Mastering the right social media strategies for writers goes a long way in helping your creative career. Nowadays, your author platform can be make or break when it comes to getting published. The biggest part of your author platform? It’s your social media following.

How can an author get a big social media following? One full of potential readers to buy your books and wow any publishers? By connecting with readers, other writers, editors, agents, and publishing pros on social media. Through creating quality posts and tagging them smartly. By reaching out to all the wonderful online communities out there.

I’ve rounded up several of the best social media strategies for writers that have helped me grow my platform up from zero.

Pick the Best Social Media for Your Writing

First things first, find the social media platforms that work best for your writing career. It’s okay if you want to claim your name or handle on numerous social media platforms, in case you ever want to spend some time on them. But you should expect to focus your efforts on 1-4 platforms at a time. More than that, and you’ll be juggling too many things.

Do you prefer taking pictures you could post on Instagram or writing posts? What about creating short, pithy posts you could share on Twitter or longer messages you could post on Facebook?

Do you like talking about business topics that do well on LinkedIn? Or maybe you like the ability to find already existing communities on Reddit.

Don’t forget: Try to choose a platform with similar demographics to your desired readership. Writing YA? There are plenty of young readers on Instagram and Tumblr. Have a self-help book for girl bosses? LinkedIn has the lady entrepreneurs you’re looking for.

Facebook is great for older audiences, while Twitter has a little bit of everyone. But any platform you choose will have some potential readers for you to find.

All these platforms have great advantages for writers and allow them to build a good platform. Of course, each one has its downsides as well. Research, maybe even make an account, and play around to find out which platforms click with you.

Create Quality and Consistent Content

The number one key to growing your following on any platform is to regularly post high-quality content. Show up consistently and do a decent job, and people will flock to you.

Make sure to post at least once a week. Preferably, post once a day on most platforms. Social media algorithms usually reward frequent posters.

I like to tweet twice a day at least. This way, Twitter remembers me. I update my Facebook pages and Instagram weekly and still get decent numbers.

Don’t just disappear on your followers without warning. They might think you’ve left for good and unfollow you to clean up their lists. If you have to go on hiatus, leave a warning and let followers know when to expect you back.

Of course, there is a little more than just showing up on social media. You also want to create good posts. When there are so many good and bad types of content out there, how do you know what to post?

My number one tip: Look at what successful people in your genre or niche are posting. Create similar content (but never straight-up copy them!) and share it.

If other writers you admire are posting snippets of their work or writing memes, go ahead. Find what works for you and others. In general though, I recommend staying away from low-quality fuzzy photos, controversial jokes, political rants, and actually unpopular opinions.

Remember, the account under your author name, the one you use to promote your works, is a professional account. Readers and publishers can be turned off by certain things easily. If you want to keep liking cheesy memes or retweeting controversial figures, then you should probably create a second account for that. Try to keep your professional account work-friendly and appropriate to your genre/niche.

If you get on the right platform and post good content consistently, then 80% of the work is done! Congrats! But if you want the remaining 20%…

Tailor Your Posts to Your Social Media Platform

Don’t just create one post and upload it to every social media channel. That kind of copy-paste won’t get you the engagement you need. You want to tailor your posts to the platform you’re posting on.

Instagram and Pinterest are all about photos. You need to create pretty images to do well on those platforms, but text isn’t too important.

On Insta, most writers I see love posting shots of their desks, shelfies, and quotes against pretty backdrops. For Pinterest, I like to use Canva, which has plenty of templates for perfect pins and free-to-use stock photos. Canva’s also good for making those ‘grammable quote images.

For Twitter, pictures aren’t too important, but you need to make the most of 280 characters. Adding GIFs and emojis helps catch scrollers’ eyes.

For Facebook, all kinds of posts are possible. What I really recommend is finding a few helpful writing groups and being an active presence. I’ve found guest post opportunities, calls for submissions, job listings, and more in these groups. Facebook groups are a great way to make connections!

Use Writing Hashtags to Reach the Right People

This is definitely the third most important step here. Hashtags are crucial to serving your posts to the audience who wants to see them! Use the hashtags that are trending among writers.

Note: Hashtags are really important on Instagram and Twitter, but not so much on Facebook or some other platforms. Investigate to see if they’re right on any other social media channel.

On Twitter, it’s all about the #WritingCommunity. This tag will help you find other writers, literary agents, publishers, and more. I don’t recommend using more than two or three hashtags on Twitter because of the tight character limit. Also, too many hashtags make a post look spammy.

Here some other good hashtags for writers on Twitter right now:

• #amwriting
• #amwritingfantasy
• #amwritingfiction
• #amwritingromance
• #amreading
• #writerslife
• #writerslift
• #5amwritersclub
• #bookworm
• #booklovers

One thing to remember about the writing community on Twitter is the special tag events. I’m talking about Twitter’s “pitch parties,” where writers use hashtags like #PitMad or #SFFpit to get their pitches in front of agents. The idea is that writers tweet out short pitches for their manuscripts, and agents and publishers show interest by linking their tweets. This is a great way to get your ideas out to possible publishers starting with only a hashtag.

What about Instagram? The hashtag rules are very different there. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags. It’s wise to use every one of them (Posts are automatically truncated so you don’t have to worry about length).

Popular writing hashtags on Instagram include:

• #writerscommunity
• #writersofinstagram
• #amwriting
• #writerslife
• #authorlife
• #writingcommunity
• #authorsofinstagram
• #writersofig
• #poetsandwriters
• #writeeveryday
• #wordporn
• #wordsmith
• #igwritersclub
• #writinginspiration
• #writerssociety
• #writersconnection
• #spilledink
• #writersnetwork
• #instawritingcommunity
• #igauthor
• #indiewriter
• #indieauthor
• #ilovewriting
• #writersblock
• #writergram

Remember, popular hashtags will change seasonally and over time. So do research every so often to find fresh hashtags to promote your writing.

It’s time to put those tags to some good use! Follow them to find out what other writers are talking about. Then, add them to your own posts as they fit for a boost of engagement!

Follow + Interact With Publishers, Editors, and Agents

The goal of your social media strategy shouldn’t just be to impress potential readers. Nor are social media strategies for writers just about networking with other writers. You also want to connect with people who might just get your work published.

Find editors, literary agents, publications, or publishers in your genre or niche. Follow the ones you like. Comment regularly to form a connection. Basically, this is good old-fashioned networking, but online!

Ever hear of cold pitching? E.g. sending your writing’s pitch off to an editor, agent, or publisher you have no connection to? With no particular reason they should choose you over all the other people pitching to them?

Engaging with these people on social media takes your pitches from cold to warm. Once they notice you on social media, they’ll know your name and specialty. They might even have seen you post samples of your work and have been impressed. They’ll have a good first impression of you and more reason to trust your pitch.

Following possible publishers also gets you extra opportunities to get published. On my feed, I’ve seen editors asking for article pitches on specific topics, magazines and anthologies having calls for submission, and agents begging for good books. I wouldn’t have spotted any of these opportunities if I didn’t follow these people.

Bonus tip: The hashtag #MSWL, short for manuscript wish list, is a tag where agents and publishers ask for pitches they’d really like to see right now. Keep a close eye on it to spot if any agents out there are looking for exactly what you’ve got!

Reply to and Engage With Your Followers

You get out as much as you put into it. That’s a piece of advice I’ve heard given about many social media platforms, and in my experience, it’s absolutely true. The more you engage with communities on social media, the more people engage with you.

Try to engage with your social media friends and followers. Ask questions, always reply to any comments on your posts, and reach out to people.

Everyone wants to follow people who are friendly, outgoing, and approachable. So be those things! Interact with everyone you can on social media in a positive, upbeat way, and followers will flock to you.

On the other hand, ignoring commenters or never commenting with others’ posts will make you seem unapproachable. Plus, social media algorithms tend to reward those who interact and post more, not less.

So get out there and be social on social media! Put your best out there, and people will give you their best in return.

Whew! That was a lot of info. But, hopefully now you know a lot more about the best social media strategies for writers. Post good stuff regularly, on a platform that fits you, and tag it right. Interact and engage with editors, agents, possible publications, publishers, and all of your followers.

Like it? Pin it for later!

If you want to save this guide for later, consider pinning it! Do you have any social media know-how you’d like to share? Did this post help you discover something new about social media strategies for writers? Let me know in the comments!

Mint Miller

Mint is a writer and digital marketing pro who lives in coastal Virginia with her family and one lovable pitbull. Her passions include helping people and businesses display their best side through the power of communication, buying her dog costumes he doesn’t want to wear, and talking all day about Batman.