Instagram is a great platform for photographers. Let’s dive in and see how to promote your photography on Instagram. With hundreds of millions of engaged users, it is one of the best platforms to showcase your photography expertise. As a new photographer, an influential Instagram account can help you leverage online marketing, increase brand awareness, and sell more photography.
Why Promote Your Photography on Instagram
There are many reasons why Instagram works for photographers, but here are the main three reasons below. With all the social media interfaces available nationwide, why is this interface so popular among photographers, businesses, and users? Here are a handful of reasons below:
- A visual platform with the purpose to share photos
- Networking resources
- Great place to connect with new audience & customers
Attract Your Audience to Promote Your Photography on Instagram
Attracting an audience is another essential step to building your brand. Data records document that many engaged users only have about 300 followers. Thus, if you have accumulated more than that congrats you have reached the average ranking, keep up the great work!
Keep in mind, not all users on Instagram use the platform intending to advertise. Some users simply use the platform for personal uses only. With this in mind, attempting to attract these types of prospects would be irrelevant, as many of these users don’t wish to accept requests from strangers.
The good thing is there are a variety of tools to assist in gaining a broader audience. However, it truly relies on the content. The best recommendation is to use quality content at all times. This is what can break or make your audience and the goal is to obtain Instagram growth.
Types of Content Every Photographer Should be Posting
- Ensure you post great quality content at all times
- Posting at least 4-5 times a day increases your audience
- Make sure your blog or post is relevant to your content
- Post in multiple genres to keep your audience engaged
- Architecture photography is a great format to post
- Ensure you use the optimal size for photos up to 1080 pixels wide
Using Instagram’s Shoppable Features to Drive More Sales
Instagram’s shoppable features are an extraordinary tool and perfect for Instagram growth. However, you will certainly need to bank on your site’s traffic, to use the tool effectively. The key question is how does this feature drive more sales to your site? Here are three essential reasons below:
- More than 30% purchase products or services via the web
- 20% of users make purchases on a weekly or a monthly basis
- Instagram has over 400 million users, 80% tend to follow business accounts
How to Create Engaging Content to Help Promote Your Photography on Instagram
When using Instagram for business, it is important to enhance your audience for Instagram marketing. Nevertheless, the most frequently asked question by photographers is how to get the audience to engage with posts and overall on whether Instagram marketing can grow your brand.
In the event you don’t have the time or tools to market your brand, you also have the option to seek services from an Instagram Marketing agency. The Instagram marketing agency can assist you to connect with your target audiences, using various strategies like brand identity, content development, marketing campaigns and more.
To elaborate more on this, many photographers utilize this resource if they are holding down a 9-5 in addition to having the site. This is certainly something to consider if you have the budget and don’t have the time to consistently manage your brand.
This section features a step by step guide on how to create intriguing content for your photography brand.
Search for Templates
When it comes to content there are a variety of resources you can use to assist you in quality Instagram posts and without the need of being some high shot Photoshop expert. With this being said with today’s technology increasing every day, there are more and more helpful tools photographers can gain access to.
Here are a few recommended photo editing tools, that feature pre-made templates: Online design tools such as Spark Post from Adobe, Canva, and Venngage are incredibly useful when it comes to crafting attractive visuals for social media.
- Adobe
- Canva
- PicMonkey
- Venngage
Choose Top Quality Stock Photos to Promote Your Photography on Instagram
Stock images are not favorable in today’s market. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use these types of images. A good tip is while researching, take your time, and try to find images that don’t give off a “stocky” presence.
Select photos of excellent quality. Many sites offer stock images for free but may require author attribution, which is essential. On the other hand, if you have the budget to purchase photos, this option is also recommended, whichever is easier for your strategy is what’s important. Below is a list of sites that offer free and paid photos:
- Pixabay
- Adobe Photoshop
- Unsplash
Shuffle Your Post formats
A great way to keep your audience engaged is to shuffle or rather mix-up your posting format or niche. You don’t want your audience to become bored with your posts and eventually start to un-follow. The college or carousel format is a great tool, it enables multiple posts within one post.
Short videos or post with interesting GIF s is also a great method for posting or even to sell off your products. If you want to take your brand to the next level, you can also consider the option to design your own GIF s.
Use Effective Hashtags Relevant to Your Niche
Hashtags are very useful to promote photography on Instagram if you’re using them effectively. Whatever niche or post your posting ensures the hashtags relate to your content. This is very essential because hashtags are another easier way for your audience to locate your posts. The last thing you want is to lose your audience because the hashtags you selected has nothing to do with your content. Be careful about this, as it can leave a bad stain on your brand.
Furthermore, a lot of mistakes photographers make is posting too many hashtags, which can make your posts look tacky, amateur, and unorganized. Thus, use no more than 15 hashtags. Lastly, out of the 15 hashtags, ensure their effective hashtags to grow your audience.
The great news is multiple sites feature tools to search for effective hashtags some are free and others may require payment. You also have the option to search within your Instagram account itself to locate trendy posts within the niche your posting and within the post itself, you can select favored hashtags to embed into your post. Here are a few sites for hashtags below:
- Instavast.com
- Displaypurposes.com
- Keywordtool.io
- Hashtagify.me
Network With Other Brands and Re-post
Networking is another awesome tool to promote photography on Instagram, that you can use to engage with other business owners. For this strategy, all you have to do is when you come across a post from another photographer that offers quality content.
Reach out to them on the gram to request permission to re-post within your feed, rather than just re-posting the post. This shows that you have the professionalism that stands behind your brand. This process is great because most times when you initiate a relationship with other brands like there is a possibility that the brand may re-post your posts as well.
Run A UGC campaign
This kind of content is referred to as “UGC”, or user-generated content.
Engage With Your Audience
As your audience increases, interact from time to time by commenting or liking your audience posts. This assists in building a stronger and more active feed and relationship with your audience.
Keep An Eye On Your Feed For Nudity and Profanity
As you promote your photography on Instagram, your followers will increase and you may gain followers that may post nudity or images inappropriate for business use. If this is the case, within your feed you will find unpleasant pics that can also leave a bad stain on your brand.
Remember your audience will be actively viewing your feed and you want to ensure your brand is promoting or advertising professional and appropriate images. Unfortunately, if you do find you have followers that fall in this bracket, it is recommended to un-follow them immediately, this also instantly removes vial content from your feed.
Be Attentive to Contrast and Balance
As a photographer you want to ensure your images pop and stand out, to do so, your image must have contrasting elements. This is very essential as this relates to the colors, shapes, fonts light and exposure, and more.
Quality Check Your Content Before Posting
The one mistake that many photographers make is not performing a quality check before the post is posted. It is important before you click the share button, look over the complete post to ensure there are no errors or misprints.
Use A Spell Check Tool
A spell-check tool is an awesome tool to help eliminate, grammar errors within your posts.
Use Appropriate Colors
Select colors that are good on the eyes, colors that are too bright will force followers to eventually unfriend you.
What Strategies Does Successful Direct Sales Brands Use?
Direct sales consist of trading products directly to customers and developing a connection with sales agents. Here are 10 examples of the strategies utilized by direct sales brands:
- Inbound marketing
- Replying to customers replies
- Browser optimization
- Content advertising through social media
- Google Analytics
- Yoast Seo Tools
- WP Meta Seo
- Storytelling blogs
- Reviews and testimonials
- Email marketing
12 Tips for Creating Instagram Stories for Photography Brands
Snapshots, selfies or small posts that highlight your brand can be put together in no time. So make sure your stories are compelling, the last thing you want to do is bore your audience. Here are twelve tips on creating Instagram stories for photographers
- Create compelling stories
- Include animation, audio, and music
- Ensure your stories photos/videos are of great quality
- Select a font that fits your story
- Use text frames to add pizzazz to your content
- Create polls to engage with your followers
- Create video content for visual connections
- Place a call to action to get viewers to your site
- Remember no more than 15 quality hashtags
- Create content in vertical format
- Produce a clear and intriguing title
- Make each paragraph 4 sentences long
How Photography Brands are Using IGTV
IGTV is an app designed by Instagram in 2018. The beauty of IGTV is there isn’t to much work to put in to use. Most of the features are automatic, which is one of the reasons this app is highly favored. Photographers use IGTV to locate their target audience systematically.
- Images shared using motion format
- Vertical formats used
- Genuine stories posted
How to Monetize Your Instagram?
This is a great question, however, the first thing you want to know is to build your audience first. Once your following is strong, it’s not much on where you go to get your site monetized, but rather how can you monetize your Instagram. Nevertheless, here are a few tips on how to monetize your Instagram:
- Create Instagram campaigns for brand mentions from your audience
- Affiliate Marketing
- Brand Ambassador
- Business Promoter
- Direct your audience to your blog and increase engagement for google Adsense
- Earn money using IGTV video content
- Run campaigns for businesses
You may also want to consider sponsorship posting to monetize your Instagram site. Sponsors need photographers, bloggers, advertisers, etc. with a large following and if you have that then, sponsorship may be a great tool for your preference. Here are a few resources that will assist you in finding sponsors that pay you for posting.
Additional Resources For Site Monetization
- Google AdSense
- Youtube-Sign into your google account for resources to monetize your site
30 Popular Hashtags for Photographers
- #awesome_photographers
- #collectivelycreate
- #iglobal_photographers
- #icatching
- #ig_exquisite
- #ig_great_pics
- #ig_masterpiece
- #master_shots
- #moodygrams
- #photographyeveryday
- #photographyislife
- #photographyislifee
- #photographylover
- #photographylovers
- #photographysouls
- #shotwithlove
- #throughthelens
- #worldbestgram
- #50mm
- #instaportrait
- #goldenratio
- #longexposure
- #longexposure_shots
- #longexposure_world
- #macro
- #macrophotography
- #panorama
- #igportrait
- #wideangle
- #discoverportrait
Measuring the Results of Your Instagram Marketing Strategy
Monitoring your analytics and performance is essential to building your brand. Instagram has made this strategy simply for business owners to access and view metrics right from the home feed. To elaborate more on this, once you post content, simply click within the post, tap on view insights, and just like that you can view activity and metrics for each post.
Your Instagram bio is an essential aspect of your brand and with so many resources that you can use to enhance your Instagram bio. Here are a few things you can include in your bio to spruce it up a bit.
- A brand named hashtag for tag and sharing recommendations
- Your brand’s tagline
- Website or Blog link that directs to your site
Make Sure Your Stories Are Compelling
Snapshots, selfies or small posts that highlight your brand can be put together in no time. So make sure your stories are compelling, the last thing you want to do is bore your audience.
Keep Consistency With Your Posts
Users are usually looking for consistency, thus, this is why it’s essential to post at least 4-5 times daily. Anything more than this quantity would be considered spam so you don’t want to over-post.
Once you have established a good following that sticks than you can convert to posting once a day. The key to keeping your audience to stick is to ensure every last one of those posts is of great quality. Remember, your audience depends on the content you post.
Recap & Conclusion
- Stay on Top of Instagram analytics
- Download and save everything captured.
- Make your text short and Precise
- Use editing software to add text over your images
- Place your font wisely.
- Use your friends, family, and colleagues as presenters (and tag them).
- Set the scene.
- Upload old material by exporting from editing software with new metadata.
- Use the phone’s edit feature to crop your pictures.
In this guide, we’ve provided clear and precise steps and resources for photographers to promote their photography on Instagram. Remember it’s more than just the pic in the post.
