In today’s world, there is no way to ignore the influence of social media on people. It has changed the traditional ways of marketing for businesses or job searching for freelancers. And same goes for photography. To emerge as a popular photographer in this era, you probably need to spend as much time and effort as you did to learn your gears. Social media paves the way for photographers to showcase their work to the audience worldwide, free of cost. Yes, you might put forth examples of famous photographers who didn't need social media to be famous, but, you cannot ignore the importance of it to connect with potential buyers globally. In today's world, word-of-mouth recommendations rarely work when one has the opportunity to see the work of different photographers, compare them, and choose the most potent one before placing an order.
Why is social media necessary for you?
Social media marketing also has a great role to make your work noticed by the audience and potential clients. You can use various strategies to increase your reach in social media just like what the social media influencers do. Social media can be more effective than the internet itself. Maybe you have your impressive portfolio on your website, but chances are, people will come across more of your work in social media, than on the website. Only if they like your work there, they would be interested to find you on Google and visit your website. There are many ways for you to find your potential client on social media. You can search for online ads posted by them. But it works locally. As a freelancer, you might be reached by customers on LinkedIn. You will get a job alert as per your preference. Another way, of course, is being active in social media and having good traffic. Clients would get to see your account on top, and see your work there. It's a much more effective process.
Is it still necessary when you’re not a professional photographer?
Even if you are not a professional photographer and photography is just your hobby, you will be benefitted from social media. By following the eminent photographers in social media, you can get inspiration and learn from them directly, through live streaming and direct chat. If you are unsure about your talent and skills, you just need to post some of your works on social media. You will get confidence when you will see people appreciating them. Social media is a great platform for learning. Free lessons on YouTube or online courses are really helpful. By joining online groups in social media you can share your ideas, tips, and works among your fellow photographers.
Current Stats of Social Media Networks
Currently, 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide. Facebook is the most used social media that engages more than 2.7 billion active users monthly. Over 1 billion people use Instagram, with 500 million of them using Insta stories regularly. As per Twitter reports, there are around 187 million monetizable daily active users. YouTube has over 1.86 billion users. Pinterest, a very important social media for photographers, has 442 million users. Tumblr, which engages 327 million unique visitors, is an equally important site for photographers to display their works. LinkedIn has more than 772 million users.
Getting traffic in your social media channels
Social media also isn't a valid measure of talent. If you know the social media algorithms well and work according to that, you're most likely to have a much greater impact on the audience than your fellow photographers, even if they click better shots than you. Social media algorithms are not something static, rather it changes with time and depends on many factors like posting consistently, preferably at the same time every day, responding to comments, etc. There are some other sure-shot ways to generate traffics in your social media handles like changing the settings so that your photos or contents become easy to share, improving SEO, Using social media calendar to maintain discipline in posting, engaging with your clients, etc. And you must track the traffic of your social media handles regularly to analyze which strategy is working and which is not. If you're busy and don't have time to maintain and operate social media handles, employ a manager to do this task.
As a beginner, you can get learning opportunities and gain recognition on social media platforms. As a professional photographer, you can get walk assignments and fame there. Just keep in mind that you must encounter a lot of negative comments as they are an integral part of social media but you will learn to filter only the useful suggestions from them eventually. It will help you to handle criticism as a professional outside social media too.
Written By Sanga Basu, Content Writer, WPC
