hey guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going
to be talking about instagram and how to make it work for you as a photographer
if you haven't already please remember to press the subscribe button and hit the bell icon the
bell icon will help you out because i'll give you a notification every single time i upload
a video i upload every week and sometimes more if i feel like it we do all things photography here
mainly uh portrait photography animal photography but you know
we chat about other stuff too so the whole reason why we sat here today is because
recently the instagram ceo said we're no longer a photo sharing app now it is important to preface
that or add to it that he also followed it up by saying this for a square foot of sharing
so technically it might just be a slip of the tongue that led out the first bit which is
what everybody jumped on including me now it's important for us to be honest and assess the
situation in full and therefore instagram is not saying that photos on the platform are dead what
it's saying is that it's adjusting its strategy and algorithms to focus more on a different types
of content and that's to do with the user base of it and also where the market is moving where
people are getting more enjoyment when they're using applications it actually appears like
instagram is just kind of shooting itself in the foot and in the process it's kind of just
trying to be tiktok trying to be youtube trying to be facebook trying to be ebay
and probably a number of other websites at the same time uh in my opinion it's probably not
going to end well but we're not here to discuss my opinions i guess we kind of are but hey in the
long and short book you guys need to know that essentially instagram's algorithm is changing
again but it's changing quite dramatically so the shift in what instagram uh as an app is pushing
out to different people is switching a little bit now the actual measures and how that works hasn't
or isn't changing that much at all the thing is is that engagement has and always will be one of the
largest measures on where your stuff will rank but it's important as photographers to kind of
isolate why do you have instagram in the first place and what are you expecting to get from it
the theory behind instagram was originally that you would be discovered on instagram and therefore
you could convert viewers into paying clients via instagram that's not actually true and if
you look at instagram like that now you're gonna struggle probably a little bit more
that's because instagram rarely forms the first decision-making process that's far more
likely to be taken up with things like personal recommendations uh articles online anywhere where
a person who could be a client sees you first that is where you want to be discovered so you want to
put effort into doing that not just instagram that doesn't mean that you shouldn't put effort into
instagram but we'll come back to that in a second if you think of a marketing funnel historically
you probably have seen a diagram of a marketing funnel before you'll have a wide end that kind
of catches all of the people's and then it gets to a narrower narrower narrower end where people
drop off but you end up with a few down the bottom there that convert into paying customers
those guys are really the most important thing but you have to cast your net wide enough to
fill up the funnel at the top with that in mind you want to work out where instagram and your
instagram profile specifically sits within that funnel so for us we kind of look at instagram
differently here at that photography spot because our instagram really is a place to
share our current projects and current work that's going on at the moment and also to inspire other
photographers and share stuff about what we're doing we are not looking to convert anybody
into paying customers via our instagram that doesn't mean that you shouldn't because you can
the point is is actually the instagram is right down there at the bottom of that little funnel
just before usually somebody converts into a paying customer and what they use instagram
for for the vast majority of the general public is validation so validation when it comes to
instagram is things like checking out your uh your full portfolio if you want to use instagram as a
portfolio that's up to you your story content what you've been up to recently are you busy
because if you're busy that technically means that you're usually quite sought after and desirable
which then makes somebody feel like they are going to have fear of missing out by not booking in
so that's really important to have so you want to work out what do you need to show your target
audience that will help them validate you and your expertise and therefore convert into a
paying customer so if you step away from thinking of instagram as the start of your funnel and start
thinking of instagram as the validation center for your funnel you should really start to shift and
instead of thinking of instagram as a discovery platform you want to think of it as a relationship
building platform and therefore your content needs to suit so it doesn't matter what your aim is of
your instagram profile to gain a large following from other photographers or to gain a reliable and
genuine following of potential customers either or really you just need to know which one you're
going for with that in mind you then need to put yourself in the shoes of your target customer
so let's say for example that um i'm looking for a newborn photographer what i actually would go and
do is go and google it first and look on the maps for local listings i would ask my friends i would
check out any facebook groups that i'm a member of as a mother to be for example and i would kind of
go from there as my initial discovery if i already have heard of or seen this person's work before
then great but if not i usually will cast my neck quite wide and look at a couple of different
people and check out their portfolios and their pricing and their about page etc on their website
right so from there i then usually would go ahead and click that little instagram icon and the
little facebook icon that usually is linked on that person's website and at that point i would
then start to validate my choices here and pick between two people so often actually the social
platform isn't how someone finds you it's a post in a group it's a link off of an article it's
something that the net is cast wider and then they go to find you so you need to make sure that your
instagram profile is set up in a way that is super appealing to your target market whether that be
photographers or whether that be clients and if it is clients what are they actually interested
in what questions might they have that they need to be answered you want to answer those questions
on your website but you also want to answer those questions on your social feeds so when it comes to
instagram i would be using my story highlights to really focus in on certain things like behind the
scenes like real life shoot stuff if you're a dog photographer for example or a child photographer
you want to go ahead and basically include the good the bad and the oakley of your sessions so
if you a dog photographer most of the time people think that they can't have their dogs photographed
because they must remain on lead or in a secure area so that would be something that you could
definitely feature in a story highlight so with your stories what you want to do is make sure
that they're highly engaging so either that people watch and re-watch people can vote on stuff answer
questions all of those things help with your engagement and over time usually quite quickly
those things will push you further up the story ranking so your story will be seen faster and
more at the front of people's feeds now one thing that i want to pick up on here in terms of the
engagement side of things is you often see like chains and follow groups etc on instagram dms now
that's fine but this isn't going to help you in the long run because you're partnering with
a group of very similar people i.e photographers in most cases and usually niche specific
dog photographers even for example and what you're all doing is every new post that somebody puts out
you're going there first and you're engaging on it what that tells instagram is that people like
you would like their content not that their customers would like their content
so you've got to know how the algorithm is viewing things and the signals that we give
signals can be things like stopping on a post for a while liking commenting sharing saving all
those things are different signals and signals can mean very different things the thing is is
if you want to reach your target market being a member of these light chains and follow groups
although it kind of helps you out in terms of boosting your numbers it doesn't actually help
you out in terms of reaching people that you want to reach so just bear that in mind it's
also important to use your location specific hashtags and your tags your location tags if
you're operating in a small area make sure you get out there and visit other businesses other places
within the within your kind of geographic area and go ahead and tag all of those including adding
them so actually tag them in the image and in the caption just to make sure that you're building
those relationships with your local area that will help you with your exposure and your reach and
those things all kind of help avoid using broad hashtags because they're not going to help you get
your target customer you want to be using location specific hashtags where possible and if you can
start conversations with people who look like your target audience within your local area so
use those location pins use the location hashtags find people that might be in your ideal audience
on instagram and start to engage in their feed instagram has shown that they will
kind of help you guys out here what they do is if you both follow each other back you liking someone
else's post engaging in it commenting on it will push your post up higher in their feed as that
connection is made stronger so your main thing that you need to be aware of here is that your
engagement is key and community and conversations are vital start conversations where you can
make sure you use quite long descriptions in your posts if you're doing photo posts and you can
absolutely use your feed as a portfolio i'm not going to say don't do that i'm just going to say
make it interesting for people to come and look at if you are a working photographer
and you sell wall art make sure that you are using the opportunity of when your clients
collect the wall art to take photographs of them holding the artwork if possible smiling face
and then you can post that on your stories as a story highlight or you can post it into your
feed however you want to work it out those kind of images are really useful because they show the
general public your potential clients that other people believe in you enough to purchase a session
and buy large format work from you and therefore they're more likely to follow and do the same
humans don't like to be different so anything you can make normal is brilliant and the last thing is
the theory on posting every day if you post every day then that's fine but you need to make sure
that you have 365 images of absolutely superb level of quality to post every day of the year
and then carry on for every other day i'm far more in the school of thought post quality over
quantity so make sure you're only posting your very best pieces onto the gram if you feel like
you really need to post something and it's not great try and put it behind a carousel with a
better image on top so that your feed immediately when someone's doing that validation phase they
click on look at it they can see all the wall art going out they can see all the behind the scenes
of stuff and they can see this amazing portfolio coming up in front of them there's so much more to
instagram but that's all we have time for today so if this video was helpful for you please do leave
a comment below ask any questions that you might have and i'll see you all again really really soon