Last Updated: February 14th, 2020
There is a surprising amount of power behind the Instagram search function. For photographers looking to find new clients, learning how to use this search tool to find the information you need to enhance your IG profile page is hugely important.
In our experience, Instagram is one of the best social media websites for photographers to be a part of. By it’s nature, the content on the site revolves around pictures, so it works well as an extension of our online portfolio. According to some of the stats we track in Honeybook, we can see that ~25% of our photography business bookings are a result of people finding us through Instagram!
Because we lean pretty heavily on this website to get new people to work for, we’ve come to rely on the information we can get from Instagram search a whole lot. In this post, we’re going to walk you through some of the ways you can leverage Instagram search functions to better build your own photography small business.
How We Use Instagram Search
Our approach to using Instagram search over the years was driven by two things primarily: finding new people to collaborate with and finding ways to attract new clients directly.
Keep in mind – both approaches end up sharing the same end result when done correctly. That is – we create content, both photographs themselves and actual Instagram posts, that are engaging for our audience. This is how we have managed to grow our IG account followers pretty substantially over the years in a way that suits our business.
Our goals with Instagram are quite simple. We like to try not to overthink things too much, and it seems to jive well with our photography business aspirations!
Related: How to Use Instagram to Market Your Photography Business
How to Find Photography Collaboration Partners through IG
If you are wanting to do photography for a living, it’s critically important that you start networking with others. Instagram, as a social media platform, is perfect for getting to meet new people that share similar and overlapping interests. No matter what your style of photography is – from wedding photography, to portrait photography, to landscape photography – and everything in between, you can find people out there sharing the same passions.
The Benefits of Styled Shoots
As wedding photographers ourselves, our collaborations often come to life in the form of a styled shoot. Style shoots can be as simple or complex as you’d like them to be, but they tend to have one clear goal. To showcase the work of multiple wedding vendors in unique and breathtaking ways.
A few examples of styled shoots we’ve participated in:
- Indie Woodland Styled Wedding
- White Cliffs of Conoy Couple’s Shoot
- Latourell Falls Adventure Couple’s Session
- Asbury Park Boho Styled Shoot
- Moody Model Portraits in Oregon
- Cannon Beach Elopement Wedding Styled Shoot
- Fox & Finch Vintage Romantic Styled Shoot
- Buttermilk Falls Styled Elopement
As you can see in some of our photo galleries, these types of shoots enable a couple important things for us:
- We get to experiment with new techniques and often go to really beautiful locations
- We get to interact with other vendors such as hair & makeup artists, other photographers, venues, models, etc.
- And, we get to build our personal portfolio with strong images that reflect our brand vision concisely
Once we’ve done the shoot, editing up the pictures, and share an online gallery with the other vendors – everyone involved move things back onto Instagram (and other social media platforms) and share. By sharing content like this, everyone benefits – and our reach as photographers expands quite dramatically.
Think of it like this: we go to a styled shoot and work with other great artists. Those artists post our images and share with their audience. Not only have we built a relationship with another professional (which may be able to lead to future referral work through them!), but we also reach their audience directly – and get some exposure to our work out there.
Searching for People to Work With – 3 Easy Steps
Now that we’ve squared away why we want to get involved with other creatives, we will show you how to find some of these people using Instagram search. You may be surprised that it is actually a very simple process.
Step 1: Search for “#[Your Local Area] Photographer”
Every good search anywhere on the internet begins with a solid keyword string. In our case, the best way to find new friends, collaborators, vendors, etc. is to begin by seeing who is “out there” in your local area.
If you are having some trouble with this, which may be possible if you are in a really small town, try shifting your “local area” to a larger city near you. For example, we are located in a small town in Pennsylvania. While there are some decent hashtag groups (for a lack of better words) around, they don’t see a whole lot of activity. For the sake of this example, we’ll show you some results we get when we type in “#Philadelphia Photographer” – the largest metro area near us (about 1 hour drive from our home).
When we type this in, we get many more options to choose from…
Step 2: Click on a related hashtag
Now that we’ve started our search, we can comb through some of the hashtags that pop up. There may be a few that are similar – in our case some for our search included #philadelphiaphotographer and @philadelphiaphotographers. The only difference being the “s” at the end. It may be worth to explore both hashtags as there may be different posting in either. But, for sure, our attention is drawn to the most active of the bunch. In this case, that is #philadelphiaphotographer.
When you click the search result, it’ll take you to a simple screen where you see some information, can follow the hashtag, and can view the images attributed to the hashtag.
Step 3: Browse through the posts
As is the nature of IG, start scrolling down and checking out all the images. In our little world (and you may feel the same), a lot of the photos being shared aren’t all that remarkable. Some are even a little scary with really dated editing techniques. But, hopefully you will find at least a few posts that you mesh with on an aesthetic or subject matter level.
In our personal exploration for this post, we came across this nice set of images. Most of these are pretty solid – but our attention is drawn pretty heavily to the 2nd image down on the left. The editing tones, candid moment, and simple fact that it’s a wedding image really makes it draw our eye.
Step 4: Click on the post(s) that stick out to you
In this case, we decide to click on the aforementioned photo. This allows us to get more information about it, see what the poster had to say about it (if anything), and go from there.
We should add – there is also a lot of other useful information to gleam just from this screen. Many people will post the location – which is great if you are looking to take a photo at the same place. You can also review the hashtags being used by the poster, which might turn you on to some others worth exploring. We’ll talk more about keyword research later in this article!
Step 5: Visit the user account that shared the image
Now that it’s pretty clear you like the style of work being shared with a certain hashtag, it’s time to check out the user account. It’s here that you will be able to view all other images being shared by this person. You can also get to know them through their bio if it’s well written and informative.
In the case of this (random) example photographer we found, you can see below quite a nice summary about themselves & a link to their website where we can further explore what they are all about.
Step 6: Get in touch
Finally, you can now take things to the next level. Your initial Instagram search can quickly lead you to connecting with other artists. If you feel strongly, you can follow them on IG, send them a message, or reach out via email.
It’s really simple stuff at the heart of it. Our experiences have been positive to connect with other artists in this way. But, of course, be mindful that this is “the internet” and you should properly vet people, meet in public, and if you see any red flags – don’t proceed.
How to Use Instagram Search to Find Keywords Your Clients are Looking for
Meeting collaborative partners through Instagram is hugely beneficial to any business. However, the real gold of IG is that it can enable you and your prospective clients to connect seamlessly. You will be surprised that it is actually extremely easy to do this as well. We’ll show you how!
Searching for Instagram hashtags – what’s the point?
You’ve already been exposed to IG’s hashtags earlier in this post, but what really is the goal of them?
On Instagram, hashtags function like keywords. Just about anything can be made into a hashtag. In weddings – it’s been a pretty big trend for a couple to make up a wedding hashtag for people to share photos from the big day under. However, not all hashtags are made the same.
In our experience, hashtags come in 3 different forms that help determine whether they are valuable to our business. A lot of it has to do with the search volumes.
- Low volume hashtags
- Medium volume hashtags
- High volume hashtags
For business, the best hashtags tend to fall in the low-to-mid volume area. Hashtags (like #photography) have way to many people posting under them to be useful. As you can see in the screenshot below, that tag has over 300 million posts. This would make it difficult for anyone to find your photo posted there.
Meanwhile, a hashtag like #landscapephotographyaustralia is far less competitive.
As you can see, this tag has far less posts, but it still comes across as being active enough that we could envision people actually using it. And what are they using it for? Some folks may just want to look at nice pictures, while others might actually be looking to hire someone. For example, if we were a company needing photos of Australia for a marketing campaign, we might just look through some of the work here to find someone to reach out to for this purpose.
How to Find Hashtags that My Potential Clients Will Be Looking At?
To understand your client base, you need to start by putting yourself in their shoes.
Let’s say you were wanting to hire a photographer. What would you do to go about this? We’ll give you our thoughts:
We’d start by talking to friends & family to see if they have any recommendations. This is often the easiest, and for established businesses, these word-of-mouth referrals are hugely valuable. They also tend to be pretty easy to book because, you know, if your mom tells you so-and-so is a really great photography team, you’re probably going to trust your mom.
Of course, not everyone is happy with these recommendations or even receives any valuable responses back. When people are left to their own devises, it’s pretty common that they’ll start exploring online to find the right photographer for them.
As we’ve mentioned, Instagram is such a great platform where photographers can show off their work, so it makes sense potential clients will go digging around there to find someone they like.
When we planned our own wedding, Instagram search was a key way we got in touch with a number of wedding photographers, eventually finding the person we hired for our wedding.
3 Methods for Finding Great Hashtags
1). Use Instagram search for local hashtags for locations you want to work.
The initial hashtags you will want to start posting to consistently are those that utilize the combination of your location (or desired shooting location) and your style of photography. There may be multiple local hashtags present as well, and using them all has benefits for sure.
For example, say you want to target potential clients in your town, a larger metro area nearby, and even in another country. Using 3 separate hashtags, you could target…people looking for photographers in your town, people looking for photographers in a larger metro area, and people looking for a photographer in another country.
It’s simple, but very effective.
2). Research hashtags being used by your competitors.
So, what’s the point of doing hashtag research yourself when other people are already doing it themselves?
By looking at the hashtags being used by other people in your area, it can help you better identify the types of hashtags on Instagram you should target.
Keep in mind, not every person using hashtags is doing it successfully – so we certainly don’t recommend just copy-and-pasting what someone else is using entirely. But, explore those hashtags and add them to your list as it makes sense.
3). Leverage Instagram hashtag research apps.
Lastly, you can research Instagram hashtags outside of IG. Through the use of platforms like Tailwind or Later, they have built in hashtag research components of their sites that enable more in depth analysis. For example, Tailwind’s Hashtag Finder can actually recommend hashtags to you automatically when scheduling posts there.
Instagram search is hugely powerful when you know how to use it to find new clients to take photographs for. When done well, over time you will naturally grow your IG account to have a nice following and a steady stream of people interacting with you and your brand. If you’d prefer a quicker solution to get a serious bump in your Instagram traffic and follower counts, you could consider checking out a service like Kicksta to do just that.
So, what do you think? Do you have any secret tips to maximize how useful Instagram is for your photography business? Let us know in the comments!