so fresh and so clean (clean)
or: time to spring clean your feed, besties
Good morning! Today’s the day! The sun is shining! The tank is clean…
That’s right, friends. Today we are…cleaning.
It’s spring, which means somewhere in your real life, you’re probably eyeing a closet, a junk drawer, or a corner of your kitchen that’s become that quintessential “let me put the junk mail here and deal with it later” pile. The urge to throw things away is strong.
I can’t help you with your house (something about having to get my own house in order first?), but I can help you with your socials. Because your Instagram has its own version of that closet/drawer/junk pile. The out-of-date pinned post. The bio you wrote in 2022 - approximately 3,246 “unprecedented events” ago . The grid that’s been on autopilot since your last launch. The link-in-bio page with five dead URLs. The captions that all start with “I’m so excited to...”1.
We’re going to clean it all out. It’s going to take fifteen minutes2. You’re going to feel approximately ten thousand times better afterward.
One rule before we start: do this on a desktop browser, in an incognito window, while logged out. This is the single most important move during this entire process - you need to see your profile the way a stranger sees it without cached vanity metrics, without your own Story ring at the top of the feed, and without personalized suggestions. If you only ever look at your account from your own logged-in phone, you are grading your own homework, and you are grading it on the most generous curve.
OK - open the windows, grab your beverage of choice, put on your most energetic cleaning music or listen to a podcast or an audiobook. Let’s do it to it!
(Today’s post was written to the classic and effervescent “So Fresh, So Clean” by Outkast, in case you needed some inspo):
1. dust the bio (2 minutes)
Open your profile in incognito. Set a timer for 10 seconds. Look at the profile picture, the name field, and the bio only but don’t scroll yet.
Now close your eyes and answer three questions out loud:
What genre does this person write?
What’s one thing I’d know about them as a person?
Is there a book I could buy right now, and where?
If you can’t answer all three in five seconds, your bio needs a deep clean3. There is no partial credit for it being cute or funny or for having remembered your link in bio. A new follower decides whether to tap “follow” based on at MOST this much information…not your grid, or your last ten posts, or your Reels. The bio and the bio only. It’s the same principle as the dating apps, in a way. You are trying to attract a partner (reader) who wants to jump your bones (read your book) and maybe spend the rest of your lives growing old together and laughing and doing all the things that make life worth living (becoming an auto-buy author for them).
The most common dust bunnies to look for:
Genre is implied but not stated. “Author of [book title]” tells me nothing unless I already know the book. Say “contemporary romance,” or “cozy fantasy,” or “sapphic historical.” Be a word search someone could actually find.4
Personality hook is missing. Every bio is “author of X, mom of Y, coffee ☕.” This is interchangeable with 400,000 other accounts. Give me one specific, weird, or memorable detail. “Writes about haunted diners. Will talk to you about pie for hours.” As a pie lover, I would follow that in a heartbeat.
No CTA or a dead one. “Link in bio” is not a CTA - remember? What’s IN the link? Is it a book? A newsletter? A preorder? Tell me what you want me to do next.
Fix it before you move on. A broken bio invalidates every other thing we’re about to look at, the same way you wouldn’t vacuun before dusting.
2. throw out the expired pinned posts (2 minutes)
You have three pinned post slots and they’re the most valuable real estate on your entire profile. They are also, in most cases, the place where author Instagrams go to die.
Open your profile and look at what’s pinned. Now ask yourself:
Is any of them older than nine months? If yes, unpin it. I don’t care how well it performed in 2024. It is the marketing equivalent of a yogurt expiring last fall and you can throw it away. In fact - PLEASE throw it away.
Are all three the same type of post? (Three launch announcements or three cover reveals or three personal posts.) If yes, you are answering one question three times and ignoring two other questions a new follower has.
Do they collectively answer: who are you, what do you write, and why should I trust you? Because that’s the job. Three pins, three answers, in that exact order for maximum efficiency
The ideal pinned-post triad for an author is something like:
Pin 1: Who you are. An introduction post with your origin story (your origin story is a free marketing asset and you are probably hiding it in the back of the closet - it is your SUPERPOWER and your unique differentiator).
Pin 2: What you write. Your current or most representative book, with vibes, tropes, and a specific reason to care.
Pin 3: Proof. A high-performing post, a reader review, a character art commission, a fan quote, a bestseller moment…something that signals “other people have already decided I’m worth their time.”
If you can’t fill all three slots with those categories right now, that tells you what kind of content to make next so add it to the spring backlog.
3. take a hard look at the front nine (3 minutes)
This is the one everyone hates and I’m sorry in advance. Spring cleaning sometimes means admitting the rug is, in fact, ruined beyond repair.
Look at the first nine posts5 on your grid. These are the nine squares a new follower sees before they have to scroll or tap. This is your shop window, your end cap at a grocery store, you online dating profile pic. If a stranger walked past it today, what would they think you sold?
For each square, ask:
Can I tell what this post is about from the thumbnail alone?
Does this square fit the same voice as the others, or does it feel like a different account?
Would a stranger looking at these nine squares understand what I write and roughly who I am?
Common stains:
Seven out of nine are launch graphics for the same book. Fine if you launched in the last two weeks. Not fine if that launch was four months ago. You are stuck in campaign mode and that’s no bueno.
Massive tonal whiplash. A polished quote graphic next to a selfie in pajamas next to a Canva-template trope tease next to a fan art repost next to a screenshot of your Notes app. Individually these can all be great. Stacked together they read as “this person has no idea what their account is about.” Keep in mind - you want a mixture of whatver feels authentic to you but keep your tone in photography consistent and your tone in non-photography consistent.
A good example of on-brand marketing posts and more personal content c/o Sarah Adams Every square is a text graphic. You’ve forgotten that Instagram is a visual platform. Give me a face, a book, a setting, an object… something my eyes can rest on.
The fix isn’t “redesign your grid.” The fix is: know what your nine squares are supposed to say, and plan your next nine posts to say it. Grids are self-correcting if the posting strategy is sound. You don’t need a deep clean, but you do need to commit to wiping it down semi-regularly.
4. rebalance the Reels-to-static ratio (2 minutes)
Go to your profile. Look at your last twenty posts. Count how many are Reels vs. how many are static posts (single image or carousel).
If you’re at 0-10% Reels: you are leaving the largest discovery lever on the platform completely untouched. Instagram has been explicit, for years now, that Reels are how new people find you. You do not have to be a face-forward creator to use them. Character art set to music, a book-opening ASMR shot, a trope POV text-over-video, a cover reveal with motion…these all count.
If you’re at 70%+ Reels: you’re doing discovery content but probably not giving existing followers enough to sink into. Carousels are where you convert the people Reels brought you. Balance it out.
The sweet spot for most authors, in my experience, is roughly 40-60% Reels, 40-60% carousels/statics. Adjust based on what your specific account data tells you, but if you’re outside that range in either direction, that’s a signal worth investigating.
One caveat: this isn’t a quota. Don’t post a bad Reel just to hit a ratio. A posted Reel that flops because you didn’t actually want to make it is worse than no Reel at all.
Another caveat: Instagram treats carousel posts with music as Reels. You may have noticed that they often show up in the explore tab/Reels feed. That’s because when you add music to your carousel, Instagram will keep serving up different slides to viewers based on interest. So…I guess what I’m saying is add music and avoid one-off slide posts.
5. wipe down the caption hooks (3 minutes)
Remember last week when I told you nobody is reading your captions?6
Pull up your last ten captions. Read only the first line of each one. Out loud, if you can…
Now ask: out of those ten first lines, how many would stop YOU if you were scrolling?
If the answer is “two or fewer,” congratulations, you have identified your single highest-leverage fix. You don’t need a new brand, a new aesthetic, or a new content strategy. You need to spend five minutes rewriting your first lines before you publish, every single time.
Look for these patterns:
Starting with “I’m so excited to...”
Starting with “Today is the day...”
Starting with “I can’t believe...”
Starting with a book title in all caps followed by exclamation marks
Replace with:
A weird, specific detail
A half-sentence that implies a story
A question with an obvious answer that invites disagreement
Something that sounds like a text you’d send a friend, not a press release
You do not need to be clever but you do need to be specific and human. Those are two very achievable things (if you’re a robot reading this, sorry but this isn’t FOR you).
If you don’t think you can be objective, find someone in your life that is not necessarily a romance reader (or that one friend that you can trust to tell you when you have something between your teeth no matter where you are). Ask THEM their opinion. I do this all the time with my own job - if my husband, who is not in the industry I work in, can understand it then I’ve done what I set out to do.
6. clean out the link-in-bio junk drawer (3 minutes)
Last stop but we put it off for long enough: the junk drawer.
Click your own link in bio, in incognito, as if you were a new follower who just decided you were interesting.
Now honestly grade the experience7:
How many clicks to buy a book? If it’s more than two, you have a problem. Ideal is one: bio → link → “buy the book” button.8
Is there a newsletter signup? If not, you are building your entire business on rented land and you’re just waiting for the landlord’s deadbeat nephew to move in because he can’t get hold down a job and needs all the family help he can get. Every link-in-bio page should have a newsletter option, clearly visible, with a reason to subscribe (freebies, first looks, etc).
Are there dead links? Old book tours, expired preorder campaigns, “upcoming events” from 2025? Throw them OUT. Each dead link makes everything else look neglected, the same way one expired bottle of salad dressing makes you suspect everything else in the fridge and next thing you know you’ve thrown out half the food in your house and suddenly you have nothing to eat and so you have to go to the grocery store and then once you’re done at the grocery store you’re so tired that you just order pizza for dinner anyway. Or something.
The link-in-bio is not a parking lot for every link you’ve ever needed. It is a funnel to get people from “hmmm” to “buy now”. Three to five options, max, in priority order, with the most important thing at the top.
what to do once everything’s clean
If you did all six steps honestly, you probably have somewhere between two and fifteen things you want to fix. Don’t try to fix them all today, and don’t panic about it either. Spring cleaning works because you do it in passes: first the obvious mess, then the deeper stuff, then the parts you’d been pretending not to see but keep you awake at night stomehow.
Pick the one that felt most uncomfortable to look at (that’s usually the one costing you the most) and fix only that this week.
Next week, pick the next one.
Eight weeks from now, you will have a profile that’s doing actual work for you. And then once a week or biweekly or once a month, just do a little quick sweep. Open the windows, dust a bit, take it room by room.
Now, doesn’t that feel better? Go get yourself your drink of choice, grab a book, and put your feet up. You’ve earned it!
Make good choices!
xx Ada
That was both a callback to last week’s post and me throwing salt into the wound. I AM SORRY!
Set a timer but don’t hold me to it…there is no money back guarantee on the timeline of this today
That’s what she said
Do your research on this - look at your comps, look at other authors, see what THEY are saying about themselves. This will help you understand what people are naturally searching.
More Ada lore: I am a golfer. Not by choice, but I am and I used to compete as a kid. So that whole front nine thing was written while watching golf with my husband because he watches it and I sit and sometimes make commentary because again, against my will, I know too much. GOLF!
Given the amount of message I got about this, I think you do…
Not on a curve
Hot people have a link in bio that’s their OWN website to drive traffic (think: youramazingauthorname. com/links). This is usually an unindexed (or hidden from the menu) page that you navigate to only by having the exact URL.