We know from conversations with our photography business students that Instagram is the source of a lot of confusion and stress for photographers. And over the years, Instagram has made a ton of changes to its platform and user interface and algorithm. Yet it seems like the fundamental mistakes that we see from newer photographers stay the same! Today, we’re tackling the first such big question: whether photographers should have a personal or business Instagram.

 

Right at the beginning of this post, we’ll tell you our firm opinion. Separating your personal and business Instagram accounts is the most common mistake we see newer photographers making. It’s one that nearly every one of our past Apprentices and Coaching Students had already made by the time they joined our programs! And we totally get it. It seems intuitive that the one of the first things you should do when you start a photography business is to start a new Instagram account for that business. After all, your own Instagram is probably private, and full of silly photos of you and your friends, right?

 

Well, in this blog we’re going to show you why we believe that conventional wisdom is 100% wrong 😉 So if you’re asking yourself, “Should I start a new Instagram for my photography business?” then keep reading!

 

 

Personal or Business Instagram: Why Start from Scratch?

Unless you’ve literally never used Instagram before and don’t have a personal account at all, you already have some sort of following! By starting a new Instagram account specifically for your photography business, you’re creating a lot of extra work for yourself !

 

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say Emily Smith already has a personal Instagram where she has 500 of her friends and family following along. When she decided she wanted to turn her photography hobby into a business, she started a new account: Emily Smith Photography. But here’s the problem: that new account starts over at zero followers!

 

Even if she posts a big exciting post to her personal Instagram account announcing her new business, and asking her friends and family to follow her new account, experience shows that less than 1/3 of her followers will make the transition to the new account.

 

 

Instead: Turn Your Personal Instagram INTO Your Business Instagram

Instead of starting over, we always recommend taking a critical eye at your current (personal) Instagram instead. Archive anything that might not be appropriate for a business page (which very well could be 100% of your posts — and that’s okay!). Then just convert your personal page to your photography business page! You’ll keep 100% of your current followers when you make the transition, even if you clear every single photo, and your grid is actually starting from scratch! It’s almost like starting a brand new account, except with a huge head-start in followers.

 

If you’ve been running both accounts for a while, it may seem like a lot of wasted effort. “But Hunter and Sarah, I’ve already worked my photography page up to 500 followers! Should I just throw all of that work and those posts away?” Well, if your personal account has 1,000 followers, then yes!

 

You can let your “Emily Smith Photography” followers know about the transition, and if you can get 40% of them over to your personal-soon-to-be-business page, then now you’ve got 1,200 followers on your fresh, “new” page! Obviously, if you currently only have a personal Instagram account, then this is easy to put into practice. When you start, just don’t start two pages!

 

 

Tap Into Your Personal Network

Maximizing your followers (and minimizing your work to get there) is great. But that isn’t actually the most important reason to merge your personal and business Instagram accounts! We know from our own experience (and that of our students) that early on in your business, it’s crucial to tap into your personal network.

 

Until your business grows to the point that you can afford to pay for marketing and paid advertising, you need to find a way to book jobs for free. And your personal network is the best way to do that! For so many of our photographer students, it was their aunt or their grandma or a high school friend they haven’t talked to in 5 years who ended up being their first paying client.

 

During our first three years in business, more than 50% of the weddings that we booked came from word-of-mouth referrals. People from our own personal network that we connected with over Facebook or Instagram made up more than half of all our business! This is especially important in the early days of your business, which is why we spend a huge portion of our Marketing and Advertising Workshop discussing how to turn your personal network into paying clients!

 

 

Personal or Business Instagram: It Makes Life Easy

I’ll never forget one of our former Apprentices who was extremely resistant to this idea of combining his two pages. This was despite the fact that his personal Instagram has triple the followers of his photography Instagram account! At the time he was in our program, he captured an image that was both photographically excellent, but also had a lot of personal meaning for him. Because of that, I saw it show up on his personal page, with a link to “see more” on his photography page. He then shared the personal post to his photography page’s story, then later that week, posted the photo again to his photography page’s feed.

 

As you can see, posting that one great photo was a lot more convoluted and complicated than it needed to be! Part of the reason this former-Apprentice left our program is because he didn’t want photography to ever be more than a fun hobby that occasionally makes money. That’s totally fine! And in that case, it did make sense to keep his two Instagram accounts separate.

 

But if you’re hoping that your photography business one day becomes a profitable side hustle or even a full-time career, save yourself the time and effort and consolidate to one Instagram account. From there, you can share both your professional imagery, as well as everything else! Plus, if you’re using a scheduling app (like Later.app that we use!), you can only connect one Instagram account anyway. But more on what else to share next week 😜

 

 

Next week we’re going to share another common mistake that new photographers make on Instagram. But until then, stop debating whether to have a personal or business Instagram or both. Go combine those pages!

 

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Check out the other segments in this blog series!

• Personal or Business Instagram: Common Instagram Mistakes for New Photographers Part 1
• What Should I Post to Instagram? Common Instagram Mistakes for New Photographers Part 2
• Best Instagram Grid: Common Instagram Mistakes for New Photographers Part 3
• Not Posting to Instagram Consistently: Common Instagram Mistakes for New Photographers Part 4

 

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