5 Instagram Tips for Photographers

If anyone asks I often play it down, “crazy isn’t it”, “no idea how it happened”, “what madness hey”.

But in all honesty hitting over 22k followers on Instagram didn’t just happen and it wasn’t a wonderful surprise.

It’s been the result of a constant effort to keep building my Instagram account.

Although I say these tips are for photographers in the title, they could really apply to any small business.

So here are the top 5 things that I think have helped me grow my Instagram account to over 22k followers in under 2 years.

1. Forget business

Instagram accounts that are flying are those that engage their followers.

They’re relatable, or funny, or inspiring.

Messages like “20% off”, “booking mini sessions now” don’t engage people.

Business messages are not relatable, they’re not funny, or inspiring and should ideally be kept to email communications.

Or if you do want to feature them in social media, then perhaps slip them into the caption after you’ve already engaged your audience with an inspiring photo, or funny anecdote.

2. Be yourself

I believe this is one of the most important factors to growing an amazing Instagram account.

People can tell if you’re being authentic and they will embrace you much more if they believe you’re being you.

Don’t copy others, come up with a vision that feeds from who you are.

Your tone of voice and the type of imagery you love. It’s even better if you’re creating the imagery you share yourself.

3. Come up with new ideas

When I share something new, that won’t have been seen before, that’s when I see the highest engagement.

These are the images that people notice, the ones they comment on, the ones they save and share.

For example I’d seen a brilliant photo a brand had taken of a child stood in front of some gorgeous wallpaper.

I loved the illustrative effect in the background and so reached out to my friend who is an amazing illustrator and she sketched some images that I then edited into my images.

The feedback on this image was fantastic achieving over 1.5k likes, over 65 comments, 560 saves and was shared 180 times.

People hadn’t seen something like that before so it grabbed their attention.

4. Post consistently

It’s not easy and it takes time.

For the past almost 2 years I have posted every single day. Even in the early days when I’d get maybe 15 likes on a post and after seeing my followers go up by 5, I’d then see them drop by 9.

But I kept going, posting every single day.

Chipping away at it. Figuring out which posts worked well and which ones totally flopped.

5. Plan plan plan

This helps me with posting every day.

I plan my posts a week in advance so that I know every day what I’m going to post without faffing, or panicking last minute.

By planning my posts it also means I can make sure that viewers are able to see immediately what I do and what I offer from just a 3 second look at my feed, so consistency is key.

6. Use the Carousel feature (I know, I know, I was only meant to put 5 tips. But I then thought of this one and couldn’t leave it out).

Instagram uses several factors to determine a posts ‘worth’ and the more worthy it deems your post, the more people it shows it to.

One factor it bases this decision on is the amount of time people spend looking at your post.

So the longer someone looks at your post the better.

This is why the carousel is brilliant and so massively underused. By posting other images, or behind the scenes, before and after editing shots, or videos you’re encouraging the viewer to spend longer looking at your post.

As a final tit bit to help you on your Instagram journey, below are some of my favourite apps to help me plan my Instagram activity:

• Preview – I use this app to plan my Instagram feed and all my posts.
• Unfold – This is amazing to create your Instagram story posts. It’s so easy to use and the templates are brilliant.
• Tezza – This is a brilliant app for editing both photos and videos.