The Gift of an Authentic Social Media Presence

As an older millennial and parent who keeps things low-tech, it’s been a curious curveball to find myself in the position of being a social media influencer. While I’ll never fully embrace that label, it’s nonetheless accurate as I have an Instagram audience of over 16,000 people, most of whom follow me for my book reviews, recommendations, and reading groups.

(10 LinkedIn Goals for Authors.)

When I secured a literary agent for my debut nonfiction book, We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with American Christianity (Broadleaf Books, 2026), I had about 4,000 followers, and I sold the book to a publisher with around 5,000 followers. I’m not sure if my social media presence was critical for my path to publishing, but it certainly didn’t hurt!

Not everything I’ve learned from my years of “bookstagramming” will apply to everyone, but I hope these tips will help you develop a joyful social media presence that raises your visibility, cultivates community, and supports you on your writing journey—without burning out.

When I started my Instagram account years ago, I gave it an aspirational name: @ktlee.writes. I was not a writer of anything other than emails and clinical documentation. I didn’t understand how Instagram worked, nor did I grasp that social media could be a platform. I used it sporadically as a place to drop book quotes; my first post was a Marilynne Robinson quote from Gilead.

In 2021, I started posting screenshots of book covers with short reviews. I thought of it as my online book journal, as I didn’t know about Goodreads or Storygraph (at the time, I was naïve to much of the literary world!). It wasn’t until a few strangers started commenting on my posts that I learned there was a whole community of “bookstagrammers” out there. I was delighted to find passionate readers with whom to swap thoughts, and in 2022, I started taking actual photos of books and writing more coherent reviews, which connected me with many more readers.

Since then, my account has grown organically, and I’ve had unexpected opportunities to live out my bookworm dreams, from serving as a conversation partner for a favorite author’s local book tour stop, to attending the National Book Awards as press. It takes time to nurture genuine connections in online spaces, but if you stay authentic, it helps others get to know you as a person and writer, so you’ll have a built-in cheering section for when you publish your own work.

Many times, this advice is given strategically—focus on an area in which you have expertise or for which social media users show enthusiasm. When you define your niche, you attract followers to your unique offerings. But for your social media presence to be sustainable, it’s more important that your niche is life-giving—to you. What are you excited to post about? What keeps you engaged? People can tell when you’re posting just for the sake of posting or building a brand.

Once you’ve established your niche, break it from time to time. Post that photo of your dog! Drift into talking about activism and politics. People appreciate connecting with you as a fellow human, rather than as an overly polished, distant content creator.

I’m fortunate that when I was starting out, I didn’t see Instagram as a tool to be harnessed. This allowed me to build real friendships around a shared love of books. Some of my favorite social media experiences have been participating in and hosting read along groups, from reading all of Toni Morrison’s fiction in 2024 with @scottxbooks, to creating the #AsianClassicsReadAlong series that highlights the rich history of Asian and Asian diasporic literature, to hosting #Baldwin2026, where we’re reading through James Baldwin’s writing this year. I’ve even met many bookstagram friends in real life.

You can cultivate community by commenting on and sharing posts of people in your niche (for me, that’s fellow readers). Drop into the DMs if there’s a personal connection you’d like to make. Create group chats for a specific purpose. Many people are seeking low-entry ways to find community around shared interests. Show initiative and be the organizer.

It’s a maxim in the bookstagram community that book reviews “flop.” Instead, it’s photos of beautiful book spreads, book stacks, or themed compilations that garner likes and shares. But book reviews remain the backbone of my account, because that’s what I care about, and that type of substantive content generates the best conversations. Sure, I’ll sprinkle in an occasional compilation post, but if I were only making posts that had a chance of going viral, using social media would become a chore, instead of a fun hobby.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to community feedback. For example, once I started putting an ounce of effort into taking photos of books to pair with my reviews instead of just a screenshot of the cover, more people took the time to read the reviews. Small tweaks can help your work be seen by more people, like using relevant hashtags or decent lighting. Putting in effort helps, but make sure your investment of time is aligned with your joy—not just the numbers.

The algorithm might reward catchy memes with quick growth, but it’s like drinking a sugary soda—a glucose spike followed by emptiness. Instead, developing meaningful content that you’re proud of helps others find you and stick with you over the long run as they’re drawn to your values and interests. You’ll nourish more genuine conversations and relationships this way. I’m most interested in bookstagrammers who post about little-known books that may not get immediate attention, but who consistently give good recommendations accompanied by insightful commentary.

While my experience on bookstagram has been overwhelmingly positive, I’ve also glimpsed how being too wrapped up in social media can hurt. It can distract from one’s writing life or in-person relationships; it can become an echo chamber; it can lure you to care about the wrong things. Thus, each person needs to find their own guardrails to make sure social media is serving their purposes and is appropriately contained.

When harnessed well, social media can connect you to wonderful people from across the globe. I'm immensely grateful for my reader friends cheering me on as I wrote my first book, secured a book deal, and received a starred Publishers Weekly review. They’re excited not because the content of the book is necessarily up their alley, but because they know me as a person through my book reviews and recommendations. I’ve developed lovely, non-transactional friendships with other writers as well as with publishing professionals. And I’ve been able to decompress, have fun, and let my creative side play while I’m at it.

If you decide to establish a social media presence, make sure it’s true to who you are, and whatever else, don’t stress about it. Finding shared connections with others is its own reward, and above all, I’m so grateful for the lifelong friends I’ve met through bookstagram.

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