How To Grow Your Photography Instagram Following
We all have a love/hate relationship with Instagram. The algorithm changes, the silly follow/unfollow games people play, bots, fake followers… the list goes on. When it comes down to it, Instagram is one of the easiest ways to build a loyal and connected community of followers, and ideally that community converts into paying clients and customers. Let’s walk through 4 strategies you can start implementing today in your photography Instagram account.
Brand vs. Business:
When it comes to Instagram or any social media channel, as business owners, it’s easy to want to hide behind your service, only showing your photos/work and ignoring the fact that YOU are even there.
Here’s the good news: people want to buy from humans, not businesses. People connect with other people including you and your face. Don’t be a business, be a person.
Show your face, include photos of you in your feed, share personal stories about you, your background, your family, where you live, what lights you up everyday. The posts that you include yourself in and personal details will likely get more likes and engagement than the rest.
Plan out your feed so every 10 images you post features a photo of yourself or something personal. Of course there are boundaries and oversharing is not recommended, but staying personal and engaged is.
This is also where storytelling comes into play. When you post images, use them as an opportunity to tell a story, whats happening in the photo, whats the backstory, etc.
Photographer (and 3-time TFN attendee!) @racheljoybarehl includes a perfect balance of work images and personal images of herself and her family in her posts and stories.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Content
Deciding on what to post is a huge pain point for any of us, especially as business owners. Your content should always have a purpose. You want to produce consistent posts with a variety of categories. Mix and match to keep your engagement high. You can divide your posts into a few categories:
Educational: You’re teaching your audience something
Sales Driven: you are asking your audience to buy something from you (this should be no more than 20%)
User generated content: Use images your customers tag you in or of your product or service (GoPro is an amazing example of using user generated content in their instagram feed… and they have 13 million insta followers!)
Inspirational: Quotes are an easy topic that makes people feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside
Humorous or funny: Make people laugh! Everyone appreciates a smile, and humor will encourage engaged followers.
Use Instagram Planning Apps
It’ss much easier to batch your content out in advance, rather than trying to post in real time. When you plan your posts out, you can plan them out so they look good aesthetically which is crucial for a photography business. I try to batch out one weeks worth of posts ahead of time, then if I need to make changes here and there it’s easy to edit quickly. This process will not only make your feed look better but it will save you hours and hours of time. Add your pics, plan out the captions, add the hashtags, choose the launch date and you’re done.
Our favorite instagram planning apps are Planoly and Plann.
Add Calls To Action In Your Captions
Instagram is all about connecting with others. You want to build relationships with followers and one of the easiest ways to do this is to consistently invite your audience to take action on each post. Once you start asking your audience to do something, they will start, and slowly but surely the comments will come. Keep that momentum going on all your posts.
Here are some ideas for good call to actions you can sneak in.
Double tap if_____
Tell me what your favorite____is!
Tag your favorite__________below!
What’s your favorite photoshoot, pose, portrait session, marketing strategy etc.
Share“exclusive”content through a link
Head over to the link in my bio to signup/join.
Tag your work bestie who needs to see this
Share your biggest struggle/inspiration/motivation
Click link in bio to join my free training/grab my free download/watch a video
Describe your day in 3 emojis
That’s enough about me, what about you?
Drop me some of your fave quotes in the comments!
Caption This