Hi there!
I am an amateur photographer living in London. My main occupation is doing a Masters degree (clinical research) at Imperial College London, but I do some freelance work from time to time (events), mainly thanks to the jobs being advertised through the facebook page of my university's photographic society.
So I have this little dilemma which I can't really get my head around and was hoping if instagram professionals/experts might be able to help.
My main photography interests are landscape, portraiture and urban/street photography. That is how my instagram (http://bit.ly/29T8kk6) is structured (a column for each topic). I nearly always post every day, and the pictures are normally from past trips (working through a backlog of images) for landscape or they're just 'old' (within a few months) street/portrait pics. I also have a website (http://bit.ly/2abi6uF) with a 'portfolio' for different kinds of photography. And I also have a Flickr account (http://bit.ly/29Urxwy) to which I post any pictures from time to time. I ALSO have a facebook page (http://bit.ly/2aacQui) which I don't really use - only by posting pictures via instagram. So I guess I showcase my personal work in the facebook page as well.
This is the dilemma I have - I want to harness the power of instagram in order to connect with people and businesses, so that I can potentially get new clients (not necessarily events, but portraits or even commercial!). So I'm thinking that maybe I should only post pictures about events I've photographed. But the problem is that I also want my personal work to reach out to as many people as possible (and increase my following!), and I can't think of a better platform than Instagram.
I don't think I am doing the best thing to reach potential clients by posting personal photo work/images, but then I don't want to only post the event photography I have done. And I also don't think mixing both personal work (landscape/portraits/street) and paid work (events) will do much good either. Might get too chaotic. Maybe I should post pics that target potential clients on instagram and then post personal work on Facebook, or the other way around?
Also, should I stop posting 'old' pictures and just post new/fresh pictures??
Thanks for reading thus far! As you can see, I don't really know how to go on about using Instagram (and social media actually) appropriately for the intentions I have (reaching potential clients/jobs but also exposing my personal work).
I would really appreciate it if you could tell me what you think I should do/focus on. Or if you've got any recommendations? Any form of constructive feedback is very welcomed!
Do you recommend other social media platforms?
Looking forward to reading comments (hopefully there are some!)
Thanks again and have a great day!
Pablo Oriol Valls
The trick is striking a balance between having cohesiveness throughout your Instagram posts, without painting yourself into a single stylistic / thematic corner. As a photographer, I always resisted committing to a niche because I wanted to be able to shoot anything I wanted to. What I realized is that I actually really only want to (professionally) focus on one general area (athletics / fitness / outdoor lifestyle). This means that I run my Instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/calebkerr/) with that loosely in mind. I try to show a balance of my portfolio images, along with recent work, as well as some of my own life that makes for an interesting photo. I don't post pictures of my food or my friends. I have a personal account for that stuff.
When it comes to your situation / question, my advice would be this: When someone looks at an Instagram account and in the first 3 seconds is deciding if they want to follow you or not, one thing (I think) they're looking for is what is your account all about? What would they expect to see if they followed you? The "problem" with your account as it is now is that people might not want to always see architecture, and landscapes, and portraits. They have been trained to follow accounts that have a topic of some sort. If you're getting business shooting events, and that's what you want to get hired to do more of, then I'd just post event work. If you really want to shoot portraits and landscapes professionally, maybe you need a secondary account.
Another way to look at it would be to bring all the different themed content together through the processing style. An example of this would be @gearednomad (https://www.instagram.com/gearednomad/). While I do have a little bit of burnout on this style because it's become very common, it is a good example of how the account looks cohesive, but the actual subject matter varies a lot. It's the post processing that makes it all fit.
tl;dr - if you want to gain a tens of thousands of followers, that will probably only happen if you have a single theme or element that is predictable across all your images, whether it's the topic or editing style.
Thanks loads for your detailed response! :)
I agree with everything you say. And I think I'm going to have to re-think or reflect on what really matters to me photographically speaking and see what I can put under a same topic/umbrella. Like that, and as you say, one can shoot pretty much anything, as long as it relates to the account theme or topic.
The "problem" you mentioned is what I had feared would happen when I thought of the 3-themed structure of my Instagram account. Very few people will be interested in landscape, portrait and urban photography all at the same time.
I am actually considering your suggestion of having an account for business events and then a second account with either landscapes or portraits.
Yes, true, same processing style accounts are quite popular in IG and subjects are very varied as well. Don't think I'd be able to pull that off though. I think gravitating around a topic is more appealing to me.
Thing is, account's like Andrew Griswold's don't seem to have a general topic at all, but he manages to have a great following nonetheless! It's a mysterious success story to me