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10 Free Marketing Tactics for Photographers – Part 4: Begin Your Social Media Presence

 

Happy Thursday, photog friends! If you’re ready to start booking paid photography jobs, but don’t know how to get your work in front of potential couples, this blog series is for you! Welcome back to our “Free Marketing Tactics for Photographers” blog series. Today, we’re going to discuss how a beginner portrait or wedding photography business can use social media to begin building momentum with potential clients.

 

Last week, we continued our series by talking about how your past clients can be great sources of your future jobs. But this week, we’re diving right into the world of social media presences, and how new photography business can use them.

 

 

Business in the Social Media Age

Now, you obviously don’t need us to tell you that nowadays, everyone is on social media. We’ve read that the average American spends more than two hours each day on social media, meaning your ideal client is almost definitely hanging out on social media. And keep in mind, the creators of these social media platforms didn’t create them out of the goodness of their hearts for your entertainment; social media was invented to make money! They get paid to connect the people that sell products and services with their captive audience.

 

So if your ideal client is almost definitely hanging out on social media, and the platforms were created to sell them SOMETHING, the only question is whether they’ll be consuming content that YOU produce, or content that someone else produced? Because here’s the thing: HOW you use social media makes a BIG difference. If you use it like a consumer, just mindlessly scrolling and taking in content for the sake of entertainment, it’s not going to do you any good as a business owner. But if you use it as a TOOL to intentionally market yourself as a business, you can begin reaching your network without spending a single dollar.

 

And we know that there are a LOT of different philosophies to running a social media presence for businesses. But in this blog, we’re going to focus on the two that we feel like are the most effective for the least amount of effort: Facebook and Instagram. Yes, we’ve heard huge success stories about photographers marketing themselves and their imagery on Pinterest, reaching a wider audience using Twitter or Snapchat, and using video content on TikTok or YouTube… But we believe that Facebook and Instagram are the best places to START for a photographer who is in the early stages of their business. So let’s start with Facebook!

 

Facebook Pages for Photographers

The first thing to be clear about is that, if you already have a Facebook, you likely just have a “personal profile”. That’s YOU. While you need a personal profile to do basically anything on FB, what we’re going to discuss in this video is a Facebook PAGE for your business, which is different.

 

The good news is that setting up a Facebook page for your business is super simple. All you have to do is click the little button in the top right corner of your screen with the 9-circles inside it, and click Create… Page.

 

 

Now, there’s a few reasons why we think creating a business page is more effective than JUST sharing your content on your personal profile. For starters, it allows you to access things like analytics to see how your page is growing and how your posts are performing, and it also allows you to run ads one day. But it also can help you grow beyond just your personal network, because it establishes you as a legitimate business. If you don’t have a website yet, it can serve as a home for your business online. That’s because a Facebook Page can store things like your business hours, an introduction to your potential clients, and tell them how best to contact you.

 

You can even use a photo album to show off your overall best-of-the-best portfolio (see Part 1 of this series).

 

 

Best Practices for Facebook Pages

So, whether you’re creating a FB Page for your business from scratch or you already have one, here’s a couple of best practices for setting up your business page on FB that we’ve figured out over the years:

 

Best Practice 1. For starters, a picture of you, smiling, looking at the camera, and holding a camera will most clearly communicate that YOU are the photographer who runs this business! People always prefer to talk to people, as opposed to nebulous business entities. Which of the little circles below feels more friendly, warm, and inviting? Which makes you want to reach out more?

 

Best Practice 2. Next, think carefully about how you name your business! It should be VERY easy to remember and even easier to share with a friend. We’re big proponents of just “your name” photography or some variation of that (in most cases), as opposed to something that may seem clever, but is actually generic and could be anyone.

 

Best Practice 3. Another hot tip is that if your business page is linked to your personal account, make sure your personal FB profile is presentable and professional! If a potential client clicks from your business page where you seem very friendly and personable and professional, to your personal page where you post inappropriate content, or content filled with controversial or unprofessional topics, they’re going to very quickly lose trust in you as a photographer. So if you have anything on your Facebook profile that’s unprofessional or would potentially turn off a client, now’s a great time to make those posts and images private or delete them altogether.

 

Best Practice 4. And finally, if you have an Instagram for your photography business as well, link the two accounts so whatever you post to Insta will automatically post to your FB page! This makes posting new content and keeping your FB page fresh much easier! And speaking of Instagram…

 

 

Business Instagram Accounts for Photographers

For a photographer, Instagram probably seems like the most obvious social network to be on. After all, it’s a platform that revolves entirely around posting and viewing other peoples’ photos! It’s user base also has a  different demographic than Facebook, and people come to Instagram for a different reason than the might go to Facebook. Speaking of a different user base, maybe you’re reading this blog and you’re thinking “Man, Hunter and Sarah must be so OLD that they think Facebook and Instagram is where people hang out. All my friends are on insert-other-social-media-platform-here.“ But, don’t be so quick to dismiss these two platforms!

 

Yes, Facebook has an older user base than Instagram, which in turn has an older user base than platforms like Snapchat or TikTok. And maybe you’re watching this video and the newest platform has already arrived and TikTok has gone the way of Vine (RIP Vine). But that doesn’t mean that these platforms still aren’t an incredibly powerful and easy-to-access tool to grow your following, and especially to reach your own personal network!

 

You honestly never know where your first paid clients are going to come from, and even if your ideal clients are on TikTok, maybe their parents who are actually paying for the senior photoshoot or the wedding are on Facebook, or maybe their best friend is on Instagram and is the one who recommends you. Plus, while it may be harder to “go viral” on a platform like Facebook or Instagram, it’s much easier to build a consistent and committed following, especially if you already have a strong personal network. But we’ll get to that in a minute!

 

Posting Consistently is Key

Because, at the end of the day, when it comes to posting to Instagram (and especially if you link it to your FB page so you’re posting to both platforms every time you post), the name of the game is consistency. When someone checks out your IG profile for the first time, or if they’ve been following along for a few months, if they see that you consistently post least 1-3 times a week, it communicates a few things.

 

For starters, it gives credibility — it reassures them that you’re an active business who is actively shooting. Of course, they don’t need to know that some of the photos you’re posting may have been ones you did for free, or ones that you did a year ago and you’ve just brought back to fill gaps in your social media schedule. All they see is someone who is actively keeping up a photography Instagram. The secret is that scheduling apps (like Later.App that we use!) can make this much easier than you think!

 

And if they’re seeing your imagery every time or every other time they pull up Instagram on their phone, this will keep you at the top of their mind. If they see you enough, you better believe you’ll be their first thought when the time comes around for them to book a family photographer or when they get engaged. But if you’re posting once a month, or you post 5 times in a week and then not at all for three weeks, it’s going to be way easier to totally forget about you than if you post consistently. Or if you go to a profile for the first time and their last post was two months ago, your first thought is, “are they still in business?” 

 

 

Two Instagram Accounts vs. One

Now, the last thing we want to talk about is the actual “how” of posting to Instagram. On Facebook, the distinction between a business page and a personal profile is pretty obvious — after all, you send a friend request to a person but “like” a business. But the lines are much more blurry on Instagram, where personal accounts and a business accounts look almost identical.

 

And there are really two approaches you can take: The first approach is to have a personal Instagram account where you share content from your personal life for your friends and family, and a separate business account where you share your photography work. And in our experience, this is the route that most of our students and apprentices take by default. But the second approach is to take what WAS your personal account, and convert it into a “business” account where you share both your photography work, and your personal life.

 

While we see the benefit in having two separate accounts, we believe that having a single account is a far better option for most newer photography businesses where you are your brand. Since “Hunter and Sarah Photography” is a business built on our personal brand, our Instagram account is US.

 

 

So, if you go check out our Instagram right now, you’re just as likely to see a professional image we took on a wedding day or during an engagement session as you are to see a selfie from our most recent date night or the last trip we took. We think that this shows our followers that we are — in fact — real people, not just photo-taking robots. And it also makes us more relatable to our followers, and people often want to work with people that they relate to, and could see themselves being friends with.

 

And just like this one-Instagram-account model gives potential clients a glimpse into our personal lives, it also gives our personal network a glimpse into our professional lives! When you’re first getting started as a photographer, 95% of your early jobs will be family, friends, and friends of friends. So why would you hide your photography work from them, while starting to build up a client base from scratch? We can’t even tell you how many Apprentices and Students we’ve brought into our coaching and our programs who have a thriving personal Instagram account with over 1,000 followers engaging with their personal life, then a “business” Instagram with like 100 followers who never engage with their content.

 

Don’t hide your entire personal life from your potential clients, and don’t hide your photography business from your personal network! If you’re going to share both personal content and photography content to both your personal network and your photography followers, why not just save yourself the effort and only post to a single account?! If you separate your personal and business accounts, you’re basically just dividing your efforts and your effectiveness in two, and you never know who is missing out on all that great content you’re producing! But more on winning over your personal network in Part 7.

 

And if you’re really uncomfortable about sharing your personal life publicly, like if you have kids or other circumstances that you want to keep private, we’d recommend still converting your personal account with lots of followers into your business page, and just creating a new, private, personal Instagram and just inviting your 10 or 20 close friends who you want to share your life with.

 

 

Well, that’s it for this week! We’ll be back next week with another marketing tactic, but for now, get working on that social media presence!

 

Want More?

 

Click HERE to get your free copy of our eBook: “5 Essential Tips for Turning your Side-Hustle into a Full-Time Photography Business.” You’ll also be subscribed to our newsletter, so our newest content, weekly encouragement, and exclusive offers will be delivered right to your inbox!

 

 

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Check out the other segments in this blog series!

• Part 1: Maintain a Strong Portfolio
• Part 2: Join Local Facebook Groups
• Part 3: Referrals from Past Clients
• Part 4: Begin Your Social Media Presence
• Part 5: Network with Other Photographers
• Part 6: Networking with Venues and Vendors
• Part 7: Win Over Your Personal Network
• Part 8: Our Secret Direct Outreach Method
• Part 9: Four Reasons to Start a Photography Blog
• Part 10: Get More 5-Star Review from Past Clients