Is Social Media Taking Too Much Time Out of Your Photography Business? In this article, we’ll discuss the important topic of social media time management for photographers.
The use of social media has revolutionized the way most professional photographers conduct their business.
There can’t be many top photographers who don’t include it in their marketing plan.
It has become an essential tool for building a following, interacting with potential clients, and networking with other professionals.
Social Media Sucks!
But social media can also be a huge time suck. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the constant stream of updates and notifications, spending hours every day scrolling through your feed or checking for new likes and comments.
If you’re not careful, social media can easily take over your life – and your business. Social media time management for photographers is crucial to avoid otherwise productive time being wasted. So how can you make sure it doesn’t become a time-waster?
Here are some tips:
1. Set aside specific times for social media
2. Use social media scheduling tools
3. Don’t get caught up in the social media cycle
4. Take a break from social media
5. Focus on quality, not quantity
6. Interact with others
7. Use social media to build relationships
8. Don’t compare yourself to others
9. Be authentic
10. Have fun!
Social media can be a great way to connect with others and build your photography business – as long as you use it wisely. By following these tips, you can make sure it doesn’t take over your life.
What social media platforms do photographers use?
Here’s a list of just some of the many social media platforms that photographers can find themselves spending time on:-
- Tik Tok
- YouTube
For some photographers, social media may be the entire basis of their marketing plan, with many running their whole company on Facebook, for example – some without even a “traditional” website.
However, that marketing playground has been continually tightened by Facebook (or Meta to be correct, the parent company that controls the purse strings). In order to ensure your customers definitely sees your marketing message, you need to pay-to-play in the form of advertising or boosted posts.
However, if you want to attract new customers as well gain more exposure for your business, it’s important not to overlook the basics. Even though there are some big-name companies that have left social media due to its perceived negative effect on their company or products, nothing is lost; in fact, utilizing social media effectively can provide you with free marketing.
Yep Social Media Still Sucks!
But here’s the thing – social media sucks MASSIVE amounts of time out of your business. Hours and hours and hours!
It’s all about coming up with more things to say and how to express them. Time and time again!
You need to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and whatever the latest social media platform that comes along.
You go to those sites, and before you know it, you’re distracted by your latest buddy’s blog about their cat, the newest chocolate cookie recipe that someone posted, or the hilarious video of the cackling woman using sellotape as a face lift.
I’m sure you’re aware of what I’m referring to.
Because it sucks YOU in, social media takes time away from your business.
How much time do I spend on Social Media? Let’s talk social media time management for photographers
Want to know exactly how much time? You’ll be surprised!
If you don’t want to depress yourself you can skip this section – but it you are curious about how much productive time you actually spend on your business take a look at the “Screen Time” settings in your iPhone or “Digital Wellbeing” on an Android Phone.
These utilities basically keeps a log of your phone usage and activities
Take a look at this graph from a week of social media and phone distraction.
Look how many times I pick my phone up in a day – 135 times in one day and the first thing I use after I pick it up, is Facebook. My Bad!
This is where social media time management for photographers comes in!
Time to get productive with Social Media – Meet Edgar!
How do we go about being more productive, though?
Well, it’s very straightforward, you need to get someone else to do it – and in our case, we use a Virtual Social Media Manager called Edgar!
Social Media management and scheduling with MeetEdgar.com is the Social Media savior that saves us hours of time by doing those updates for us on our behalf, and at a time that we have specified.
So how does Social Media Management work?
Well basically MeetEdgar.com works on a library of “content” – i.e. a list of your social media posts – you build this library of content up over time, but the best thing is you can re-use it. It’s the perfect tool for social media time management for photographers.
Let’s face it a post advising brides and groom’s the best time to hire a wedding photographer is a post that you can repeat often. Similarly, that link to your portrait or wedding portfolio can also be posted on a fairly regular basis.
Essentially what you are looking to do here is build up a library of “evergreen” content that isn’t date specific, and is useful to your audience at any time of the year.
But it goes further….
Not only can Meetedgar.com maintain that library, but it can also automatically add your new blog posts to the library as you publish them.
You can also incorporate RSS feeds from industry news websites into your social media posts as well – MeetEdgar will automatically pull these into a “Pending” queue and you can either approve or delete them. For example, you might see a list of “Ten Great Wedding Venues” published by a Wedding Blog – well that information is fantastic to share with your audience no matter what time of year, isn’t it? That is the type of content that you could add to your library to be shared with your Facebook fans.
MeetEdgar.com also categorizes your posts into helpful segments and you can actually build your posting schedule around these segments so that your newsfeed isn’t just full of self-promotional material.
Wedding Wednesday’s Anyone?
For example, you could create a Category for “Wedding Wednesday’s” which posts a Wedding Image of the Week every Wednesday.
The scheduling system also ensures your information is going out to your audience at the best times of day.
The best part about tools like MeetEdgar.com is that just a small amount of time per week is required to maintain and build up your library – and you can still post one-off content whenever you like.
MeetEdgar.com is great value for money at just $29.99 per month and this includes up to 5 Social Accounts.
The system currently supports works with Facebook pages, Facebook groups, Instagram feed, Instagram stories, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn & LinkedIn Company Pages.
If you want to extend your reach to other platforms it’s relatively simple to set up an automated process using IFTTT.com to add other social media sites to the mix.
There are other similar auto-posting systems out there to help with social media time management for photographers, like Buffer.com and Pally.com (which I’ve also used) – these are also great services and also less expensive – but we have found MeetEdgar.com to definitely offer the best combination of power, flexibility, and ease of use.
$29 is a small price to pay to potentially free up hours and hours of unproductive time surfing Facebook 😉
If you’re a professional photographer who wants to spend less time on social media and more time taking pictures, then MeetEdgar.com is the best social media time management for photographers. With Edgar, you can build a library of evergreen content that will be automatically posted to your social media accounts at the best times of the day.
The best thing of all – they even give you a free trial to give it a whirl!
