At the beginning of March I had about 1,750 followers, now at the beginning of May with 1,901 followers.
So let’s discuss changes I’ve made, and what’s working so far!
I recently participated in my first follow train in a few years. I’m not the biggest fan of follow trains so let’s go through my personal pros and cons:
Pros:
Within the train itself and from people who followed me, I’ve met some lovely people so far and I’m loving discussing books with them!
BOOK RECS: one of the rules for this particular train was to comment on the post what book you’re currently reading. Between those comments and scrolling through peoples feeds I added A LOT of books to my TBR. (Although this is a con if you ask my husband and my wallet)
Your number of followers JUMPS.
Cons:
Some people follow you and then immediately unfollow after you follow them back. This is just kind of crappy behavior.
Now my main con and the reason I don’t love follow trains is because I know that some of the people I end up following i will never interact with again. It has nothing to do with the individual person but more to do with the types of images they post and what hashtags accompany these photos. Instagram has an algorithm, and it’s not going to show me these posts because they’re not something I usually like or engage with. I have this account to interact with people, and this kind of defeats the purpose.
So would I do a follow train? Probably not! Yes, they’re helpful for a quick boost in followers but in the long run, I’d rather follow people and be followed by people because we enjoy each others photos/book recs/personalities, and not because I feel like I have too.
ENGAGEMENT GROUPS
I have such a love hate relationships with these groups. Some of them have such strict rules – I was in one where you would get a “warning” if you didn’t like, comment, save, and share everyone’s posts within 24 hours. Three warnings and you were kicked out. I have zero desire to make that much of a commitment to Instagram, and I was very quickly kicked out.
Now engagement groups can be really awesome! I’ve met amazing people, and having people like and comment on your posts is so helpful for sharing them with more people, and encourage other people to comment as well.
My main downside with them though is sometimes I feel pressured to like and comment on a post I usually wouldn’t engage with. Sometimes a certain photo or caption or book recommendation just isn’t for me, which is absolutely fine, but I still feel obligated to engage. In this case my attempt at engagement usually ends up being something like “oh wow! This is so pretty!” Which just sounds pathetic after the eighteenth time typing it out.
So overall, not really my thing for engagement purposes, but great for meeting amazing new bookish people.
The last thing is tag groups, which I didn’t actually know was a thing until relatively recently. The concept is simple, you tag the group in your post and you like all posts that have the tag. I’ve been experimenting with this one and I do like the fact that I’m not forced to actively engage with content that isn’t my style, and although you don’t have to follow everyone else in the tag group, it has increased my followers. Having more likes boosts your posts overall, and its more likely new people will see your account and follow you.
I’m still working on getting better at posting everyday, its still a bit of a struggle for me mental health wise some days, but consistency in posting is a major help in boosting your page.
So it seems like I averaged about 75 new followers a month so far, which is a fair amount of people and is a growth rate that I’m happy with so far. It means that its more real people and not bots, and also followers that I’m more likely to actually engage with and communicate with on a regular basis. I’ve met some great new people in the last two months and I’m excited to see where this journey takes us next!
Caffeinated Book Owl 