In January 2023 smartinsights.com reported that over half the world’s population uses social media, with an average daily usage of 2 hours and 31 minutes. Social media has evolved from simply updating your friends with your current mood and whereabouts to now being platforms for influence as well as a primary form of marketing and connection with clients. Users turn to social media for everything; from learning how to renovate their home DIY style to shopping their favourite brands and find services – including photographers. As a result, the rise of social media marketing on Instagram has forced current photographers to also become ‘influencers’ and content creators on the platform.
The use of social media by businesses is not new but it has evolved, in 2010 PR Newswire wrote, “As companies emerge from one of the steepest economic downturns in history, they understand the significant reach and importance of using social media to promote and rebuild their organizations. A new CareerBuilder survey reports that 35 percent of employers use social media to promote their company. One-quarter (25 percent) of these employers said that they are using social media to connect with clients and find new business, while others are using it to recruit and research potential employees (21 percent), or strengthen their employment brands (13 percent).” At this point in time, there was value in the use of social media, but there was no pressure to ‘be an influence’. Historically, the primary use of social media by businesses was often to advertise positions and recruit employees rather than sell their brand or product (PR Newswire, 2010). Businesses still turned to traditional marketing methods like print, news and TV while social media was adapting into what it is today, alongside the rise of small businesses (Omolloh & Lao, 2020) and social media influencers. In 2010 if someone wanted a wedding photographer, they googled it, if someone wanted a family photographer, they asked their friend for a recommendation – social media was not their first point of action. Amelia Claire Photography is a self-titled business run by a photographer and a friend Amelia Sherwood, her business focuses on capturing weddings and families. Amelia is a loved and well-known photographer in the Perth and Western Australian region who is a case study in the evolving nature of social media. Her online pages reach back to 2013, social media (@ameliaclairphoto) posts consisted of individual photos of her favourite shots from shoots with a caption, some hashtags and minimal other marketing techniques or incentives. Her primary focus was on sharing what she loved, and while this may have given her some business as social media platforms such as Instagram were on the rise in 2013, her primary form of business came from online Google searches and ‘word of mouth’. However, with these initial posts her journey into social media marketing begun and as the platforms evolved and changed so did she.
As a photographer myself, when I ask clients how they found me, using a pool of 100 clients, 3% say Google, 18% say ‘word of mouth’ and the majority 79% state social media, with the primary platform being Instagram followed by Facebook. Social Media has evolved to a point of precision with targeted advertising, carefully designed algorithms and a range of search features that guide a user to exactly what they’re looking for to match their perceptions and their own identity as a person (Taylor & Choi, 2022). You can now search for a photographer by looking at a location they’ve posted or been tagged in before so that you know they are familiar with the area and have the style to match. You can search by hashtags that highlight what you want in a photographer, ie. #perthweddingphotographer to get your desired service. Then there’s also the option of ‘suggested’ pages that pop up when you follow or engage with a photographer you like, sending a user clicking through profiles that are similar in style until you find ‘the one’. Another popular option is to search for photographers by joining a wedding group on Facebook for the area you are getting married in, such as ‘Everything Weddings Perth’. The user posts their date, desired budget and any other associated prerequisites. Almost instantly they’re flooded with comments from other clients or the photographers putting forward their Instagram handles so that the user can click and find an instant portfolio of work to engage with. All this being said, to be found on the other end of these searches requires the photographer to be consistently posting, curating a ‘feed’ that is desirable (aesthetic) to attract clients and sometimes even engaging with social media marketing tactics such as boosting posts or listing them as ads on Facebook through the use of Meta Business.
The world is evolving, social media is evolving – photographers have to evolve. Gone are the days of simply posting a photo because it was their favourite from the shoot. Each post is strategically picked with imagery to match the previous posts, captioned appropriately and followed by a range of hashtags to be visible to clients on the hunt. Each post is not just about showing a piece of work but also about advertising for future work. Social media requires more thought than ever before and is now focused towards being a management tool to reach prospective clients or other brands (Omolloh & Lao, 2020). Now this at its basis may not be that much of an issue, but then you add the adaptations of algorithms as well as add in varied formats of posting such as videos or reels that regularly change the game. So photographers have to learn, adapt and try to keep up. With the introduction of Tik Tok and its growing popularity, Instagram was forced to improve its own app by making videos more accessible and in a format that competed. This resulted in Instagram reels, originally 15 seconds videos primarily showcased in a portrait 16×9 format. These have now evolved to be up to 90 seconds and creators have become adventurous with the layouts and how they format each video. In 2021 Hootsuite, a popular social media management platform, conducted an experiment to find out whether reels actually increased followers, engagement and overall reach. As a result, there were some increases. Since then reels have become more popular and are the most viewed form of content across the Meta Business apps above stories and static photo posts.
Why does this matter? It all has a ripple effect. Users often view accounts with more followers as more popular or even better in their niche. To get more followers people have to create posts that are viewed by users that aren’t already following them. To get views they have to create posts that are relatable and engaging enough for someone to click on their profile. To do this well you need to post in all formats but particularly the most popular ones, like Tik Tok videos or Instagram reels. This is all happening while thousands of other users are doing the same thing and silently competing against you. Photographers aren’t immune to this effect and must also participate in this chain of events, as social media marketing is on the rise while competing with arguably ‘the best’ users of the app – influencers and content creators. So then to effectively do this, current photographers are forced to evolve and also become ‘influencers’ and content creators.
While some photographers enjoy this part of the business and the need for social media marketing, many don’t have the energy or interest to stay up to date with the most current format of posts or platforms. A common occurrence is randomly timing images to a sound and posting that. Or there’s even a trend to add a song to a single photo and leverage it as a reel by simply adding one very basic step to a normal static post.
In early 2023, West Michigan and Chicago based Photographer Ashtyne Brooke posted a reel with text that read, “Waking up to another day of being a content creator to keep my actual dream alive of being a photographer” accompanied by a video of her walking out of a room and the lyrics of a song that say, “So if I’m honest I think I’m beginning to question how much I want this”. This song ‘Chronically Cautious’, originally written by Braden Bales and in the trend vocally accompanied by Elyse Meyers (a social media influencer) has been used as a trend where people post a video that involves text questioning whether they actually want to keep doing something they have been doing. Ashtyne Brooke is not the only photographer to follow and use the trend when posting about content creation and is unlikely to be the last. The photographers engaging in the trend speak to the nature of needing to participate in social media culture and become an influencer or content creators to market themselves to be able to continue to do what they want to do – take photos and manage life as a photographer.
As a photographer myself, I feel the pressure to be constantly creating and posting online even when I am content with just delivering the photos to my clients for them to share. However, if I don’t post on my own social media accounts, then it is highly unlikely I will continue to get future work as that is where people go to investigate whether I am actually someone they want to book. It is used as a guide to establishing whether they like my style, whether I’m up to date on trends and whether I am actually good at what I do. It has become my portfolio, whether I like it or not. While a version of my actual curated portfolio is hosted on my website, I get a comparative number of an average of 800+ views on my Instagram profile versus an average of 20-50 on my website every week. This is due to access, usability and the perceived energy used. As a result, most clients will just access and engage with me, first at the very least, on social media platforms. If I want to engage above and beyond the few people that happen to stumble onto my page and gain more followers as well as clients, I do see the need for posting and engaging in the most popular formats of social media such as Instagram reels. This is because I have seen the stats as well as the success and increase in engagement with them versus a regular photo post. This is why the rise of social media marketing has forced current photographers to also become ‘influencers’ and content creators.
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References
Burgess, S., Sellitto, C., Cox, C., Buultjens, J., & Bingley, S. (2017). An Innovation Diffusion Approach to Examining the Adoption of Social Media by Small Businesses: an Australian Case Study. Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9(3), 2. https://doi.org/10.17705/1pais.09301
More Than One-Third of Employers Use Social Media to Promote Their Organizations, Finds New CareerBuilder Survey: –One-quarter of companies leverage social media to recruit and research potential employees–; –Twenty-nine percent of companies with 500 or fewer employees utilize social media–; –More than half of leisure and hospitality organizations use social media; tops industries surveyed–. (2010, Aug 18). PR Newswire https://www.proquest.com/wire-feeds/more-than-one-third-employers-use-social-media/docview/744419137/se-2
Omolloh, A. H., & Lao, T. (2020). A Case Study on Social Media as an Effective Management Tool. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 21(3), 9-40. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/case-study-on-social-media-as-effective/docview/2454441779/se-2
Taylor, S. H., & Choi, M. (2022). An Initial Conceptualization of Algorithm Responsiveness: Comparing Perceptions of Algorithms Across Social Media Platforms. Social Media + Society, 8(4)https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221144322
Websites
https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-reels-experiment/
https://www.instagram.com/bradenbales/
https://www.instagram.com/ameliaclairephoto/
https://www.instagram.com/ashtynbrooke/
Hi L, The thing is the paper is mainly concentrated on the African continent particularly.If you make an analysis of…