How to Use Instagram for Photographers & Creators
May 5, 2021
Instagram is an incredibly powerful tool. With over 1 billion users, Instagram can help photographers & creators reach a new audience and curate their art. It’s a place where people can not only follow your work, but support it. Knowing how to use Instagram for photographers or creators will help further your reach, create a community, and ultimately land gigs & make sales.
The first thing to know about Instagram and social media is that you actually don’t need ton of followers to land paying gigs or be a “real” photographer. What you need instead is an excellent portfolio and engaged community. This article will focus on portfolio building first, followed by community building, then examine expanding your reach.
Expanding reach (think “going viral”) is completely ineffective if you don’t have a compelling portfolio that makes people look through your work, and a community that others want to be a part of. A portfolio and community will land you paying jobs and make sales. Excellent hashtag strategy might bring people to your page, but it will not make them stay.
Portfolio Building for Photographers & Creators on Instagram
The single most important thing for any content creator or photographer is a really solid portfolio. Plenty of successful content creators aren’t on Instagram at all, and operate instead through word-of-mouth referrals and a stand-out portfolio. In order to build that portfolio, you need great photos & captions to match, effective website use, and a compelling profile.
“Quality Content”
“Quality Content” is a big buzzword in the community of Instagrammers talking about Instagram, and while it seems incredibly obvious, it’s true. Having stunning visuals is a must for photographers and content creators. If you’re just beginning as a content creator and looking how to up your photo/video game start here:
- Adventure Photographer’s Guide to Composition & Lighting
- Beginner’s Guide to Editing Photos for Instagram
- Camera Gear for Outdoor/Adventure Photographers
Creating is hard. It takes a lot of practice, and you really have to love it and want it to start seeing progress. If you’re still finding your style and voice that’s okay. Keep creating, and don’t get discouraged!
Effective Website Use
Having a great Instagram page is awesome, but it can be hard to covert that into paid gigs without an online portfolio. There are some awesome website building tools out there for people with all ranges of skills, so here’s what I would recommend:
Smugmug is great and easy to use for selling photography prints specifically. If you are exclusively a photographer and have no interest in writing, Smugmug can host your entire website and portfolio.
Squarespace offers a very sleek and professional option for portfolio building and is what I would recommend to anyone specifically interested in photos and image creation. Squarespace offers blogging options as well, but I strongly recommend anyone seriously interested in blogging invest time in creating a site at WordPress.org.
WordPress.org sites (like the one you are on right now!) are highly customizable and an incredible content management system with powerful analytics and tools to optimize SEO. If your writing is a key point of your portfolio in any way, or you aspire to seriously blog, you want a WordPress.org site.
Why you need to be Blogging as a photographer or creator
If you’re a photographer on Instagram, you need to be blogging. Blogging is a way to get people off of Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and on to your own website, where they can hear your voice directly. It makes you more memorable to the people who will become your community, and more memorable to potential clients. Not only does blogging help you connect with people who stumble across your profile on social media, but it also has incredible SEO benefits. Basically, blogging can help your site rank on Google searches.
Personally, I use Smugmug to sell prints and host pictures (embedded Smugmug photos tend to load quickly), and WordPress.org to manage my content, blog, and host my portfolio. Once upon a time I had a WordPress.com site (archived here), which was a really great starting point for me. WordPress.com sites are almost another form of social media, and training wheels for WordPress.org. If your goal is to casually blog as a way to connect with other people, WordPress.com is a great fit. If you want to land sponsored blog posts and writing gigs, a WordPress.org site is going to make that a lot easier.
I would caution strongly against using platforms like Wix or Weebly to make your website. Most people in the industry can tell when a site is made on those platforms, and it instantly takes away your credibility as a blogger. Both sites have terrible SEO optimization. A basic understanding of SEO is required to blog effectively, and using either of these sites is essentially self sabotaging in the long run. If a handmade WordPress.org site is too much of an undertaking, spend the extra money on a Squarespace site instead.
Microblogging
Microblogging is the practice of treating your Instagram, Twitter, or other social media like an extension of your blog. This can look like long form personal captions, flash nonfiction essays, useful bulleted lists, or blog content converted directly to a carousel posts.
Instagram is incredibly microblogging friendly. You can write long form captions to accompany your photos, adapt blog posts into videos or Reels, or distill blog content into a info-packed carousel. Microblogging adds clear value to your posts in a way that inspires people to share or save posts, and encourages people to keep coming back to you and your page later.
All of the paid work I have gotten from Instagram has included the phrase “I love that your page is more than just a pretty picture”. Pretty pictures are great, don’t get me wrong. People hire you for having something to say, and saying it well. Be more than just a pretty picture.
An effective microblog on Instagram will…
- Have a beautiful photo that catches attention
- Provide clear value in the post itself for people to share and save
- Prompt people off of Instagram and on to your website for continued value. (See above.)
In the above specific case study, once prompted to the initial blog associated with this post, people are then directed even father down the rabbit hole to where they can buy my book on that exact topic– Great Lakes Hidden Gems. [note: at the time of the above post I had 5000 followers and average 400 likes per post.]
This works so effectively because the post as it is provides value, but for that continued value and more information, you need to leave Instagram and visit my site directly. You don’t need to write any new content for your microblog. Instead, distill a few key points from the initial blog post, and prompt people off of Instagram and onto your website for continued information.
Another effective type of microblog is the carousel microblog. In some cases (like above) this can be a stand alone piece to facilitate conversation in your community. [note: 119 comments at a time I usually averaged about 20 comments per post.]
Fine-Tune Your Profile
Your profile on Instagram is many people’s (and potential client’s) first introduction to you as a person and a professional. In that way, it functions like a casual resume. It’s important for your bio to be clear and readable.
What to include in your Instagram bio:
- Your name and what you’re about.
- A clear profile picture with your face in it.
- A description of what you do.
- Your location.
- A reason to click your website link.
- A link to your website.
- Clear story highlights.
You can see almost any photographer on Instagram with an engaged community for an example.
Community Building for Instagram and Other Platforms
The most important determiner of successful photographers or content creators on any platform isn’t a follower count. It’s the community you have and create. In order to turn your photography or content creation into more than a hobby, you need to have an engaged community.
Your community are the people who will buy your photography prints or book, and the people who will refer you for freelance jobs and contracted gigs. These are the real life humans on the other side of accounts that read your work, and comment, and share it. But in order to have a community, you have to be nice and likable. Here’s a few tips on creating that cozy internet environment:
Reply to Comments and DMs
You are not going to maintain an engaged community without establishing a relationship (a TWO WAY relationship!) with the people who follow you. You don’t need to follow back every single person, or reply to every single dm, or like a thousand photos. Here’s what you can do instead:
- Follow back some of your most engaged community members. Engage with them, and make friends. Friends are good.
- Reply to all the first 20-30 comments on your post. Say something nice. Every time.
- Reply to your (polite) dms. Answer questions.
One thing that really used to bother me was when people asked me questions about hikes and locations. I felt like I was expected to take the time to answer, always, for free. For a while, it felt like an unfair expectation on me as a photographer and writer, especially as I have dozens of free trail guides online.
Until I wrote and published a hiking and paddling guide. It turns out if you help someone online simply because you can, they will leave that interaction with a positive impression of you. When you write a book, the people you helped for free will buy it, and tell their friends to buy it.
Helping someone for free isn’t always a feasible or perfect fix, but when you are in the stage of building your portfolio as a creator, simply being likable and going the extra mile for people goes a very long way.
Supporting Other Creators & Photographers
Other artists and creators in your field are not your competition. They are your friends.
Viewing other creators in your area or niche as competition is the easiest way to let your social media use become something toxic. No one else’s success negates or prevents your success. In fact, supporting other creators by leaving nice comments, sharing their work, and even tangibly supporting other artists like buying prints or products helps you by creating a community of support rather than competition in your niche.
By supporting other creators, you make friends and create that community that will in turn, support you. Trust me: sharing other peoples work, commenting nice things, and generally being a kind person will get you MUCH farther than asking people to share your posts, or getting frustrated on your stories about the Instagram algorithm.
Don’t do this on Instagram:
I highly recommend never directly messaging other creators asking them to follow you or share your work. Most people find this incredibly rude. The message “I’m trying to get to 1000 followers by the end of the week so I would really appreciate it if you could help out” lacks an introduction, any information about you, and any real reason why I should help you.
Creators work very hard, often for free, to build their meaningful online space and certainly do not owe you anything, no matter what size your following. I am generally happy to share the work of others. But if you ask me directly in those words, treating me like a tool and not a person, I will absolutely not help you.
It goes back to this: reach will not get you followers on Instagram. Followers on Instagram will not translate to actual sales of your work or paid projects. Followers are really not that important in the long run. “Share my work now” undervalues the work creators have already done to get where they are.
I posted this photo and caption after a video of mine went more viral than expected. As a result, I had received more critical comments and dms than ever before. It felt bad, and different, and I wanted to talk about what my real life is like, not just the life I present on social media.
Be Honest, Personal, and A Real Life Human
Ultimately, building a community on Instagram or any other social media app is about creating an ethos around yourself. Put simply, you want people to know of you (and your brand) and think of you positively. Ideally, you want people to see your name and associate it with someone who is a good person who creates art or content they like.
In order to do that, you need to actually interact with the people who follow you (ie, your community) meaningfully. A great way to do this is to share some of the honest, more vulnerable parts of your life on occasion.
Instagram as performance art
Another technique you can employ is treating Instagram like a performance. Can you think of a creator or person on Instagram whose life you need to keep updated on? Is there someone with little dramas that have you hooked? Do they have a big, highly engaged following?
Probably, they aren’t as dramatic or unhinged as they seem. Creating the type of account that people want to keep up with, is actually a really great social media strategy. Caroline Calloway is a great example of someone who has used this strategy incredibly effectively, like sold the rights to her life story effectively.
You don’t need to have a public meltdown. But if you’re a little bit messy in real life, be a little bit messy online. If part of your brand is being a little bit chaotic, then be a little bit chaotic.
Personally, one thing that I do is I will publicly share particularly obnoxious comments. I keep them anonymous, but I’ll often add a little commentary, especially if these comments touch on a subject I have strong feelings about. Is it strictly professional? No. Does my reaction make it look like I care more than I actually do? Often. But it absolutely increases engagement.
Expanding your Reach on Instagram
In general, people tend to think that expanding reach is the secret to gaining followers and having success as a creator. That is not true. Eyes on your work does absolutely nothing if people don’t like what they see and want to stay, and reach won’t necessarily translate to gigs as a creator.
What reach will do is bring people to your profile, and give you the chance to impress them. If you have a solid portfolio, evidence of content they’re interested in, and a welcoming community, then people will stay.
Using Reels and Video
It’s a not so well kept secret that Instagram Reels has massive potential to expand a creator’s reach when used effectively. Partially this is due to Instagram pushing Reels to compete with TikTok. But more importantly, video is just a part of the way we consume content today.
As a writer, I hate it. I want to write my pretty words and have that be enough. As a person who understands social media use and it’s intersection with psychology, I know that video gets a person attention more quickly than a photo or words. Not only will video get attention, but it will hold it.
Between Instagram pushing Reels out to more and more people, and the simple fact that people are likely to interact with video content, learning how to integrate reels into your content strategy is a smart move.
Don’t believe me? Both of these spikes in followers were a direct result of a viral reel. The screenshot on the left is from early March 2021, and the screenshot on the right is from mid-late April 2021, when two reels went “viral” nearly simultaneously.
Effective Hashtag Strategy
Hashtags aren’t quite dead yet. It used to be that in Instagrams old days, hashtags could get a creator a significant amount of reach. Today, it’s harder, but not impossible to see great reach from hashtags.
This post is from mid- April 2021. On this post, I used 23 hashtags, posted separate from the post as a comment. I like to scaffold my tags, and include around seven region specific hashtags, seven activity specific hashtags, and five larger hashtags (ie, #nature, #adventure). I also try and make sure about 1/3 of the tags have less than 100k posts (but still get views; generally location/activity specific).
Creating an effective hashtag strategy will vary from person to person. I’ve found that having several groups of hashtags and cycling them in and out works really well. For example, I have a set of tags specifically for Lake Superior sea kayaking, a set of tags for hiking in Minnesota, a general Midwest set of tags, and a different set I like to use for fine art photography.
Ultimately, increasing your reach on Instagram relies on good content strategy.
Content Strategy for Beginner Creators
Content Strategy: put simply, your plan for developing, creating, implementing, publishing, marketing your content & art.
If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. You’re probably already doing it. If you plan your content, you have content strategy of some kind. If you read the entirety of this article up to now, you’ve been reading about content strategy. Now you have a name for it. If you are looking to start fine-tuning that content strategy, here’s a crash course:
Plan Content in Advance
I started planning my Instagram grid using Later.com back in November 2020, when I had just over a 1000 followers. It was a little step towards content strategy. Since then, while I have migrated away from planning the aesthetics of my grid, I’ve adopted a few new ways to plan content.
My personal strategy looks like this:
Every week, I set aside three hours to free write. Based on that, I can usually find one or two journal type topics I feel that I can fine-tune and share. These posts fall into my “journal” category. I’ll pair these with a photo I’ve taken that I feel fits the mood of the writing. After, I write a few micro-trail guides. Usually these backlink to a blog on my website. I’ll fill in these microblog, text heavy posts with fluffier, “destination” posts throughout the week (more on that shortly). I write and plan all of my Instagram posts and captions in a one-three hour sit down on Sunday.
My content strategy absolutely does not end at Instagram. I spend at least three hours a week writing blog posts. I like to have at least three drafts of posts going at any given time. This pairs well with my Instagram content. When I’m ready to post a blog, usually I try and distill that blog content into the same style of microblog for Instagram content you saw above.
Use Basic Content Strategy
Basic content strategy looks like planning in advance. In order to do that well, you need to understand your audience. Know who they are and where they’re from. Decide what kind of pictures you share based on that. What do you talk about? When do you talk about it?
Here’s a brief overview of my own basic content strategy:
My content is based on my writing. I am a writer first. Within my blog you can find three categories: Travel & Trails, Journal, and Photo & Social. Almost all of my posts both on my blog, Instagram, Twitter, etc., fall into one of these three categories. Travel & Trails is the up front value for most of my community and makes up the bulk of my content. This includes trail guides, conversations about the outdoors, and destination like photos.
Journal is the nonfiction writing, real person part of my strategy. People might come to my page for travel guides, but a large portion of people who regularly return, actually purchase my books, or pay me to freelance write do so because of the literary nonfiction writing that falls under the journal umbrella.
The last piece of my content strategy as a creator is photo & social. This includes sharing edits, and photography advice, and blogs like this one. Sharing your content strategy might seem counterintuitive– do you really want other people to know exactly how you do what you do effectively? Personally, yes.
Again, helping other creators ultimately helps you, not hurts you. But more importantly, writing useful things about photography, and social media use, and being a creator massively helps SEO on your blog, and establishes you as someone who actually understands your industry. For me, being a creator is probably 20% on the trail. The other 80% is portfolio building and effective social media use. You need both.
Reframe Photos as Destinations Rather than Landscapes
The single biggest piece of advice I have specifically for photographers is to reframe your landscape or fine art photography as a destination. People will share and save the the places that they want to go. A pretty picture is great, but make sure that picture has a purpose.
For me, that purpose is to inspire others to get out on the trail and make a meaningful connection with the outdoors. I try and let that goal, sharing the outdoors in an inspiring way and facilitating those connections, inform my writing and the way I share photos.
Want to be a photographer but don’t know where to start? Click here!
