Photographers. Are You Really Connecting With Your Audience?

Since your audience is basically your main source of income when it comes to your photography business, connecting with them is imperative. The more the audience feels the connection you have with them, the more engagement you’ll get, thus you’ll end up having more clients and more products sold.

Connecting With Your Audience – Engagement

The best way to raise engagement (at least from what I’ve seen personally and many other famous photographers) is to ask questions, mostly about what the audience would want to see next. This is a great way for connecting with your audience.

Do that from time to time, also ask questions connected with emotions and states of mind during certain photographs too. For example, you’ve taken this awesome shot of a sunset on an untouched beach, so along with the image, you can ask a question like:

“How do you feel when taking photos like this?” or “How would you feel if you were in a place like this right now?”

This will gently sway the audience to take more time looking at your picture while typing a response, and thus will create a longer lasting memory of that picture since it now connected to an event, making it more than just a nice picture posted on a social media site.

Photo by Phil Roeder

Whilst engaging with your audience, always make sure you act in a friendly manner. Having your audience feel as if you are their friend (and you should be, even if you don’t know them) will make them feel comfortable being your audience and will probably spread the word around more people, thus effectively increasing your exposure by the best marketing tool: word-of-mouth.

Connecting With Your Audience – Behind the Scenes

Your social media accounts don’t have to be filled with just the awesome pictures you are taking. That alone can make your audience feel a tad distanced from you, which is why behind the scenes photos and videos are really powerful in making the audience feel closer to you.

When you show people the way you work, you are also putting a face to the person (in this case, you) – it simply looks more personal.

That way, by showing the amount of work and skill required to capture photographs like that, paired with the personality and face behind the images, amplified by the friendly tone and engaging posts; you have a great formula for increasing and keeping your audience happy.

Behind the scenes on a video set in a physics university. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski.

Additionally, materials from behind the scenes can be great lifesavers when you don’t have any final product to show – it gives the sensation that you are too busy creating the final images and it still keeps the audience engaged, thus your final product (even if it comes late) will pack more punch!

Connecting with your audience with behind the scenes images, keeps them feeling confident you're genuine and realize every little detail going into even the simplest-looking shots.

Look for a different type of audience altogether?
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Be A Swift Responder! Your Audience Will Appreciate It

With the internet being available anyplace and anytime (I’m talking about 3G/4G and Wi-Fi) you really have no excuses not to answer messages and reply to comments swiftly.

Not that it would matter that much to the single person if you reply in 10 minutes or even the next day, but overall, when someone scrolls through the comments section and sees that you take the time to reply to the comments quite swiftly, that person will feel that you are there for your audience.

Also, on this point, they'll sense that you respect each and every individual (which you should do anyhow). Result? A great first impression for your followers!

Yes, there will be times when you won’t be able to respond to every single comment but you can do that by giving general replies in the comments section.

If your audience is big enough, you’ll generate comments in the hundreds quite fast, thus you won’t be able to respond to each and every one of them.

Many photographers hire social media marketers to do that for them since often it is not possible for a single person to be able to respond to everybody.

If you feel you can afford it and that you have the need for it, do it. By keeping your audience happy, engaged, and entertained it will result in higher income. Bingo.

Get Some Feedback From Your Audience

Connecting with your audience to keep them happy is key, which is why you should really listen to the feedback you get from the audience. If you ask each person for feedback, you’ll be able to see the opinions on most matters quite fast – and you’ll notice opinions fall within a few groups.

That way you’ll be able to tell what the audience wants to see improved and what you should improve in order to keep the audience satisfied.

Even though you should take into consideration opinions which are singled out (likely only a couple out of 5,000), try to focus on the aspects that most of the people ask of you first, and then take care of the finer details.

Summary

A happy audience usually equals more customers thus it means you are doing it right. The bigger the audience the bigger the income is if you use it wisely, but aside from the income, it increases your credibility and the ability to affect certain aspects of your work.

It's always good to present yourself towards the audience as a person who tries to earn a living, but also as a person that is always up for helping those in need and fights for a better world. If you are both, I applaud you.