If you are a photographer who is looking to find more customers, why not spend some time establishing yourself on multiple social media platforms where you can showcase your talenåt? Sites like Facebook and Instagram have millions of active users. The latter is driven visually in particular. Spending a few minutes on Instagram is enough to get an idea of what the website is like.
On the other hand, you do not have to focus entirely on just the two of the most popular social media sites. Pinterest is also a good platform to explore. LinkedIn is worth a shout as well, particularly if your primary objective is to find new clients.
Overall, the bigger your presence on social media is, the more you can expect to gain from that presence. The question is how to get yourself noticed and take advantage of it.
Luckily, if you are a professional photographer, you already have what most social media users lack – quality content in the form of your photos. The next step is to make the most out of them.
Post Variety Content
While high-quality photos are some of the best content one can find on social media, your followers may get bored of repetition eventually.
Try introducing some variety to see whether there is more engagement from social media users. For example, you can add motivational photography quotes or other meaningful messages to your pictures. Some of your followers may even want to get the text from image and use it to share on their wall or for some other purpose.
Posting collages instead of single photos could also be one of the options if you want some variety.
Set Goals
Setting small goals like getting a certain amount of followers or having 100 people share the same post may not seem like that big of a deal, but these small milestones are great for finding motivation.
Seeing some progress will help you move forward, particularly if you reach a stale period where the follower growth stagnates.
Show Your Human Side
Showing your human side is also an excellent strategy. People want to find someone they can relate to, and seeing the person behind the camera makes it easier to connect with the content creator.
You do not have to post selfies every day, but some behind-the-scenes footage or moments from your personal life you want to share with your fans now and then could be just the thing to take your social media pages to the next level.
Establish Relationships With Followers
By sharing more personal stuff, you will establish stronger relationships with your followers.
However, that process should not stop there. You need to work hard to be in great relationships with your audience. Otherwise, they will lose interest and unfollow or look elsewhere.
The tricky thing is how to show enough attention to everyone. If you have thousands of followers, responding to every single one of them is pretty much impossible. You could hire someone to run your account, but that would defeat the purpose of establishing genuine relationships.
Regardless, take as much time as you can and respond to as many comments as you can to show your appreciation to those who like your photography.
Stick to a Schedule
As a professional photographer, you should not run out of content. However, it is still worth noting how important a regular post schedule is.
Over time, followers build certain expectations. If you post one or two pictures in a day at a particular hour, there will be people eagerly waiting for your next piece of content. Missing that could lead to some disappointments.
In case you cannot make the deadline, use scheduling tools like Hootsuite that let you prepare social media content in advance and publish it for you.
Collaborate With Others
Collaborations with other photographers or influencers would benefit your social media pages as well. In fact, it should benefit both parties, so the reason to collaborate is pretty clear.
Perhaps you could create a series of posts where you teach an aspiring photographer about the importance of composition or other photography elements? Or maybe you can take a trip to an exotic location with an influencer and snap amazing photos that you can share with your followers?
The possibilities are not endless, but there are quite a few different ways to grow your audience with the help of collaborations.
Image Size & Resolution
You need to ensure that your images look best on your social media pages.
The fact that Facebook and Instagram will try to optimize the size and resolution of the picture according to their platform standards can make your photos look bad on these platforms.
So, you must have a good understanding of the photo size and resolution for Instagram and Facebook.
READ MORE : Lightroom Export Settings For Instagram
Try to upload images in the maximum size and resolution that are supported in these platforms.
Otherwise, these social media sites will compress your image according to the site specifications.
READ MORE : Lightroom Export Settings For Facebook
Organize Giveaways
It is no secret that giveaways are the type of content that goes viral on social media quite often.
As a photographer, you might not have that much to give away, but even a small prize like a framed picture from your collection should incentivize plenty of people to participate and share the contest with their social media friends.
Use Right Hashtags
Hashtags are another important part of a social media post, especially on Instagram.
The right hashtag will make your post visible to a more like-minded audience. It will help you to grow more followers on your social media page.
Do good research to select the right hashtags for your post. You can put your brand name, your name, subject in photo, place, etc in hashtags. But don’t use too many hashtags.