The Literary Marketing Newsletter helps authors, booksellers, lit mags, literary non-profits, and other literary-minded organizers improve their marketing efforts with strategies, tips, and stories from my marketing experience in the literary community.

Organic Audience Building on Instagram

Last week, my Literary Boston Instagram account hit 4,000 followers! 🙌 I started Literary Boston, then the Boston Book Blog, in 2012 when I found that there was no one site or hub for everything going on in the Boston literary community. So I started one on a Wordpress.com site (free version), and starting posting content on Twitter (which I've since abandoned, because...).

In 2018, I expanded to Instagram, and it's the primary social media account I use today. As a visual and text platform, there's so much you can do with it, and it's a great way to disseminate information through text graphics, video out-and-about in the city, text captions, sharing, all the things.

So how did I organically get to 4,000 followers?

Simple, focused strategy: My strategy's always been simple: Share things that my audience would find super helpful, and share on-brand things that I think are nerdy and interesting. People who love that stuff follow along.

Create content for my target audience: My target audience has always been me sitting at that desk in 2012 scouring the internet looking for information about the local literary community. When I create content, I think about what would help her out. Seems like a lot of people are interested in the same.

Staying on brand: Literary Boston is all about what's going on in the local literary community. I don't use that account as a personal account. I don't share pics of my coffee or sunsets. I'm on brand all the time, which helps my audience easily recognize who I am and what I offer, which makes it really easy for them to want to follow.

Providing value: From local events, to literary news, to local author new releases, to literary history — I'm always posting things that my audience would find valuable. It informs them, teaches them something new, gives them a way to get involved, and maybe entertains them! In fact, I paused Literary Boston for two years (2022-2024) and STILL gained followers, which shows the power of providing something of value that people are interested in.

Create professional content: I had someone recently tell me that they enjoyed how professional my content was. My Instagram content is fueled by my $15-a-month Canva subscription — I design everything in there. These days it's really easy to create high-quality graphics without being a designer. It just takes a little thought and creativity.

Don't follow trends; be relevant: I've never made a trends video. I'm not sure I would know how! Has that cost me followers? Maybe. But would they be following because of the trend or because they're interested in Literary Boston content? I'm more about providing value and utility in my content, not jumping on a trend that doesn't really relate to what I do.

Be consistent: I'm not always great at this, but at least every Monday I'm posting an events line-up for the week. I sometimes try to do Newsday Tuesday, Writer Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, and Newsletter Friday. Even if it's only one post a week, I'm still getting content out there so that the algorithm keeps me in front of my audience.

Organic growth is more authentic growth (?): I'm all about organic growth on free channels (mainly because I don't have money to spend on advertising!), which relies on creating great content that attracts interested followers.

(Ok, Ok.... I spent $10 last month to boost a post on Instagram. It's the only money I've ever spent on advertising in my 13 years of running this. My boosted post invited viewers to click to see my profile. Of the 1,543 views my post received, 139 clicked on the link and visited my profile. Of those, 80 followed me and 13 people visited my website. So $10 "bought" 80 followers — not bad! I might do it again just to increase awareness, but I'm hesitant to advertise or boost on a large scale because I wouldn't know the quality of those "bought" followers. Are they actually interested in Literary Boston content, or did they just click an ad? It's a theory I have to play out, but at the very least one can simply start posting on free channels and build an organic audience that way.)

That's all for today. Happy marketing!

- Jessica

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If you'd like to learn how to do this 👆, come work with me! I have several done-with-you marketing packages available, including social media and newsletter. Want to do it yourself? Check out The Literary Marketing Playbook!

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