When choosing for social media photography, you have to make an impact on your target audience. To achieve this, you will only have a few seconds, or more precisely 3 seconds, to do so. The idea is that your social media images cause some kind of interest or emotion in the viewer.
Because the networks are already part of the tools you use to make your work known, but be careful! Not everything goes when it comes to creating photographs for social networks and it is not always easy to get the much sought-after “likes”. How can you find out which photos get the most attention on social media and what kind of photos get the most likes?
In today’s article we are going to solve these and other doubts about how you have to be the photographs that you publish on this type of platforms.
Learn how to create images in networks that impact your audience in less than 3 seconds.
What types of social media photos get the most likes?
When creating photographs for social networks, the first thing you have to take into account is the type of network where you are going to publish them. Uploading an image to Instagram is not the same as uploading it to Facebook.
This differentiation is mainly due to the fact that the audience tends to be somewhat different. Even so, there are a series of qualities that make certain images more successful on any type of social network than others. Let’s look at some examples.
Scenes of happy people or people with a winning attitude
If you look and analyse the images on your Instagram feed, how many of the people in your feed are enjoying or winning? According to a study by University College London, photos showing happy or winning people are more likely to capture the attention of busy or somewhat distracted audiences than, for example, those showing the opposite.
Positive and happy human emotions also generate this same positive reaction in the viewer and this translates into more likes for your images on social media. Therefore, if you post images of happy, smiling people, you will have a better chance of getting a reaction from the viewer than if you choose to post images of serious or sad-looking people.
Tender images of babies or puppies
Who can resist the sweet pictures of a smiling baby or a puppy dog on social media? It doesn’t really matter which social network we are talking about, because they all have one thing in common: pictures of animals and babies always get a lot of likes.
It is almost certain that, thanks to this type of photos, you will be able to capture more attention from your audience. Here we would like to point out that if your message or photography service has nothing to do with this type of images, it doesn’t make much sense to use them. On the other hand, if you see that you can link an idea related to your service with this type of photos, go ahead, experiment and publish it without any consideration. But don’t abuse them when you publish them on your social networks.
Delicious gastronomic photos that will make your “mouth water”!
Content on networks that is related to gastronomy tends to become a trend in a very short time and gets a large number of “likes“.
This type of photography for social networks has been improving over time and becoming more and more refined. And it could be said that nowadays many people who are not dedicated to photography are obtaining very good results that people like.
Therefore, if you are dedicated to this type of gastronomic or product photography, including images of restaurants or dishes prepared by you can increase the engagement on your account.
What network images work best for a photographer?
It is important that when uploading photos for social networks you create a prior content strategy. This will ensure that your efforts serve a purpose. Here are some recommendations that you should apply and review from time to time:
Take care with the composition of each image you upload, especially if they are not from your photo shoots or if they were taken while you were in the middle of your work. Although these types of images are more informal, they also have an impact on users.
Avoid filters offered by the social networks themselves: such filters are fine for amateurs and personal accounts, but not for use by a professional photographer. Before uploading a photo to your social networks, apply the same editing process as if you were going to give it to a client.
Look for your own style when publishing images on networks: the idea is that when a user likes a publication of yours and enters your feed, they can enjoy a series of photos with a very marked and defined aesthetic that will make your style clear when it comes to your work.
Create a publication calendar, for example, on a monthly basis to achieve a certain periodicity in your network announcements. This way you can offer content to your followers on a more or less regular basis.
Nowadays there are many social networks where users interact and in each one of them, the size of the photographs is different. It is important that you take care of this aspect when uploading your photos to the networks, because if they do not have the right size they will not be optimised and, therefore, you will not achieve the objectives you have set in your communication strategy.
As you can see, in social networks, you can’t leave any detail to improvisation and that’s why we are going to help you with the most appropriate measures for photographs in the most used social networks at the moment.
Instagram
This is, without a doubt, the social network par excellence for photographers and for the rest of the world in general at the moment and there is no arguing that on Instagram photographs are the main protagonists.
This network is very peculiar and although the photos usually have a format of 600x600px, we recommend you to upload them with a maximum size of 2048x2048px.
If you are going to upload a photograph horizontally, you can do it in 1080 x 566px, even if you see it in 600×400 px. And if it is vertical, the ideal is to upload it in 1080 x 1350 px so that it is displayed in 600x749px.
Here are some other measures to keep in mind when uploading photos to Instagram:
Twitter is the news network that was born with the aim of connecting everyone quickly. A tweet with a photograph is up to 6 times more likely to be retweeted than one without.
If you want your tweets to achieve high value and reach many more people, the images you use should have the following measurements:
Profile picture: 400x400px.
Header image: 1500x500px.
Photo of the tweet: 1024x512px.
Facebook
Facebook is possibly the most complicated social network as far as photographs are concerned and it has certain peculiarities in this respect. Its images are the least often optimised since there are many possible combinations when it comes to using them: post with or without image and link, cover photos, profile, etc.
LinkedIn is the professional social network par excellence and it is also very peculiar when it comes to photographs. If you want to increase your list of contacts and for your publications to reach your followers, the images must have the correct measurements in order to optimise the post.
And as was already the case with Twitter, a post with a photo will always have more reach than one with just text. Let’s take a look at the measures for photos on LinkedIn:
Profile image: 400x400px.
Header or post photo: 1000x425px, can also be 4000x4000px.
What texts should a photographer publish in networks?
When creating posts on any type of social network, it is always best to combine a powerful photograph with engaging text. Here are some recommendations that you can follow when including text in your ads and posts on your networks:
Encourage your audience to participate. For example, invite them to comment on a post.
Make it clear what you want them to do. In any publication there has to be a main objective. It can be sharing the post, commenting on it or clicking on the button to redirect the audience, for example, to your photography website.
Be concise and direct. If, as a general rule, people are in a hurry on a day-to-day basis, on social networks even more so. On these platforms, users move from one publication to another in a matter of seconds and if they don’t find out quickly what you want to tell them, they will pass on your post before they can take the expected action.
Always proofread your texts. Avoid spelling mistakes or unconnected sentences that do not make clear the message you want to convey.
How can you create interesting content on Social Media?
We know that when it comes to planning the content of each social network can be overwhelming. There are many details to take into account and they will not always be the same for each type of social network. For this reason, we are going to share with you a series of tips and recommendations that we know will be of great help to you.
Choose a consistent theme
Regardless of whether your social media photos include babies or are colourful, to get more likes they need to tell a story and have a consistent theme.
If, for example, you are a wedding photographer, it probably won’t make much sense to include photos of puppies, unless they are part of a celebration.
For this reason, the best thing to do is to be clear about your objective before publishing and to maintain a similar dynamic. In this way, you will ensure that those who follow you will continue to do so and value your work.
Colours also influence and define your brand identity
It is very important not only to establish a theme or a type of content but also to understand the need to express through colours.
It has been shown that, for example, we look more closely at pictures where the predominant subject is red and the background is greenish than at pictures that combine yellows and blues, which tend to be less successful.
When choosing these colours, you can also take into account your corporate colours and your style of photography.
All these details together, along with others, will help you create a brand image on your social networks.
Lighting, also a very important factor
Did you know that images with high lighting have 24% more likes on Instagram? As we have already mentioned on several occasions, each platform is different, but opting for images with high exposure can give you that extra push you need to get your social media photos in front of many more people.
Innovative angles and framing
The key in social media is also to differentiate yourself from other photographers. Because there will be many colleagues whose work may resemble yours, or at least be of the same subject matter.
It is therefore necessary that your work, as well as being consistent, is as original as possible. This will guarantee you a number of valuable followers who will give you more engagement and more “likes”.
To be different on your networks, you can play with angles and framing in your photos and show the best of each moment. In any case, the best thing to do is always try to understand your audience: what do they like, why do they like you, what kind of photography stands out the most on your networks?
More quick tips for creating social media content for photographers
Know your audience. You need to know who follows you and what interests they have in order to offer them the right content. Research your audience, know their tastes and be clear about a series of data, such as when they connect or when they are most active so that your publications have a greater reach.
Personalise and humanise your brand. If you manage to give “soul” to the contents of your networks, you will see how, little by little, you will meet your objectives and reach a greater number of people. Create friendly and approachable publications and show yourself in the networks as you are. Try to provide value, advice and knowledge to your followers. And remember to interact with your followers.
Analyse your successes. Measure everything you publish and check that all the research you have done on your audience is paying off.
Get organised. To be successful you must have order in your head and in your content. You must know in advance what images you are going to show on networks and what topics you are going to deal with. This will help you not to be repetitive, not to leave posts to the last minute and to be clear and consistent in your posts.
Don’t copy and paste content to all your social networks. On the one hand, we have already explained that not all networks will have the same type of audience and if they are, they don’t have to connect at the same time.
Learn how to create social media photos that grab the attention of your audience
As you can see, when creating and publishing photographs for social networks you have to take many factors into account. Ideally, you should learn to plan ahead, be yourself and take into account the tastes of your followers.
Today we would like to share with you the interview with the photographer Cristina Grañena.
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