Social media plays a crucial part in most people’s everyday lives. No matter where you look, you are confronted by social media. From celebrities posting pictures on their Instagram accounts, to politicians making headings through Twitter, and businesses promoting their brand from Facebook, never before digital media had such a grasp on our lives. Social media is the perfect visual platform for photographers (get a great name photography name) to promote their business.
Just imagine for a second, how many of your family and friends use social media on a daily basis? How many of them post something on social media at least once a day? You’ll be surprised by the numbers.
Over the course of the last few years, social media has become a powerful tool to reach your target audience, gain their attention to work and even find new clients. Furthermore, social media has helped many businesses improve their brand image and has helped many individuals showcase their portfolio, all for free.
As a photographer, you must leverage these digital platforms to improve your business. Here are some very important tips on how photographers can use social media for their business.
Choose the Right Platform
There are many different social media platforms ranging from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and more. If you want to, you can always spend some time on each of these platforms, but we all know that this is an impossible task unless you have a specialist working to promote your business on all social media platforms.
As a photographer, some social media platforms are better for your line of work. The key is to determine which is the best platform for your business. In our opinion, you should focus all your energies on these top three social media platforms –
Instagram for Photographers
While Twitter and Facebook are both good to spread the word of your work, nothing beats Instagram when it comes to photography. The platform is ideal for photographers because it is essentially a digital form of your job.
In fact, Instagram is a social media platform where most of your efforts should be concentrated on. All posts are backed by an image and people who take interest in images and photographs are usually on this platform making it the perfect place for photographers to showcase their work.
Consistently Post Quality Content
Many aspiring photographers lack in this area the most. A lot of photographers create a social media account with great intent but within a few weeks or months, they run out of ideas and their posts become less frequent and eventually they stop posting altogether.
Social media is all about providing consistently good quality content to maintain your audience. You must make sure that you create high-quality content consistently to keep your social media page running and growing.
Never forget, consistency is king. You must aim to post at least 2-3 times a week. By creating consistent content, you will keep your audience interested and engaged. Just make sure to create content that engages people rather than promoting yourself with captions and taglines. You can even get creative and pull out some Paper Cutters and do some creating scrap booking to get some great looks for your content.
Do More Than Just Posting Photos
A lot of photographers don’t realize that just posting a photograph isn’t enough to pique interest. You must add a caption to your photo to help people understand what your photograph is about. Add a line or two to give them an idea and you can choose to leave the rest for their imaginations.
If you’re using Twitter, make good use of hashtags to categorize your photos and try your best to write a short description to tell a story. Be creative with what you upload. Tell stories through your photographs and see how the number of your followers start to grow.
Engage with Your Audience
It is very crucial to be a part of your social media page. This isn’t a one-way thing. You must get in touch with your followers occasionally to give them a sense that they are important to you. Take part in discussions, talk to them directly, provide feedback and interact with them personally on your feed.
The quickest way to do this is to actually take part in the comments thread. Every social media platform highlights the comments of a page owner which gives the readers/followers and indication that you are someone who likes discussing and talking back to your followers.
With this, you can easily win the trust of your followers and the next time they need any photography services, they will likely reach out to you and even recommend you to their peers.
Conclusion
As you can see that social media is more than meets the eye. As a photographer, you must use social media to your advantage. These two things complement each other so well that you can simply use your best shots to outshine your competition.
Remember your photography business should be an LLC for you and your client’s legal protection.