Using social media to promote your photography business

Social media is a great way to build a genuine fan base for your brand at zero cost. This is true for any business type including and especially for freelance photographers. Ever since the pandemic, the gig economy has boomed. With platforms like GigVistas offering thousands of high-paying projects, almost every professional is taking freelance jobs to monetize their hobbies.

Freelance photography has emerged as one such part-time job opportunity for most work-from-home employees. Whether you are a freelancer or a full-time business, social media offers a brilliant opportunity to engage with the audience and keep them hooked with appealing work. You can win new customers and generate long-term gigs from social media if it is used effectively.

In this blog, we will understand how to plan a robust strategy to leverage social media channels to promote and get gigs for your photography business.

Leveraging social media to promote freelance photography business

Social media has been around for years, and almost everyone is fluent in its use for personal needs. However, the rules change when using the media to drive business value.

Many freelance photographers and well-established brands fail to post consistent and coherent content strategically when presenting their brands and work. Most brands either post about their accolades, heavily-technical stuff, or something entirely irrelevant. Deciding on a strategy will ensure that you control how your brand is perceived, the audience you attract, and the type of leads you generate.

Below we have listed some of the key constructs that form your social media strategy:

Know your audience

Most freelancers need help understanding the first rule of social media – understanding who your audience is. You can move ahead with your social media strategy only after you’ve established your target audience. Knowing your audience, their demographics, preferences, and related information will influence your efforts. It gives you a clear picture of where, what, and when to post.

Decide your channels

Social media is wide and deep, with multiple channels designed for a specific content format. For example, you have Instagram for visual content, YouTube or TikTok for videos, and Pinterest for creative compilations. You can pick either or all of these channels as a freelance photographer to expand your reach. You can also experiment with behind-the-scenes videos for YouTube or short video snippets to go as Reels.

Learn about your competitors

Keeping an eye out for your competitor is an easy way to refine your social media strategy. You can learn about the audience they are targeting, the channels they are active on, and their content approach. Researching your competitor will also help you identify gaps in their strategy and benefit from these shortcomings to strengthen your social media presence.

Define your objectives

Objectives are simply the outcome you expect from your social media strategy, measure appropriate metrics, and publish content with a purpose and direction. Establishing your objectives will help develop a coherent narrative and align your efforts with business goals. For example, if brand awareness, you can measure the number of followers, post impressions, web traffic from social channels, and direct messages to generate leads.

Create content calendar

Consistency is a critical factor for succeeding on social media. A social media calendar will streamline your publishing plan by helping you decide on the frequency and content categories – educational, promotional, inspiring, etc., and set a uniform tone. To avoid panic posting, most freelance photographers keep their content for an entire week, ready at any time.

Audit your performance

As a freelance photographer, you might share a wide variety of workpieces. You can audit your social media performance to get a first-hand account of what works for you and what isn’t.

One way of auditing your work is by picking the top five or ten performing posts and trying to detect a pattern. Were they posted on a particular day or time, or did you use specific hashtags? You can do a similar study for posts that didn’t perform well and identify the reasons for their failure.

Best practices to follow

If you’re a startup or a freelance photographer, social media can be a brilliant way to establish your brand positioning in the market, as you have complete control. Here are some best practices to help you get the most out of your social media efforts:

1. Set a niche for your photography business instead of generalizing it. For example, wedding photographers create content that appeals to couples.
2. Use trending hashtags relevant to your niche to make your content easily discoverable on social media.
3. Encourage user engagement by actively responding to comments on your posts and inviting the audience to share feedback.
4. Customize your work or content for the format that a particular social media prefers for easy consumption by users.
5. Run contests for your audience by offering custom-made merchandise or free photoshoot to garner more followers.
6. Always share your best work on social media. Being exceptional is the only way you can stand out in the crowd.

Starting a freelance career can be challenging if you don’t know where to find the right gigs. While remote working and online jobs allow you to try your hand at freelancing, you must pick projects that contribute to your purse without adding extra stress to your life. GigVistas is a great way to browse and pick freelance projects of your own from thousands of gigs available.