Helpful Hashtags for Writers
One of the ways you can help build up your author platform on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram are a little thing called Hashtags. They may seem cliché or perhaps annoying but they serve a purpose and you should consider using them to help build up connections with others with similar interests. Those similar interests are important for authors because that means you can find people from your target audience. And finding people from your target audience will lead to higher conversion rates because you know they will be more likely to purchase your books.
Let’s look at an example. I write mostly YA fiction. So I use hashtags dealing with YA. Then I know that the people who find me through searching that hashtag are more likely to be interested in what I write because they were searching out a hashtag related to what I write.
Building up your numbers is not the goal for your author platform. Large followings on social media sites may seem impressive but they don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got that swing. And for writers that “swing” means your followers swinging over to your website to buy your book(s). I’d take a much smaller, targeted group of connections on Twitter over large numbers of purchased followers any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
So how do you find these targeted consumers? That brings us full circle back to hashtags. Put these babies strategically in your social media postings and you’ll have the targeted audience searching for you! I did a little research and here are some of the top hashtags I came across.
- amwriting
- amediting
- wordcount
- writerwednesday (or WW)
- writerslife
- YALitChat
- LitChat (M,W,F)
- BookMarket
- WritingParty
- WriteChat
- NaNoWriMo
- SciFiChat
- KidLitChat
- ACFW
- SCBWI
- YA
- WriteTip
- WritingTip
- GetPublished
- PromoTip
- Publishing
- WritingPrompt
- Creativity
- StoryStarter
- WIP
- FridayReads
- BookGiveaway
- MustRead
- StoryFriday
- TeaserTues
- FreeBook
- FreeDownload
- Kindle
- Nook
So keep these on a list near wherever you post your social media entries from and start using them in your posts.
*The rule of thumb for Twitter is no more than 2 hashtags at the most.
*Tip for Instagram, do all your hashtags (the more the merrier) in a comment. This helps people find your pictures and then when you get a lot of likes you can remove the comment to clean up your pic. 🙂
Happy hashtagging!