Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing and Instagram for Photographers

how do we start really getting serious about instagram we'll start with instagram will finish with interest so for us we started jason chief photo was my instagram handle it was my handle for everything and uh uh and I I developed quite a significant following their but I realized that I really love instagram as just a way to memorialize my family and my kids and and our daily activities it's so easy to crab a picture on my phone posted to instagram posted on facebook and actually have a life outside of photography but I had this nice following and was posting wedding pictures and wedding pictures and and then pictures of my kids and then pictures of our dogs and actually are dogs got a significant amount of likes so you can post pictures of dogs all day across any brand and you're going to be fine but at a certain point I realized that we really needed to separate our personal instagram from our business so what I did because I already had a kind of following a four five thousand peop...

le at this point and I think about how the white how did I not lose these people I start a new instagram handle on dh then invite everyone to transfer over that now I'm gonna have five thousand on both both sides of this and I just decided you could do just as easy as this with instagram just take your existing handle jared bellman use you jerry just jared bellman and maybe you want to call this battlement photographers now okay just going to instagram change your handle you can change in instagram you can change it as often as you'd like but just change the handle change your idea and instagram and then create a new instagram profile called jared bellman because probably during the thirty seconds that you had this new handle no one grabbed up jared bellman during that thirty second laugh so grab your old handle and that's your old new profile makes them you don't know how popular my name might be out there could be something that's very attainable and desirable I don't even know how to spell it for state probably fair enough all right fair enough but by separating that and and then what I did I did this post you'll see this is in this example I just you know I created this photo shop and I made it really clear like hey family and friends if you want personal picks come find me over here because now this is jason underscore china underscore photogs not the most creative but it's the one that worked so that's what I suggest I suggest breaking those apart with instagram there are some challenges and having two accounts first challenges it's just kind of a pain you you can't post to instagram from the web yet there's some maps that kind of allow you to do that they're just not that great I still use my phone to post everything so I actually have the log out of my personal account log into jason underscore gina post a picture there have engagement there and then multiple times today I'm logging out of one account logging into another account to an active three or four three accounts but I'm managing all of this engagement and all of these conversations independently by logging in and longing out of my phone now go in secret it's just silly but I have an ipad right here in front of me and it always has our wedding business instagram running so if I feel like I need to respond to someone's comment or beam or engaging I always have that running on my ipad just always have my ipad in front of me but if I'm at my desk my ipad is open I have noticed they notifications open for my primary business on instagram and I'd like to try to be as engaging as possible in that sense okay the benefit having multiple accounts is that you can have consistently in a very direct strategy for one instagram profile our personal one it can go weeks without a picture posted to it no big deal my business instagram profile a cz you know charity we've gotta be gotta be engaged in that we want post frequently in that you know shoot dot edit on twitter I mean they just kill it on twitter they're very consistent very strategic they're not on instagram yet I don't know if you guys ever I'm not sure the strategy around that but it's photographers we wanted way want to emulate your consistency that you do with twitter what a post often and post consistently so that z definitely beneficial to accounts now once you have your business account it's time to share images right as wedding photographers or whatever your specialty is with photography you wouldn't want to share those in which I know that's a no brainer but you really have to do it you know one of the things that I do is every time I do issued I have the images that were going tobe log in their own folder now I don't bloody know one blog's that I know of is consistently as we would like tio so I'm just gonna play that broken record I wish I blogged more but but three four times a month I tryto blogged but I have a folder full of those images and I constantly send those images over to my phone so that on a regular basis I've got a whole a slew of images I can choose from and post those to instagram right you just wanna have a good amount of images ready now I you can use a number of products we use pass from time to time so all of you all the weddings we've delivered I do have on past on my phone I can just download an image but really to be strategic every image that I would um end up putting on my block is going to make this into a verb instagram a ble right so sharing we just share wedding images share engagement photos on dh while you're at it while you're sharing you'll want to be as engaged as possible with other photographers other wedding vendors on publications we've got this picture this is from our instagram feed it's a couple in amongst the trees this was actually rehearsal dinner up in aspen late september starts snowing we have to go outside and captured this image we love it andi this post if it's on your computer screen you'll be able to see that we've got engagement from photographers from publications and vendors all all here and we really enjoy that and stay as engaged a cz we can with that so lots of interaction lots of relationship developing could happen this way you know jason there's a couple things that you've talked about it I just started kind of highlight thie interaction that goes on after you post the image is essential is that what you're saying is it's essential to continually not just post and then walk away and let the likes stack up or walk away and let you know the comments back up and stay back there's a social conversation that have to lean into an engage in in which we've been talking about here a lot over the last couple days but you're saying you actually bring people into the conversation wedding publications other vendors you know talk about more about that yeah absolutely it's when we first started out we we weii stocked wedding planner's on twitter to get to know them that's all we had at the time really facebook you kind of follow them but they had to accept a friend request with twitter you could just follow them and stocked them and get to know them and then everyone's while strategically comment and then develop a conversation on twitter I feel like a significant amount of that is has moved over to instagram and when we talk about curating an audience in a few slides we'll talk about how to reach out and build an audience but now this is an example we have an audience and they're engaging with us and yes we want to lean it that's a great word lean into that because we don't have the opportunity really that often too have these guys I don't have a reason to talk to all of these people by just sending them an email or giving them a phone call and like I said earlier I'm generally avoid into any kind of phone calls I don't want to answer a phone or diallo a phone but instagram is just so easy that I'm going to lean into that conversation onda of course I'm gonna prioritize which conversations I'm gonna lean into you know when someone says hey great shot and another photographer I may not jump into that conversation but if I have a perspective client or a bride that may might start a conversation there I'm going to help although obviously jump all over that onda also wedding publications and wedding vendors that I'm particularly fond of I really want to engage in that now in the same way that uh you know we can we can tag people on facebook and our images we can tag our clients here that's okay instagram doesn't just push this image into someone's feed because we tag them but if I if I'm doing a wedding like this with a wedding planner I might tag that wedding planner in this image just to ping them and let them know hey opposed to this amazing image from the wedding that you planned on the my instagram and I have you know six eight thousand followers that's a nice little gesture hey I'm I'm letting my followers know about you I mean right so this is the social given take yeah and they love that and you're right we do the same thing on facebook of course but this is the way we do on instagram great great okay behind the scenes photos always good as well sometimes really enjoyable so thinking of this idea of transparency you know our clients want to know about us photography is not I mean super technical but it's a relationship business on dh you know we're spending ninety percent of our life our work life nurturing relationships so we're doing this by interacting with clients via email on the phone unfortunately from time to time but on pinterest on instagram on facebook and they really want to get to know what's having a transparent about pitch on a website is all about about drawing them into you so that they they like you when they like you they're going they're going to hire you it's just the perfect fit and being transparent about your life on instagram is great now I don't think this means that we post pictures of every meal wheat or that we uh I mean if I'm a coffee connoisseur and that's part of my brand that's kind of what I do I'm probably gonna post you know one or two pictures a week of the top of my coffee cup with the cool lot little design right but that's that's not me I me I might post pictures of great colorado beer right the groom's that we shoot love colorado craft beer so would be strategic for me strategic and I used that word intentionally for me to actually post pictures of amazing beers that I'm enjoying because my clients that's part of that demographic behind the scenes here here's a picture of me this is what I look like when the bride is walking down the aisle and I have my you know my cool strap I've got michael ty but I'm wearing boots because I'm not super formal this's just letting my clients like my followers know that I'm not this you know rigid stiff photographer there's nothing wrong with any of that but we're shooting weddings in the mountains it's ninety five degrees I'm lucky that I'm wearing a button down shirt in this picture so we're all lucky jason actually we're all lucky I'm not topless in this picture they told me to wear a shirt for this yeah and then you know other in images consistent with your brand you know one of our one of our big brands for us for us is photographers is the idea of colorado colorado is its own brand it stands for the outdoors it stands for adventure one of the problems we have in colorado is all of our pine trees are dying beetles are killing all of our trees so one trend I think it's really cool is to repurpose beetle kill would for furniture and really anything so we had this is in my office this colorado flag out of repurposed beetle kill custom made super super cool aziz I think so and I think on our people think so as well so this is just more behind the scenes this is us this is who we are we're colorado we love fear way don't get too dressy for a wedding and on to the next light we do have a baby and a dog so like I said strategically sneak in pictures of dogs or babies and and really you're not gonna gain a lot of traction with other wedding maybe you will with other wedding vendors but you this's a like magnet right here these are like magnets so it is fun to sit back and watch you know five hundred likes because I've got a dog in a picture so nothing wrong with that but the idea is that I'm actually strategically sharing images that air transplant about our life and they're just kind of cute so we have wedding image engagement photo wedding image engagement photo picture of beers wedding engagement photo you know so it's a picture of our baby boy and r and r uh dog then they were up to no good right there in that picture is something is about to go down