Marketing Newbie QOTD: Should Creating Vertical Stories on Instagram Help Grow My Facebook Book Club?

This month, I did a thing and started a digital book club community on Facebook. Now I’m working to develop strategies that help me gain more members.

This week, I created a vertical story on Instagram, reaching out to the Instagram book community. By offering a book recommendation and posing a book-related poll question, at the very least, I hoped to increase brand awareness for Thrill Readers Book Club.

Why did a choose these content types?

My choice of content was based on the common types used and loved by book lovers on Instagram.

Polls are a great way to engage with your audience as you build your brand. For this week’s attempt to generate new members, I decided to have a bit of fun with the poll question. I asked my audience their thoughts about a popular young adult book turned Netflix series, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo.

A second page of my story provided my audience of book lovers with a Halloween book recommendation. People in digital book communities love to scroll through social media and discover new books that they can add to their personal lists of potential books to buy. Also, Halloween-themed content is trending on social media right now.

I figured I was sure to get lots of eyes on my content and maybe a couple of member requests for Thrill Readers.

Results

Although I failed to gain any new members from these content strategies, my stories were successful in reaching 19 people.

This exercise taught me that Instagram Stories might not be the best method of attracting more attention or membership requests for my book club. In the future, I hope to try my luck and skill at creating a fun book haul or book recommendation video for TikTok.