Social media is a great way to engage with clients, share your work, and promote your brand as a photographer to the world. We get that it’s difficult to know where to start and what to do and we see many photographers simply posting photos and expecting great results.
This isn’t the best way to build your social media following and it takes more effort and a detailed approach using various techniques. To give you a head start we have listed eight social media tips for photographers below – enjoy!
1. Respond to your followers
Isn’t it frustrating when you take the time and effort to like a post or leave a comment on a photo only to have it ignored?
This is a big no-no for photographers and you must be willing to engage with your followers and show that you value their time and effort. Reply to comments, like things – just interact with people so that they know their voice is heard!
2. Use your photos!
This might seem like stating the obvious but make sure you show your incredible photography skills and post high-quality images for your followers to see!
This is highly important because photography is a visual business – if people can’t easily see the standard of your photos they may start to mistrust your skills.
3. Add interactive elements to your posts
To create popular social media platforms you need engagement and things that people can do. If you just post amazing photos you may get a few likes and shares but not much else.
Add text and features that people can interact with in your posts. This could be opinion polls or even simple questions in the photo captions. You could ask people to guess where the photo was taken or to critique your work.
4. Create exclusive giveaways and contests
We all love getting a discount or something for free so why not do this for your photography posts? The key with social media contests and giveaways is that they should ask for something in return. You could set up a contest where the first X people who like and share your photo wins a prize for example.
They get a nice prize and you get improved engagement and potentially some new followers – fantastic!
5. Make a consistent posting schedule
How many times have you checked a business’s social media pages only to find that the last time they posted anything was in 2018?
This doesn’t fill you with confidence and it shows a lack of care and interest on the photographer’s part. Irregular posting can also damage SEO and your online presence.
To get the most out of your social media channels you need to create a posting schedule and stick to it. This could be three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays for example – whatever it is, keep it going and be consistent.
6. Don’t be afraid to include photos of yourself
As a photographer it’s easy to get stuck behind the lens and only ever promote the work you do. This is fine but it doesn’t really convey your personality or help customers get to know you.
It’s a great idea to include personal images and show photos of you at work or in the studio for example. When people can put a face to a name they are much more likely to trust you and learn more about what you have to offer.
7. Only use platforms that fit your niche
We’ve seen photographers make the mistake of instantly creating profiles on EVERY social media channel.
This can be exhausting and it isn’t always productive. You will be far more effective if you only concentrate on platforms that are relevant to your niche. A wedding photographer might benefit more from Facebook as opposed to Twitter for example.
8. Promote your channels
Throughout all of this you need to promote your channels so that people have a way of hiring you or buying your photos!
Make sure that things like your social media profiles have links to your website or online store. You can also post occasional links in your posts but they must be relevant to the content. This helps SEO for wedding photographers and other businesses and can build your backlink profile.
With these tips and some incredible photos to showcase your work your social media following and engagement should flourish in no time! Don’t worry if this seems like a lot to take in – take it one step at a time and work down this list of tips to gradually improve your social media content.
