Here’s what’s wrong with the photography world and social media. They try to use it as a tool to bring more traffic and sales to their images.
Social media is all about giving, not taking. If you approach social media like a giant pool of leads that you can just plunder with self enhancing calls of greatness, you will be met by a huge silence. Instead, if you approach it as an exchange platform, where you give as much as you receive, people will start paying attention. I see photographers and photo agencies posting their latest production on Twitter or Facebook with the same passion as suburban wives take their garbage at the end of their driveways. A few words, a link to their website and that’s it. And then they wonder why they don’t have millions of retweets and likes, let along people emailing them to license their images.Social media is all about participation. And that participation takes the shape of sharing part of yourself, what you know, what you like, what you have learned to a community that it eager to exchange it against what they know, learned and like. So, when you open the door of social media and say look at my pictures ( and do license them), no one listens. Instead, if you would say, this is how I took this image or look at this guys work, its fabulous, all ears will rise.
It is not complicated. It just takes a little time and engagement, the same that you expect from those following you. The more you give to social media, the more it gives back.
