Social Media Photography Success [FixThePhoto’s Expert Guide]

Your Instagram account is essentially your digital business card, as it’s frequently the first thing potential clients see. At FixThePhoto, we diligently curate the accounts of all employees to make sure they look aesthetically pleasing and professional.

For Tetiana’s Instagram profile, we:

• Created a concise bio that features her name, role, and areas of focus.
• Provided a value-focused description so the audience knows what they get.
• Added a Linktree to forward traffic to several destinations (portfolio, booking page, apps).
• Attached popular images to the top of her feed to instantly grab new viewers.

Another important Instagram photography tip is to preserve a cohesive color scheme across posts to ensure your feed looks professional. Put together a color guide if your company doesn’t have one yet, and remember about complementary colors photography and their importance to create appealing visuals. For instance, combining blues with oranges or purples with yellows is guaranteed to attract the viewer’s eye.

Stick to a palette of about seven colors that you frequently use in all your content. Whether you're taking a single picture, doing a photoshoot, or making a text-focused post, try to preserve a cohesive aesthetic that makes your work instantly recognizable.

When it comes to social media content and photography, your style is what makes your work stand out. Consider exploring the most popular brands on various social media channels and check how Instagram photographers like Brandon Woelfel, Kat Irlin, Bella Kotak, Nirav Patel, Adam Senator, among many others, use photos to convey their identity. Focus on their use of lighting, colors, compositions, and mood. Afterward, figure out how you can leverage these elements to establish a unique brand identity.

For the Fix The Photo Editor & Retouch App account, we focused on showcasing before/after edits. This approach is great since it:

• Instantly shows the quality of our editing and retouching services.
• The juxtaposition between the two versions is aesthetically pleasing, which tends to gather a lot of likes, comments, and shares.
• It helps establish trust by demonstrating what we can achieve.

You can further improve the efficiency of this strategy by adopting a consistent editing style and framing when making before/after posts to boost cohesion and ensure your audience instantly notices your content in their feed.

Tip! The basis of any branding identity is to know your audience. Edit your images and adjust their presentation to cater to their tastes and interests, be it wedding photography, moody portraits, lifestyle pics, or creative photo manipulations. If your followers feel like you understand what they want, you’ll see a natural increase in engagement.

When doing photography for social media, even the highest quality picture can lose its charm if it’s cropped poorly or looks blurry because of improper sizing. All platforms have their own resolution recommendations, and it's important to adhere to them to ensure your images look their best.

So, for instance, the recommended file size on Facebook is 1200x628 pixels. Meanwhile, the Instagram profile photo requirements are entirely different, suggesting you import images in 1080x1080 resolution.

At FixThePhoto, we use free photo resizing software to ensure all photography social media posts look sharp and are properly cropped when needed:

• Adobe Express - Quick, browser-based resizing solution with handy social media templates.
• Canva - Efficient cross-platform resizing for all kinds of social media content.
• FastStone Photo Resizer – Lightweight, quick, and optimal for batch resizing large quantities of photos.

Your average follower sees hundreds of photos daily, which is why it’s so important for your upload to stand out. At FixThePhoto, we get inspired by images we see on both social media and dedicated platforms 500px or Pinterest or even stock photography sites like Adobe Stock, Pexels, and Unsplash, as well as all the little things we say in our daily lives.

To ensure our social media photo posts are unique, we prioritize storytelling over pure aesthetics. We can also occasionally post a behind-the-scenes photo of the retouching process, or a before/after image that showcases how efficient our services are. Additionally, we like trying out different combinations of lighting, color palettes, and perspectives to show our versatility, while ensuring the overall feed still feels cohesive.

A while ago, Vadym and Nataliia managed to make a viral video, a creepy picture with a lot of hands, which helped us gather a lot of views and comments, reinforcing the belief that unique ideas are still great at boosting audience engagement.

A go-to tactic of ours, which you can see on Nataliia Omelchenko profile, is posting candid moments and personal work stories, while also discussing various issues that help the audience get a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes. This is a terrific way to connect to your followers through photography social media posts.

In the ever-changing social media landscape, a cluttered image is usually ignored. You need to ensure the viewer’s eye is instantly locked onto the subject and the message behind the photo is clear. For instance, when I’m taking portrait or product photos for Instagram, I tend to include a lot of negative space around the subject to avoid diluting the viewer’s attention. I also like to follow the rule of thirds in photography, framing the subject off-center to achieve a more dynamic and balanced composition.

In my experience, images that have an abundance of little distractions receive around 35% less views and engagement than cleaner, more focused posts. Guiding lines, like a road or the edge of a table, lead the viewers’ eyes straight to the subject. Additionally, a cleaner photo looks better on smaller smartphone screens, which are the main devices used for viewing social media content.

When it comes to photography social media marketing, the key is to pick a caption that will resonate with the audience while advertising your photography brand. Due to how social media for photographers like Instagram and Twitter have changed, people no longer just look at the picture; they're also interested in learning the story behind it. As such, you need to put in the time and effort into writing the caption.

On Daniel Zhus’s page, I’ve seen plenty of images with well-written captions and enticing CTAs, which helped him enjoy up to 30% more comments and 20% higher saves when compared to content with single-line or generic captions. This goes to show how impactful a good caption can be for engaging your audience and increasing your reach.

Check out these social media photography tips that can help you write better Instagram captions:

• Strong beginning. Catch their attention with the first line. For instance, “Want to completely change the look of your selfies in a few taps?”
• Provide context. Share a story or insight, like the process of setting up lighting equipment or retouching a specific type of photo.
• Don’t be afraid to use emojis. Add relevant emojis to make the caption feel more personable.
• Leverage hashtags. Feature popular hashtags like #photographytips, #photoediting, as well as more specific ones like #portraitretouch or #fixthephotoapp to appeal to both general and targeted audiences.
• Add a call to action (CTA). Prompt followers to engage, for instance: “Double-tap if you like the result!” or “Tag a friend who might benefit from this trick!”
• Cater to your audience. Stick to a language and tone that matches what your audience expects from you, whether casual, professional, or humorous.
• Know your limits. Ensure the caption is focused and easy to understand. Don’t use long blocks of text.
• Edit. Proofread to avoid any grammatical errors or poorly-constructed sentences.

Pick the right length for each platform to ensure your audience doesn’t feel overwhelmed or shorthanded.

At FixThePhoto, all our bloggers dedicate a lot of effort to producing “How To” posts since such an Instagram photo idea is extremely efficient at engaging followers by offering them something they actually need. Step-by-step guides, tutorials, and tips allow your audience to master new skills while you get to demonstrate your own image retouching and photography expertise.

From our observation, uploads that are accompanied by clear, useful how-to tips achieve up to 50% more engagement compared to other posts. Users tend to like such content more, leave more comments, and share it on their own socials, which is perfect for organic growth.

To craft engaging social media photography guides, I suggest providing clear and concise visualized instructions. Add before-and-after images, short clips, or carousel posts to ensure each step is presented engagingly. For instance, tools like GenApe AI can help refine visuals or adjust backgrounds, making your how-to posts even clearer for the audience. Remember to write captions that cover the importance of every step.

You can consider using these Instagram photography tips for your content:

• Dedicate each post to individual skills or techniques.
• Write in an easy-to-understand style.
• Add examples or results to ensure the audience is confident in your expertise.
• End with a call to action like “Try this and tag me!”

Crafting useful how-to posts helps grow a dedicated following and establish it as a go-to page for relevant tutorials, which can be instrumental for continuously increasing your reach.

The key to achieving success on social media for photography experts is consistency. Frequent posts ensure continuous engagement and let the algorithm know that you’re active and can be promoted to new users. At FixThePhoto, we strive to make at least 4 posts per week without ever sacrificing quality or overwhelming our followers with needless posts.

To properly manage such a schedule, I employ social media management tools like Later, Hootsuite, and Buffer. Sometimes I also use Turbologo to prepare quick, branded visuals that keep the feed looking cohesive. They help me plan, sort, and track existing and future posts, which helps me stay organized and efficient.

Some recommendations to ensure you’re doing photography marketing properly:

• Draft a content calendar to plan out posts and campaigns.
• Combine multiple content types – images, clips, carousels, and Stories.
• Schedule posts for hours when your audience is most active, which you can determine by examining your analytics.
• Remember to analyze post performance and tweak your strategy to optimize reach and engagement.

Stories and Reels let us produce engaging behind-the-scenes tidbits, editing recommendations, and creative photo ideas, ensuring our social media photoshoot content is more relatable and engaging. Our Reels receive up to 60% more views and likes than other posts, while Stories ensure we give and receive feedback from our audience, increasing page visits by around 35%. Such consistency has allowed us to build an ever-growing community dedicated to our brand.

• We tested a wide range of software for producing and editing Reels and Stories, including InShot, CapCut, and Adobe Premiere Rush.
• Aim for short and concise videos, between 15 and 30 seconds in length, to secure maximum engagement.
• Add interactive stickers like polls, quizzes, or questions to further encourage your audience to engage with your content.
• Add captions or text overlays to ensure your content is easy to understand, even to users who browse on mute.

Tip! Add original audio when possible. Original sounds increase the uniqueness of your posts and make them more preferable to the algorithms. Consider making your sound clips in apps like Voice Memos or GarageBand, or check out the trending clips in Instagram’s music library that match your content’s vibe.

Promoting content from fellow social media photographers can be a great way to reach the wider photography community. Beautiful photos, handy tips and tricks, and behind-the-scenes stories allow you to always share interesting content while establishing relationships with colleagues in your field.

If you’re handling social media for a photography business, curation highlights how connected you are to the industry and how you value different perspectives, which can be useful for reaching a larger audience.

If you’re interested in curating content as well, here are some recommendations to take into account:

• Remember to credit the creator clearly to avoid infringing on their content or losing your reputation.
• Pick imagery that matches your brand’s style and tone to ensure your feed still looks cohesive.
• Provide commentary or insights to ensure you’re adding something and not simply reposting another person’s creation.
• Mix curated uploads with your original content to ensure your page is still primarily about you.

By carefully curating posts, you offer more variety to your followers, can network with other photographers, and build a reputation as a knowledgeable social media photographer.

Communicating with your audience is a must if you want to have a real sense of community around your brand. Remember to reply to comments and questions so that your followers know they’re more than just engagement metrics for you.

Another thing we do is include questions in our captions, prompting users to share their own opinions and thoughts. Engaging with your audience like this facilitates trust, increases reach, and makes you more appealing to the algorithm, which tends to prefer active communities.

We know the importance of proper marketing when it comes to scaling a photography business, hence why there's a shortlist of dependable digital marketing agencies that have proven to provide great results when assisting brands with increasing their online presence quickly and efficiently.

Social media photos can help you create meaningful connections with other people, a percentage of whom will eventually become your clients. That's why properly showcasing your brand and content is so important.

Only post high-quality images that are appealing enough to engage your audience and make them want to like and comment. A well-written caption and good tag usage will never be a substitute for beautiful visuals, especially if you’re representing a photography brand.

Every person scrolling their feed only takes a single glance before choosing if your post or page is worth their attention. Take advantage of all the tips provided above to ensure you maximize your chances of being tapped on, liked, followed, and eventually contacted to provide a service related to your brand.