Book-promoting hashtags require some trial and error, but don't despair! Instead, gain an edge using specific hashtags and general principles.
Why hashtags?
Have you ever wondered what the best book hashtags are for promoting your book?
In social media, people use hashtags to search for content that matches with their interests. According to The Balance Careers, hashtags can help people connect with others who share similar interests. This connection is especially beneficial when you are trying to promote books. To effectively market with hashtags, you need to know your target audience and the hashtags they follow.
So, what are the best book hashtags for book marketing?
Best book hashtags
Digital Branding Institute suggests that the following best book hashtags be used throughout the writing, editing, and publishing process (I have added the current counts for posts tagged with these hashtags on Instagram):
- #bookstagram (69.7m)
- #books (57.3m)
- #reading (34.6m)
- #writing (26.8m)
- #booksofinstagram (8.3m)
- #amreading (3.2m)
The question is, do these suggested best book hashtags really help spread awareness? The number of engagements a post receives, including likes and comments, is a good indicator of awareness. As you probably know, higher awareness equals higher sales.
If this recommended best practice really works, I would expect the recommended hashtags with higher usage to have higher levels of engagement on Instagram.
Sampling 5 Instagram book accounts
To find out, I analyzed a random sample of posts containing these hashtags. I chose to include the following Instagram accounts in my sample because they all promote books and regularly use hashtags: Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Book Club Girl, and One Minute Book Review.
I went through each account and recorded the number of engagements (likes and comments) for the six most recent posts containing each hashtag.
The averages for all sampled posts containing the suggested best book hashtags is displayed in the table below.
| Best Book Hashtag | Average # of Likes per Post | Average # of Comments per Post |
| #bookstagram | 2,110 | 144 |
| #books | 1,116 | 80 |
| #reading | 1,890 | 120 |
| #writing | 978 | 58 |
| #booksofinstagram | 1,204 | 143 |
| #amreading | 1,007 | 118 |
It should be noted that for most of these accounts, the amount of posts which used these suggested best book hashtags was rather low, so some of the posts used to provide this data are up to two years old. In addition, I included posts using these hashtags regardless of how many other hashtags were used. For most of the posts I reviewed, the more book and reading hashtags used, the better!
There are many factors other than hashtags that can greatly affect post engagement, such as call to actions, type of images used, and caption length. You can read more about the effectiveness of those best practices in other articles here at bookmark.byu.edu.
While those are all important, this analysis is specifically focused on finding out if these suggested best book hashtags influence the amount of engagement a book receives. According to the data I collected, they do!
Is #bookstagram the best book hashtag?
On average, posts with hashtags produced more engagement than those without hashtags. The hashtag #bookstagram far surpassed any other hashtag for the average number of likes per post, and was a close winner for average number of comments per post. As the best book hashtag suggested with the highest frequency, this data supports the idea that the higher the frequency, the higher the engagement. #Bookstagram was by far the most popular hashtag I saw as I gathered data from the five aforementioned accounts, so all of the posts included in the data for this hashtag were very recent.
The other hashtags did not demonstrate a clear relationship between frequency and average numbers of posts or comments, but they still encouraged engagement.
Even though #writing was included in the list of suggested best book hashtags, I think the reason it had the lowest averages was that these accounts were more geared towards readers, not writer. I did not analyze any writing or author accounts, but according to the patterns of the data I analyzed here, if a writer wanted to promote their book, #writing would be very effective in raising awareness and driving more engagement.
Since the hashtag frequencies and engagements did not show a direct correlation, it is possible there are better hashtags out there for your publishing company! Check out the other hashtags listed at Digital Branding Institute and see what works best for you!
Try it out!
Try the following ideas out and let us know how you see success with them!
1. Use #bookstagram in all your book related posts! It's the best book hashtag out there!
2. Include some of these other best book hashtags in your posts, as well as other relevant hashtags such as titles and author names.
3. Make sure all of your hashtags are relevant to your image, caption, and brand!
4. Periodically review which posts of yours are receiving the most engagement, and try to replicate the elements of those successful posts in the rest of your content!