What are the steps to creating a social media photography strategy?

1 Analyze your current situation

Before you start planning your future photos, you need to assess your current situation. What are your strengths and weaknesses in terms of social media photography? What are your competitors doing? What are your audience's preferences and expectations? You can use tools like analytics, surveys, and audits to gather data and insights that will help you identify your gaps and opportunities.

2 Define your objectives and KPIs

Next, you need to set clear and specific objectives for your social media photography strategy. What do you want to achieve with your images? How do they align with your overall business and marketing goals? How will you measure your success? You can use the SMART framework to define your objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, you might want to increase your brand awareness, engagement, conversions, or loyalty with your photos.

4 Plan your content and calendar

Once you have your visual identity, you need to plan your content and calendar. What kind of photos will you create and share? How often and when will you post them? How will they fit with your other content types and platforms? You need to balance your content mix between promotional, educational, inspirational, and entertaining photos that will add value and variety to your audience. You also need to schedule your photos according to your optimal times, seasons, and events.

5 Create and edit your photos

After planning your content and calendar, you need to create and edit your photos. This is the fun and creative part of your social media photography strategy, but also the most challenging. You need to follow your visual identity guidelines, use high-quality equipment and software, and optimize your photos for each platform and device. You can use tools like cameras, tripods, lenses, lights, backgrounds, editing apps, and presets to create and edit your photos.

6 Monitor and optimize your performance

Finally, you need to monitor and optimize your performance. This is the ongoing and iterative part of your social media photography strategy, where you evaluate your results and make improvements. You need to use your analytics and KPIs to track and measure your photo performance, such as reach, impressions, likes, comments, shares, clicks, and conversions. You also need to test and experiment with different photo elements, formats, and strategies to see what works best for your audience and goals.