POLL: Does having Instagram affect your stories and their popularity?

[RavenWrites]

• Yeah! It definitely increases reads and popularity
• Not really…

[Blaze.the]

I’m honestly not sure as mine and @ali.x story is unpublished (we are co writing it together)
and we both have our own private instagram accounts but we’re thinking of making one joint for our story but not sure

[Epi.milkyway]

I think instagram has great impact when it comes to your stories and their popularity! And majority of the episode community are actually from Instagram, so you can definitely promote your story there!

[JadeBeckson]

But I haven’t got an ig acc…

[Sydney_H]

Moved to Episode Fan Community since this isn’t about story feedback or reviews. Make sure to check out our Forum Tutorial for more info about creating topics, and feel free to PM me if you’ve got questions.

[EliseC]

I think it helps a bit more if you already have a readership too.
For example- I published my new story a day before I announced it because I was worried about the cover glitch. I kept quiet and didn’t share that I’d published it. I gained 10 reads in just under 24 hours.
I then announced my new story on IG and gained over 200 reads in the next 24 hours lol. So it definitely made a difference there.

[episodes_bylex]

Yes, instagram is a huge part of promotion. I’ve got many readers from others promoting my stories on their instagram, or from readers seeing my posts.

Also, what really helps is when you start a new story. My first story was shelved, gained a lot of reads and gave me 1000 new followers. So when I announced a new story I didn’t have to start from scratch. By day 4 I had 1000 which had previously taken me 3 months. Plus it’s a lot of fun interacting with your readers!!

[amberose]

It’s hard for me to vote on this, as I was someone who didn’t get Instagram until I got 100k reads anyway

I think for sure it helps authors who are publishing another story, because they already have gained a following based on their existing story/ies. However, I think if your publishing your first story, whether you have Instagram or not won’t really change how hard it is to first get noticed. It’s hard to get reads when people don’t know you exist, you know?

But I actually did a similar thing to what @EliseC said she did. I published, but didn’t announce it anywhere, I think I got about 30 reads, and then when I announced it a few days later on Instagram (on a Friday too), it got about 1k reads within the next day. So based on that, I guess I can’t deny that it helps to have Instagram

[RavenWrites]

Thank you for this

[writingspirit]

It absolutely does. Mainly because it’s a way to share snippets of future or ongoing stories, to interact with other people more consistently and develop friends + grow a reader base, and just have everything for your stories in one convenient place.

Forums has its pros and cons like anything, but it won’t be able to serve the same function as Instagram in this regard.

[Baleigh_episode]

I think Instagram definitely helps in the sense that more people use that vs use the forums, but I agree with @EliseC about how already having a readership helps a lot. Even a small one can do wonders.