Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably noticed that many social media platforms are going downhill. Here’s how to best prepare for the social media storms ahead.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea for online photographers, especially if that basket is owned by a billionaire company that values profits above anything else. . While social media can be a great place to meet people, sell work, and get inspired, it can also be a source of negativity and pointless waste of time. The biggest downside of social media is that a particular platform you’ve worked so hard to grow an audience on can easily go out of style or out of business with very little notice. I haven’t counted the number of big-name photographers on Instagram that literally don’t exist on any other form of social media. This approach to growing an audience is not only risky if your corner of the Internet suddenly becomes unpopular, but you could also miss out on the opportunity to reach large groups that don’t often go to the places you go.
What can photographers do to avoid losing online audiences?
Embrace automation tools
If these social platforms are where you want to try to build an audience, then you need to stake and participate in all of them. It minimizes the risk if the worst happens and one of these spaces suddenly becomes unpopular. While I appreciate this sounds like a lot more work, there are tools like IFTTT, this will allow you to connect various social media accounts and post automatically on your behalf. So, for example, you can manually post photos to Instagram, and your Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and LinkedIn can all be updated with the same content without you having to move a finger.
Promote your social media everywhere
If you haven’t plugged in your various social media accounts across platforms, you should really start doing so. I’m sure there are a lot of people following you in one place without even knowing that you’re somewhere else online. Use tools like link tree to create a page of all your social accounts and make sure your personal website clearly shows where you can be found. Also, consider including these social elements in any print marketing you may be doing. The worst time to connect your alternate social media accounts is when the ship is sinking and everyone has stopped logging in. So be sure to get there early and gently remind people that you’re online elsewhere.
Consider not bothering with social media
There are many successful photographers out there who don’t mind social media. That’s not to say they don’t have an online presence, but they choose to connect with their audience from platforms with annoying ads and ever-changing algorithms. One powerful tool that I think is still underrated is newsletters. I talked for a long time about benefits of having a newsletter and still feel it’s the most effective way to stay connected with your audience in the future in 2022. It’s hard to know if Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook likes will survive in the years to come. no, but chances are we’ll all still have email accounts and be subscribed to different newsletters. Out of all the points raised in this article, having a newsletter is definitely the best way to avoid losing readers.
Build a website
Continuing from the idea of staying away from social media and starting a newsletter is the idea of building a website. Having a website of your own is a more secure way to stay connected with your audience for a long time. The great thing about a personal website is that you have complete control over it. No pay to promote posts, no shadow bans, and no billionaire boss telling you what you can and can’t do. As long as you keep paying the bill for your website, it will always be there. The same cannot be said for any of the major social media platforms out there. Some of my favorite corners of the internet are the creators’ websites. It’s refreshing to see great content on someone’s site without having to skim through the noise of ads or posts you have no interest in.
Additional measures worth considering
While some social media platforms are closer to extinction than others, I think photographers should back up their social media accounts from time to time. The backup not only gives you all the text you’ve written over the years, but also any pictures or videos you’ve shared. This content can be useful for new social media platforms you may join or for use on your own blog. Twitter, Instagramand Facebook all make the backup action easy enough to perform. With just a few clicks, the social platform will email through an archive of what you’ve posted over the years. This can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the amount of content you have and the amount of demand for that service. I recently requested to back up two of my Twitter accounts and it took longer than usual to receive the download links. The main thing to take away from all of this is that it’s best to take the lead in creating repositories, as you never know what will happen to these places in the future.
While it’s hard to know what will happen to these spaces in the future, all good things usually end up in some form. For this reason, photographers must bet and prepare for the worst case scenario if retaining those audiences is important to them. By taking your existing followers to safer waters, you stand a much better chance of staying connected with them in the long run. The internet can be a great place for photographers to meet clients, make sales, and build an audience. Just make sure not to put all your digital eggs in one basket, as that hard work to engage an audience will be for nothing.
Come to you
What do you think the future of social media is for photographers? Do you have any other thoughts on the best way to retain your audience? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Original lead image by Javad Esmaeiliused under Creative Commons.
