by Tatum Bunker
Most people now frequent social media platforms, which makes their attention spans shorter. This poses a new challenge for writers: How do you gain more attention for my creative works on social media?
Since more and more people have been obtaining a shorter attention span due to the shortened length of videos and reels on social media, most viewers expect a video between thirty seconds to a minute. I would even argue that you have about ten seconds before the average viewer swipes away. You need to be able to optimize your short time well. We’ll start with how to gain an interest for your content and ideas.
Keywords
Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms use hashtags and descriptions as a way to send content to certain algorithms. If you want romance fans to find your account, you may want to use tags such as ‘#lovenovel’ or ‘#romance’. Naturally, your works will have specific tropes and scenarios that people will want to find, such as ‘#foundfamily’ or ‘#onebed’. But video descriptions, while typically being fairly short, are just as important. It can direct people to your bio or a link, describe what your content is and who you are, it may even help convince viewers to follow!
Content
Short videos are the most common form of social media sharing nowadays. It is crucial that anyone posting about their works has a basic understanding of video editing. Using trending audios will always give you a little boost in the algorithm. Finding videos or pictures that fit the aesthetic of your works to include will always attract fans of that particular aesthetic. While many authors include voice overs and videos of themselves, this is not a requirement. You can post about individual characters, snippets from scenes, answer questions about the plot, talk about your inspiration for your works, give a general overview of your works, or even show what outfits you think your characters would look hot in. Everyone tends to have different tastes and preferences when scrolling, but do try to avoid using anything that could potentially be offensive, inaccurate, or misleading. People like honesty and accurate information. They like videos that are interesting, creative, and fun.
Interaction
Eventually, you’ll end up with a decent amount of those interested in your ideas. I strongly recommend adding links into your bio for them to click on and explore. Linktree is a platform used by many authors to keep all their links in one place. These links may take them to your personal website, publications places, or other social media platforms. You can also include polls on your posts and answer their questions in other posts. While follower interaction is important, I would also recommend interacting with others who make similar content. You can use their accounts as a blueprint for your own, providing you with ideas as to what kind of content you should be making. Keep in mind that you should only be taking inspiration from these creators. Plagiarism is never something you want to do, it eliminates your creative thinking and steals work from other creators.
Collaboration
Similarly to interacting with fellow content creators, you should build a small community with other content creators. You can do this through social media, advice columns, and Discord servers where you can share advice, opportunities, and promotions. Sure, you can view them as competitors, but why do that when you could duet videos and posts, chat through DMs, and make friends? You should make sure to follow and interact with their posts. It’ll boost their engagement and chances are, they’ll do the same for you!
With these tips in mind, let’s pretend you are a writer trying to hype up your writing. You have a small following on Instagram that includes other writers and readers. The first thing for you to do is to make a short video about the plot, but you don’t want your face or voice to be in the video. This could be for many reasons; you want to keep your personal life separate from your online presence, you may not want your family or friends to find this account, or it’s just easier for you to edit. After scrolling through Pinterest, you find a couple of photos that match your books’ aesthetic. Using a trending audio, these images, and overlaying a quick summary of your book’s plot, you finish the video. You use eleven hashtags and write more clarifying information in your video’s description. Let’s say that after about a few weeks or so, you post some more videos and your account has gained some traction! It’s helped that you have reached out to other creators who have reposted and interacted with your posts. You are even part of a small group chat with some creators! You have noticed that a certain reel trend has been popular with your mutuals, so you make a similar reel (but NO plagiarism) and get more interactions! With a handful more subscribers, you notice that the links you put in your bio have been getting clicked on a lot more. Thankfully, you added a link to your personal website so those interested can find out more about you and your works. Following these simple steps, you can grow your audience and interest toward your works.
Gaining traction on social media takes time; if only it was with a snap of one’s fingers that one could have 1K followers. Just know that you are not alone in your journey to promote your creative works and ideas.
Even the most popular writers started with 0 followers. With time, dedication, and post editing, you can slowly climb the ranks.
To clarify, you can’t just post one picture and two videos and expect to get popular. You should make a post schedule for yourself. Maybe post one non-video post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and one video post on Tuesday and Saturday. This makes your posts more likely in people’s feeds and they can see what exactly you will post.
To wrap this up (before you scroll away), there are more than a few ways to boost interest towards your creative works. Social media is the best way to promote yourself and can be fairly easy using the tips I gave you. I hope that these tips were able to help inspire and motivate you to go boost your account and creative pieces!
Follow Tatum @tatum_tot24601 and at her literary magazine @thelettershomecollection
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