Social Media Marketing Tips for Wedding Photographers
Your business, your target audience, and your competitors – nowadays, everybody is on social media – making it a great yet common platform for advertising and marketing for wedding photographers as well. But with plenty more fish in the sea, how do you ensure that your content shines through, gets traction, and most importantly, gets you more valid leads? Well, more than one factor could play an important role in doing that, and in this blog, we take a look at social media marketing tips that could help get you your ideal clients.
The Importance of Social Media Marketing
Social media has undoubtedly changed the way we perceive the world and interact with each other. In the 21st century, whether it is an information update, a product, or a service – everything is available at the ease of our fingertips. According to this report, as of 2021, 72% of the US population uses some form of social media. This fact paints social media marketing as a powerful tool to expand your business’s reach beyond borders and time zones.
Social Media Marketing Tips for Wedding Photographers
1. Get To Know Your Audience
You are likely to have a better idea of how to sell a service or product when you know who to sell it to. This is the building block of any kind of marketing strategy, let alone social media marketing. Having clarity about the type of couples you want to target for your business will get you started, and that too on the right track. This way, you can build your online feed accordingly and pitch specific advertisements that cater to your potential customers.
2. Create a Vision
Once you have a clear idea of your ideal clientele, create a vision for how you may want your brand to appear on your social media platforms. Think: What is the brand image I want to create? Brainstorm on the different types of content you would like to post online, how you want them to look, and what they would convey. Behind the scenes posts, informational tidbits, images from a session, there are many options that you can explore as a wedding photographer. Consolidating the essence of your brand’s style in your feed is a good place to start.
3. Add Videos
By 2021, “It is predicted that an average person will spend 100 minutes per day watching online videos.” This statistic essentially points to the power of video-based content in the future of social media marketing. Incorporating videos into your social media ads could considerably boost traffic and get you a good response from your target audience. With a trend of short-form video formats on the rise, it becomes all the more important to invest in making a short yet engaging video that tells more about your brand. One way to create content that connects is to include an element of storytelling in your videos.
4. Consistency is Key
Social media platforms have become a pool of all types of content. And trends keep changing all the time, and so do the algorithms on these platforms. So what might strike as a brilliant post today might not be as effective or engaging in the near future. However, the one thing that has stayed the same and is bound to work is consistency. The more consistent you are at posting content, the better the engagement.
Moreover, having a consistent online presence for your business has become a prerequisite. It also helps you build brand recognition, a loyal following and ups your organic reach. However, consistency does not mean you have to post the same type of content. Infographics, videos, images, live streams – bring in variety, post different types of content at different hours of the day, and then analyze what works best for your brand.
5. Engage & Interact
The entire concept of social media is based on its ability to help users connect and communicate with each other, making it one of the most crucial social media marketing tips. Simply put, it’s not easy to build a strong online community without engaging and interacting with your audience. Moreover, people are not there for a one-way experience. They want to interact, inquire and express. And most of all, they want to feel heard and strike meaningful conversations.
Comments, likes, replies, mentions, DMs, saves, retweets – engagement in social media covers a broad spectrum. Aim to respond to as many comments and mentions as possible and keep the tone positive and encouraging. To make it easier, you could use social media monitoring tools to track mentions and comments. Moreover, personalized replies can help to build trust and create a feeling of authentic communication.
6. Use Strategic Hashtags
Hashtags are a way to make your posts reach more people. And the options are infinite. From #gettinghitched to #destinationwedding, there is a hashtag for every event and every mood. The sweet spot, however, lies in finding the ones that gain your post the most value. When it comes to wedding photography, you will find many trending hashtags that could do the trick. But that also means it just as quickly can get lost in the clutter. So try exploring your niche and discovering hashtags that cater to it and also have a substantial reach.
A mixed bag of hashtags with high, medium, and low reach can be a good start. Note that Instagram only allows you to add 30 hashtags per post. But remember to balance those out too. Too many hashtags could make your post appear spammy. Also, include hashtags that have your brand name in them. If you are running a specific social media campaign, you can add branded hashtags for the campaign’s name or tagline.
7. Social Media Ads
Working towards building organic traffic is great. However, sometimes, it can also feel like a drag, especially when your numbers don’t seem to shift an inch. Therefore, paid social media ads could be a credible way to expand your reach in a faster way. Whatever be your business objective, different types of social media ad formats can help you effectively advertise for it. One of the perks of pitching ads is that they give you instant feedback that can help you determine what’s working and what’s not, making them a great way to partake in A/B testing.
However, to run a successful social media ad, it is crucial to understand the ‘why’ behind it. Why do you want to run a particular ad? Do you want more engagements or impressions? Answering these questions will help you build more goal-oriented social media campaigns. Another vital thing to keep in mind while designing your ads is to make them mobile-friendly.
8. Bring Focus to the Experience
“People buy ideas, they don’t buy photographs.” This quote from Annie Leibovitz stands true for social media marketing as well. Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest – in all of your social media platforms – you are selling your services and what you can do for your clients. In the form of aesthetically pleasing and carefully curated galleries, you are intriguing your audience with the idea of how it may feel to be photographed by you.
If your content can spark a thought process or elicit a response for a need, want or wish, emotion, or a solution, it is more likely to impact the audience. Remember, this social media marketing tip and as a wedding photographer, post content (video and images) that makes the audience dream about living that experience.
Further Read: Wedding Photography Topics to Write About
In Seth Godin’s words, “marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but the stories you tell.” And what better place to build your brand’s story than on social media platforms? Remember, the social media community is constantly changing, and different things work for different markets and social media platforms. Paid advertisement, better engagement, and consistent posting, carefully planning your social media marketing strategies could serve as your starting point to take your photography business to the next level. Adapt different strategies, reflect on your mistakes, then try again – because until you try, how will you find out?
At Fotoskribe, we aim to help businesses like yours grow their online presence by delivering smart and meaningful content that engages your audience. And we do it in a way that gets Google’s attention.
For more information on how we can help – check out our pricing plans.