Do you want to attract new clients to your photography business or gain more recognition as an artist? With such a saturated market, you need every advantage you can get. If you’re a photographer in need of a boost, it might be time to harness the power of social media for yourself!
We all know that social media is a powerful tool for promoting our work. But it can be tricky to know how best to use this platform effectively when you’re just starting out or if your business has grown since its early days on Facebook and Instagram.
Don’t worry though – here are 6 social media tips designed to not only boost engagement but also generate new leads from potential customers.
If you use them correctly, you can spend more time doing what you love – taking photos! After all, a little social media savvy can go a long way.
#1. Only Post Your Best Work
Seems obvious, right? But you’d be surprised how even professional photographers can forget that every social media post is a symbol of their brand.
Your social media photography accounts should represent you as an artist or business at all times. It’s ok to be light-hearted but don’t post anything you wouldn’t show a gallery or client.
If you are already an avid social media user, you don’t need to delete your private photos and smarten up your accounts.
Create a separate profile for your business and keep your personal photos and memes on a personal account. You can even set these accounts to private to avoid any confusion with your professional work!
Rather than posting everything from your private snaps to award-winning portraits, take the time to find or take a high-quality photo that really captures the essence of your message. Your followers will appreciate seeing beautiful, high-resolution photos, so make sure to post only your best work.
You do not need to post your entire portfolio, especially if you work in many different genres. Too much diverse imagery may confuse your audience.
#2. Stay Consistent
It’s important to stay consistent in order to build a strong online presence. That means posting regularly and keeping your tone and branding consistent across all of your social media accounts.
Posting regularly will help to keep your name top of mind. If your images are always appearing in your client’s feed, your name will be familiar to them when they need your business.
Similarly, maintaining a consistent brand across all of your social media platforms will make it easy for potential clients to find and connect with you.
You don’t have to post new photos twice a day, but be careful not to let your audience forget you. These days, it’s easier for photographers to post consistently.
For example, there are many great cameras for Instagram which are built with connectivity in mind so content creators can easily transfer and share your content on the go.
If you are worried you don’t have enough work to share, you can engage with your followers in creative ways in-between more significant posts. Your followers will appreciate the effort, and you’ll be more likely to get likes, comments, and shares.
#3. Write Engaging Captions
As every social media user knows, a picture is worth a thousand words. But what if you want to stand out from your peers and say more than just “Photo by me”?
Image captions are a great way to add some personality to your photos and give your followers a little insight into what’s going on.
Whether you’re looking for a clever caption or something more emotional, here are some tips for writing engaging social media photo captions:
Keep it short and sweet
Captions should be concise and to the point. No one wants to read a novel, so it’s best to stay under 150 words when possible.
Use humor
A little bit of humor can go a long way in making your caption stand out. Just make sure not to overdo it – you don’t want to come across as try-hard or cringey.
Get personal
Share a little bit about yourself or the story behind the photo. This will help your followers feel connected to you and will make your caption more relatable.
Creative social media captions can be hard to come up with, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Test which kinds of captions get better responses on social media platforms. When you start to notice a pattern developing, you can replace the less engaging ones to ensure you keep a consistent tone moving forward.
After a bit of trial and error, you’ll be sure to write engage your followers and leave them wanting more!
#4. Use Relevant Hashtags
Using hashtags is a great way to connect with other photographers, reach new audiences, and promote your work on social media. These are essentially keywords (always starting with a # symbol) which help users filter content.
It’s important to do your research to see which hashtags are most relevant to your work, and to your audience. The first thing to do is brainstorm the words that best describe your work. Imagine what terms you would use to find your own work and check out what the results are like.
For example, if you’re a landscape photographer, using hashtags such as #landscapephotography or #naturephotography will help you reach people who are interested in those topics.
But these examples can be quite broad with many followers. If you only use very popular hashtags, your work can get lost in the social media sea!
A good way to make sure you are tapping into the right audience is to check out what hashtags other photographers in your community are using. When you get new followers, try to figure out which hashtags they found you under. What other relevant hashtags do they follow?
Using a mixture of very popular hashtags and more niche hashtags is a good blend for beginners. Try not to use the same hashtags for every single post.
If you experiment with a blend of hashtags you will eventually start seeing patterns of which ones are likely to bring new viewers to your profile!
#5. Cross-promote Your Content
One of the best ways to get more eyes on your social media photography is to cross-promote your content. By sharing links to your Instagram photos on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, you can reach a wider audience and gain new followers.
While it may take some extra effort to post your photos in multiple places, the potential rewards are well worth it.
First, make sure that your social media accounts are linked together. This way, when you post a photo on Instagram, it will automatically be shared on your other social media platforms. You can set this up for most major social media platforms for photographers.
You can also manually share links to your photos on your other social media accounts if you want to make each post custom for each platform.
Although it’s more time-consuming it allows you to experiment with your audience a bit more to get more exposure for your photo. You can try to include a different catchy caption and hashtags on the same photo across different platforms to see what kind of reactions you get.
With a little effort, you can easily reach a larger audience with your social media photography. So don’t be afraid to share your work on as many platforms as possible – you never know who might stumble upon it and fall in love with your work.
#6. Use Calls to Action (CTA)
Visual artists often find it difficult to navigate the self-promotion aspect of the business. As much as we wish it wasn’t true, simply posting your photos is not enough – you need to actively promote yourself if you want to stand out from the crowd.
One way to do this is to use calls to action in your posts. Sounds scary? It’s not as awkward as it sounds!
A social media call to action is simply asking, inviting, or reminding your audience to take action in some way. It’s another way of encouraging interaction. Inviting people to like your page, share your work, or visit your website are common examples of CTA’s.
Calls to action can be as simple as adding a link to your website in your bio or as overt as adding a “Book Now” button to your posts.
You can go further by using creative calls to action to really boost engagement and create a buzz. This can include inviting your audience to caption your photos or offering giveaways or prizes.
Whatever approach you take, make sure that your call to action is clear and easy to follow. Ask your followers to like or share your photos if you want them to spread the word about your work.
Conclusion
These six social media tips for photographers will help you get started promoting your work and building an audience.
But don’t stop here! Keep learning and experimenting with new ways to market your photography. The more you put yourself out there, the more opportunities will come your way. Now go out there and show the world what you’re made of!
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