How Make It As A Social Media Photographer

I'm not an expert, in fact I'm not even a professional photographer, as the saying goes I work for a living ;) but for some reason I have become both successful and well known as a social media photographer.  This has meant over the last few years I have been fortunate enough to amass a fairly large following after being picked up buy both Google+ and Facebook.

After the initial rush things began to settle down and I have managed to maintain the following I have but I have a few rules that I abide by and I think that has helped me. I'll share these rules that I work by and its up to you if you want to use them or not, I'm not here to teach granny to suck eggs!

1/ Don't Overdo It

There so many social sites out there and a lot now offer the ability to showcase your work, join them all and you will spend the rest of your time bouncing from one site to another trying to keep track, eventually you will burn out. Your a photographer, yes you need to showcase your work but you need to be able to get out there and take the images first, you cant do that sat in front of your PC screen all the time. See what each site has to offer, join if need be and use that as a place marker in case that's the site for you. Limit yourself though to a few, I myself predominantly use G+ and Facebook and link my Facebook posts to Twitter.

2/ Limit Your Posts

Some feel they need to flood social streams with as many images as possible everyday, others will simply get fed up of seeing your work. I limit myself to one, maybe two and every now and then three posts a day but rarely more than one to two images a day. Keep them wanting more, over saturate the market and your audience will simply become blind to your work.

3/ Be Consistent

While you limit yourself as above try though to post on a regular basis, I try to post once a day at least, as above where your audience gets fed up of seeing your work, if though you fall of the face of the earth for too long they can soon forget your work too. Stay around as long as you can but not to the detriment to your real life.

4/ Like What You Post

If you like it then nine times out of ten others will too, we are our own worse critics and we do at times need to listen to that inner voice, don't post it up just for the sake of posting something. Post it up because you are proud to do so.

5/ Give Your Images A Title

I talk a lot about the images I take, its just the way I am, not everyone is that way, some prefer for the images to speak for themselves and I enjoy that as well. At the very least though give the image a title, I see so many images that have been uploaded with nothing but the date it was taken, tells me nothing and if I'm honest, I'm inclined not to bother looking. 

6/ You Cant Answer Everything

So don't try and don't beat yourself up over it, I tried and failed miserably but be polite, I leave a thank you post in each post I put up to those that have taken the time to look, share and respond. I would be here for too long and photography would end up on the back burner.

7/ Expect The Trolls

They will come out from their humpty backed bridges and poke you and everyone else near you with big stick because, well its just how they get their kicks. Leave them to it, they want a reaction and if you sully it they will feed off it and starve you of the will to live. The beauty of most social sites now is that you can self moderate. Don't be afraid to use it, get a troll, delete the post, they come back, delete the post again and block the user, can you image how maddening that is for them :D Be aware though in the cyber world we have many different cultures, someone may say something without really understanding what it means and may well mean no offense. 

So that's it, fairly simply and it seems to work for me, take from this what you will and remember, be safe out there!