This post was originally going to be about bookish Twitter, but honestly, no matter how polite you are on Twitter you are going to be drawn into a fight. That’s just how Twitter works.
This is post two in my five post series about bookworm etiquette. Witness my handy-dandy schedule I mostly made for my own benefit but works for this purpose, too:
Wednesday, Feb. 29th: How To Be Awesome At Book Signings
Friday, March 3rd: How To Be Awesome At Bookstagram
Wednesday, March 8th: How To be Awesome At Negative Reviews
Friday, March 10th: How To Be Awesome At Commenting
Wednesday, March 14th: How To Be Awesome At Getting Review Copy Requests/Arcs
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Bookstagram is slowly become the most popular way for bloggers to branch out on social media, and for good reason; it’s a lot of fun to look at and take pretty pictures of books! And, honestly, most of us are already addicted to instagram in one way or another, and this just takes that addiction a step further by focusing on the other major addiction in our lives; books.
I’m relatively new the community myself, only actively participating in it for about three months or so, so if you came to this post to learn about how to gain followers or take better pictures or whatever, this isn’t the post for you! Sorry, but hopefully you’ll stick around.
- Don’t, just don’t, do follow for follow or share for share. For one thing, it’s super annoying and kind of disappointing to get a notification that you have a new comment only to see that it’s “great account! f4f?”. And, also, it sends the message that the only reason you would want to follow or share this account is if the person follows or shares your account, also. Which is, again, disappointing.
- If you follow an account, follow it with the UTTER INTENTION to keep following. Don’t follow thinking that you might unfollow later, because understand that the person manning the account will watch the numbers tick downwards-especially if it’s a newer account with a smaller amount of followers. It’s another thing to unfollow if, say, someone massively changed their theme to something you really don’t like, or turn out to just be not that nice of a person. But the rule you should stick to is only follow and unfollow for a reason.
- Don’t spam people with rep searches or shoutouts. It’s fine to do these once in a while, but there are some accounts that do at least one a week, and that gets old for your followers really quickly.
- Don’t spam with likes. In most cases, it doesn’t send the message that you’re loving the account. Honestly, the first thing I think when I see that someone has liked 34 photos in a row is that they want to me follow them. Five seems to be a safe number to like. Chose your favorites.
- Don’t do the thing where you take a picture and tag a bunch of people that have nothing to do with that picture, unless you’re specifically tagging them for a tag. Again, it comes across as being desperate for people to follow you, and most of the time it doesn’t work.
- It’s totally fine if you only follow big, well-know accounts at first! Don’t feel guilty if you’re not following any smaller accounts, because you eventually will.
- ALWAYS ask the original photographer before you use any of their photos on your account, even if you credit them. Always.
- It’s always nice to comment instead of just “liking” if you really love a photo. Especially if you do what I do and just like every photo that gets up on your dashboard so the stupid instagram theorem won’t bury your less “liked” accounts (AKA, the newer ones you follow) under the ones you “like” a lot.
- If you see a stolen photo tag the person who originally took the photo in the comments. Even if you don’t interact with them a lot. It’s always better for someone to know so that they can deal with it. And if you really want to help, report the photo.
- Be friendly! Talk to people. Participate in photo challenges. Respond to comments. If you treat your bookstagram like you do your blog, you’ll most likely do well.
And, finally, to fit with the theme, here are some awesome bookstagram accounts you should be following!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRI_tOtg5Nh/?taken-by=bookotter&hl=en
Happy Friday,
Writing on a Vintage Typewriter 
Treating it like a blog sounds like a pretty good general rule! I’ve tried to get into it so many times, but I just don’t take enough photos. I do a lot of the same things as you with following though 🙂
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I’ve had to set aside specific times during the week to take photos for the rest of the week, so maybe that would work for you? but either way, it’s also fun seeing all the pictures.
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Haha, I just started getting into bookstagram last week, and it’s literally so much fun! The accounts you listed are some of my favorites as well! ❤
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It is! It’s super addicting.
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