Using Instagram For Business

Photographers practising in the modern age need to learn to master the art of social media, in all its incarnations. Along with the common shared themes of routines, holidays and other personal moments, social media is a vital tool for advertising and helping brands to survive and blossom.

With the countless users worldwide, this is the best way to reach a vast and varied audience, and to top it off, it’s free!

The most popular of all the image heavy platforms, Instagram boasts an enormous user base, which in turn gives your work the largest possible audience.

Instagram works on the familiar hashtag system, which when used correctly can help you refine and target your audience. Some more pros are the geotagging feature and the fact that there is no upload limit! Here are some tips to help maximise your Instagram user experience:

Keep your content relevant:

As much as it is tempting to upload each and every image or video that you take, it is important to remember that if you are a business, you are responsible for crafting your brand. Therefore, stick to posting photos and videos that are representative of the type of photographer that you are.

Use and understand hashtags:

Make use of Instagram’s highly intuitive hashtagging and geotagging features to explore and hone in on your target audience.

As well as building your own followers, these features help you to know who your main competitors are, so don’t waste them! Hashtags can be monumental when it comes to grouping bodies of work or promoting features or concepts of your business. Using clever, popular hashtags will help introduce your work to new potential followers, who already have an interest in the subjects that you are posting.

For best use, you should use a mix of broad and popular hashtags and other niche ones that are more indicative of your work.

Stick to a schedule:

In order to stay relevant and to stay in the minds and feeds of your followers, you should upload content consistently, meaning about once or twice daily. In saying this, be sure to avoid spamming your followers and to follow our first tip in posting relevant content.

Always aim for quality over quantity.

Have an informative Bio:

Having a Bio that states who you are, what you do, and where you are situated along with any other relevant information, will save people the time and hassle of contacting you for information and save you the time of answering them.

If you have a personal website, this is also the perfect place for a link.

Networking:

Among its huge user base, Instagram has a treasure trove of potential new models, designers, stylists, or whatever else your business needs to help it grow. Get out there and start meeting new folks and building relationships ASAP. Your business depends on it!

Competitions and Giveaways:

Competitions and giveaways are a great way to entice people to share your page around to their own followers, with the chance of winning something for themselves. The great thing about this is people who follow you are likely to have followers with similar interests, so you will once again be promoted to your niche audience.

This is a great way to get your followers to work for you!

Social media has really caused a complete redesign of the photography industry and it is clear to see that this change is here to stay. With this online revolution, photographers are now gifted with more opportunities and more exposure than would have ever been imagined in the pre-digital age.

All you have to do is find a way of continually creating your best work and making sure it is directed at a relevant audience, using the various available platforms.