Social media has become one of the most powerful and useful marketing tools for photographers today. Whether you use Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or one of the many other platforms, social media—if used smartly—can be a game changer for your small business. However, social media, like any other marketing tactic, takes planning, strategy, and dedication, with a clear focus on your business objectives. In this article, we’ll show you how to create a social media strategy for your photography business by outlining a few steps to help you succeed.

Set Realistic Goals

If you are creating a social media marketing strategy from scratch, it’s important to set realistic goals for your business to achieve. What you’ve determined are your main business objectives will determine how you will execute your social media strategy. Are you looking to grow your brand recognition or increase the engagement around your brand? Do you want to see more traffic on your website? Are you aiming to build relationships with potential clients?

Each social media platform will have a different advantage and therefore serve a different purpose:

• Facebook can be used to link directly to an educational blog post you’ve written on your website.
• Pinterest can be used to link people that searched for your photography niche directly to your contact page.
• Instagram can get your business name out there through shares and show off your portfolio.

Know what goals you want to accomplish, and research which platforms would best help you reach those goals.

Dig Deep Into Who Your Target Audience Is

Your social media strategy will only be successful if you understand who your audience is. Take a minute to explore who your portfolio appeals to. What type of person would be your ideal client? What interests or hobbies are they into? What style do they prefer?

As you determine what that ideal client looks like, you can break down your target demographics.

If you’re unsure of who your target audience is or what you want your audience to look like, check out who your close niche competitors are targeting. It can be helpful when you are learning how to create a social media marketing strategy from scratch. If you’re starting from the very beginning, you’ll want to be sure that your target audience is well-rounded and a good fit for the type of portfolio you have or the type of photography you’re offering.

Only Focus on KPIs That Matter (No Vanity Metrics!)

It’s important that you don’t get tied up by the wrong key performance indicators (KPIs) throughout your social media strategy. Metrics such as likes or followers can quickly become shallow predictors of how your content is performing across social media channels. While it is important to have a following as you aim to increase brand awareness, you want that following to be highly engaged with your content. A high follower count does not automatically equal high engagement.

Create high-quality content that tells a story and builds conversations with your followers. The more they interact with your content—whether that’s liking, commenting, sharing, etc.—the more your content will be pushed to your audience and therefore seen by more people, increasing your content’s reach. Once you increase your engagement and reach, it’s time to focus on the clicks or profile visits. At the end of the day, you want your online viewers to convert by contacting and booking you.

As you begin to focus on these important KPIs, understand which content performed best with your ideal audience. Which images were shared the most? Which images got the most people talking about them? Which hashtags that you used increased your reach and exposure the most? Remember: Understand your goals first to understand how these analytics will help your social media strategy improve.

Only Post Interesting Content

When it comes to choosing which content should live on which platform, it’s important to understand which types of content perform best on which platform.

For example, Facebook is good for sharing articles that start a conversation. While you can share photos and videos on Facebook, it thrives on conversations through groups and events. With Instagram or TikTok, videos reign supreme. Creating quick highlight reels that are less than 30 seconds can gain some traction on these platforms. With Pinterest, you may find success in sharing your blog posts about the types of photography you offer or how to style a photoshoot.

Depending on which platforms you choose to use, set your profile up to match the audience you are targeting for that specific platform. It’s easy to sink into wanting to post the same content across all platforms to save time, but remember that each one can target a different audience and must be designed accordingly. If you’re having a difficult time with creativity, find inspiration from other successful photographers and brands and see how they are restructuring the same types of content to fit each of their separate social media channels.

To keep yourself organized, start a social media content calendar. This can help establish what the best times are to post for each platform, posting frequency, and types of content that need to either be edited or created ahead of time. You can even find free or affordable social media content calendar options that will schedule and post the content for you, saving you time and effort in the moment.

Analyze What’s Working and What Isn’t; Then Use That Data to Optimize Your Marketing

All your hard work on how to create a successful social media strategy would be for nothing if you don’t look at your insights, analyze the data, and optimize your marketing tactics. It’s important to compile regular social media reports to understand what you can improve, what you should continue, and what you need to change.

UTM parameters are a great way to understand where your website traffic is coming from. These customizable additions to URLs can help track campaign traffic by showing which source, medium, campaign, or button a specific person used to get to your website. Using UTM parameters and Google Analytics can give you a deeper understanding of your demographics, webpage sessions, and sources that are driving the traffic to your site.

Conclusion

Social media is so much more than just posting to your social media channels and scrolling. If used effectively, it’s a great (and free) way to spread brand awareness and create an identity for your photography brand. Agency Access is here to help, as the platform that pairs you with creative industry clients that need talent like you for their projects. With these tools, and the Agency Access database, you can grow your business in no time.