Instagram is a powerful tool for authors to market their books, but social media can be time-consuming without the proper training. Here are three easy ways to save time and effort creating Instagram-specific content to help market books on sick days, days when you’re not camera ready, or days when you’re too busy writing to invest more than a minute or two on social media marketing.

1.) Video cutout gifs for Stories

Instagram has a new feature that allows creators to import a video clip and cut it out directly inside the app to use as a Sticker inside of Stories. These video cutout gifs then live in the Sticker section of your Instagram for repetitive future use in Stories.

To use this new feature, create your video or photo Story and then click on the Cutouts option under the Stickers tab. This button currently looks like a round icon with the Instagram signature yellow/pink/purple colors with a pair of scissors on it.

Next, import a video clip of yourself pointing, cheering, gesturing, etc. Keep in mind it’s best to do this on a solid background in a color that you stand out against so it doesn’t accidentally pick up details in the background as it cuts you out.

Select the time frame you wish to use and allow the app to cut out the video. Once it’s done, this video cut out will remain accessible in your Stickers to add to any Story so you can continue to use it in the future on days when you aren’t camera-ready.

2.) B-roll footage of writing with text overlays

Since you’ll already be writing, it’s a wise choice to record the first 60 seconds of every writing session you do. Film this in ten-twenty second increments and use three-five different angles focusing on a side view, a view peeking around from behind your computer, and a view of your fingers typing with a bit of the screen showing.

This b-roll footage can then be saved for future videos, compilation videos, voice over answers, etc. One of the easiest ways to benefit from this type of footage is to take a fifteen second section, mute the audio, and add a simple text over set to commercial use music, keeping in mind popular and trending music on any social media app cannot be used without securing a license for it.

The text overlay can include a writing tip, a brief overview of what type of scenes you wrote that day, what you learned about your character, or anything that is a quick nugget of information your audience would find interesting. In total, this type of content can be fully created in under five minutes start to finish.

3.) Saved replies in your direct message inbox

If you get direct messages from followers, setting up Saved Replies in your inbox allows you to pre-type answers that can be added with a tap. These saved replies are the equivalent of typing, copy, and pasting a reply from the notes section of your phone, but housed within your inbox so you don’t have to leave the app.

Saved replies are found under the Tools section of your inbox and are entirely editable. By adding one in the reply section of your conversation thread, it autopopulates the pre-typed reply that you can then alter if needed before hitting send.

By using this feature, you no longer have to hand type replies to the same ten questions everyone sends you.

If you want to go even more in depth, there are third party programs that allow you to not only set up saved responses but allows your followers to guide themselves through conversations by going through flows of buttons to get them answers, freebies, links, etc, or to get directly to you if the flow doesn’t help them.

Saving time on Instagram—even a few seconds here and there—can add up to quite a bit of time at the end of the week. Taking a few minutes today to create content that will save you hours every month is certainly worth the ten minute investment now.

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• How Social Media Made My Fanbase Explode (You Can Do It, Too!) – K.M. Robinson
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• Why Aren’t My Social Media Posts Selling Books?

K.M. Robinson is a social media marketing educator and speaker, bestselling fiction author, and Top TikTok Creator who works directly with TikTok to help authors grow their brands, thrive on social media, and save time and effort on their content creation. Here’s a link to all of her TikTok tutorial videos!