I follow an absurd number of photographers on Instagram. I love seeing the beautiful wedding photos, the creative family photos, those newborn babies wrapped up. If you are someone who absolutely dominates the Instagram algorithm, I applaud you. Keep doing it!! However, beyond Instagram, what photographers need to focus on is owning their information.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the Instagram Basket
For one, you don’t own Instagram. You can watch the back and forth about TikTok right now. Is TikTok going away? Nobody knows. The same thing is true of all social media platforms. When Instagram is down, people FREAK OUT. But it happens! You don’t own these social media platforms, and you do not control them. Other people can decide to fuck with your perfectly curated algorithm. Accounts get suspended or hacked. There is so much opportunity for things to go wrong that you have no control over. So, keep posting, keep building connections, but have a first plan – IE a website. Let Instagram be your back up.
The other problem with putting everything in social media is you don’t know when attention is going to fade from it. Facebook is not as popular as it once was. Can’t even tell you what happened to Vine and MySpace. No adult gave two craps about TikTok until the pandemic (myself included). Businesses slowly fade on social media. However, people will always use search engines to find websites.
Is Instagram still worth it for photographers?
I say yes, but it’s a lot of fricken work to keep thinking of 10 catchy captions and reels. My advice for social media is to batch it all. Spend a couple days a month and create your content and schedule it to be posted. No one should spend 10 hours a day staring at a tiny screen.
Beyond Instagram, what photographers need to focus on is their passion. You are the beautiful, creative spirits who need to be out in the world experiencing the joys and capturing it with your camera! Don’t sit there and consume your own content all day long.
Pssst if you are wondering should a photographer have a creator or business Instagram, you absolutely need a creator account. I am guilty myself of wondering if I am businessy enough. The truth is, we are creatives who have a business. Creativity should always come first, when you start to mix up those two and lose the creativity, you’ll lose the business. And that is my uncomfortable truth of the day!
Beyond Instagram, What Photographers Need to Focus On is Their Website
I know it’s a pain in the ass to build a website. I know people who have struggled through figuring it out themselves. There are people who pay top dollar for a website and then have to call the designer back up every time there’s a problem or a weird update. Personally, I’m a small business woman. I like to raise the very talented but lesser known people up. The beautiful website you are reading this on is made by TwoFriends Design. Two kick ass women who partnered together to start this business. Call them if you’re looking for a business website.
The benefit of a website is that you own it. No one is legislating your website. It will not randomly disappear on a Tuesday. Pay your dues and your website is yours, which is pretty fricken cool in itself. It is also a great way to organize your portfolio. Instead of clients scrolling through your Instagram (and maybe missing out on your best work!) you can have multiple tabs for your highlights. Clients know where to go to see your family photography, adventure photography etc. It’s not just one long never ending feed.
First Comes the Blog, Then Comes the Captions
Unsurprisingly, my biggest take is you need a website for the blogs. WHICH can then be used to create your Instagram content. You should expect to write about 1,200-1,800 words on a single blog. Do you know how many captions and ideas you can pull from that??? I have a recent Instagram post which is a series about why Chat GPT is not great for photographers. You think I randomly came up with that? Oh no, honey. I wrote this blog- Why You Need a Ghostwriter – No, AI Won’t Work. Then used the SAME information for my Instagram. I am a big proponent of work smarter not harder. Also, something to think of when you use a blogger, you get free Instagram reel ideas and content from the blog as well. See, you’ll be working smarter too!
The reason I am harping on Instagram is that it’s the best social media platform for photographers. TikTok is cool, but most people are there to be entertained by short clips from all across the world. A very small amount of the clients who book you are interested in paying to fly you to wherever they are based on a TikTok video.
Build your website and then extend your reach beyond Instagram. That’s what photographers need to focus on. Looking for a blogger who knows the photography space? Let’s connect.