Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Hashtags on Instagram for Photographers

getting more specific with instagram hashtag how do we use hashtags what's the purpose and I was actually corrected in my mind as I was researching you know preparing for this presentation starts thinking about hashtags and way use hashtags for branding obviously waken search for hash tags we can use the internet to find popular hashtags start being creative about the hashtag that we use waken use multiple hashtags there's nothing wrong with that particularly on instagram that's okay but really the hashtag come down too and so I skipped one hashtag is double meaning you can use hashtags one of our friends uses hashtags just to write a whole sentence into a hashtag so did jimmy fallon he needed a fund show you know that's what she said cash whatever you need to have some fun and quirky hashtags but really for us and our purposes were being strategic so are hashtags are you know what we do we're gonna hashtag what we do what we're up to where we're at so this particular photo is up in va...

il colorado and this photo's probably three three or four maybe six months old my hashtag veil on a hashtag wedding with the idea that a bride is watching a show on tv at eight o'clock at night she's just flipping through instagram she's bored with her feed she's gonna go search for hashtag that she's interested in let me check out wedding okay here's some wedding let me look up wedding veil and let's see oh interesting now um the next light hubs spot did a little bit of research around hashtags and the amount of engagement the number of hashtags has and I just absolutely blew me away because I tend to find the use of too many hashtags to be annoying visually so just look at it like that's just way too many hashtags but research is showing that more hashtags equals greater engagement now maybe that's a no brainer obviously the more hashtags them or use a biltmore findable you are on instagram and that's kind of what we want we want to be as spread out as casting is bigger than that as possible but even up to the eleven hashtags really really significant interaction so with hashtags I'm starting to become a little bit more creative and start thinking through that a little bit more now the hashtag that we want to avoid oh yeah I get that but on on on on this hashtag idea the hashtag that we kind of wanna watch out for are hashtags like um um you know follow me or something like that there's there's lots of really hashtag spaces trying to think of the one I can't think of the one that's that's really really popular out there but basically hashtags for likes they're literally like you have a hashtag prevail hashtag for wedding photography and then a hashtag follow gram or follow me or something like that those they're just really uh I don't know they just looked really out of place where they pull your brand down and they don't make you look professional and they don't make you look like you're actually genuinely trying to share content it looks like you're trying to game the system thank you game the system that's exactly what I was trying to think of andi we don't really want those types of followers were not looking for random followers what we're really looking for his followers that have similar interests andi actually care about what we're sharing right right so with instagram how how to do this thing we want to be consistent right consistency is the key way want a post daily if not more than once a day consistent with our image is consistent with our branding revealing our transparent to revealing who we are and what sand for um you know with that idea you know I love I love eggs random thought ok I love eggs do them every day okay but I don't need that to be part of my brand okay a lot of eggs happy eggs there their cage free but there's a lot of it they're like multi vitamins in my mind but I bring that up because that's not something you're going to see on our about paige it's not something you're going to see really on our on our profile everyone that knows me intimately knows how many eggs wheat or I but but again that's not what I'm sharing in it and everybody knows how much I love fear and I'm not going to share a picture of me drinking a bud light while I'm fly fishing because that's not consistent with my brand even though it's super yummy at ten in the morning on a stream I'm not ready for you know a stone I papa which is not a colorado beer but that was for you jared we love stone thank you that's a good san diego beer there thanks good standing and it is a microbrew maybe it's acceptable in colorado come but with that idea that that there's mohr too of course gina and I then that's the specifics that we share is part of our brain those are just the things were really really into and and they're consistent and we love to share with our brides well and you're really hitting upon a deeper point you're not just instagramming just instagram just listening to you for the last twenty thirty minutes there is so much strategy behind what you're talking about and what you're sharing there's so much strategy between the layers of what you post and why you posted your posting personal photos to give that personal side of you and show that there's a side of you that's personal you're posting stylized and branded photos that contribute to the brand image you're trying to portray and that gets your target market to self actualize and we talked about that leading up to this and so it's very intimate me again instagram is not just a tool to just post images and hope that the business follows but it's actually asleep according to what you are doing really a strategic process a strategic process absolutely and yeah yeah I love that idea that you know we aspire to be what we're what we're posting these air aspirational kinds of things you know one of the one of the one of the key things to make sure you don't do with instagram is besides posting absolutely everything pictures of eggs and bacon in the morning if they knew my diet they wouldn't hire me but don't be boring s so boring is is one way to drop followers quickly so I find that there's times when you know I'll just I'll be kind of calling who I'm following on instagram or facebook or really any any social media platform andi do find that those that really share any random thought that enters their mind filling up my feed or filling my feet with boring images boy just kind of start to get annoyed and I end up letting them go right I'll follow them I mean I'll keep up with them somewhere else I've got six social platforms to follow someone on they're killing my instagram feed I'm just so tired of seeing this image of a cat over and over and over again nothing wrong with cats but I'm done with you know I'm done with these cats so I'm gonna let that go so you can't be boring the other thing is photographers we really want to post good images to instagram on dh and we're gonna want to edit our images I did put no filters into this slide that's a personal preference but reality is just taking that I'm just thinking about the times that I just quickly you know on behind the scenes at a wedding and I don't have time to edit it but I'm doing this going apply a quick instagram filter and I'm gonna hate myself later but I will I'm just going to get it out there so okay maybe filters from time to time but we really want to edit our images or use finalized images so I've got all the images have done with light room I did the jared platt thing I'm all the way through I've got my got my my folder full of laudable images I transferred all those to my phone I now just put him into photos I a beta of photos on a mac they automatically show from my phone at this huge repository of images that I could just grab one post one andi all times forget kind of what I've already posted so there's times everyone's we'll have like five black and whites in a row and though I love black and white photography we want to think strategically about a nice rounded varied uh set of images that I'm sharing so I'm going to share images of a couple and we share lots of him if a couple has a dog I'm sharing that image because images with dogs are you attract a lot of attention dogs actually attract a lot of followers will talk about that in a second besides just being cute dogs they're just dog lovers love love instagram but I'm not going to shoot you know share pictures of dick or sharing that entire rounded experience you know here's what we do here is all the beautiful things we capture when we shoot your wedding on again thinking about instagram when it's just my wedding brand I'm sharing just the types of images that I want to be shooting again in the future way do the same thing with blogging were really strategic about what we share are the things that we want to keep shooting into the future on there's times when we well you know we'll shoot a wedding and it's it's night it's it's oh it's almost our ideal wedding but it's not quite there if I'm not super happy with those images and I don't really want to shoot a wedding at that venue at that location not going to share those an instagram I'm not going to try to attract that wedding in the future that makes sense so we're going to be aspirational even what we share we love shooting unveil we love shooting and aspen in beavercreek so we're going to share those images crazy I love engagement shoots at a couple of spots just in the foot hills here in denver to share those images all day long so that when someone says hey you know we love to hire you for our engagement shoot do you have any good places as matter of fact I do if you've been following me on instagram or you on instagram here's this place going go to my instagram go down six images this is the spot I want to take you guys andi this beautiful amazing spot but anyway thinking through all of that all the time so let me ask you yeah and by the way I wanna make sure we end up because we could talk about interest for this entire segment and I wanna make sure we have time to get to pinterest but with that being said how do we get more instagram followers I know you're going to be talking about that it's someone I want to jump ahead to far but they wanna make sure we get to that because that's an important thing none of this matters if no one's following you it is about the most important thing so way down this backwards jarod actually we've shared hey you've got this great following here's what to do with it right next very next lie don't go there yet I'm going to talk about how to acquire follow okay the last thing I would say there's a couple of aps to take note of that air really andy for instagram one I have on this lights called er I think it's called white a gram with a gram white a gram really what that does so are so instagrams pictures or square our images are four by three I think that's right right um four by three so white a gram will actually allow youto teo it'll create white space above your picture below your picture it's a horizontal picture or white space on the sides of the border pig vertical picture that's just looks better way shoot with our four by three crop or whatever camera we're using what we shoot with that prop for a specific reason we're not often shooting square pictures unless it's in the instagram absolute white a gram really handy for that ninety percent of you probably have that but pick that up the other thing that I think is kind of fun is a is an app called repost so it allows you to essentially retweet or repost and instagram image so it's something that I've been thinking about and been incorporating in one of my other instagram feeds that I'm just seeing how that works its really nice so one of the things that I like to share with my followers are the things that I'm into so not only during the pictures that we do in the beer that I drink in the fish that I catch but you know I love the idea of backpacking so if I follow you know ari I dot com or outdoor world or thes brands that I follow are consistent with who I am so everyone's want used the app called repost to repost their image onto my instagram feed it gives them credit it tags them in the image but it's also sharing with my father's hate this is part of my life as well hey the new apple watch comes out friday I might post that on friday so that's where I'll be at one a m friday morning ordering an apple watch from this what that I'll be exhausted from this three day course probably sleeping hey man I'm my time is for sale I can buy it for you just let me know how how do we how do we get people to follow us well there is there is a way one of course we we create relationships by following others weaken weaken generate some follows so we'll be talking about ways tio to create relationships on instagram obviously you know first thought is people I like and people I enjoy I'm going to follow them and I'm going to engage with them this may be a no brainer I don't even have a slide on this but I think it's important to say that if there's a wedding plan but I'd really like to work with I should probably follow them on every social media platform instagram just happens to be the easiest so when she posts or he post something from a style shoot totally consist with our brand I'm gonna comment on there just say how much I like it or boy that that really came together great job amber right on dh amber is going to take that as a compliment I'm engaging in conversation with her just like I did four five years ago with twitter when I was trying to develop a relationship with wedding planners who did the same thing with instagram so by following people that I like and engaging with them leaning into them I'm gonna develop those conversations and they may or may not follow me back they probably will if we start um start having dialogue together right so that's one way within your circle to develop relationship and that gain followers is actually by following others and then they might follow you back right that's a tricky way for me to find brides that I've never met before right good point yeah so really instagram for me is about the money and I want to get paid to shoot photography so I'm going to create relationships with strategic wedding planners and referral sources and I'm going to do this so research shows this is this is this is totally common sense but from the university of queensland found that more facebook lights and comments a person receives the more likely they are to feel good about themselves so likes make people feel good about themselves likes also stir up a sense of curiosity you know who liked my image and this was something that that hit me about two years ago I posted an image was a christmas image and I can't remember it was something so blue like a christmas ornament this was before he separated my instagram feeds and I had any kind of australia just you know posting everything so christmas ornament I took it with like an eighty five one point two so the boca was beautiful and and posted to instagram and I had with the hashtag christmas or something I had a like within like ten seconds someone that I didn't even know and it just occurred to me as well that's interesting how does that person like me already clearly somebody was searching or or paying attention to the christmas hashtag came to my picture and liked it immediately so that was like huh cheese on wonder because now I want to find this person wise of course I click on him some random person I was liking a ton of christmas ornaments that dave's this whole feed was full of christmas ornaments like okay so they're kind of their kind of interested in christmas ornaments well I wonder if I start looking up I don't know engagement ring you know I search via hashtag for engagement ring and I've got all of these pictures of people that just got engaged well that's I really feel like I discovered gold right oh my god it's right here it's right in front of me and that was really curious to me so I started liking a couple of this was experimental early on and started liking random random things engagement rings um I'm just literally watching tv and I see an engagement ring that I like there's lots of there's some engagement rings they skipped but there was something I liked and and you know it search other other hashtags like dogs beagles we have a beagle so we take pictures of our beagle beagle lovers they're all just crazy like us we love beagles we see one we just talk and we just but we start ruling is there just such amazing dogs so I started liking a couple of beagle images right around the time that I posted this really cute christmas picture of our beagle embarrassing if you if you dig deep on our feet you're gonna see some stuff but really funny is I started liking pictures of other people who took pictures they're beagles boy they started following me it was it was almost instantaneously you know if I liked maybe thirty pictures based on hashtags I searched for one night while I'm watching cs I or something the next day I had five more followers I would check out my followers and see oh there oh there's a beagle lover okay this okay that engagement ring she followed me that's kind of cool but I started develop a strategy for liking liking the right amount liking the right images and developing a habit where when I'm just idle andi I did this for a couple of years whenever I'm idle just search for hashtag that's consistent with with our brand or what kind of what we're up to so I'm gonna look up hash tags for vail colorado so when I see pictures that are interesting to me or people that are interesting to me I'm just going to end like those images snowboarding a lot of our clients love snowboarding my love skiing they love hiking biking running these air all topics that I would that I would you know search the hashtag for instagram and find pictures I liked and just like them and you'll find that people will hash tag things that have nothing to do with the hashtag obviously don't like those images but I liked the images that caught my attention and doing this consistently over time you know within a couple of weeks I had garnered an extra couple of hundred followers and that was really it was really curious to me now it took work it took strategy but it was literally mindless work it was oh that one's interesting cool okay that one's interesting now this is a bit of a shotgun approach right we're not I can't I can't search for pictures of um bride looking for photographer I wish I could find brides looking for photographers that'd be a great hashtag maybe that is a hashtag out there but it's unless it's likely that it's not real but I can't find brides and may like a couple pictures of brides but those are just pictures that photographer's post of brides so not really going to like a ton of bride just wedding images are not really that stimulating unless um maybe gonna find a wedding planner in there but colorado outdoors active life kind of hashtags helped me start to curate this audience in this following of people that I'm assuming if they follow us they kind of dig us because I like their active lifestyle hashtag whatever that active lifestyle hashtag is they started following us because they kind of doug what we stood for does that makes sense you know it makes perfect sense we've talked a lot about using social media to share and target your perfect an ideal clientele your target market I think that this falls in line with and again until you know your target market it's going to very hard to search these hashtag once you understand you're perfect client it's very easy to search these hashtags you rolled off about ten different things that your perfect client that your target market does