Can I make an Instagram Business account to promote my comic?

[lolinone]

Hey, everyone!
Like everyone else, I want as many people as possible to find and read my comic. Therefore, I need to promote it.
I have decided to make an official Instagram account for it, but I'm unsure wether it's okay to make that a business account or if I should just make it a normal account.
Any thoughts on this?

[franzvanderlinde]

I did that, but had the feeling IG puts less exposure on my posts now, probably to make you pay to promote posts. You get access to some analytics, not anything too fancy. So unless you want to pay to promote the posts, don't bother.

[lolinone]

I'll keep that in mind then. Thanks.

[Sanz]

I use Instagram alot I just make a preview page and leave a link and upload art with the right hashtags.... don't need to pay dime with the right hashtags and it's just a regular acct.

[franzvanderlinde]

Yeah, that was bottomline what I was telling, just use regular one. BTW, do you have any guidelines you follow as to the "right hashtags" ? That seems to me a key to this.

[Sanz]

usually I'll hashtag the art style, or artstyles similar, color, black and white, pencils, the program used if digital, the genre, things related to the genre, the type of characters, example. Los Esmeraldas is about an alien terrorist but she's also blonde so I'll hashtag beautiful blonde. alien, blue eyes, even if it seems unrelated but you never who might be interested. and I try not to go over 30 hashtags. also Instagram, twitter, and facebook have prime posting times so I try to do it at those times. on the certain days.

[franzvanderlinde]

Thanks, very helpful. I have been doing this same thing for hashtags, and they make a lot of difference. I experimented with times and days of the week too, but haven't reach definite conclusions yet.

[Sanz]

this might help. it helped me !

[kjack2899]

Some might think it's unnecessary to promote in social media, but august social media ideas https://promorepublic.com/en/blog/august-social-media-post-ideas/ include post ideas to make your account more attractive.

[Memai]

Social media manager here, and I've some thoughts...

I'm not wholly comfortable promoting on Instagram, not if your comic doesn't have a large following or isn't known in some capacity. This is because you might get more eyeballs on your post on Instagram but it might not translate to views on Webtoons/Tapas or even new readers.

It's very hard to convert the average IG user to being active readers.

However, some comics (like Lore Olympus) have used promotions on IG to some success (I don't have access to their analytics, so I'm not sure how useful promotions are to the comic). What they did however was use carousels to tell a mini story that would end in a cliffhanger, prompting people to read the comic to see what happens next. Kind of like a mini-trailer or commercial.

If you're keen on using promotions, some things to consider:
1) Where will the comic land? Is it right at the latest episode or will readers be able to read from the beginning?

2) Who's your audience? It's best to target people who are potential readers instead of casting a huge wide net. Think about the kind of people who might be interested in your comic and make the promotional material appealing to them.

3) Is the comic accessible? Do readers need to sign up to read the comic or can they read everything for free?

I'd personally recommend using the appropriate hashtags on Instagram (#YourComic'sName+Comic, #Webtoons, #WebcomicsOnInstagram #WebcomicArtist, etc.)

The best bang for your buck would be to participate in art/comic shares on places like Twitter/IG when it goes around. Promo-for-promo stuff is pretty common and helps out in people discovering your work!

[punkarsenic]

dont pay for promotion, but a business account is really useful! you get analytics that help you figure out whats working, and you can use third party apps to auto-post for more regularlity

[bartlettbrittany636]

I don't really do social media promoting but a friend of mine promoted one of my books all off insta, Facebook, and snapchat. It really do help!!!! She just put the link where I write and now I've lots of readers.

[Vinius]

Instagram is enough, really. It's really good if you're young and wanna get popular and attract people interested in your art... You can do literally anything you want. I promote myself a lot through Instagram and it pays off. Also, do not forget to use different metrics and analytic tools, I like Zen, follower boosting is really effective: https://zen-promo.com/follow_bot_instagram

[CodeMonkeyArts]

Oh wow! All of this is super helpful! Thank you! I'm gonna be making sure to schedule or set reminders to post stuff at those times with my instagram account and my facebook page!