You probably already know that posting to Instagram consistently is super important. In fact, in all areas of your business, consistency is crucial! If potential clients visiting your website or social media don’t perceive that your business offers consistency, it will be much harder to convince them to invest with you.

 

That goes for consistency in the images you deliver, in the way you interact with clients, and in everything else! And while we don’t think anyone is paying as close attention to how often you post as you are, this is still an important area to be consistent in! So let’s dive into the fourth common mistake that we see newer photographers making: not posting to Instagram consistently!

 

 

Posting to Instagram Consistently = Staying “Top of Mind”

There’s an old business concept called “Top of Mind Awareness” that can serve as an invaluable asset to any young and growing business. The idea is this: if you frequently put yourself in front of your potential clients when they don’t need your services, then when they eventually do, you’ll be the first business that comes to mind! In other words, you should put your photography in front of as much of your personal network as you can, even if they aren’t currently looking for a photographer. That way, when they do get engaged, or do have a baby, or do decide to invest in family photos, you’ll jump right to the top of their mind!

 

Another related business concept is the “7 Touch Principle” which says that it takes (on average) seven interactions between a company and a consumer before that consumer even remembers that company. Hopefully, these two business principles alone are enough to convince you that posting to Instagram consistently is super important for your business! This is doubly-true if your Instagram is reaching your personal network (see Mistake #1 for getting in front of your personal network).

 

One of our Apprentices recently sent us a screenshot of an Instagram Direct Message she received less than a month after she combined her personal and business Instagrams, and began posting in the way we’ve been outlining in this blog series. The message read, “Hey *Apprentice’s name*! I hope you’re doing well! I see that you do photography now. Your pictures look SO good!! How much do you charge for a session?” This Apprentice sent a screenshot of that message to us and said, “THIS is why we I take your advice! I haven’t talked to this girl in three years!!”

 

 

Consistency Isn’t Easy

Hopefully we’ve convinced you that posting consistently to Instagram is important. But you know what else it is? Difficult. This was especially hard for us in the early days of our business, since neither of us are naturally very active on social media. Before we started our photography business, we were those post-once-every-six-months people! But since we know that staying top of mind is important, we set a goal to post to social media consistently.

 

At first, the goal was just to post once each week. And even that was a challenge, as we’d sometimes go weeks without a new session! But over time, as we got busier and booked more sessions, we worked our way towards three or four times a week. Now, we often struggle to fit in all the content we want to share without posting multiple times a day! There have been seasons where we post as much as 10X per week, just to make sure we’re keeping up with the sneak-peeks and blogs of all of our clients!

 

But we found that in any season, posting consistency to Instagram and Facebook was more important than how often we posted. Consistently posting just once or twice each week, week in and week out, was better than posting 5 times in a week, then not posting for 6 weeks! We know that this is true, because many of our students post to their social media in this way, and they rarely book jobs from their social media or get high engagement. And at the end of the day, turning the curious into fans and your fans into clients is what it’s all about!

 

 

Posting to Instagram Consistently Requires Planning

Let’s recap this blog series so far. You want to be posting to Instagram consistently. And you want to post in a way that varies your content (avoiding Mistake #2). But you also want to post in a way that makes your grid look great (avoiding Mistake #3). Obviously, this is going to take some intentionality and planning! If you wait until it’s time to post, and just grab a random photo, your grid will look a mess. Plus, most days you just won’t feel like it, and you’ll post rarely and inconsistently.

 

For us, we used to sit down each Monday and plan our posts for the rest of the week. We’d start with things we “had” to post, like client sneak-peeks and blogs. We always want to get these to our couples ASAP. So the day to post these was obvious to us right away! Then, we’d fill the rest of the week’s “schedule” with other content (see Mistake #2), and write a few captions. Finally, we’d set a reminder each day at 5:00 PM to post to Instagram and auto-publish to Facebook.

 

However, as our business grew, we invested in what we think is the best Instagram scheduling tool: Later.App. Now, instead of planning our week, we can actually schedule a week’s worth of social media all at once! This is especially helpful if we know we’re going into an especially busy week. Or ahead of a week where we don’t want to be on our phones (like before a holiday/vacation). We chose Later.App because it allows us to schedule to multiple platforms all at once, including Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube. We also just enjoyed the user interface the most!

 

 

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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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