For those with a talent behind the lens, there have never been better opportunities to share your work with a truly global audience, across the expanse of the internet. Whether you’re an amateur getting into the craft, or you have several years of experience behind you, social media is key to making it in photography in 2020. Instagram is the world’s most popular image sharing website – and is therefore the perfect platform to get noticed for your great photos. In this article, you’ll learn how to best expose your pictures to the world on this social media website.
Curating an Account
When you create and curate your online account on Instagram, you want to make sure that you’re ticking all the right boxes, initially. Ensure that you’ve shared a profile photo of yourself – preferably one with your camera around your neck, to show you’re a keen photographer. Meanwhile, write a short biography, linking to your social media elsewhere, and to your online portfolio, if you have one. Finally, when you upload photos you’ve taken, be sure do so periodically and regularly, so that you’re constantly seen on the feeds of those who follow you.
Searchable Pictures
Instagram has a number of features which allows you to boost the visibility of your photographs on the platform. Perhaps the best of these are the hashtags that you’ll use to tag your work and to sum up the contents of your pictures. When you’re creating hashtags, you need to be sure that you’re tailoring them to the crowd of people that are looking for exactly the type of picture that you’ve snapped. Explore Instagram to understand how these hashtags work – or look to the work of your favorite photographers to see which hashtags you should be using with your work.
Paid Marketing
There’s an option on Instagram to pay to boost your posts – and this is something that you should consider if you’re interested in making a business, or a career, out of your photography passion. You’ll be taken through a quick guide, on Instagram, on how to best target your advertisements, when you choose to boost your posts on the platform. Then, you’ll find that hundreds more people will come to see your shots – and many of them will stay to follow you and to look through your entire catalogue.
News Feature
If you really want to grow your follower count, you need to get some exposure. And one of the best ways to get exposure as a photographer is to have your photos seen in magazines, newspapers, blogs and other media companies, with your name and your Instagram tag attached. If you’re able to get a feature into a local newspaper, for instance, or you win a photograph competition, you’ll find that many thousands of people will flock to your Instagram page instantly, in order to see the rest of your work, and to follow your development as a photographer in the future. It’s a great way to boost your exposure in a short space of time.
Making it on Instagram can be difficult – but with great photos, and a can-do attitude, you can use the tips above to build your visibility on the platform in the future.
