I met Lara Ferrari, the founder of Lemon Friday, when we spoke at the same virtual summit recently. I’m always impressed by other speakers at these events, but Lara stood out. So, of course I asked if she’d like to write a guest post for us here!

Lara provides marketing support for authors who’d rather be writing. As an Instagram specialist, she has personally helped more than 100 authors grow engaged communities of readers online. Lara’s tips, tools, and templates are designed to simplify and streamline your book marketing so you can build book buzz online without sacrificing precious writing time. As gifts are her love language, she would like to give you a free copy of her 10-step Glow Up Your Instagram guide for authors! (I downloaded it as soon as I learned about it and I’m already working with it. Grab your copy!) 

The great Instagram glow up: Are you shining your absolute brightest?

By Lara Ferrari

Glow up /ɡloʊ ʌp/

(Also known as glow-up or glo up or glo-up)

Significant and positive changes made over time, resulting in an eventual version that’s better in every way.

Example sentence: “After finding her purpose, embracing her individuality, and getting seriously strategic about connecting with the right readers, her author Instagram account experienced a remarkable glow up, attracting a wave of new and engaged followers.”

Synonyms: transformation, evolution, elevation, blossoming, maturation

More than a makeover

Don’t confuse a glow up with a makeover.

Unlike a makeover, a glow-up is not about miraculously changing your Instagram account into something (or someone) else. It’s not forced, it is not immediate, and it’s definitely not surface level.

An Instagram glow up is a gentler, more gradual, more genuine approach to improving your social media presence. Because it’s based on embracing and showcasing your unique brand of magic, the result is a transformation that’s not only long-lasting, but has a deep and meaningful impact on you and your readers.

After your glow up, not only will you attract more readers, but more of the right readers will immediately recognize you as their perfect match.

If this resonates with you and your author account, let’s dive into the 10 steps to achieve your Instagram glow up.

How to tell if your account is overdue for a glow up

First, let’s play a quick and easy game.

I’m going to give you a list of 10 statements and if any of them are true about your author account, you’re going to give yourself a point. At the end, we’ll add up your points and find out whether your author Instagram account could benefit from a glow up.

1. Your profile picture is not a clear and close-up shot of your lovely face.
2. Your username is hard to read or not obviously connected to writing.
3. Your “name field” is not being used or does not include words your ideal reader is searching for.
4. Your bio doesn’t make it clear what readers can expect from your account or give them an incentive to stick around.
5. You’re not entirely sure who you’re trying to attract… or what your main goal is.
6. You’re hiding your real self.
7. Your “aesthetic” feels messy, haphazard, non-existent, or just doesn’t match the style of your book.
8. You’re posting captions with zero strategy or end goal.
9. You aren’t using the Instagram “highlights” feature effectively.
10. Your own feed (the home page) doesn’t inspire you.

Now for your results…

If you scored 0 points:

Congratulations! Your Instagram is perfection – don’t you dare change a thing.

If you scored 1–2 points:

Very impressive. You’re basically an Instagram expert.

If you scored 3–10 points:

Welcome to the club! You are perfectly primed for an Instagram Glow Up. Read on.

How to get your Instagram account glowing

Think of your Instagram glow up as steadily turning up the dimmer switch, getting brighter and brighter until eventually you shine a light so bright and distinctive that your ideal readers will be dazzled as they’re drawn to you!

This means standing out for all the right reasons and it’s where those 10 steps I mentioned come in.

No more hiding!

First of all, no more hiding behind profile pictures of books, or usernames and bios that don’t proudly proclaim your purpose as a writer or your true value to your readers. Standing out for the right reasons means creating a space your ideal readers want to hang out in.

In other words…

• Personalize your profile picture with a clear headshot because this creates a sense of familiarity and trust.
• Pick a memorable username that makes it clear you are a writer.
• Craft a bio that appeals directly to your ideal readers and lets them know what they can expect.
• Choose a visual style that fits with the overall “vibe” you want for your account.
• Create “highlights” that showcase your top Stories, neatly organized into collections so it’s easy for your readers to quickly find key info about you and your books.

These five steps are an excellent start to feeling glowy!

via GIPHY

Create deeper connections

But we’re not going to stop there. Remember: a glow up goes beyond appearances and creates a deeper connection.

In other words…

• Get super clear on “who your audience is” and “what your purpose is” so that every post, Story or Reel speaks to the right readers and gets you closer to your goals.
• Embrace your individuality and stop hiding those awkward, secret, quirky parts of you, because what makes you different is also what makes you special.
• Choose clear (and strategic) content themes to save you time, help you create engaging posts, and make sure you’re always getting closer to those goals.
• Re-introduce yourself and remind your followers exactly why they follow you by highlighting the value they get from reading and engaging with your posts.

Find sources of inspiration

And finally, you attract more readers, create better content, and generally get more out of showing up on Instagram when you feel inspired, uplifted, and energized.

In other words…

• Cultivate a constant stream of creativity, passion, and expertise by “training” the Instagram algorithm to only show you content you really want to see by engaging with accounts you love – and unfollowing any you don’t!

Get your (free) step-by-step “glow up” guide

If you’re a visual learner or you just want a more detailed breakdown of these 10 steps to an Instagram glow up, you’re going to love my free “Glow Up Your Instagram” guide. This downloadable booklet has helpful examples, practical templates and step-by-step checklists to help you shine brighter and attract more of the right readers.

Let’s get glowing!

Where will you start your glow up? What do you think needs the most improvement? Tell us in a comment!

I was so impressed with Amy Rogers Nazarov when we were on a DIY book marketing conference panel together last month that I asked her to write a “how to master social media” guest post for us. Amy is a former journalist who teaches people how to use social media more effectively, with less scrolling and more serendipity. Before she launched Spark: Social Media Strategy in 2014, she was both a freelance and  staff writer. Her byline has appeared in Cooking Light, Slate, The Washington Post, and American Songwriter among many others. Be sure to check out her affordable course, Seven Easy Social Media Hacks for Entrepreneurs & Creatives, especially if you find her article helpful.

Let’s get engaged: How to use social media effectively

By Amy Rogers Nazarov

Today’s authors and writers have available to them a free and fantastic tool their counterparts a generation ago could only have dreamed of.

It is a bottomless resource of inspiration, prospective readers, generous colleagues, tips on editing and selling, leads on relevant podcasts, and a great deal more.

This free tool is social media.

And whether or not you are just beginning to explore it or have been making TikToks since the platform launched, I promise you that by intentionally engaging with followers on any social media platform, you will derive a host of benefits, from unexpected support from strangers to an idea for your next book.

What is “engagement?”

Let’s talk about that word “engagement” for a second. This is the key to all of the potential goodness waiting to be unlocked. What exactly does engagement mean where social media is concerned?

I’d sum it up this way: When we engage with others on social media, we are being a bunch of different things, such as:

• Responsive
• Conversational
• Reflective
• Curious

We are also doing several things, such as:

• Teaching
• Guiding
• Questioning
• Connecting

The dreaded boring dinner party guest

Yet in the absence of these behaviors and traits, we show up on social media as a virtual version of the tedious guest you hate to be seated next to at a dinner party: the one who goes on and on about their projects, their successes, their goals, their relationships, etc. and never once asks you about yours.

via GIPHY

It’s the kind of individual that has you dreaming up excuses to leave the gathering early. (“Sorry, Sheila, but I just got a call that my parakeet somehow escaped her cage, Gotta dash…”)

Ugh.

Online or off, don’t be the person that drives away dinner guests – or followers!

Trust me when I say your Instagram gallery or your Facebook page or your Twitter account will be much more fun to read, follow, and maintain when you are doing and being the things I just listed.

Like, comment, share, save

In practice, then, what does engagement look like?

It looks like answering a poll question on Twitter when an editor you follow posts it. It looks like weighing in on the pros and cons of newspaper paywalls, or on mergers in the New York publishing world.

Perhaps it will simply be saving an Instagram post that resonated with you to read more carefully later (note: Instagram lets you organize saved posts by topic, which makes them much easier to locate later.)

Engagement looks like following authors in your genre, or in the genre you aspire to. It might be posting thoughtful questions when an agent hosts an Instagram Live. It might be taking a stab at answering a question someone else posed.

Quality engagement = quality conversations

Through this type of engagement with others, you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality and depth of conversations with strangers as passionate about a topic as you are – and conversely disappointed by the lack of engagement with people you’ve known forever (one of my key arguments for only following, on any social platform, people and organizations who are squarely in your niche, not your Uncle Vernon. Save following him for your personal accounts!)

Best of all, engagement begets engagement. The more you thoughtfully engage, the more others will return the favor.

Generating content vs. engaging

My rule of thumb for the amount of content you create versus the amount of content you engage with: 1 to 5.

For every carousel ad you generate on Facebook, for every Reel you make on Insta, leave a comment, question, query or opinion on five other accounts. Not just strings of emojis, either, cute as rows of hearts and puppy faces may be. Type in actual words and sentences! As writers, this part should come pretty easily to us.

By the way, when followers engage with content originating from you, and you comment on their comments or answer their questions, that, too, counts as engagement!

Keep the conversation flowing in a couple different ways:

• Don’t “post and ghost.” Check back within a couple of hours on your latest posts to see if it has elicited responses from followers.
• Each time you add a comment, toss in a related question. “I see you’re a fan of Stephen King. What newer horror authors do you enjoy?”
• Loop in someone else. If you’re a food writer chatting with a journalist who covers the local food scene, tag a chef you know and invite them to join the conversation. You never know what kind of synergy this kind of additive approach to an online conversation will have.

Set a timer for 10 minutes

One of the best things about spending time on social media intentionally engaging with others is it will make your time there feel less burdensome and more serendipitous.

Try engaging for 10 minutes a day, maybe 15; set a timer if you have to in order to guard against slipping into a passive scroll.

I get that many people don’t like social media.*

While it’s certainly not without its problems, social media still enables all kinds of random and rich connections with the sort of readers, writers, and thinkers who will be intrigued by you, your work, your process, and your projects.

Go engage with a few of them today, and for the next month or so, and see what kinds of inspiration and connection you can discover. That might even convince you that it’s worth it to master social media.

What works best for you on social media? Please tell us in a comment.

(*Editor’s note: If, in spite of this excellent advice, you still have no interest in social media, take a look at my short training program, Book Marketing Without Social Media, on the Writing Blueprints site. They’re offering Build Book Buzz authors a $10 discount.)

She was terribly disappointed. In fact, it was clear she felt betrayed by the thousands in her social networks.

I understand her frustration.

Like so many other authors, she has heard lots about the importance of social media in book promotion. There’s a reasonable expectation that a chunk of those connections will buy your book, right?

Unfortunately, it’s an expectation that isn’t necessarily based on reality. And that’s why it’s important to manage your expectations.

Manage your expectations about social media

There are a couple of reasons why any author, but especially this author, might have unrealistic expectations about what’s possible with social media.

To begin with, social media algorithms are such that most of your followers don’t even see what you share about your book. This is especially true with Twitter. Blink once and your feed has all new tweets.

And if most of your connections come through your Facebook business page (which is not your profile), fuhgeddaboudit. The only way most will see anything there is if you pay to “boost” a post so it gets fed to more newsfeeds.

Just ask famous authors

In addition, the size of your social network isn’t an accurate predictor of your book’s success, as The New York Times points out in “Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable.’ ”

For example, popular musician Billie Eilish has 97 million Instagram followers and 6 million Twitter followers, but only sold 64,000 copies of her book in the first six months.

But here’s there’s another even more important reason why the disappointed author’s social media followers didn’t buy her book: They weren’t interested in it.

Who’s in your networks?

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

This author’s social network is built around an impressive nonfiction body of work that has no connection to her novel. That’s why it’s unrealistic to expect that those she’s connected to for one type of writing will automatically be interested in anything she writes in a totally different arena.

It’s a reminder that you need to know your book’s target audience. They might not be your colleagues on LinkedIn or your high school classmates on Facebook.

Friends and family might disappoint, too

I also hear regularly from many authors who are crushed because too few of their friends and family are buying their books.

I feel their pain, believe me. Don’t get me started on how my siblings were too busy to watch me talk about my first book on national TV.

Some push their relatives to review their books on Amazon, then are annoyed when they don’t.

Your relatives are doing you a favor when they don’t review your book. Family reviews violate Amazon’s review policy because relatives can’t be objective.

(Look at it this way: It’s one less opportunity for you to be disappointed.)

Try to be fair

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize there’s a good chance your friends and family aren’t interested in what you’re writing about.

And, quite frankly, it’s unfair of you to expect them to spend their hard-earned dollars on something they won’t read.

You might think they should do it out of loyalty, or maybe curiosity, but I disagree. Judging by the number of authors who complain about close connections who don’t buy their books, I’m a bit of a lone voice here.

Continue to tell your friends, family, and social media connections about your books. It’s a smart thing to do, and it’s not a waste of time.

But don’t hold it against them when they don’t buy. They know what they enjoy reading, and it might not be what you write. It’s not personal — it’s life.

Manage your expectations about the marketplace

You also want to manage your expectations on a more macro level — the publishing universe.

Unless your book is on a very niche topic, it faces a lot of competition.

That means that yours has to be better. You also have to work to make sure the people you wrote it for know about it.

No overnight successes

Even with a great book and an exceptional marketing effort, most of us aren’t going to hit The New York Times best-seller list. Bona fide best sellers (as opposed to short-term Amazon category best sellers) are usually traditionally published books by authors with large, well-established audiences.

You’ll also be less stressed if you don’t see your book’s launch as the be-all and end-all.

Sure, do your best to introduce your book to your ideal readers as soon as it’s published, but don’t stop there. If you understand that this is a long process that only starts with a launch, your book sales are more likely to meet your expectations.

And please, try not to be angry or disappointed with people who aren’t as interested in your book as you’d like. Writing, producing, and marketing a book is hard enough. Protect yourself by avoiding that extra, toxic layer of resentment.

Focus instead on reaching your ideal readers. It’s the best use of your time.

Much of this is article is about understanding your book’s audience. Who do you think is most likely to buy your book?

(Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2014. It has been updated and expanded.)

. Through her writing and coaching, Rochelle helps writers, creatives, and entrepreneurs overcome distractions and procrastination, design a writing life, turn their ideas into books, navigate the publishing world, and connect with readers through social media. Learn more at writenowcoach.com.

Develop your author social media strategy

By Rochelle Melander

Are you a plotter or a “pantser?”

I am not talking about how you write books. I’m talking about your social media strategy.

Some people plot: laying out a careful social media plan, complete with post content and links, and follow it daily. Some people are pantsers, posting whatever comes to their mind when the mood strikes.

The truth: The best social media strategy includes both plotting and pantsing.

Plot your author social media strategy

Social media can help us with multiple tasks: researching our current novel or nonfiction book, connecting with colleagues, promoting our work to readers, and connecting with influencers and the media.

Our priorities will change depending on the season of our work. If we are writing a book, we’ll use our social media time to research and connect with colleagues. Once our book goes to the editor, we will shift our focus to connecting with potential readers and influencers.

Action step: Set a social media goal and make a list of your social media priorities.

Choose your platform

You don’t have to do all of the platforms. In fact, many social media advisors believe that it’s ineffective to spread your social media reach over multiple platforms.

Choose the one or two platforms that will help you the most. Where does your tribe hang out? Maybe you will connect with readers on Instagram, but use Facebook to connect with colleagues.

Play around with this and see what works. Where is it easiest to connect with other writers? Your readers? Where do you get the most engagement—post likes, comments, and shares?

Action step: Choose a social media platform to nurture and grow over the next month.

List your content categories

Many writers use social media as a sort of water cooler for their writing lives. We hop on to talk about our writing process, our professional challenges and successes, our book events, and our new books.

Some readers will be interested in hearing all about us some of the time. But over time, this self-focused approach may annoy followers.

The key to becoming a social media superstar is building relationships. Watch and listen to other people. Engage – like others’ posts, comment, or share.

As authors, our challenge is to get in the mind of our readers and think about what they might want to read. We can do this by paying attention to what people ask us at our book events and noticing how people engage with us on social media.

If you’re not published yet, take a look at what your favorite authors post and how it resonates with readers. Here are some topic ideas:

• Current and favorite reads
• Inside info about your book
• Photos of your setting, character inspiration, and more
• Fan art
• Q&A session with readers
• Book playlists
• Contests

Action Step: List the types of content you will post.

Develop a social media schedule

Once you know your social media goal, favorite platform, and what you’ll post, it’s time to develop a social media schedule. Just like successful blogs follow a publication schedule, you can grow your following by posting regularly.

First, decide how much time you’d like to devote to social media. You’ll need to dedicate time to creating and curating content, scheduling it to be posted, and then interacting with your followers. Then, schedule time in your week for each task.

Here’s what you need to include in your schedule.

Planning time: Develop a social media plan. Research possibilities and make a list of the best kinds of posts for you.

Content creation (1 hour): Schedule time to find or create content to post over the next week or two. Pro Tip: Create a special folder to save bookmarked posts for social media sharing.

Content sharing (30 minutes): Use a tool like Buffer or HootSuite to load up most of your social media ahead of time. Schedule your posts for the times that most people are socializing on your social media platform. (You can easily find out the times by searching for “best times to post” and your favorite platform name.)

Interacting (15-30 minutes): Finally! We get to the pantsing part! Set aside time each day to be online and interact with followers.

Review and revise

Once a quarter, review your social media reach.

Many of the online publishing tools such as Buffer offer some analytics that will help you measure reader engagement.

Then revise your plan accordingly.

What’s your social media strategy for your book? Please tell us about it in a comment.