How to Get Started on Bookstagram and Gain Followers: Tips, Tricks, and More! Part 2

Hey! So, after noticing that I literally haven’t posted in another two weeks (which has felt like an actual fever dream), I was like yeah, I can’t procrastinate on this anymore. I was thinking of ideas until I saw this over in my drafts! I know that bookstagram tips don’t apply to a lot of you, but I thought it would be a nice post for anyone that it does apply to! Also, I found it over halfway written, so I’m letting my laziness get the best of me.

For those of you who haven’t seen my first post here (go check it out!), I’m fairly active on Instagram as @universewithinpages. Being on bookstagram, a community that shares pictures of books, I’ve gotten some experience on how to best grow your account. Over on my Part 1, I covered the two best ways, but I had a ton of other stuff I wanted to talk about too! These methods are much more secondary to everything listed on my first post, but I wanted to do a follow-up one, because I love talking about bookstagram and helping other people grow on it!(Sorry to everyone not on it for another post, but seriously, you should join! It’s super fun, and you can hear about me and my life DAILY! Super cool, I know, because you’re all incredibly invested in me and my blog,

1. Consistent Posting

Okay, so this is actually a pretty big one, and it takes a lot of commitment. If you’re serious about bookstagram, you need to think about posting consistently, and at a relatively frequent rate. Obviously, if you’re just doing this for fun, it doesn’t matter, but I’m just attesting to what patterns bring in the best engagement. You’re going to want to post a minimum of 4 days a week and a maximum of twice a day, especially if you’re just starting out. Engagement rates drop hard if you aren’t active. I’m not sure why, but they just do, trust me on that. I got blocked for about a week because Instagram thought I was a bot (I do fail those CAPTCHA things all the time, but I’m 100% sure I am human), and that hurt my account. I consistently lost followers daily, and my overall engagement levels fell. You don’t want to be doing this.

Towards the beginning of creating your account for everyone new here, I would post more frequently to achieve that 9 photo grid (I literally mean having 9 photos). Accounts filled with a more photos typically have greater engagement rates than emptier ones. But don’t go too overboard and post a ton all at once. It kind of gets annoying if you spam your Instagram too much, so you do want to achieve that healthy balance. I’d also recommend staggering your posts so make them more evenly spread out. This way, people won’t see all of your posts at once, at one time in the day.

I personally post daily, and I’ve found that this is a pretty good balance for me. It’s basically the maximum amount of photos I can take before literally not having enough time to take any more. I do know some other people who post twice a day in the morning and the evening though!

And one more tip: if you ever don’t feel like taking photos, bring on a shelfie! Those always do well, and they’re super easy to take. But don’t post it too frequently, or use different books in it to vary up your photos, so they don’t look entirely the same.

2. Use your Hashtags

It’s all in the title, use your hashtags! There’s a ton of conflicting advice on the best amount to use. I don’t have a clear-cut number to give you just because of the sheer amount of disagreements online, but you should use some at the very minimum. Hashtags let you get discovered by people who won’t know about your account otherwise, and they’re a great way to get your photos out there. They’re like free promotion to people who want to look at photos like yours! So why wouldn’t you do them? I used to include all thirty hashtags in my posts, but I’ve started to include less (around 11 per photo) now. I don’t think there’s much impact on my photos, but who knows, yours might be different!

You have the choice of putting your hashtags either in your photo description or your comments. They effectively work the same, and it’s all up to whatever you want. I just put them in my photo description out of pure laziness, but a ton of other people put them in their comments. I would say that putting them in your comments can be good because they become hidden after you get a few user comments. It’s all personal preference though.

But what hashtags should you use? Here are the 30 that I usually alternate between.

#bookstagram #book #books #bookish #bookworm 
#bookaholic #bookphotography #bookstagrammer 
#booknerd #booklover #booklove #bookobsessed 
#bookcommunity #booksbooksbooks #bookblog 
#bookgram #booklife #bookgeek #bookcollector 
#bookpics #booknerd #bookaddict #bookreview 
#booksofinstagram #bookshelf #bookdragon 
#bookblogger #booklovers #bookphoto #booksofinstagram

I’d highly recommend the hashtag #bookstagram and #bookish though since those seem to be the most relevant. However, they are competitive hashtags since so many people use them!

3. Post at the Right Time

Posting at the right time is SO IMPORTANT! My engagement levels change dramatically through the day, just because there are less people active at certain times. If you have a business/creator account, you can hit the insights bar and you’ll be able to see the time that most of your followers are active. However, I’ve found that engagement usually peaks late morning for me (10-11 AM EST/EDT). You might need to test things out, because it may differ greatly based on your follower base and where they live! I think that non-english based accounts might need to pay more attention to this because most of their accounts might be demographically focused around one area.

So yeah, those are another three tips! I hope you enjoyed this post, and thanks to all my non-bookstagram blog people for sticking around regardless. I’m really struggling with finding inspiration for general-reading blog posts, and I can’t think of anything unique! I don’t know how all of you who post frequently do it, but I promise I’m going to do my best to think of something and post on time (though I don’t know if I’m going to hold myself to that haha). Have a great day everyone!

Happy reading!

-Allison