Photography Notes: Should I have two Instagram accounts?
I have pondered on this particular thought for a while: Should I have an Instagram account for both personal and business posts or should I keep it all separate?It's a tough choice (at least I thought it was). Here's some points you should probably take into consideration:
Are you a shearer?
Do you like to share every moment of your day, every silly face, every donut you eat, and run you have to go on afterwards? It's great, it's fine ..no problem with that .. but.. are you taking your best pictures in these situations? Do you want your clients to see this side of you?
Can you separate the two?
phone
If your business is you, if you take photos of real people and their events, of life with it's wonders and it's tears then maybe sharing a bit of your own is not such a bad idea. After all you want to really know your clients and you can't really expect someone to open up fully when they don't know who you are. Put them at ease with a few messy hair days and favourite hiking spots. The more they know you the more they know what to expect and if you're on the same wave length.It's easier to separate your personal life when your business profile is unrelated to who you are. Maybe you shoot fashion or business headshots but you're favourite outfit for everyday is a comfy animal onesie... that's quite a contrast right? Even so, when we have clients we are talking about human beings who you want to build great relationships with, so I think showing your beautiful face once in a while is not that bad :)
Do you have a style?
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During my hours and hours of browsing, and swiping, and double clicking on Instagram I learned one important thing: you require a theme, a style that people will get accustomed to, will follow because that's what they want to see in the morning while sipping coffee. So ? Are you the adventurer with pretty images in the mountains? Or the lifestyle blogger with a great sense of art deco. Or maybe you like beauty or fashion? It can be anything as long as it's consistent. Does this style go with your daily life? Yes? Great mix it all together.No? Then think about the amount of people on Instagram (over 800 million monthly active users) and also think about the Instagram algorithm - scary right? It is more difficult to have active followers when they don't know what to expect from you everyday. Let them know what you are about by being consistent in your style and the ones who love it will follow. It is more likely to get people interested in one or two themes you post rather than all your hobbies and favourite foods and family pics put together.
Are you interested in being featured?
Being featured is a great way to get yourself and your brand out there. A feature account with thousands of followers to pick your image to share would be amazing. But it's becoming more and more difficult and most times getting featured it's not only about one image. Curator accounts choose the best of the best and they do that by looking at your entire account. And here is where it becomes very important to share your greatest images, have a style and be consistent. Yup, basically very similar to the point above.
Conclusion
2 instagram accounts
Instagram has grown so much and the majority of people I know (and are interested in photography) have at least one account. It's an awesome network for sharing your images, art and lifestyle and it's also pretty good for socialising and inspiration. The application even made it easy for you to change from one account to another. You have Stories! The silly faces and the days in the animal onesie while eating a donut can be shared there freely for 24 hours.So really the only reason for not having multiple Instagram accounts can only be that .. it's kinda difficult to keep up with two in the long run and you don't have inspiration for new captions :PPS: Personally I decided that I don't need to share pics in my onesie so I keep mine all business, and the odd dog walk (but with free reign on the stories). I did decide I need a separate Instagram account for my art. So in the end I still have two ;)