I've Got My Publication, What's Next?

Our today's theme is Advanced Promotion.

First let me say this: when you think about using your successful publication for promotion, let social media be just one of your channels. As you are well aware, social media promotion takes all the time you are willing to give it, and without a clear plan you will spend waste time in vain. Today I'll tell you why.

But let's start over: you've produced and published an editorial, how do you get the most out of it? Let's divide your promotion efforts into 4 circles:
1. Team and magazine
2. Clients - personal communication
3. Blogs and newspapers (or wherever your earned audience lives)
4. Social media

Team And Magazine

The team and the magazine are those people who were directly involved in the work on the editorial. This is not only a model, make-up artist and stylist, it is your model's agent, the owner of the cafe where you shot the editorial, the magazine's team, the designers whose wardrobe you used.

You are now in an ideal position to deepen your connections with these people. For example, if among the presented designers there is one whom you would like to get as a client, now is the time to invite them for coffee. If you want to arrange an exhibition in the cafe where you Shot the editorial, present them a print of one of the images you made. Be creative and sincere and you will build a special network - a network of clients who are a little in love with what you do and will stay with you for many seasons in a row - because it all didn't start with money - it started with beauty.

As for interacting with the magazine - try starting a little more direct exchange with the editor - complimenting the content or asking what kind of project they would be interested in - this will help you in the future to not be faceless for them.
Make sure readers of the magazine can find your work and your audience can find a copy of the magazine — this is useful for both audiences.

Future clients may come to you from the magazine, but you have no control over this, so focus on what is in your control - using the name of the magazine and beautiful design to deepen the connection with your network and audience.
Step one - write the name of the journal on your resume.

Clients

Step two - here we come to the "Clients - personal communication" category. Think about which of your past, present, possibly future clients will be interested in this publication.

Example: when I was publishing a book, I had several interviews, in one of them I mentioned a couple of clients. Now I am doing new big campaign for one of them.

But the connection may not be so direct. Ask yourself which of the clients might be interested in shooting at the location used in your editorial. Who could be interested in the model you were working with (especially if it is a new model). Which one of them might want to appear in this particular magazine?

All this correspondence, video calls and plans together show the client that you remember them and are sincerely interested in his business - when they is ready, they will choose you.

Blogs and newspapers

The third category is your earned audience. If you have an art newspaper or blog or any group of people who reads you all the time, tell them about the photoshoot process, but give a little more than on your social media posts - show the backstage, tell them about some interesting detail or technical challenge. Know your audience and tap into the aspect that will be of interest to these people.

For photographers, these are technical details, for spectators - your inspiration, for models - the specifics of choosing your and chemistry with the model. Just do not assume who is in your audience - know for sure!

And your goal here is not likes, but feedback, you want to start a dialogue and transfer a person to your network. Selling books and prints, expanding a network or building your own reputation as a pro starts here.

Social Media

Finally, social media. The first thing I want to mention is pretty obvious - publish the shoot at the same time - the magazine, you yourself, the team, the designers, the agency, all the assistants upload the shoot at the same time with links to each other. Ideally, the content should be slightly different for each participant (either different 2-3 photos out of 15 processed, or the same photos with different info) so that those who found these photos could learn new details by following the links.

If someone has shared your post, always write a small comment with gratitude - they will share again. Under the team posts, write small details and compliments - so the audience of the team will go to look at you. In general, be positive, open and concise so people want more. You will have an increase in your audience (which will become your network, which will become your customers and partners)

But here I also want to say about two traps. The first is that if you look at all the people who follow you on Instagram, most likely 80% of them are new models and your peers, photographers - the first audience will not become clients due to lack of funds, the second because they came to watch what you were doing, not hire you.

Therefore, you need an influx of the right audience - it can be google or facebook ads, guest articles in blogs and magazines, or people whom you meet in the real world at exhibition openings or creative evenings or fashion events. In other words, do not expect that the audience that will find you by tags will be your ideal audience.

The second trap is your own psychology and the so-called vanity metrics. Let's say you pour 2-3 hours of time into social networks every day. Your audience grows, each photo first collects 10 likes, then 20, 50, 100, and now you have built a page with 1000 or 10000 users. Everyone likes you and no one ever writes to you (except for spammers who offer dubious promos for your real money). You hope that someone will "discover" you at last and you continue to broadcast your work.

But the fact is that if you spent 2-3 hours a day on competent marketing, then perhaps you would not have 10,000 audience, but you would already have a customer base. If you wouldn't explore tags, but would go to catwalks with a camera, exchanged business cards and sent photos from events to designers, it would be more effective, but it wouldn't flatter your ego as 10,000 "followers" (in this way, vanity metrics).

Therefore, do not chase a large audience for the sake of an audience. Perhaps you are building a youtube channel to make money on advertising - then yes. Or you send these people to your newspaper and want them to buy your prints and books in the future - then also yes. But if you are selling your services locally as a fashion photographer, then it is worth having a small beautiful Instagram as a business card, but there are much easier ways to find and secure clients, since Instagram will take your time and ...(see the thought with which you started)