There’s nothing that irks me more than when I hear an Instagram guru telling people to just post more on Instagram to make sales.
I haven’t posted on my photography account since 2021 and I still, without doing ANY marketing or showing up, am generating a handful of leads every week from using it strategically.
This advice especially gets under my skin because long, long ago, I listened to that advice and I was STUCK on the content hamster wheel feeling frazzled, overwhelmed, and scratching my head as to why I wasn’t getting more inquiries as a result of posting my pretty photos.
Here’s the truth: Posting to Instagram is not a marketing strategy
Just posting isn’t going to get you more emails in your inbox of ideal clients wanting to work with you.
I’m sorry I had to say it.
Photographers simply shouldn’t be using Instagram in the way that an influencer, or Youtuber or really anyone else would. So in today’s post, I wanted to share 3 things you should be doing instead of just posting frequently for the sake of “keeping up”.
POST LESS, POST BETTER QUALITY
Rather than try to meet the criteria of a posting frenzy, I want you to liberate yourself from the hustle and instead tell yourself that you are actually doing your photography business a favor if you post LESS. I always encourage our students to grab only the best of the best of their portfolio and then post those.
Let’s be real, all of our images aren’t made to be centerpiece portfolio images, and the way you should be looking at your Instagram account, is more of a portfolio landing page, than simply a way to keep up with the hustle. So that when you post less, you provide a truly quality experience for the user who has landed on your page and you remove the stress from marketing on Instagram.
ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BE SOCIAL
Let’s be real, how often have you posted and sat there refreshing your feed waiting to see how many people “like” it only to get crickets? 5 little hearts on the labor of love that took you way too long to get together and finally post. I know exactly how that feels because that was me and the thing is, we can’t expect people to show us love if we don’t show them, love.
Instagram is social media so just posting and expecting to get love on that goes against everything anything social stands for. You give, and then you get to ask. Set a timer every day and spend time loving people and their feeds, show them that you aren’t expecting something for nothing.
The beautiful thing about this is, yes it will generate more engagement on your hard work, but also it opens up so many more opportunities sheerly through networking. I’ve also seen so many friendships come from simply going out into the Instagram world and leaving thoughtful comments on people’s content.
GET PERSONAL
When you are looking to follow someone’s feed you know what the most exciting thing to find is? That little highlighted circle around the profile image shows they have uploaded something to their stories recently. We get curious about this because this is the place where people usually show their personality, they show the behind-the-scenes…and we ALL want to know what people’s behind-the-scenes look like.
Leverage this for your own photography business. How can you share your behind-the-scenes with people who are interested in following you, or inquiring with you? When you post less you leave room for more depth and more time. So you can pop in really quickly about this meal you are cooking, or a video of you working on something for a wedding, or a cute short video of your kiddos. This doesn’t need to be something that takes longer than a couple of minutes, but instead of just posting, invite people to your brand and what it looks like to work with you.
So there you have it, 3 of my strategies for posting less and getting better results with your Instagram account have gotten us really amazing results. When we stopped running on the hamster wheel and started getting really strategic, our inquiries from Instagram took off. If you’re looking for some extra guidance in this area, or just don’t know where to start, I would love to invite you to my 4 Secrets To Booked Out With Luxury Weddings where you will learn the 4 simple steps to take you from struggling to thriving as a wedding or portrait photographer.
1. Free Masterclass: 4 Secrets To Booked Out With Luxury Weddings
3. Quarterly Marketing Calendar
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