Photographers in general find it hard to promote themselves, or do not know where to start. Sharing your photography and content on Facebook will help build your fan base and allow you to engage with your audience on a regular basis.

The setup

To setup your photography business on Facebook simply go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ and follow the prompts. We highly recommend configuring your photography business as a Local Business or Place, and Professional Services to ensure you are listed correctly.

What to post?

Not sure what to post? Here are some guidelines to help get you started.

The type of content you post should align with the type of photography you specialise in. If you are a wedding photographer you might post recent photo shoots, posing guides for brides and grooms and industry news. Ensure you are sharing a wide range of different content, like:

• Recent photo shoots; finished images and behind the scenes
• Links to your new blog posts
• Photography tips and tricks
• Inspirational quotes
• Industry news, products and events

Theming your social media posts will also help you curate social content into a calendar for scheduling through software like Buffer and Hootsuite. To help schedule your posts try Hubspot’s social media calendar template.

Here are some theme examples to help you kick things off:

• Sunday’s shot of the week
• Monday’s Inspirational quote to start the week
• Tuesday’s tip of the week
• Wednesday’s weekly blog article
• Saturday’s brag
• Thursday’s tricky photography tips
• Friday’s fun photo challenge

When to post?

Before you hit Publish take a look at Facebook’s Insights on your page to determine the right time to share content with your audience. Based on past post history Facebook Insights will help you understand the best time to post and what type of content is most popular with your audience.

…and how often should I post?

Often and consistently. Apply the 80:20 rule and post 80% of your own content (tips, photos, blog post etc) and 20% curated from other credible websites.

Building your Facebook fan base

There are a number of ways to build your fan base. If you are just starting out ask your friends and clients to follow you.

Ensure your audience can follow you from your website through a Facebook button. Most good website building tools will have this built into the platform.

Facebook advertising can also help promote your business and services. Before investing time and money into advertising it is important to know your audience. Once you know your audience it is easy to create targeted audiences and ads.

Facebook users beware

You should be aware that not each post will reach your entire audience on Facebook. Based on a Facebook users interaction and connection with people Facebook’s sneaky news feed algorithm will determine who will receive your posts. If you want to reach your entire audience or a larger audience you will need to pay!

We also recommend understanding Facebook’s legal terms before posting on your page – uploading photos directly to your page practically voids your copyright to these images.