[47.] Interview with Digital Marketing Strategist Emma Tessler on Unleashing the Power of Social Media for Photographers

Photographers, get ready to elevate your online strategy with our content creation secrets designed to captivate and convert your audience. We delve into the art of balancing entertaining reels with educational posts that lead to bookings, opening up about the power of personal branding for photographers to forge deeper connections with clients. I discuss my own journey of stepping out from behind the lens, and how it has unlocked new opportunities, assuring that embracing your unique story can be a game-changer in the competitive digital arena.

Connect with Emma:

• Website: https://ninetyfivemedia.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ninety.five.media
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NinetyFiveMediaCo 
• LinkedIn Business Page:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ninety-five-media 
• LinkedIn Personal Page:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmatessler/ 
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/NinetyFiveMedia
• The Stop Scrolling, Start Scaling Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stop-scrolling-start-scaling-podcast/id1635151196 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Six Figure Photographer podcast. I'm your host, skye Edmonds. With 20 years of experience in portrait photography and 16 years as a photographer educator, I have a more holistic approach that addresses the whole photographer, starting from the inside out. The purpose of this podcast is to activate women into their wealth identities as the CEO of their business and to expand their income and their impact through mindset, work, nervous system regulation, energetics, somatic connection and business strategies so that they can step into their next level, self and become the bold, visible face of their brand. Hello and welcome to the Six Figure Photographer podcast. I'm your host, skye, and I am so glad that you could join me today. Well, it feels like it's been a hot minute since I did a podcast episode, but I only skipped an episode last week, but I've missed you all so much. Remember how I told you that my business and my life was about to pop off. Well, things are popping off and my nervous system gave me limited choices to focus on before. My stress levels went way up and these days I do all I can to keep the stress levels low. I've got my three remaining in-person photographer workshops coming up, plus, I'm releasing a new program next week. That's stealing my attention. So if my presence here is a bit spotty, you know why, and if you want to know what, I'm up to check the show notes for more Now.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Today I have an amazing, informative interview with Emma Tesler of 95 Media. We're going to talk all things social media, like algorithms, audience size and content that converts. If you know me, you know that I'm a big believer in outsourcing. When possible, outsourcing is a not so secret weapon in expanding your business without adding additional burnout. In fact, outsourcing can help you stay out of burnout.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Emma's company, 95 Media, is a digital marketing agency that works with scaling brands to grow and monetize their online presence. She spent the past eight plus years building 95 Media from side hustle to woman run and lead agency with a team of six. As a matter of fact, emma will be doing a guest teaching for my upcoming new program, the 10K workshop blueprint, launching next week, so be sure to check out the show notes for more info on that, as well as all the ways to connect with Emma, including her podcast Stop Scrolling and Start Scaling, which I think that's like the most clever name. Now that is enough for me. Let's get into the interview. Okay, so welcome, emma, to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 2: 3:03

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for our conversation. A little bit about me my name is Emma Tesla. I'm the founder of 95 Media and we are a digital marketing agency working with scaling brands to really build your online presence and monetize your audience.

Speaker 2: 3:22

This definitely wasn't what I thought I would be doing. Marketing kind of fell into my lap. I originally was actually an interior designer in New York City and through that career really found social media marketing and became obsessed with it because I really saw the potential for what social media marketing could do for a business and it just felt really inspiring and exciting for what I could see was coming, because I found it back in 2015. So since then, obviously we've all seen the growth of social media and how it has and can impact your brand. So luckily, we were really kind of hitting it at the right time and since that point, we have just helped so many brands build their online presence and actually see real sales from content that converts for them, which I absolutely love. That's really our passion at the end of the day, I love that.

Speaker 1: 4:25

I love that. I love how you know. I find that a lot of people in marketing and messaging they didn't really intend to go into that but then they saw the power of how that can really up level of business knowing about messaging proper marketing content that converts. So I love that for you. That's pretty interesting yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:46

I mean, I think that there's, once you see it, it's hard to unsee it, right? It's one of those things where you kind of open your eyes one day and you look at it and say, okay, well, I know. For me, I looked at social media in 2015 and looked around and said why are more brands not doing this? Like, how are brands not seeing what's happening here? And truly, it didn't start to, in my opinion, really pick up traction on the brand side until 2020, when there was this, you know, huge reality check of if you don't have in-person connection, if you don't have those touch points like a billboard or radio ads or things that people are still doing in, you know, 2020, which, don't get me wrong, are still viable advertising avenues, but to do them and not do social media was a huge miss in my opinion. And so once that really shifted in 2020, it changed everything. And when you look at the trajectory of social media marketing since 2020, more has happened in the past three to four years than happened in the 10 years prior.

Speaker 2: 5:57

So, we're really in this big boom of shift of change which is just so exciting to look at from an outside perspective.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Okay, so this is an off of the like, off the top of your head, question, but what brand can you think of? Real quick, that is doing it right.

Speaker 2: 6:16

That's a great question. I mean, there's so many brands that are doing such great marketing in different industries. One that's coming to mind, because we were just looking at them yesterday as sort of a competitor analysis for a new client that we're onboarding, is Natural Cycles, which is the brand that has that thermometer for women to track your cycle and your fertility, and their marketing, in my opinion, is just so fun, so great. They truly, truly understand their target audience and they create content that subliminally markets their product. But what it really does is create these connection points with their target audience, based around common experiences, and they infuse this entertainment aspect into their marketing. That really just makes their content fun but also makes you want to purchase what they're selling.

Speaker 1: 7:12

I love that, I love that, and how important are connection points.

Speaker 2: 7:18

I think they're extremely important. Connection and community are. They kind of go hand in hand, and since 2020, we've seen this really big boom in everyone's need for community, as our daily lives have become more isolating and more lonely. There's this loneliness epidemic that we're all going through, and having those connections are really important to make you feel less alone, and so a lot of brands are leaning into building community online.

Speaker 2: 7:47

But outside of creating community and creating groups and chats and in-person meetups and things like that, when you can create these points of connection between your audience, for example, with Natural Cycles, just using them as an example, one of the things that they do is they give you the green or red rating on your thermometer every morning, like are you fertile today or are you not fertile today? This is getting super specific, but they make jokes around how, when you get that green rating of like you're fertile today, are you using protection or are you trying to get pregnant, things like that, and they infuse a lot of humor into that type of content, which is a really common experience for women who may or may not be trying to get pregnant, which is their target audience, and so it's little things like that. Right, finding those commonalities in the people that you're speaking to, to create that oh my God, I'm not alone. Oh my God, isn't that so funny. Like we all go through the same thing is a really valuable aspect of creating community amongst the people who are following you.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Now I know what if my photographer audience that are listening, they want me to ask you about the algorithm. What is your take on the algorithm? Is it the enemy or does our content just suck?

Speaker 2: 9:16

No, it's not the enemy. It's definitely not the enemy, but it is something to be cognizant of and to adapt to. So I think when we look at it as the enemy, we kind of go back to like teenage rebellion period of our lives where we're like, oh, it wants me to do this, I'm going to do the opposite, I'm going to dig my feet into the sand and I am not going to do what it wants to me, because I am different and I'm unique and I don't need to succumb to what it wants. But at the end of the day, the algorithm does make the decisions and it will tell you and be pretty obvious about what it wants. So my recommendation when it comes to the algorithm is to be aware of it and to adapt quickly.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Do you need to do everything that the algorithm wants from you? No, but if you are leaning more on the rebellion side of your content, against the algorithm, you're just simply not going to see as great results as you possibly could. So when you can take into account what the algorithm wants, like, for example, video content which I know can be really difficult for photographers because you're used to photo content it's your preferred method of content. That's what you're doing day in and day out, but when you can turn photos into videos, imagine what you could do then and imagine how much more of an audience you could reach because you are speaking to what the algorithm wants. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Absolutely, absolutely. I know that the algorithm is like the fall guy for a lot of people who just aren't putting out good content.

Speaker 2: 11:04

So, yeah, I agree, yeah it's easy to point the finger and be like, oh, the algorithm changed again. I just can't keep up with it. It's too difficult. But that's also the benefit of having a marketing team or a marketing strategist that you can go to and ask those questions.

Speaker 2: 11:21

We do that for all of the clients that we work with. That's why they hire us, because your job is not to keep up with the algorithm, it's not to understand what type of content you should be creating today versus in six months. And so when you can have someone who can advise you on here's the marketing that their content is doing really well, or here's how the algorithm is changing, or here's the type of content we're going to create for you and it's going to be posted wherever you land on that spectrum. It's really helpful because you can't do everything and as business owners, we like to think that we can do it all. I've been there myself, but everything starts to get impacted when you try to stretch yourself too thin. So I absolutely understand keeping up with the algorithm can be difficult, but it's also our jobs to adapt as business owners and to create content that the algorithm is wanting to see from us.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Yeah, absolutely. I am very, very pro outsourcing. I'm actually getting ready to hire my first virtual assistant. When does it would a photographer know it's time to outsource, like for someone to do content or what have you?

Speaker 2: 12:30

Yeah, I think the point that you should begin outsourcing is when you're kind of at. There's two split points that I always identify is one you are so booked out that you just simply do not have the time to be doing your marketing anymore. So, in order to continue bringing in the leads that you've been signing from social media, you now need to outsource that work, that execution, to someone else and potentially take it up a notch, because you couldn't do certain things that you could now outsource. For example, a lot of people who are doing their own marketing aren't really doing engagement or community building, because it's time, it's an extra step, but it's an extremely important step in building your marketing and truly seeing a real ROI from that time, whether it's time or financial investment. So either you're at that point where you're just maxed out on time you want to be able to take on more clients, projects, et cetera, and so you know you need to outsource marketing at that point or you may be doing it yourself currently and you're not seeing results from it. So maybe you're not maxed out or booked out, but you want to be, but you know that what you're doing is just simply not working and that someone else could do it better than you, of course, at that point.

Speaker 2: 13:51

In that scenario, budget oftentimes comes into play, so I would obviously make sure that you're clear on what you can invest at that earlier stage. But the ROI that you should be seeing from outsourcing at that level should be great and it should help you get booked out. Just be clear on your expectations as well. You're not going to see an ROI within the first 30, 60, maybe even 90 days, but as you build that momentum based on wherever you started, you should be kind of snowballing the impact of your content and then beginning to see those results come in fairly quickly after that point. Yeah, yeah absolutely Okay.

Speaker 1: 14:32

I had like a great question. Totally there it went. Okay. So let me ask you about niching how important is it to have a niche or to niche down?

Speaker 2: 14:46

Well, I think it's different for every industry. Obviously, with photography, there's a lot of different niches that you could explore when it comes to your marketing. It's there's pros and cons of niching, right, because there is an avenue you can take where you niche too far down and you begin to only speak to one thing, which can get really repetitive and really boring for your audience. So, when it comes to niching, I would recommend you find the thing that you love doing. Maybe that's wedding photography, for example. So great wedding photography is the offer that you want to sell, but that should not be the only thing that you're talking about in your marketing content. So to make sure that you're not talking about just one thing in your marketing content. Then you want to make sure that you're really mapping out content buckets for yourself. So what I mean by content buckets is figuring out the different avenues of content that you're going to touch on.

Speaker 2: 15:51

So wedding photography, offers or packages is one content bucket. Normally, you want to have between four and five content buckets for your business. So wedding photography package is one. Maybe your brand and your assistant photographer. So you and your assistant photographer are another content bucket. Your content bucket is like before and afters, so maybe like the raw file versus the edited file, or recommendations on location or how you work things like that. Those are all different content buckets and when you can begin to rotate through them, what it happens to your audience on the consumer side is that they're clear on the offer that you're selling because you're only talking about one offer, because that's your niche, but they're also being entertained and captivated by these other content buckets that you're rotating through, which keep your content new and fun and really something to look forward to consuming when they log on to the app.

Speaker 1: 16:59

That's excellent, yeah, okay. So let me ask you this now. I am really interested in this answer because it's something that I'm currently dealing with. So we all hear about inspiring content versus content on social media that converts, that moves people to buy. What advice would you give a photographer or creative entrepreneur that is in that space where their audience is being inspired but they're not buying?

Speaker 2: 17:33

Yeah, that's a great question, so I love this because it really is true. You kind of have two different types of content. The inspiring content is typically content like your reels. So reels are really top of funnel content that help you reach a wider audience, meaning they are going to get the most reach, they're going to get the most impressions, they're going to bring in new eyes to your business.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Your reels content is likely not going to convert for you and that is okay. It's just a different lens that you're putting on that content. In contrast, the other content on your feed should be that content that's moving people to the sale, so more bottom funnel content. This is likely static photo or carousel or you went live or things like that, and the difference between these types of content is that your reels should be more entertainment, maybe slightly educational, but not sales-based content. Your other content on your feed should be more around your offers and it should be more about how you can help and who you serve and educational pieces that are answering questions that your audience is having.

Speaker 2: 18:56

When content isn't converting, it's sometimes because the strategy for these two different types of content is actually swapped as compared to what it should be.

Speaker 2: 19:08

So you're focusing your reels content on selling and your static and carousel photos more on entertainment, which is not to say it can't be that way, but if you're seeing that that's not working, it's likely because of that angle.

Speaker 2: 19:27

So if you're not seeing conversions right now, my recommendation would be approach your reels in a much more fun entertainment, trend-based angle and avenue and then look at your carousels as an opportunity to educate your potential client on what you do and how you do it and how that helps them really speak to their experience. Because the more that we can speak to their experience, going back to natural cycles from the beginning, we can build community and we can build connection. And connection leads to trust which leads to sales. So we really want to follow that avenue. That we have high funnel, top of funnel reels brings in new eyes because it's fun, funny, trending, and then we move them through that process of our funnel, of our sales, kind of like high-level sales process, and then they're consuming our other content, they're getting prompted to reach out from our stories. Our link in bio and our profile bio is really clear with the CTA and so through all of these different touch points we're leading them to the sale.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Good, yeah, I love that. Yeah, I don't want to be sold to in my reels, I want to be entertained. Yeah, exactly, I love that. Okay, so kind of related how would a photographer? Obviously you can't give all the details, but like one tip for a photographer who wants to create that trust and authority online in their social media.

Speaker 2: 21:04

I think the biggest thing here would be to share more about themselves.

Speaker 2: 21:10

This is something I don't see a lot of photographers doing, because photographers like to be behind the lens and they like to put the spotlight on their client, but truly, the reason that a client is going to hire you is because of you. It's really important to just continue to go back to that and remember that. Who you are, how you show up, what makes you different, is going to be the reason that you sign clients and you make sales and, with that knowledge, consider how you can show up on your social media. We work with one of our clients is a husband and wife photography team, and we have shifted their content significantly to show more of them, and when we did that, we saw a massive increase not only in their engagement, but with their website clicks as well. So not only are people engaging with the content that we're creating, but they're also actually going over to their website and now more people want to work with them because we have shared more about who they are, about their relationship, about their cute little family right.

Speaker 2: 22:23

We're building things that people can connect with and want the reasons why they would want to work with them, and that has been absolutely huge.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Oh, I so, so agree. Photographers I swear they joined photography because it's the perfect job to hide. It's like, no, no, you be in front of the camera. And then they get mad because it's like don't call me a button pusher, I don't just push a button, but people want to see you and to do that, you have to get out in front of people and show yourself. So, yeah, I completely agree, completely agree. I see a lot of photographers who struggle with consistency and posting their content on social media or even marketing in general. How important is consistency in your opinion?

Speaker 2: 23:13

Consistency is everything. So, going back to the algorithm, the algorithm wants consistency and I would say that this is the most prevalent on TikTok. But Instagram just looking at the platforms that most people are on Instagram, facebook, tiktok these are kind of the big ones. Instagram wants consistency as well. It just doesn't need as much consistency as TikTok. But the biggest mistake that you could make is you put all this time, money, effort into creating content and you're really consistent with it. You do it for six months.

Speaker 2: 23:50

By that four month mark, you're getting leads coming in, you're booking calls, you're signing clients and then you say to yourself oh, it's working, great, I don't need to do this anymore. I'm just going to pause, I'm just going to take a little leave of absence and stop posting because I don't need more clients right now. This is like Cardinal Sin number In my opinion. There's two reasons for that. One is that lead generation and marketing your business should be happening consistently, and even more consistently when you are full and when you are really, really busy, because that is going to set you up to no longer have dry seasons, and having leads come in when you're really busy is like the best thing ever, but most business owners are not used to that, and so they kind of shut down when they're busy so they can focus on the clients that they've just recently signed. The second reason why it's so bad to do this is because when you stop posting to whatever platform you're marketing on, what you're doing is you are just destroying all the momentum that you just built for four months. So it takes time to get your content in front of new people.

Speaker 2: 25:03

The reason for that is that the more that someone engages with your content, the more that they are going to see your future content. So in the first couple of weeks, no one is really going to be engaging with your content, because a lot of people aren't going to be seeing it, because the algorithm just doesn't know that people want to see your content, because you haven't been posting for a while. So, okay, great, now you're posting. For a couple of weeks, a couple of months, people are seeing the content, they're engaging with the content. Now you're building that snowball effect and you're getting in front of more people, and then imagine, all of a sudden you stop. Now you have no engagement, no one's seeing your content, and if you then want to go back to those results that you saw.

Speaker 2: 25:44

You are going to need to go through this process all over again, which really sucks Like. That's just unfortunate. So don't stop after you've started. Once you have put the like, you made the decision. You're going to market your business, you're going to get on social media for your brand. Make sure that you can keep up with it consistently, or you have someone who can take over that, like 95 media, like a digital marketing agency who can support you with creating that content, because it will yield you such better results when you continuously and consistently create, post and engage, rather than do it in short spurts. You're just not going to see the results that you want to if you tend to do that.

Speaker 1: 26:28

So is it better to pick one platform and do it really really well, or I would do as much as you can, honestly, and that looks different for everyone.

Speaker 2: 26:37

If one platform is your max, then yes, go all into that platform. Make sure that not only you can create great content now, but that you have a plan for creating great content moving forward and for a long run as well. If there's an opportunity to repurpose content, then that may allow you to get on multiple platforms. Just be cognizant of the fact that repurposing is getting more challenging, in my opinion, than it used to be, because the algorithms are getting smarter, the AI is reading content better, and so just copy and pasting between platforms isn't working in the same way that it used to. One example of this would be cross posting between TikTok and Instagram for your video content.

Speaker 2: 27:24

So it used to be I mean, there was always sort of talk about this that you could post between the platforms, like not making any changes and like, yeah, maybe it wouldn't perform as well, but we're really seeing that creating the final video in each platform uniquely is really important. So maybe you are splicing together some video clips. You would want to do that in an outside app. Inshot is one of my favorite apps to use for video editing, so I would create the base video in InShot and then any text that I wanted to put on the video. I would do that in both Instagram and TikTok drafts and then that way we're using the fonts, colors that are unique to that platform. We're also adding a trending sound that is unique to that platform and by doing so, the videos on each platform are both going to perform well, rather than only the one that you created the video in actually performing well and the other one just kind of taking yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 28:26

So what are your thoughts about a lot of people? They want to go viral. They want to go viral. What are your thoughts about going viral?

Speaker 2: 28:34

My thoughts are that it's not as good as it sounds.

Speaker 1: 28:36

Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2: 28:38

Yeah, one thing that tends to happen that really no one talks about is the fact that when you go viral, yeah, you're reaching a really wide audience. Maybe your video got 2 million views on it Amazing, that's so great. You've gotten in front of 2 million people. But are those 2 million people actually your ideal client? Because the reality is probably not, and so what tends to happen is that you got in front of 2 million people. Now you had a certain percentage conversion rate to how many of those players actually followed you and are going to consume your future content, which is probably a small amount. So maybe of 2 million, you got 10,000 followers Right Now, of those 10,000 followers, what percentage of them are actually your ideal client?

Speaker 2: 29:24

If you are someone who's location-based maybe you don't like to travel a lot for your shoots well, now you're really limiting yourself in terms of which of those people are actually in your local area, or maybe you only specialize in wedding photography, and so how many of those 10,000 people are actually planning a wedding?

Speaker 2: 29:40

So then we kind of have to narrow it down and look at okay, well, of the 2 million, maybe we have 50 potential clients in this mix, and it's more so like making sure we're speaking to the right people and also expecting that after you kind of get this big boom, you're going to have unfollows, and that's totally normal. You're probably also going to have some unpleasant comments, which people are not usually prepared for. You know, with a lot of reach comes a lot of negative feedback as well, and that's totally normal, but it's not usually something that people are prepared for. So I wouldn't say that going viral is the goal. What the goal should be is getting a lot of views, getting in front of the right people and really speaking directly to your target audience.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Going viral can be really triggering for your nervous system, because it's like, how can I hold this? And then the negativity that comes with it, because it's there, that's for sure. Yeah, a lot of opinions.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Yeah, they sure do. On social media they do not hold back, especially on TikTok TikTok. People are savage.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Oh my gosh. Yeah, don't ever say like I look good for 40 or anything like that on TikTok, because you will be skewed alive, yeah. So let me ask about Pinterest. Is Pinterest still relevant?

Speaker 2: 31:08

Definitely. Yeah, pinterest is actually one of my favorite platforms, especially for photographers. It really comes down to what industry are you in if Pinterest is still relevant. But we actually manage Pinterest for a lot of our clients and for the majority of the clients that we manage this platform for it is actually the number one driver of website traffic. That's not always something people expect, especially in today's world, but Pinterest is a platform where people are going for inspiration.

Speaker 2: 31:44

I would say that anyone I've ever known who has done a photo shoot, including myself we actually just had a company photo shoot last week and Pinterest is the first place I went Okay, I'm going to build out my Pinterest boards. I'm going to figure out what stories I want to tell through the photo shoot, what outfit inspo, what pose inspo. There's not a lot of other places you can go to find that as a resource to share, because sure, you could go to TikTok and you could find pose guides and here are different poses you should do, but how do you then put that into a document and share it? It's just not as easy as sharing a photo with your team, which is, for example, what I did for our photo shoot. So Pinterest is great for inspiration.

Speaker 2: 32:28

But the reason that Pinterest works is because the majority, like 90%, of the searches on Pinterest are unbranded, meaning that you are not. You know you can think about your experience as a consumer on Pinterest. You're probably not following the people that can commonly come up for you or that you really like their content from on Pinterest. You just kind of search them up, you pull things from their boards and you move on. So, unlike Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn or Facebook, you don't need to follow people or really know like the brand of the content that you want to consume. You're searching for keywords and Pinterest is really the OG search engine, which is really funny because now Gen Z and millennials are as search engines Like they are the new Google, which is why it's so important to be there.

Speaker 2: 33:26

But Pinterest has always worked that way and it has always been keyword optimized. So in order for Pinterest to work for you, you really need to focus on your keyword descriptions and titles. That's going to be how you get found on Pinterest and drive traffic back to your website. So you may want to drive traffic to your services. Page Blog content does really well, like educational blog content does really well on Pinterest, but there's so many avenues you could take here. I would definitely recommend it as a marketing avenue for photographers.

Speaker 1: 34:04

Giving me a lot to think about. I've kind of forgotten about this, but let's kind of shift again. Well, what about LinkedIn? Why would a photographer want to join LinkedIn?

Speaker 2: 34:15

Well, linkedin is an interesting platform. I love LinkedIn for the reason that, of the millions and millions of users of the platform, only 1% of users on LinkedIn are actually creating content, which is a mind blowing stat, because it means that there is so much white space, and that's what you're always looking for on social media. That's why people went viral and grew their platforms so quick on TikTok in 2020 because there were so few early adapters who were actually creating so much content and connecting with their audience. So it's really interesting that LinkedIn has remained this way for so many years, because LinkedIn is actually the oldest social media platform. It launched in 2000 or 2001, I believe, and since then, people have just consistently not made content, which is really interesting.

Speaker 2: 35:12

So what that means is that if you create content on LinkedIn, it's going to be seen and it's going to be on your followers or your connections, like Explorer page, homepage, whatever you're like looking at, and it gives you an opportunity to get in front of the people that you're trying to reach. Now, if you are someone who exclusively does, you know, family shoots or like newborn shoots or senior portraits, things like that that are really not business related at all, linkedin may not be the right platform for you to invest your time in, but if you are doing anything on the business side or that could connect to the business side, like brand shoots or headshots or product photography or event photography, I would definitely say to be on LinkedIn and to market your services there, because people are in that mindset of business when they log on to LinkedIn and they are expecting marketing content for you to promote your brand, more so on LinkedIn than any other platform. So why not get in front of them, where they're expecting to see it?

Speaker 1: 36:27

Yeah, brand shoots are huge right now. Yeah, yeah, and I'm about to hire my first brand photographer for my own and I am so excited. So, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, all right. Are there any platforms where you think it's kind of too late? You know you missed the boat. You know, is it too late for a photographer to start on TikTok tomorrow, for example?

Speaker 2: 36:53

Definitely not. I don't think there's any platform where it's too late, to the point where it's not worth it. In my opinion, instagram right now, in the beginning of 2024, is the hardest platform to start from ground zero on, just because it's been around for so long and has been a platform that people have been creating so much content on for so long. It's hard to start from ground zero on any platform, but if you're going to do that, you need to be really aware of the amount of content you're going to need to create in order for it to be successful. So if you get on a platform and you're starting from ground zero whether that's Instagram or TikTok or whatever that might be you're going to need to create a lot of content, like a lot in the beginning. Because if you go into it and you're like oh yeah, I'm only going to create one or two posts a week, that should be enough, I'm here to tell you it's not, and so you're not going to see your results and you're going to feel like you missed the boat just because you're not creating the right content and you're not creating enough of it. If you're starting from ground zero, you're going to need to create five to 10 posts a week in order to actually see real momentum and I know how scary that can sound, because that's a lot of content. That's also the benefit of having a marketing team by your side who can help you create the content.

Speaker 2: 38:20

Create something from zero, integrate a strategy. Those are all things that we do with our clients, and we have started so many accounts from zero and really built them over time. That's not to say they gained thousands and thousands of followers within the first few months, but there's definitely opportunities still on the table for any platform. In my opinion, it's not really worth starting from ground zero on Facebook, but that's a different story. I think that's not really one that people are looking at anymore to be like, oh, let's just go all in on Facebook. But if you're looking at starting on Pinterest, instagram, linkedin, tiktok, there's absolutely opportunity on the table.

Speaker 1: 39:01

Yeah, good. So what would you recommend? I have on Instagram over 10,000 followers and I'm shifting in my content from posting photography to posting photographer education. And should I start from ground zero or should I continue to build on my current platform that I have built?

Speaker 2: 39:27

Well, that would go back to who your audience is on your current profile. So if you were previously a photographer and you were talking about your photography services, you probably do have some other photographers in your audience pool, but the majority, hopefully, are people who are looking to hire your services, hire you for your services. So then, speaking to educational content for photographers, you're not going to be speaking to the right people with your current audience. Now, does that mean you 100% need to start over? No, but what you should expect to see is that your engagement will be lower. You're going to lose followers probably faster than you're gaining them, because the existing people are just going to fall off, which is exactly what you want them to do, because you don't want people following you who don't want your services or whatever it is that you're selling, and over time, you'll build it back up and you'll be speaking to the right people.

Speaker 2: 40:30

But there are a lot of pros and cons of starting. You know, turning an existing account into something new versus starting directly from scratch. So it really comes down to a personal opinion and really also understanding who is in your audience already, which obviously I don't know. You could look at your analytics, see the age range, the gender, the location. Meta will give you more information around. Like the industries, pinterest is really great with giving you industry information as well, and all of that will help you determine if you should start from scratch or if you should convert an existing account.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Yeah, I definitely have a lot of photographers because I've been posting workshops and stuff like that. It's just I'm going to be posting less images and more, like you know, educational content, value content, carousel posts, stuff like that Perfect.

Speaker 2: 41:25

Yeah, if they're in your audience, then that sounds great to keep them around and to just build on that existing platform.

Speaker 1: 41:33

Okay, so is there anything else that you would like to say as we wrap up here together?

Speaker 2: 41:41

I think the biggest thing I would say is just that it really is never too late to start marketing your brand, no matter where you choose to do so. If you are someone who's just been apprehensive or scared to start posting and get in front of the camera yourself, I just want to encourage you to start doing it. That it's not as scary as it might seem and the results that you'll see from taking that leap of faith are going to be worth it. And to just get support if you feel like you can't do it on your own. Like I've said, at 95 Media, we work with a lot of small business owners. We've worked with photographers to really help you just get comfortable and to build your brand presence, because there is just so much opportunity in the world of social media when it comes to your marketing that is available to begin tapping into. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1: 42:40

I love that. I learned a lot. Thank you so much. This was great. Where can people find you online?

Speaker 2: 42:45

Yeah, so we are definitely most active on Instagram. We are 90.5.media, all spelled out. Our website is 95mediaco, but we have accounts on every single social media platform. So, wherever you're at, just look us up, but I'd always love to chat if you want to send me a DM on Instagram. We also have our own podcast as well, where we share a lot of marketing tips and tricks. It's called Stop Scrolling, start Scaling, and it is on Apple, spotify, all of the things.

Speaker 1: 43:16

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I learned so much, and I hope that my listeners did too.

Speaker 2: 43:23

Thank, you for having me.