5 Great Ways to Promote Your Photography
It’s fantastic isn’t it, when friends, loved ones, and relatives comment approvingly on photos that you’ve taken. But what if you want to get more exposure for your work? After all, there’s not much point in taking a photo if no one’s going to see it. In the following article, we’ll cover five of our favorite tips for promoting your photography. Whether you’re into photography professionally or just enjoy it as a hobby, these tips will help you get your work out there and see.
Create Your Own Website
Creating your own website is so easy these days and affords many advantages that it really should be the first thing on your mind, should you looking to get your work out there. Above all, the beauty of your own website is that you can control the content on it and measure just how much you want to share with your audience. This site will become your forward-facing side; the place where you can determine the world’s perception of your work. With your own website, you can plant your URL anywhere and everywhere, from business cards to posts on Facebook. Companies like 1&1 offer the full spectrum of web hosting, including actually building up your web domain for you, so if you really want to go down this route then it’s simple enough.
Social Media Is Your Friend
If you’re serious about getting exposure for your work, you have to understand and utilize social media effectively. Aside from the usual general-use social media places, platforms like Instagram and 500px are ideal for sharing images. Of course, it’s a given that your photos will be pleasing to the eye and generally you can choose whichever social media platform best suits your purposes. If you’re looking to build up a community and exhibit your work online, then Facebook is probably the simplest and safest bet, as it allows plenty of options for interacting with your followers. Don’t forget to add the right tags and captions to your posts, so that they’ll gain even more exposure.
Start Your Own Blog
If building and managing your own website sounds a little daunting, why not scale down your ambitions a notch or two and start your own blog. Find a blog hosting service is the easiest thing in the world online. Of course, you could do both and use one to feed into the other if you’re really on top of your promotion game. Aside from showcasing your photography, a written blog can go into more detail on the history or context behind your shots or even the technical aspects, like what camera you used, film or digital, etc. Of course, having your own blog makes it even easier to get your work featured elsewhere (see below).
Get Featured On Other Blogs
Just as you might run your own blog to promote your work, why not reach out to other bloggers to feature your work. This can be taken as a first step to getting your work more exposure or, if you’re already showcasing your work, this can be a great way of benefiting from the traffic of more established bloggers. Plenty of photography blogs welcomes the work of new photographers in search of an audience. This kind of exposure can’t hurt, so give it a shot and reach out to any blogs you might like and see what happens.
Competitions
Of course, winning awards makes a lot of what we’ve written already a lot simpler. Award-winning photography comes with its own hallmark of quality and can be so much easier to promote than just another set of photos from another anonymous online amateur. If you truly believe your work is worth sharing then it’s also worth entering into competitions, even major newspapers are getting in on the act. Choose the competitions you enter carefully and always make sure that you retain copyright control of any images you do send-off. Even if you don’t win any awards, getting your work placed in front of industry professionals can always come to some good, especially if they search your name and find the rest of your portfolio (see our first tip).
