Instagram for authors: interview with Nicola Washington
Nicola Washington
I first discovered today’s interview guest, Nicola Washington, on Substack - and found her posts so inspiring and interesting. So I’m really excited that she’s here on my blog to talk about her work with authors and share her really insights into using Instagram as an author…
First of all can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to do what you do.
Hi everyone, lovely to meet you all! My name is Nicola and I’m an Instagram Strategist and Educator for writers and authors.
I started working with writers and authors two years ago after seven years of being a social media manager for small businesses. Before that I was a secondary school English teacher but I left teaching in 2016 and retrained as a social media manager after my second child was born.
At that point, social media marketing was in its infancy but I’d been using Instagram to promote a blog for a couple of years and I could see the opportunities it presented. For the first few years I worked with some brilliant small business owners before deciding to pivot my work closer to my interests in 2023, which is when I started working with writers and authors.
What are some of the most common issues that you find when it comes to working with authors on their social media?
I find that the issues writers and authors come to me with usually sit in two camps - the practical, and the psychological.
Instagram is a noisy, fast place offering lots of options of content formats, and lots of different buttons and levers to push and pull so it can take a bit of time to become fluent. When it comes to practical barriers to using it I think of it as being a bit like learning to drive: with practice, certain things start to become easier, until they’re second nature and you barely have to think about it.
Often, the issues that are harder to shift are the psychological ones - the fear of making a fool of yourself in public, the worries about what people will think, and the vulnerability that comes with being more visible.
It’s surprised me how much of my work centres around reframing and working through these kinds of worries and insecurities and it’s one of my favourite pieces of feedback when people tell me that as well as developing their skills, they also feel better about using Instagram after they’ve worked with me.
If a debut author came to you feeling completely overwhelmed and unsure where to start, what’s the very first mindset shift you’d want to help them make?
This is a fab question because that feeling of overwhelm is often enough to stall people in the starting gates.
There are different ways of approaching this but one of the most important questions I would ask would be: what would you talk about for free even if no one was listening, and what would you say if the algorithms and follower counts didn’t exist.
So much of the discourse around Instagram focuses on how to ‘hack’ the algorithm, or how to accelerate the growth of your account but, for me, focusing on these things is the fastest way to make Instagram feel like a miserable, soul-destroying place to spend time.
It becomes far more sustainable and pleasant - and therefore more likely to work in the long run - when we align what we say and do online with what we actually think, believe, and are passionate about in real life.
The tactics for how to grow your account and make ‘effective’ content come later, because realistically there is a certain amount of jumping through hoops that Instagram will demand if you are going to get anywhere with it, but first figure out what you want to talk about.
You talk a lot about authors feeling resistance to social media. Why do you think social media triggers such strong emotions for writers in particular?
Oh gosh, do you have all day?! There are so many reasons why I think writers feel resistant to social media, and often writers hold more than one of these reasons in their heads and hearts at once, but I’ll do my best to summarise a few of the most common ones that I encounter!
Some writers are concerned about the ethics and morals of the companies who run these spaces - a position I have enormous sympathies with, and trust me when I say I sit in this discomfort every day!
Writers are also often introverted people so it’s understandable that making yourself more visible is not something that sits easily with you.
Many writers tell me you feel resentful about spending time on marketing and publicity because you see your role as doing the creative work of writing - publishers should be responsible for the ‘grubbier’ side of things where you actually try to get people to buy the thing you’ve created!
When I speak with authors who say this is how they feel I often get the sense that you are experiencing something that comes close to a kind of grief. For many, many authors the reality of publishing your book doesn’t match up to your expectations and there are a lot of deeply uncomfortable, upsetting feelings that come along with that. Sometimes I think perhaps these feelings of disappointment and sadness have no where to go - the power dynamic between authors and publishers is entirely one-sided - and so they bubble up in other places where writers can exert some control and agency, which makes social media an easy target.
But I also think there’s often a sense that writers have that if your book is any good, it should organically find its way into the hands of its readers. This simply isn’t true, but it’s a narrative that lots of writers have internalised and therefore you get backed in this corner where to be seen actively promoting your work feels like an admission to yourself and others that it isn’t any good!
This is enough to stop many authors from mentioning your book online beyond the odd apologetic whisper, and this will never stop making me sad because I know how much time, effort and love it takes to get a book out into the world!
A lot of writers (me included!) find it hard to know exactly WHAT to post on Instagram. Do you have any tips to help inspire authors with their content?
Where lots of people go wrong with Instagram is to start with the question, ‘What am I going to post about today?’ The focus is on individual post ideas that are isolated from one another, you and your book.
In order to keep coming up with post ideas that will appeal to your ideal readers, you need to lay some foundations before you try to come up with individual posts. So there are two questions I would start with when thinking about what each writer should post about:
What do you want to talk and have conversations about? What do you want to be known for?
What are your readers - not all readers - going to be interested in? If someone is going to be interested in reading your book, why is that? What else are they reading? What else are they interested in? What problems or challenges or experiences might they/ you have in common?
Hopefully you will find there is some overlap between your answers to these questions (because as writers we tend to write about what we’re interested in!) - use these answers to guide what you should post about.
Some authors worry that if they’re too open or personal online, it’ll blur the lines between their private life and their professional one. How do you help people navigate that boundary?
Everyone is different so I can’t prescribe exactly which boundaries will suit every person, but one way I like to think of it is as being the online equivalent of rooms in my house: there are rooms I happily show all visitors into, but there are other parts of my house that only people close to me are allowed into.
I don’t feel pressured to show every visitor into every room of my house, so the same goes for my online ‘home’.
Having said that, it;s important to bring something of yourself to your content. Some emotion, some opinion, some deeper thoughts are where your audience will find points of commonality and connection with you. This is what helps potential readers trust you and understand how your book will benefit them so they’re more likely to make that leap into buying and reading it.
If all of your posts are factual updates with no sense of you, your thoughts, or your feelings you will struggle to create this kind of connection.
There’s so much pressure to grow on Instagram: followers, reach, engagement. But what I really liked was the way you talk a lot about redefining success. What should authors actually be measuring when it comes to social media?
I’ve always endorsed a ‘community-first’ approach to social media which basically means resisting quantifying relationships, and instead being more mindful of the quality of the relationships we cultivate through its channels.
If I’m having regular, meaningful conversations - in comments or dms - with people in my network (on their content or mine), or if I’m benefitting from learning from other people, or I’m using my own platform to lift up other people, I see this as success, not reach or follower counts, or numbers of likes.
Those things feel empty when I compare them to the chats I have in my dms with people about shared passions or interests, or someone sending me a video because it has made them think of me, or being able to put someone’s name forward for something I’m confident they will be perfect for thanks to my interactions with them on social media.
Your network does not need to be large to have an outsized impact when your book comes out, but it does need to be invested in you, it does need to care.
As humans, we’re hardwired for community and reciprocity (even if the hyper-individualisation of Capitalist systems and narratives have done their best to convince us otherwise ;-), so when we support other people - either with our actions, or with our expertise - they will want to support us too.
It’s important not to allow this to slip into transactional expectation - I did this for you, so you have to do that for me - but how we exist in relation to each other is a fundamental part of being human and, for me, this is no different in our online lives.
Cultivating online spaces where there is a sense of mutual support, encouragement and understanding is what success looks like to me.
Another issue for authors is also time! Do you have any tips for helping to integrate Insta into their already hectic schedule? Is it better to schedule posts in advance, or post things on the fly?
I do! In fact I recently recorded a podcast episode about this which you can listen to here.
Do you have any tips for authors who are more established - perhaps a few books down the line - who aren’t seeing the traction they’d hope for on Instagram? Is there an obvious way they can ‘move things up a gear’?
Regardless of what stage a writer is at in their career, I always encourage them to come back to the basics of who they are, what are they interested in, what would they talk about for free even if no one is listening?
More often than not, even experienced authors will find their social media presence becomes stagnant and unrewarding because they’re using it to broadcast about their latest book, rather than using it as a space to connect with readers, and potential readers over shared interests.
Obviously, authors should be promoting their books to their audiences BUT most of the time - basically any time outside a launch period - anything that looks or sounds like an advert for their book should be a maximum of 25% (or 1 in 4) of their posts.
Are there any authors who you think make brilliant use of Instagram?
YES! What I love about all of these accounts is that although these authors all show up in totally different ways in different niches and genre, what they all have in common is that you get a real sense of who they are, what they care about, and what they’re interested in.
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
Memoir:
Finally, please tell us a bit more about how authors can work with you and where they can find you!
Yes, of course! There are different ways of working with me depending on what stage writers are at.
If you’re ready to take action to build your Instagram audience, or want to keep momentum going with your Instagram book promotion, you can join the TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM membership on Substack by upgrading your subscription from free to paid. This is a group membership where you have weekly access to pick my brains and also receive tutorials, post ideas, and other resources to support you with your use of Instagram.
If you’re looking for bespoke support to help you build an audience is a priority, or you want to generate momentum for a book launch, my 121 services might be appropriate for you. You can find out more on my website and book a free 30 minute Discovery Call to have a chat about what might be best for you.
If you’re still uncertain about using Instagram, you can dip your toe in via my free content on Substack, on Instagram, or listen to my summer podcast series.
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