Be weary, sailor, bots infest these waters.
So I made an official Instagram page for myself as an author. You can find it here if you’re interested. This is one of the steps I’ve taken in this self publishing journey. I’ve made all the memes you’ve seen in my posts recently (from templates of course), and those go up on Instagram with thought provoking questions.
I’ve been told I need social media presence to build a following who will buy my books, so that’s what I’m trying to do. Facebook is out, by the way. I’m no longer trying to do anything on there. They can kick rocks. I’m not sure if it’s something in the algorithm or what, but growing on that platform has been abysmal.
Maybe it’s me who sucks at Facebook, but I’ve had a much better time building a small following on Instagram and Twitter (still need to start uploading to YouTube, but I just don’t have time).
But I’m focusing on Instagram today.
While growing on Insta has been steady, the interactions I get are… strange. I’ll post a meme, caption it with a question, answer the question for myself, and tag it with a bunch of relevant hashtags–and all my comments will be people telling me to DM them to promote “it”, or telling me to promote “it” @whoever.
What?
This happens on every post without fail. I’m 99% sure these are bot accounts that lurk in the shadowy spaces between Instagram squares until they see the writing hashtags and pounce. I think the “it” they want me to promote is what they think is a book… but it’s a meme.
These bots are annoying. I’m wondering if it’s better to delete their comments or leave them up for the algorithm to be tricked into thinking my post is more popular than it is. Engagement is engagement. But it might be the case that real commenters don’t want to write on a post that isn’t curated.
This demands further investigation.
Like always this blog is about the self publishing journey, so I don’t have all the answers. But I’ll divulged what I can. So if I ever figure out this bot situation, I’ll update you.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about my experience on Twitter, which has been a lot better than even Instagram.
Until then, I hope you have a wonderful day,
Colin J Switalski
*This was originally posted on my old blog on June 14th, 2023.
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