5 Quick Tips to Boost Your Social Media Presence as a Photographer
Question #1: “I don’t know what to post! I get overwhelmed and then don’t do anything.”
This was so me for so long! You have good intentions, you know the benefits of posting consistently, but it gets overwhelming when you don’t know what to post!
Let’s first talk about what to post especially if you don’t have any recent sessions to share. What I do in my photography account for years is in my mind, I broke down everything I wanted to share into 5 categories:
- Birth Images
- Newborn Images
- Call-to-Action – I post a direct request to book us, download a freebie, anything to build my list or get people to inquire
- Personal – I share about my life
- Community – I share something going on in the birth community like midwives, doulas, or local events, or even just re-sharing their posts
To post to social media in a week, I have those 5 things in my head and I would just post 1 thing per each. With these categories, planning what to post was made easier.
Overwhelm is a choice. When you’re doing something new or challenging, sometimes it’s easier to say “I’m overwhelmed,” and stop trying than to push through the challenge. But pushing through is where the growth happens. So what if instead of saying you’re overwhelmed – you said, “this is new and different and that is how I grow and succeed?”
If you understand the power of going live or being on video, you probably have heard lots of people talking about the power of going live and video (myself included!)
Question #2: “I don’t get ready very often so I don’t love showing my face on stories.”
As I’m recording this episode right now, I have a little bit of eye make-up on, my hair is old and greasy (just being honest). And I go live and I also record stories like this all the time!
Here’s what I have to say with Instagram filters specifically -FILTERS ARE YOUR FRIEND. Throw in a filter that will make you look like you have foundation on, eyelashes – there’s no shame in that! If this will help you go on stories, definitely use some of these filters.
People do not expect perfection from you. In fact, we’re always our biggest critics. And so looking at yourself, you’re gonna be more critical than other people will be of you. People want to connect with you as a person, especially as a baby photographer.
Question #3: “How do I know what people want to see AND keep my feed cohesive?”
You know what people want to see by tracking what they’re liking, commenting on, sharing and saving! Do more things like that.
Start to pinpoint: was it the photo, the caption? What was it about this that made it enticing enough for people to share it, comment on it, and all that.
Remember when you’re testing to only test 1 thing at a time.
Question #4: “Can I schedule my posts to post automatically? Because when I have time to post it’s a “bad” time.”
Absolutely, we use Planoly. There’s so many scheduling apps. I highly recommend you post on social media when your audience is online. I’m the same as you. A lot of times when we’re scheduling our content it would be like first thing in the morning when nobody is even awake, much less ready to engage, and batching your content makes things so so so much easier!
Question #5: “I struggle to be authentic and I worry too much about offending someone if I am myself.”
I can totally relate because I still struggle with this. I still struggle with “how authentic is too authentic?”
But ultimately our goal as a personal brand is to attract AND repel. You can’t attract without repelling. So if your posts are vanilla because you don’t want to offend people, this is why you’re not attracting your ideal client AND why people aren’t engaging with your posts. By being polarizing and by intentionally repelling people, I was also attracting my ideal people.
The truth is you’re never gonna be able to make everyone happy. And people are always gonna be offended by something. So you’re either being vanilla and blah and no one’s paying attention or you’re being a little bit polarizing (you don’t have to be rude!) with who you are and people will get offended and that’s just the way it goes.
Question #6: “How do I get people to engage with my posts?”
Of course, ask a question! You probably already know this and doing this, but are you asking questions that are simple? And when your asking simple questions, are you making it about them? They’re more likely to engage if it’s a simple question that’s about them.
Start with yes or no questions or give people options to kinda train them to get used to responding. And EVERY time someone leaves you a comment, reply to their comment!
Also, are YOU engaging on other people’s posts?
That’s our super quick episode – 5 Quick Tips to Boost Your Social Media Presence as a Photographer. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I will see you next week!
