Best Free Instagram Growth for Photographers

Having trouble gaining traction on your instagram? Here are tools that will help you with your instagram growth as a business owner!

• Be consistent

(you’ve heard this before and you’ll hear it again) Being consistent is the number one determinator of success when it comes to growth. If your clientele is not seeing you show up for them as your audience, there is no reason for them to invest in you. They want to see you constantly creating + be inspired. The reason you want to post so much is so your ideal clientele will envy the people you’re posting about and say “ wow, I want to do that,” or “wow I want to be one of his/her clients.” Not only do we want to post consistently (Instagram favors when you post every single day, reels 3x a week and an IGTV video once a week). If Instagram feels like a chore for you now, just start small and begin posting every time you think about it. There is no wrong time to post + the unpopular opinion is that even if it’s not an engaging time to post, your audience may see it later from another post you put up + then see how much work you’ve been putting up. The more content, the better.

• Stay up to date with the algorithm

Okay, it’s also no secret that Instagram is ALWAYS changing up their algorithm on us all. Let’s be real- this can be frustrating but the more up to date you stay on the algorithm, the easier it will be for you to succeed. For example, when reels were phasing in, if you were on the front end watching that happen + jumping on the Reel train early, you probably saw extremely good results. Though, usually it’s too good to be true + many found this with reels as they began to plateau with the amount of engagement they are getting. Usually a new feature can only last so long without being monetized, so the reels that are now sticking out are either because of their really great content (inspiring, motivational or educational content) or because they are advertisements. If I had to guess, I would say that reels may become more + more advertisements with time.

• Make save-able content.

Likes are now phasing out as saves become the new “like,” on Instagram. Some people are not even being shown how many people like their photo anymore (some have had it gone for years while others may still have the feature to be able to see their likes on their feed). Though, saves are becoming the new like. If you like a piece of content, you would save it and can categorize this to a certain “board,” similar to how Pinterest works. What this means for you if you want to be successful and get the most exposure possible is to begin creating that save-able content for your audience. This means motivational, educational or inspiring posts that people will want to save.

• Adopt features as soon as they come out.

This means every feature Instagram comes out with, you should be one of the first one’s using it. Instagram will favor the people who use their newest features and show your work with their feature to more people for doing so. It’s a selfish game play on Instagram’s part since they want to show more people about the feature they have, but if you’re one of the people using it, Lucky you! You’ll be featured on more feeds.

• Stay up to date in stories.

The real reason for Instagram in the first place was to be able to connect with people + have genuine interactions through images. Though, it became quite impersonal over the years as you just double tap the screen and continue scrolling. For this reason, Instagram came out with the stories feature which I’m sure you’re aware of. It’s no secret that your audience wants to know you behind the brand, but even more specifically as a wedding photographer. Since you are a service that is whole heartedly based on human interaction, they want to know you! The recommended amount of stories to post daily is 10 stories (which sounds like a lot), but if you get into a rhythm of showing your audience your daily routine, behind the scenes, what you’ve been working on, etc. It’s not too hard! There are many of us that find it difficult to be in front of the camera since we’re usually behind it, but trust me! People want to see YOU. My challenge to you is to make at least one story today.

• Fine tune your bio

At the very least, your bio should have your actual name in it (so people know how to refer to you), the location your based out of,  the service you provide and lastly a CALL TO ACTION. If you travel all over and can fly or drive anywhere, that’s great + I’m sure there’s some way of indicating that on there, but you should always have a home base location to show people where you’re based out of! If you are a traveling destination photographer, play around with this + you could switch up your “home” location if you feel it’s prohibiting you from getting the bookings you want.  The call to action is a very important step to have in your bio. It can be something short like “DM to book” or “email to inquire” but the more specific, the more successful you will be. For example, you could say something like “Find my engagement guide here” with a link below.

• Make your captions engaging

People can tell when you’re not being genuine or true to yourself. They can also tell when you don’t really know what to say and just end up posting something like “this session was perfect. I had so much fun with these two.” This is super cliché and we can do better. If you’re having a hard time coming up with captions, do a simple google search on caption topic  ideas for Instagram.

Here are some that you may use:

• What happened during that session that was unique or different
  • Did something happen during that session that other photographers or your clients could learn from?
  • Do you always provide an engagement session?
  • Use the weather in the photo to your favor + talk about what you do when it’s sunny or cloudy or rainy.
  • Tips or tricks to plan for your engagement session

As you can see, a lot of this is either inspirational or save-able content, meaning it is helpful content and it’s not “hey look at me I’m doing great,” content.

• Show your face on your feed

We already talked about how people want to see more of you on your stories, but this applies to your feed too! Reason being- if someone new comes to your feed and quickly goes through your feed, you want it to be obvious who’s behind the camera without them having to go searching for you. At the very least, do your best to post a picture of yourself or something in your life once a month. Most find that the most well performing posts on their business accounts are the ones of them, which may frustrate some, but use this as flattery! You are your brand and people want to understand and get to know you, not just your photographs.