Nerdology 101: Writing & Social Media

Hi, loves. Welcome back to Nerdology 101. I’m Maria Levato, indie author, hostess of this here blog, anime nerd, part-time gamer, cat lady, kink guru, and all around queen of the Nerdom. This week I’m going to talk about about the ups and downs of being a writer on social media. To keep it nice and neat, I’ll just go platform by platform. So, lets get into some Nerdologyyy!

Instagram & Other Meta Socials (My Worst)

My author Instagram, @malevato6, is my oldest account. In part, I attribute that fact to why I have such a hard time growing it now. When I started it, I didn’t know much about social media marketing, so I made a few mistakes that made effective use of the platform difficult for me. For the sake of transparency, I’ll start by telling you what those mistakes were.

1. I used my personal account that I barely ever posted on prior to starting my publishing journey instead of creating a new one.

2. I didn’t change my original username to something that indicated what the page was about.

3. I didn’t post regularly when my first book, The Islands of Rune, came out. In fact, I didn’t start posting regularly until my second book, Journey to Rallem, came out. Then, of course, by the time The Fate of Angels and Demons, my most recent book came out, I had become a lot better at making quality posts and I had experimented with making talking reels.

So, obviously, there was a lot I could have done better early on that would have made growth a lot easier, but that didn’t happen so I can only talk about my experience as it is. Right now, I have 445 followers on Instagram. In the past few months, I’ve definitely seen it start to do better. It’s exciting, but nevertheless, the platform is not making it easy to recover. In fact, my average posts only reaches 20-100 people. That makes it pretty difficult to get more substantial growth. As a result, my IG is mostly stagnant and I have to fight for every follower/engagement I get much harder than should be necessary. This sort of unforgiving algorithm makes things extremely difficult for indie authors, who typically learn as they go since most of us don’t start out with a team to help us.

Just this year, I was able to hire a PA, @jazzys_books/@apenandapromise, for the first time. She focused a lot on my IG during my launch for The Fate of Angels and Demons. It was definitely a big help and got me through a barrier I’d been stuck at for a few months. If you can afford it, I definitely recommend hiring someone to help you through moments where you get stuck like that. IG, at several points, has taken up so much of my time and energy that it made it difficult for me to keep up with writing. I’ve heard other authors say the same. Hiring a PA is probably more affordable than you think and having that support there is a pretty big deal. For IG, I think it’s one of the best strategies, especially for those busy periods. A PA can do most anything for your socials except for the reels that require you to be on camera. Even for those, though, you might ask your PA to help you with editing the reel, writing a script, or finding a caption that will help it get seen.

I did also meet the cover and character artist, @sincerrio, I used for The Fate of Angels and Demons via IG. They did great work and I loved working with them. So, IG is good for finding artists if you’re looking for them, but I also feel like there’s a slew of artists on any platform that are easy enough to find if you’re looking for them.

Ultimately, I think IG is a great tool for creating community with readers, but it is also kind of set it its ways and not the most writer friendly social media platform, especially not for indies or people who tend toward the nervous side when it comes to posting reels of themselves. As always though, the readers make it worth while. I love meeting them, seeing what they’re enjoying, and having the connection I do with the few of them that do seem to be deeply engaged with my work. The same applies to other Meta-owned social media platforms.

Biggest IG Pro: Getting to vibe with readers, no matter how many or how few.

Biggest IG Con: Unforgiving of early mistakes.

Bluesky (My Best)

Bluesky has been my largest following for a while now. I started the account about a year and a half ago. My profile, @marialevato.com, has 924 followers at the moment and is the only platform on which I have more followers than following. It gets regular engagement and is overall the platform I’m doing the best on. From my experience though, it’s not a place to make sales. Regardless of the struggles I’ve had with IG, the platform is responsible for more of my sales than Bluesky, where I have more engagement and a larger following.

In my experience, Bluesky is better for connecting with other industry professionals than it is for finding readers. My editor, Robyn, is someone I connected with via Bluesky. Bluesky is also where I connected with Ann Rose, an agent from Tobias Literary Agency, and Despina Karras, the author who hosts PitchDis, both of whom I worked with on an event I put together for Authors Guild as one of the ambassadors for the Washington, D.C. chapter. So, yes, Bluesky is great for me in that aspect. Connecting with other members of the writing and publishing communities is a huge help for me and has led to some pretty awesome things.

Biggest Bluesky Pro: Meeting other industry professionals.

Biggest Bluesky Con: More difficult to connect with readers on the platform.

TikTok (My I don’t know yet cause it’s new to me)

TikTok is my newest social media account. I’ve been on it for less the 2 months. My profile, @authormarialevato, is currently sitting at 53 followers and 56 following, so I’m not off to a bad start. At least, I don’t think I am. I already have at least a handful of followers I’d consider deeply engaged. They engage with more of my content then they don’t. They’re readers too. I won’t judge how TikTok does on actually getting me sales yet since it is still so new, but I will say that I’m hopeful on that front. A already have a fair number of influencers posting about my book on the platform and tagging me. That type of early engagement might make both growth and conversion a lot higher. I can definitely say I get more reach and engagements on my posts than I do on IG. For now, that’s all I can really say about being on the platform as a writer. Hopefully, I’ll have more updates on the TikTok front soon!

Biggest Pro: More reach and engagement, more influencer collaboration.

Biggest Con: Very aggressive about pushing AI features and I’m not a fan of that, but that can be said of pretty much any major social media platform right now. I think TikTok is maybe just a tad more annoying about it than Meta or Bluesky.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on using various social media platforms as a writer. That’s about it for this weeks segment of Nerdology 101. Come back next Friday for another. Until then, have a nerdy week!