This is a chapter from my Photographer’s Guide to Marketing.
What is great Instagram content?
As a photographer, I usually know how well my post will do, before I post, simply because some of my photos are more interesting than others, and some you might say, are more Instagram-friendly than others.
I get surprised here and then, but usually, my projection is pretty on point.
A good engagement-rate on Instagram is around 10%, depending on your niche. So if you have 10K followers, you should aim at 1000 likes per photo. We’ll get to comments later. But you can check your engagement here.
I have a lot of photos who barely reached 600 likes and some that reached 1800 likes. That’s a 3x difference and it’s not because on of hashtags or anything. It’s simply because my followers liked the other photo a lot more.
My focus for creating better Instagram content:
- Time spent: The more time I spend on the streets, with my camera, the more likely I am to take a great photo and to catch a great moment.
- Become a better photographer. The more skilled a photographer I become, the better photos I’ll take and the better Instagram content I will have. But that’s a really big project and it requires me to invest a lot of hours in taking photos, reading books like this and learn all there is to edit my photos.
- Quality of the image: Is it likable? Does it stand out? Is it interesting? Does it punch you in the face?
There’s is a formula for us
And this is actually great news for us doing photography.
We know there is a formula to push better content on Instagram.
- improving our skills (by studying photography books & Youtube tutorials)
- Putting more hours into taking photos.
It’s that simple.
And to underline how fortunate we are being photographers in Instagram, I want you to imagine you are own an insurance company or a business-to-business (b2b) cleaning service.
Finding out how to make great content for Instagram is extremely hard when are in a ‘boring business’ – and the formula requires a lot more imagination and creativity. It can be done, but it’s a whole different game.
A great example of a ‘boring business’ who got very creative is TSA. It’s the transportation security administration and they found a really creative way to produce great content for their social media and Instagram.
Blinded by the like
This guide is meant to help you create better content for Instagram, but it is very important not to measure the quality of your photography, based on the number of likes you receive. While I firmly believe there is a correlation between those two things, I also think some Instagram likes overly saturated photos in color, high clarity portraits, and high contrast black and white portraits.
And that’s doesn’t mean you should over-edit your photos to do well on Instagram. You should make photographs you love and photos you are proud of.
By the way, I just finished reading this e-book about Instagram Marketing. By now, I’ve spent about$ 1000 on Instagram Marketing Guides, and this was easily the guide that gives me most value. It’s only $37, which is way cheaper than it should be, and the author is a guy who manages a lot of Instagram accounts with +1M followers. Check it out here.
This is a chapter from my Photographer’s Guide to Marketing.
