, Tuesday 30th September, 7-8.30pm
To bring RESET month to a close I’m hosting a 90 minute guided reflection and intention-setting session.
Come along this Tuesday to review where you’re at and set some gentle Instagram goals for your platform building and/ or book marketing in the last three months of the year.
Register for the link to attend live, a replay will be available to all subscribers.
📍Pinned posts
Some useful content from across the internet 🧠
🤳This video (2 mins) says everything I want to say (and needed to hear) about over-coming your/ my fear of videoing yourself (especially in public)
🤰🏻I enjoyed this essay about the similarities between birthing and book and a baby - one for anyone wading through the post-publication endorphin crash, or a sage warning for anyone approaching publication
🌱I know lots of you are memoirists and essayists so I thought this essay about ‘tough categories’ would be of interest to you. The sub-heading alone is super-relevant to the business of marketing these kinds of books: ‘A common misconception is that these kinds of books are all about the author. They’re not. They’re about the reader.’
👩🏻💻 is the work an author does to promote and publicise your own book, ‘unpaid labour’?
offers an alternative perspective (warning: you might not love it)🤨 If you’re puzzling over who does what when it comes to marketing a traditionally published book, I pulled together this Instagram post this month that you mind find useful. Don’t skip the comments where some authors and marketing bods have also shared their insights:
💬 Need-To-Know Instagram Updates
Things have slowed down on the update front after August’s flurry (thank goodness 😅) but there are still some things a-happening.
HEADS UP: Instagram have announced that they’re soon going to be testing a new way for users to intentionally fine-tune your algorithms by adding and removing topics based on your interests, starting with Reels.
One update that I think is pretty cool for any data-hounds was the new retention insights for Reels. This will show up as an interactive chart that shows the percentage of views from people who continued to watch your Reel at each moment. Something to remember with retention is that your chart will always show a downward slope, but the flatter the line, the better!
The second Reels Insights update is that View Rate is now Skip Rate. Skip Rate will show you the percentage of viewers who decided to skip your reel after 3 seconds.
Both of these updates will be helpful if you're trying to work out what keeps your audience engaged with your video content.
Other updates:
You can now 📌pin your own comments underneath your Instagram posts. Previously this was limited to comments from others but you can now use this to highlight your own comment. Perfect for calls to action, or directing people to a link in your bio.
You can now discover content that friends have liked, commented on, or reposted, by selecting the Friends Tab at the top of your Reels feed. Meta say this is intended to foster a more social and connected experience - what do you think?
Make Instagram feel lighter and easier so you can use it for your book marketing and audience building without burning out.
If you’re tired of puzzling over the algorithms, and want Instagram to feel doable and authentic, inside the TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM membership I support you with content ideas, tutorials, weekly access to personalised advice and pep talks to pick you up and keep you going - and more!
To become a member, upgrade your subscription now ❤️
💡Three post formats for you to try in October
If you like having post ideas at your finger-tips so you always know what to post, don’t miss this month’s library of post ideas out on 16th October. Every month, paid subscribers receive a list of proven and trending post ideas with examples and explanations of how to tweak each idea to make it yours. This is September’s library.
Unfortunately, I do love ___ pair this hook with a list of things you’re not ‘supposed’ to like - make them niche/ genre specific if you want something to engage your ideal reader, or keep the list broader if you just want to share a post that is about you as a person.
I wrote my first [specify genre] novel/ book about ___ in ___ share the story of where you wrote/ are writing your book across a series of relevant photos with text over the top.
If you like this movie, read this book a clever post format to clearly communicate what your book is about and who might like it. You could feature books by other writers, but always include your own!
If you click through on any of these posts, please engage (like, comment, save, send or repost) with the post to send a signal to the algorithm that this post is valuable, and as a way to say thanks to the creator who made them ❤️
If you’ve found this edition of The Grid useful or interesting you can help me reach more people by liking, commenting, or sharing it with your networks - thank you 😊❤️
