Even though reading is, in general, a solitary activity we do by ourselves and involves a certain level of introspection, we are all social creatures. We enjoy companionship, we love sharing our thoughts with others, discussing ideas, and hearing what others think about the books we are reading. And since our lives seem to be on a constant trend of putting more and more distance between us, we now resort to social media platforms to fulfill our social needs, at least to a certain extent.
When it comes to reading, book clubs and reading challenges have been around for centuries, but our constant lack of time has made going to a weekly book club meeting rather impractical, so we found ways to adapt. This led to an explosion of online social clubs, including the already famous Bookstagram.
If you’re new to this, you might be wondering “what is Bookstagram?” and that’s where we come in. Basmo believes that Instagram is a great platform to start a book-related conversation. We’ve worked with hundreds of successful influencers and we’d love to share a couple of tips and tricks on how you can also become a real bookstagrammer.
Learning the exact Bookstagram meaning is obviously the first step in understanding what Bookstagram is and how you can create your own.
What is BookStagram?
The community of Instagram accounts dedicated entirely to books and reading is called Bookstagram and it is a huge success.
Just as you will find travel gurus, fashion influencers, and food connaisseurs sharing their opinions or photos of the amazing meals they’re serving all over the world, Instagram is now crawling with book influencers sharing important information about what they are reading, aesthetically pleasing reading-related photos, and book suggestions.
Even though Bookstragram started out as a simple hashtag that indicated that the respective photos posted with it were about books, they soon started to also be accompanied by book reviews, sparked discussions, and even book suggestions.
With its constantly growing popularity, this mere hashtag has slowly become a whole niche on Instagram, dominated by entirely book-related accounts.
Should I start a Bookstagram?
Well, the first thing you need to know about Bookstagram is that it is a community open to anyone. There is nothing stopping you from creating your own Bookstagram if you have a passion for books and reading, and the inspiration necessary to constantly post interesting content related to the topic.
If reading is your passion and you have a craving for sharing your knowledge, and experiences, and have some time to spare, why not? In the end, the readers’ community is always craving new content, fresh ideas, and new experiences. And you can also get some pretty nice perks as a book influencer if your audience gets big enough.
For example, if you have a book-related blog, you can use your own Bookstragram to promote yourself without spending thousands on paid ads.
Another way to profit from Bookstragram is the already famous affiliate model where you get a percentage of the sales you generate for other businesses. If the number of followers on your Bookstagram is big enough, you can generate quite a generous income, especially if the products or services you’re promoting are good quality and match the interests of your niche.
Authors and publishers might also offer you certain benefits if your Bookstagram posts have a good reach and impressive engagement levels: from free books or new releases to awesome promotional products or swag, as we like to call them at Basmo.
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How to start a Bookstagram and be amazing at it?
Starting a Bookstagram requires a certain level of preparation, a good mindset, and clear goals, just like any other exciting journey you might want to embark on.
Luckily, Basmo is here to help with the most important step-by-step guide and interesting Bookstagram tips guaranteed to help you become a successful Bookstagram influencer.
1. Understand your goals
First of all, you need to know why you are starting your Bookstagram. Is it for fun or do you want to use it as a business opportunity to make some extra cash? Knowing this right from the start is going to influence how you approach the process and how seriously you will take it right from the start.
If you’re just doing it for fun, don’t put much thought into it and just enjoy yourself. Post whenever, whatever you want and that is it. If you have more serious goals, you will need to plan ahead and do some research: what is the Bookstagram lacking? What do you think the other Bookstragram lovers would like to see? – which takes us to the next point.
2. Find your niche
Leigh Steinberg once said “Very narrow areas of expertise can be very productive. Develop your own profile. Develop your own niche.”, and we couldn’t agree more. Understanding what the Bookstagram needs is essential in creating your perfect little corner of the empire. Analyze the other Bookstagram accounts, explore the topics already being approached, and find something that is lacking and you are passionate about.
Do you like a certain genre that has little exposure or popularity? Are you a fan of an author very few people heard about? That is an amazing starting point.
3. Choose the perfect handle
Believe it or not, your Instagram username matters, and choosing the perfect Instagram handle can make the difference between a successful Bookstagram and a failed one. From its simplicity, relevance to the topic, making sure to be able to match it on other social networks, use of special characters, to Instagram SEO, everything matters.
Your Bookstagram username should be as short, easy to remember, and relevant as possible. Overcomplicating things is not going to get you anywhere. Keep it simple, clean, and relevant.
4. Make sure your photos are good quality
Another thing to keep in mind is that Instagram is, at its origin, a visual platform. It has been created with the purpose of allowing people to share mainly images, avoiding the use of words. You need to adapt to this and ensure that the images you are going to share are going to be top quality. Whether you use your phone or a dedicated professional camera, you need to know what you are doing and learn the basics of photography and some essential photo editing tips in order to be competitive.
Visually pleasing images are essential for a successful Bookstagram, don’t underestimate the importance of aesthetics.
If you want your photographic abilities to be out of this world and to leave a mark on your Bookstagram competition, reading some books might help. And to make things easier, we recommend using Basmo, the reading tracking app for better organizing your reading. For example, since the app allows you to create an unlimited number of personalized reading lists, you would be able to benefit from having a dedicated photography or photo editing reading list. That way you can easily remember everything you want to read and learn and keep track of your progress.
5. Take it seriously – dedicate time and effort to post frequently
If you’re a frequent Instagram user, you probably noticed that the most successful and popular accounts are also the ones that post new content frequently. And that is not a coincidence. Popularity on Bookstagram goes hand in hand with a lot of effort and dedication.
The more often you post, the more followers and likes you will get, and dedicating time to also engage with the community will grow it even more. It might be a good idea to plan ahead: take a couple of hours on a day of the week to plan all your posts for the rest of the week.
6. Post quality content
The standards are high in the Bookstagram community, so if you want to succeed, you will need to make sure to meet and exceed those standards. While the frequency of your posts are important, so is their quality. Don’t just post things for the sake of posting them, put thought and feeling into them.
Quality content is what sets accounts with millions of followers from the ones with mere hundreds and it’s easy to understand why. Our time is precious, to the extent where even the minutes we spend scrolling our social media feeds are valuable enough to only be spent on things that interest us or bring us joy. You wouldn’t follow a Bookstagram posting low-quality content, right? So you can’t expect others to follow yours unless you bring something great to the table.
Basmo takes everything related to reading seriously, because we know it’s important for you, and it’s important for us as well. Just to give you an idea of how your Bookstagram should look and how you should manage it, have a look at one of our posts on Bookstagram:
If you’re wondering what you can post on your Bookstagram and are looking for some cool ideas, here are some of the most interesting ones:
- Book reviews
- Photos of impressive book collections
- Book displays by colors
- TBR piles
- Interesting reading corners
- Bookstagram selfies
- T-shirts for book lovers
- Quotes from your favorite books
- Photos of destinations from popular books
- Books and coffee or tea
- Bookshops from around the world (interior/exterior)
7. Use Basmo to become a better reader and run a successful Bookstagram
Basmo is the ultimate reading tracking app, and we don’t say that lightly. As I mentioned, for us, all the aspects of reading are important and we take them seriously. That is why our app can help you regardless of your reading level or your reading goals. And running your Bookstagram while using Basmo is going to be a lot easier!
First of all, Basmo has been designed with you, the reader, in mind. We know what today’s readers’ struggles are and what you need. Basmo is going to make you a more sophisticated, better organized, and more efficient reader.
Here’s how:
You can create your reading schedule with Basmo
Being organized with your reading is important. Creating a schedule has never been easier and more effective. Basmo allows you to create a completely personalized schedule, and even reminds you through notifications of any upcoming reading sessions so you never miss them.
Basmo encourages you to set goals and meet, or even exceed them
You can select two different types of goals: a daily goal for time spent reading or a yearly goal for the total number of books you read in a year.
Reading lists at your fingertips
You can create countless personalized reading lists and you have complete freedom to categorize your lists however you see fit.
Reading statistics for improving your performance
Basmo provides you with interesting stats regarding your reading habits and gives you the opportunity to improve on them.
Emotions tracking for mindful reading
By giving you the option to mark your emotional status after every reading session and also providing you with a weekly emotional report, Basmo ensures that you get a mindful reading experience and that you are able to adapt your reading to your emotional needs.
While these benefits provided by Basmo do have an indirect effect on the success of your Bookstagram by making you a better, more mindful reader, there are some more direct benefits you can enjoy.
Basmo comes fully prepared for social media. Every statistic, every note you take, every journal entry you make, every celebration moment, and every quote you decide to save can be easily shared on your preferred social media platform in just a couple of taps, in a visually appealing format.
And since I mentioned quotes, we know that quote posts are going to be a big part of your Bookstagram, so we prepared a special, dedicated feature within our app. You can use Basmo to scan the pages of a book through the camera on your mobile device, extract the text automatically and turn it into a ready-to-share image. There are plenty of predefined templates to choose from, or you can even create your own, with different colors and fonts. A couple of taps, and your quote is already shared to your Bookstagram.
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How to get BookStagram followers?
Getting people to follow your Bookstagram is going to be a mix of a good marketing strategy and top quality content. The good content is going to be liked and shared, and it will bring followers.
But to boost your chances, you will need to also take some active actions. You can follow other Bookstagrams and compliment them on their work, which can sometimes lead to them following you back, for example. There are many interesting strategies for increasing the number of followers, so as long as you have the time and the determination to put the work in, things are going to work out great for you.
What are the best BookStagram accounts to follow?
If you’re struggling at first and find it hard to find your Bookstagram inspiration, sometimes the best way to get there is to take a look at those who do it best. No, stealing their content or ideas is not ok, but you can let their accounts inspire you to create your own content.
Here are some of the best Bookstagrams you should definitely follow and use as an example in your work:
While these are the most commonly mentioned Top Bookstagrams, we also encourage you to check out @basmoapp as well. There’s quite a lot of interesting stuff you can see and use as inspiration for your Bookstagram.
Final thoughts
So, what is a Bookstagram? Ultimately, it is what you want it to be. Create your own Instagram page dedicated to the books you love and show it to the world. It is certainly fun, and, if done right, quite rewarding. Using Basmo will also make things easier and more efficient, so try it out!
