Audiobookstagrammer: The Ultimate Guide to Bookstagram
I love books, but I don’t have time to read, so I turn to the next best thing: audiobooks. If I had more time, I would spend my days listening to the authors narrate their books while I clean and workout. I created an Instagram account to connect with fellow bibliophiles and authors to eventually create an online book club. What’s a good book if you cannot share it with others, right? Hence, the beginning of The Audiobookstagrammer.
Instagram is great for posting photo updates of your kids, your dogs, your elite vacations, and maybe even your relationship . This social media network is the “is the sixth-most visited website” behind sites such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and YouTube. It only makes sense to make an account to create a community of book lovers, book reviewers and book bloggers.
It is important for brands to know the ideal times to post content. How good is a book if no one reads it? The same thing goes for an Instagram post. Personally, I have been playing around with different posting times to see what works best for me and my community. According to Rafaella Aguiar, the Director of Marketing for Kicksta, stated that “Later [analyzed 12 million accounts and] conducted the ultimate Instagram engagement test and concluded the following best Instagram posting times: Monday: 6 am, 10 am, and 10 pm EST; Tuesday: 2 am, 4 am, and 9 am EST; Wednesday: 7 am, 8 am and 11 pm EST; Thursday: 9 am, 12 pm, and 7 pm EST; Friday: 5 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm EST; Saturday: 11 am, 7 pm, and 8 pm EST; and Sunday: 7am, 8am, and 4pm EST.”
There are many tools outside of Instagram that suggests ideal posting times. Other than Later, Sprout Social suggests that the best times to post in Instagram are “Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. [to] 11 a.m.” The suggestions are broken down by industry, so for the sake of specificity, I will group “bookstagramming” into the recreation category. It is suggested to post on the weekdays, “Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. To avoid the lowest engagement times, don’t schedule before 6 a.m. and after 10 p.m. every day.”
These suggestions coincide with my posting schedule, for the most part. I have an alarm set in the afternoon from Tuesday through Thursday to remind me to post an update to my community. I understand that it is important to know the best times, so I’m not just taking a shot in the dark (which is frankly, what I have been doing most of the time). I believe that it all boils down to trial-and-error. For me, there can be recommended times to post content that may not reflect the highest engagement times for my community.
Beyond the measurement tools, we should look at what a successful account within the “bookstagram industry” is doing. Ellen, a London-based blogger who has over 20,000 followers on Instagram, wrote that in the beginning, she focused on Instagram’s analytics to suggest the best times for her to post. Since then, she suggested to post different times a day to find our the best measurement of post engagement. She added, “I cannot stress enough how much my reach and engagement from my followers improved when I started posting at different times every day.”
More than finding ideal times to post, I think we should also look at content. In order for posts to reach a wider audience, we must include hashtags and experiment with different posts. I use up to 30 hashtags, which Benjamin Chacon, a writer for Later, added, “using relevant, targeted hashtags on your posts and stories is still one of the best ways to get discovered by new audiences on Instagram. And this can translate into more engagement, more followers, and more customers for your business.”
When it comes to trying out different content, Later suggests that “trial, error, and content experiments are key to being ahead of the curve and having a stronger strategy.” Using a tool like Canva, I have been able to create different pieces, either for Instagram stories or a post, to increase engagement. Personally, I usually make a post and then add to my story in order to generate some engagement.
Ultimately, I think we all need to be mindful of times we’re posting on Instagram to create engagement. It is important to post at times that are suggested for high engagement. Posting at 3 a.m. might not be ideal for my audience. But I think it goes beyond ideal times to post — we have to also make sure that the content and discoverability with hashtags are also being taken into account.
