Moving on from the Social Media is Watching You! post, I wondered how many of you use Instagram? Either for fun or to promote themselves as writers.

Several writing gurus have observed that Facebook is losing young users, who are migrating to Instagram as the way to communicate with friends. This would certainly be relevant to you as a writer if your target audience is juvenile or YA. It’s less so for me, with crime fiction, as the genre attracts older readers, but I’m still intrigued by the possibilities of Instagram.

As I gird my loins to establish a social media and blogging presence, I’ve been checking out the advantages and drawbacks of different sites. Three years ago, I set up basic accounts with LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Quora and Pinterest, a Facebook business page, separate to my personal profile, and started this WordPress blog.

I previously posted about my tactic of using Pinterest to get my name out there, by adding my blog address to pins. I could start other boards more to do with books, writing, publishers, famous crimes and Cornwall, where my novels are set, but it’s a time-consuming process.

I’ve been pondering how effective Instagram could be. Jane Friedman hosted a guest post by novelist Annie Sullivan on ways of using the site.

There’s a community of book lovers on Instagram called Bookstagram, which would be the ideal place to self-promote.

It’s impossible to predict how many of these book lovers actually buy books, but word of mouth promotion and viral marketing has to start somewhere.

What do you think?

Is Instagram a flippant waste of time?

Or, a useful marketing tool?