How to create a photo carousel for Instagram in Canva

How to create a photo carousel for Instagram in Canva

HOW TO 

CREATE A PHOTO CAROUSEL FOR INSTAGRAM IN CANVA

I  have been looking at ways to share more content on one post on Instagram for my family shoots and training. Having looked at many options, I am now enjoying using photography carousels created in minutes in Canva.

You can create your own using my free templates and a free software to divide the images. Just follow the steps in the blog post below, and please do tag me in any you create!

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STEP 1

Open my free templates from Canva

Click on the link below to open up a number of free templates I have created for Canva. Then just drag in your favourite images #simple

STEP 2

Download the image as PNG or Jpeg

Once you have created your final carousel, select and download the entire image and save it to your PC as a Jpeg or PNG, there is no need to resize the file at any stage. 

STEP 3

Divide the image into 5 squares using the free software below

Just upload your image, choose to split the image horizontally, and select 5 in the number of blocks.

Then save the files to your PC or phone ready to upload to instagram. 

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Creating a link-in-bio page for your social media

Creating a link-in-bio page for your social media

creating a link-in-bio page

HELPING SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS TO FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR ON YOUR WEBSITE

As my Instagram and Twitter following continues to grow I chatted to my friend and fellow photographers Stephanie Belton and Andrea Whelan about how to make the link in my bio work more effectively. I found I was constantly changing the link depending on what subject I was talking about (my blogs, workshops, editing tips etc) and there had to be a more efficient way.

We discussed a couple of options for making our links work more effectively including:

1. Creating a specific ‘link-in-bio’ page on our websites

2. Using  linktr.ee which has a free basic plan 

I decided to create my own page on my website so I could control the final design rather than use the Linktr.ee format.  As I design and maintain my own website so it was quite straight-forward for me to do this myself. Also having a page on your own site is always better for SEO. You can see how the final page looks on the phone on the video below.

I created a new page called /link-in-bio and I can already see traffic coming into this page so it appears that my social followers are using it.

I hope this blog post was useful and feel free to sign up to be added to my mailing list below.   

 

Marketing for photographers: Getting to know your target audience

Marketing for photographers: Getting to know your target audience

Facebook ads for photographers course

Target audience for photographers

“Your vibe attracts your tribe”

One of the questions I am asked regularly by professional photographers on my Business & Marketing Workshop is “how can they find customers who really value our photography?”

Let’s be honest,  we all hope to work with customers for whom price ISN’T the primary decision when booking us for a family photo shoot.  We want them to love our photography and be excited to work with us. “Your vibe attracts your tribe” is a quote you may have seen on Instagram or Facebook, but at its heart is a business principle that is completely relevant to running a photography business. What it says is:

“The messages you put out directly impact the type of customer you attract”

 

The first stage in ensuring your business attracts the right customers is understanding WHO your ideal customer is. To successfully market photography services to these families, we need to know WHO they are and WHAT they like. Before becoming a professional photographer, I was a marketing and brand manager for 15 years. When developing our marketing plans, we invested heavily in projects that helped us understand our target customers. This would include focus groups, online surveys, and, in some cases asking customers to wear cameras as they shopped in Tescos. 

The great news is being a photographer means we get to engage with customers daily personally. We can gather insights into our clients from multiple sources, including social media. In my marketing training for photographers workshop, one of the early exercises is brainstorming who our ideal photography client is.

The goal is to have a one-page description (which can be kept on the wall in your office) to guide you when creating marketing activity. If you have clarity over WHO you are speaking to and WHAT they like, you will understand WHERE to focus your marketing effort and WHAT you should be saying.

We can break this exercise down into 4 key areas:

1. Location

2. Behaviour

 

3. Brands

 

4. Interests

 
Ideal photography client by Nina Mace Photography

1. Location

Where does your ideal client live?

Knowing WHERE you want to work really can impact your business model. As an example, my business is designed to fit around my 2 children. Ideally, I want to work within school hours which therefore means I would like to work as close to my home as possible. 

This means I am able to list the towns in which I want to photograph families and this helps me to think about targeting my marketing messaging. As an example, it is this list that I use when I set up Facebook advertising or Google Adwords or look at my Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  (Note: If you are looking for SEO for Training Photographers you can find details of my course here

Brother and sister on family photoshoot in Camberley
Brother and sister on family photoshoot in Camberley

2. Behaviour

What do your ideal clients enjoy doing?

Another great way to understand your ideal customers better is to think about how you would like to interact with your client DURING and AFTER the shoot. Are the families you want to photograph outgoing  & outdoorsy? Are they the type of family which is happy to go off the beaten track to get the best images?  If not, do they have a home with very cool features that you could utilise on the day?

This is your opportunity to define your ideal family and what type of shoot will inspire you to deliver your best images. After the photoshoot do they want to spend time with you looking at the images deciding on wall art for their home? Alternatively,  would they be excited to see the images online allowing them to easily share with friends and family?

Photography mentor Nina Mace
Photography mentor Nina Mace

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3. Brands

Which companies and brands do your clients love?

To understand your ideal customer, even more, take some time to think about the shops and brands they love.  As I work in customers’ homes, I see the same homeware over and over again (the same rugs, picture frames and prints).

For example, my clients tend to have open-plan homes and colourful decals on the children’s bedroom walls. Take time to identify the brands & companies which appear frequently in visits or discussions with clients. You can then use this information to think about the styling of your communications – think colours, fonts and language of these brands. 

Dance photography workshops
Dance photography workshops

4. Interests

What are your ideal client’s other interests?

Facebook can be a wonderful resource for helping you to understand your customers more. I find social media a great way to see what other pages my clients find interesting, what issues are important to them and where they go for days out in my local area.   This information is especially useful when it comes to coming up with blog content that people will really want to read and share. 

Another example of how knowing my client’s interests has helped to grow my business is I discovered that my customers were interested in photography and will often already own an entry-level DSLR. This means that there is a natural crossover between my family portrait customers and my Beginners Photography Course for parents.

Photography Trainer, Photography Workshops
Photography Trainer, Photography Workshops

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I am very lucky to work with some outstanding partners and brands and they have been kind enough to offer exclusive discounts to my followers. You can find a complete list below and you can also learn more about these companies by joining my Facebook community here.

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The Business of Photography: Survey results

The Business of Photography: Survey results

The Business of photography - Survey results

As a photography mentor and trainer, I am privileged to work with newborn, family and wedding photographers from all over the UK. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed) objectives for their business is one of the core tasks we work through together on my Business & Marketing training day.

I am often asked how long it might take to establish a business that creates an income that would replace a previous job, so I decided to collate data from photographers to understand the relationship between how long a business has been established and profit.

I also wanted to see if there are any key trends that could be translated into learnings for new photographers, from those who are further along in their business lifecycle.

Details of the survey, topline trends in the data and key learnings are shown below.

Details of the survey

I created a Survey Monkey questionnaire and posted the link to my Facebook training group and some other well-known photography groups. The questionnaire was totally anonymous and 192 people have responded to date. If you would like to add your data please visit the link here.

 

Who responded?

 

  • 6% of photographers who responded have been in business less than 12 months, 37% 1-3 years, 26% 3-5 years and 30% over 5 years

 

  • The photographers that responded were a relatively even mix across all genres from newborn studio to wedding photography.

 

  • Close to 50% of the respondents work PART TIME with the remainder either working the equivalent full-time hours or full time PLUS some weekends and evenings.

Top line trends

 

  • 9% of those who responded have a TURNOVER of more than £60,000 with only 4% of respondents turning over £83,000 breaking through the VAT barrier.

 

  • Of this turnover, PROFIT varies between 50% and 70%. This translates to 13% of respondents earning over £30,000 profit.

 

  • When you break this down by full time vs part time, just over 75% of those that work part-time TURNOVER up to £20,000. Close to 15% of the respondents turnover £20-£30,000 per year. One difference is the profit – a significant proportion of part-time photographers who turn over up to £20,000 are making no money or very little profit (not likely to be paying tax). That said I would expect this to be the case because of investment in equipment and training early in their career.

 

  • To reach these income levels on average it takes 5 years (71 % of respondents) with a smaller percentage reaching this stage in between 3-5 years (29%).

 

  • Of those earning at the top end (over £60, 000 turnover) 92% work full time or full time plus evenings and weekends.

 

  • The top-level earners tended to have come from Management (HR etc), Marketing or Finance backgrounds.

 

  • The longer photographers stay in business the less reliant they become on social media for their enquiries. They shift from social to referrals and website/ google.

 

  • Those who are more established, and at the higher end of the income graph, receive on average 15-40 enquiries a month which equates to 3-10 a week.

 

  • Average sales for those in the top 21% varied between £400 and £1500 which illustrates that a full-time business can be built on mass-market family photography as well as premium clients.

 

  • These results did not significantly differ across genre whether it be newborn studio, wedding or lifestyle family photography, so running a photography business is the same no matter what you photograph.

Learnings from the survey results

 

  • Management (planning), Marketing (selling) and Finance (tracking) are core skills which help to grow a photography business so when it comes to training and investment I would add this to the wishlist if you don’t have experience in these areas.

 

  • Setting realistic targets for earnings if you are working part-time is important. It is possible that you can earn in the top tier but it is challenging.

 

  • Just under 20% of people that responded did not know what their profit was BUT 100% of the people that earnt in the top 20% of income knew AND are more likely to have some form of an accounting system or accountant. Knowledge is power!

 

Finally, there are always exceptions to every rule and everyone’s business model is different. This survey was developed to illustrate that you can build a successful full-time photography business but that managing expectation is key. I would love to hear your feedback on these results.