The Importance of Social Media for Photography Businesses

By Charles Mburugu on 26 January 2012 @ 1:06 PM.

Tags: social media, photography marketing.

Social networks have become increasingly popular tools for business in the past few years. Photographers who make use of platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook to promote their work have a significant advantage over those who don’t.

Therefore, it is important to have an account with every major social media site which is a good match for your business. Add social media share buttons on all your pages to encourage visitors to share your posts and images. In addition, make sure every page and image in your site or blog is accompanied by a Facebook ‘like’ button. Those running WordPress blogs can find numerous plugins which make it easy to generate and insert these buttons in your blog. 

So, how is social media beneficial for any photography business?

1. Managing relationships

Social media offers you the opportunity of interacting with your colleagues, partners and clients through multiple platforms at their convenience. You can answer your clients’ questions, share your successes and achievements, update clients on recent projects and drive more traffic to your site or blog.

2. Brand building

Social media offers photographers the opportunity of sharing relevant content about their niche, thus generating interest in their work. With time, you could become a respected authority in your area of photography.

3. SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO rankings

Since social networks promote a culture of sharing, it increases the possibility of your content being seen, linked to and shared by other people in your community. Social media influence and engagement are becoming increasingly important in determining search engine rankings. Therefore, your tweets and posts which contain specific keywords can help improve the ranking of your site in search engines. Social media participation has been instrumental in improving the ranking of my blog which promotes istock photo discounts and thinkstock coupons.

4. Direct sales generation

Using social networks for offering services and products for sale directly needs to be done with tact. Since social media is designed to promote dialogue, continually shouting ‘Buy my photos’ or ‘Hire my services’ will only result in putting people off.

It is important to first take time to establish credibility and trust by stimulating conversation, listening and participating and sincerely helping others. Once people trust you, they will be more willing to listen to your promotion. Self-promotion should only constitute about 15% of your posts.       

5. Feedback and inspiration

It is amazing what you can learn from a network of thought leaders and peers in your industry. Whether you engage people through Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook, you will soon realise that you have access to new ideas.

Social media will offer you the opportunity to connect with many upcoming and established photographers across varied platforms. You will be able to look at their posts and learn from their techniques and ways of doing business. You will have the opportunity to ask for opinions on a wide range of issues, from negotiating with clients, improving technique to pricing your photography.

About the Author

Charles Mburugu is a technology lover who often writes for istock photo coupons and thinkstock coupons, and occasionally for Clubnet Search Marketing. He also writes about coupon deals at discount blogs that share istock photo coupons and thinkstock discounts.

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