Last year, I stumbled upon an Instagram challenge that takes place monthly.
#WriterFriendsChallenge
I saw someone I follow posting daily for it, but I don't remember who it was. (Sorry, if it was you.) I'm always looking for some kind of content to do for my Instagram, a way to promote my books or current projects without being too salesy or pushy, and I definitely enjoy connecting with other writers.
June was the first month I joined in on the challenge. Since then, I've participated every month and will continued to do so as long as the challenge keeps on going.
I learned a few things along the way:
1. You do not have to participate every single day. If a prompt stumps you, doesn't work with your books/projects, or you're just too busy, you can skip it. You can skip several. It's okay.
2. When you post, add the hashtag #WriterFriendsChallenge to be discoverable, but also click "Tag a Person" and tag the challenge's account @writer.friends.challenge. This is additional discoverability.
3. When you look for people posting, don't just go to the #WriterFriendsChallenge. Also go to the account @writer.friends.challenge and click on the tag symbol with the outline of a person. (Tip: It's directly above the posts, to the right. You'll see one other option that's 9 stacked squares. Tags is to the right of those 9 stacked squares.) When you go there, you'll find the other people who tagged the account in their post. This is the best way to find the most current posts since the hashtags do not give you the option to see recent posts as they used to, so you'll see posts for months and years past all mixed up. Not ideal when you want to see new posts.
4. Just like with a blog hop, the thing to do is to like the posts and follow the participants.
5. But you gotta build relationships. Liking and following is nice, but you have to do more than that to build a connection. Comment on posts and reply back to comments that you get. Sometimes, if you don't have anything to add, a simple, "Thank you!" is enough.
6. Just like with all challenges and relationships, it takes time. So, the first few months, I didn't have as much engagement. I also think that the challenge was a bit smaller then. It has grown since I started to participate, because the more writers who join it, even more writers are able to find out about it. Finally in October, I started to get real, genuine engagement on my posts from people who sound truly interested in my current projects. That was a HUGE change. It shocked me and equally delighted me.
7. Have fun with it.
January 2025 Prompts:
These were the prompts for the last four months of 2024:
Some of my recent favorite posts:
Clickable if you’d like to read the captions.
