If you’ve been working as a photographer for more than 5 minutes, you’ve quickly realized that people in our industry are a dime a dozen – some of them are good, some of them are GREAT… but it begs the question: how can you get your photos noticed?! When we start out, we want someone other than our moms to like our photography (thanks for being my biggest fan mom, but that doesn’t pay the bills!), so we have to start being creative with how we get our work out into the universe and seen by those people we most want to impact: clients who will pay for our service!
5 Ways To Get Your Photos Noticed
1) Strong Social Media Presence
It really goes without saying, but you need to have your work seen across all social media platforms:
Is the idea of posting to all those accounts all the time exhausting?!
Don’t tell anyone, but I agree!
My suggestion is to have tiers of social media, pick your top 3 and really be intentional about posting to those accounts regularly and sharing great content (consistency is the key here!).
2) Submit Your Work to be Published
This year I decided I wanted to get my work featured… a LOT! I had absolutely NO IDEA how to go about this process, but after a helping hand from Misty, with Misty Saves the Day (she’s the social media gal who has it all!) I was off and running and have had the pleasure of having my work featured in a quite a few of awesome publications!
3) Photo Sharing Networks and Forums
There are plenty of awesome online places for you to share your work with the photography community at large. Sites like Flicker and 500px are awesome places to catalog and share your work (especially since Flicker gives all it’s members 1 TB of online storage for free!).
It’s also great because you can get feedback from industry peers, network with photographers from around the globe, and have the potential for your work to be seen by a much wider audience.
4) Enter Photography Contests
There are always photo competitions happening, and the range of photography they are looking for is as varied as the photographers snapping the pictures! You can start by checking out Photo Contest Insider to whet your appetite!
Make sure to read the fine print though, you want to specifically check out how the photos you submit will be used (are they going to credit you? Are they going to pay you? Are there restrictions?).
You can also keep an eye out for local opportunities to have your work displayed! Recently we put out a call to have some new photographs hung in the classroom at Virginia MOCA, and the response was tremendous! Here are two photos showing the awesome pictures that were submitted!
5) Blog Your Work
I know this comes as a surprise, but blogging is one of the most powerful tools you have in allowing your work to be seen by a larger audience. And the best part? It doesn’t cost you anything except time. Currently, I blog 3-4 times a week, and that does a few things for me. It keeps my content relevant, Google bots crawling my site will see newer posts and place me higher in search rankings, and it will also show prospective clients that I am an active business owner.
So there you have it! My top 5 tips to get your photos noticed and bring in new clients. Which ones do you think will work for you? I challenge you to try one today and see if it makes a difference in the traffic it drives to your website (or whatever social media you use most!).
Take Your Business to the Next Level!
If you are a photographer in need of business mentoring, I would love to help you out in your photographic journey! Fresh Look Photography offers private mentoring to help with any aspect of running your business, and we’d love to chat with you! Feel free to drop a comment below or click the { Contact Me } button and we will get rocking and rolling!
