The booming of social media popularity has changed the marketing policy of businesses rapidly. As people nowadays mostly rely on social media for buying a product or service, grabbing the maximum attention of buyers from different social platforms became inevitable. 

As photographs have a huge impact on the contemporary world, starting an online photography business has a huge potential to be considered a successful career. However, as a beginner, photographers struggle to understand the business policies and tend to make certain mistakes that may have a negative impact on their promising photography business.

This article will help you understand the concept of social media marketing and the things that you should and shouldn’t pull off for social media marketing for photography businesses. So, without further ado, let’s check it out.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the form of online marketing through social media to get connected with the online communities to sell a company’s products and services. It is the most effective way of establishing a brand’s name, value, and rising sales, maintaining the pace with modern society. 

Why Do You Need Social Media Marketing For Your Photography Business? 

People these days invest their maximum time online and get inspired by others’ lifestyles. Seeing photographs of different tourist sites, mesmerizing natural landscapes, or even celebrating personal events creates desires in their hearts to experience them as well. Hence, marketing on social media through photographs can act as a brilliant way to promote the photography business.

At present, the leading social media sites for business are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. So, photographers have numerous platforms to promote their work and attract their desired clients. However, the image size requirement varies from site to site, which should be kept in mind to promote the best quality photographs. 

The biggest advantage of using social media for marketing is that business owners can communicate with their existing clients and get involved with the new ones by tracking the requirements of the clients no matter where they are in the world. 

10 Tips To Use Social Media For Marketing Photography Business

How to use social media for a marketing photography business is a common concern for photographers who are new to this marketing sector. But there is nothing to worry about as we are here to assist you. To use social media marketing for photography businesses, you must try to maintain the following techniques. 

1. Determine Your Objective and Track Goals

The first step for an effective marketing strategy is to determine your objectives and goals. For that, ask yourself the most important question “What’s the purpose of your business in social media?”  

If your ultimate goal is to gain potential clients, then your primary objective should be getting more exposure in the community. Thus, more people will recognize you and get interested in collaborating with you. 

Since social media is a competitive place, people are always in a race to achieve a greater number of followers and mostly focus on the number of likes, comments, and shares. However, on social media, all the users are not genuine. So, the number of followers you have- not all of them are your potential clients. 

Hence, rather than solely focusing on achieving followers, your goal should be to analyze your followers’ needs to understand if they fall into the category of your ideal clients. Thus, you can create a strong root for your business that will help to spread your popularity among the similar community, which will lead your business to larger targeted clients. 

2. Choose The Best Social Media Marketing Platforms

To reach maximum potential clients, choosing the right social media platform is a must. Now you may fall into the dilemma of choosing the right platform. Don’t worry; we are here to help you choose the social media platform that will work best for you. 

Before choosing the platforms, you have to decide your target clients depending on the type of work you will be doing. The user of social media varies depending on their age, profession, and purpose. 

According to the estimation of social sites- 

• Most of the Facebook users: Middle-aged people 
• Majority of Instagram and Snapchat users: Young stars or Teenagers
• LinkedIn users: corporate job holders and business professionals
• People use Pinterest for taking ideas for different occasions and concepts

Therefore, if you are planning to be a wedding photographer, you must consider using Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. People generally share their wedding moments with their friends and families through Facebook and Instagram. Hence, your business will get more exposure as they will inevitably share their memorable events posted on your business page and also act as natural marketing.

Also, while searching for wedding ideas on Pinterest, people may like your work and show interest in working with you. Besides, if you work for commercial projects, then you should use LinkedIn and Twitter.  

There is no harm in using multiple platforms. Eventually, multiple platforms will lead you to have a different variety of clients. The greater advantage of having access to multiple platforms is that your clients will get the opportunity to contact you easily, no matter which platform they use.

Alongside this, you may create a Google+ account, as many people are dependent on Google searches. Thereby, you will have the chance to get traffic from Google as well. 

3. Encourage Engagement

According to the recent social media algorithm, content with maximum engagement reaches the greater community. Therefore, instead of counting likes and followers, you must work on increasing the engagement with your followers.  

For this, you have to research your audience and create interactive and relevant contents which will grab the attention of your followers and naturally influence them to comment and share their views on your posts.

You can also follow your competitors to understand the market and learn from them. Engaging with their clients in the comment section can bring new clients for you as well. Always remember, your reply to the comments of your followers will always encourage them to share their views and opinions with you. 

4. Be Active in the Relevant Online Communities

Creating an account and making a portfolio is not enough to sell products online. When there are more options, people generally recall the popular ones. To make people recognize your existence, you have to be always active on the relevant online platforms. 

Your post must reach the viewers from time to time. The rise and fall of popularity on social media depend on how active you are on social media. 

5. Pay Attention to Trends

This is the era of hashtags. Anything that is trendy gets viral through hashtags on different social media platforms. To promote the photography business, you should use trendy hashtags to get maximum exposure.

For that, you must research your client’s views on popular trends as much as possible. As maximum purchasing decision these days depends on the current trends, to create relevant content, it is important to be well informed about the mainstream trends.

You can also participate in different competitions that can help you get viral among the community. Bear in mind that following the trend is an easy shortcut to grabbing the attention of your target clients. 

6. Share Quality Content

Do not share content merely for the sake of posting. To gain the trust of your potential clients, focusing on the quality of the content is more important than the quantity of the content. To prove your authenticity and skills, you can showcase your best works stating the services you will be providing to your clients.  

You can also make your content informative by answering the possible queries that your clients may ask. Sharing personal events can also give the viewers idea about your personality. So, try to post things that will help you to connect with your clients.

7. Use Social Media Scheduling Tools

The most important factor for effective social media marketing for photography businesses is to show your constant presence on social media, which requires regular posting at a specific time when the chances of having maximum social media users are higher. However, it will be difficult to maintain the time frame every single day. 

To make your work easy, you can use different social media scheduling tools, which will help you to post automatically on the different platforms at the same time. The 5 most popular social media scheduling tools are SocialPilot, HootSuite, Buffer, Sendible, and SproutSocial.  

8. Build Your Channels Early

By the time you are planning to use social media marketing for your photography business, there are numerous photographers who have already established their photography business on social media.

So without any delay, you should start creating your accounts on different social media platforms as early as possible and join different photography groups. Always try to appreciate others’ work and have the mindset of growing together.  

9. Build Relationships With Influencers

One of the most convenient ways of social media marketing for photography businesses is to collaborate with social media influencers. As social media influencers already have a huge number of followers, it is easier to reach a larger audience within a short time. So, try to collaborate with as many social influencers as possible from various social media sites. 

10. Consider Advertising

Social media advertisements can be considered an efficient way of marketing photography. You can reach your target audience by boosting your posts on social media. You can also collaborate with google for advertisement purposes. 

Marketing Mistakes to Avoid for Photography Businesses

Apart from knowing the techniques that should be followed, you should also know about the common mistakes that you should be aware of before considering social media marketing for a photography business. 

Not Investing in Marketing

Investment is essential for any type of business, whether it’s your time or money. To give your service a professional touch, you should invest in having professional photography gear and a studio. In addition, you have to invest your time in social media and remain up to date with SEO. Besides, collaborating with influencers and advertising will require investments as well.  

Not Using Multiple Forms of Content 

Sharing the same type of content may make the viewers feel monotonous. To avoid this problem, you should experiment with different forms of content to see which type of content the social media users like more. Your contents may be regarding your services, any intriguing story experienced with your client, tips to make them a better photographer, and so on. 

Over Promote

Anything excess is harmful. Likewise, seeing your excess posts may make your social media followers annoyed, which may result in unfollowing you or even hiding your posts. So, try to post a minimum number of posts consistently.  

Not Tracking the Social Media Analytics

Only using social media strategies is not enough. You have to understand which strategy is working effectively and which one is not. To make this tracking easier, you do not have better alternatives than social media analytics. It is not necessary that you will always get results related to your marketing strategies. 

However, collecting the demographic data will assist you in planning your strategies in a more effective way. Sadly, most photographers do not properly use this feature and fail to market their business successfully.  

Thinking Each Social Network Is the Same

Each social media has some distinctive features regarding the purpose of use, way of communication, and type of users. So, depending on these features, you have to plan your marketing strategies. You should never use the same content on every social media platform. Make some changes depending on the style of communication users prefer on those specific platforms.  

Final Verdict

To successfully use social media for marketing your photography business, it is crucial to move forward strategically. With the understanding of different social media algorithms, effective strategies, and mistakes to avoid, you will certainly be able to establish your photography business with ease. 

Every business requires time to flourish. So till then, work hard, invest your time sincerely and have patience. All the best! 

Author bio:

Lisa Rose has been creating quality and satisfactory content for more than 7 years. Having appropriate insight into writing has helped her understand clients’ requirements. At present, she is a dedicated cognizant writer and applying her skills to numerous people and their businesses to reach more people. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram.