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If you have been following our Social Media miniseries you are undoubtedly excited to start executing your new strategy (if you haven’t already).  This week liveBooks is going to help you improve user engagement by looking at two of the variables you can control: what content you share and when you share it.

What types of content should photographers post to social media?

Few other marketing platforms let you reach so many people so quickly and for such a low price point as social media. It is important when you’re starting to use social media that you publish a variety of content to see what sticks best with your audience. As a photographer you’ll have a lot of visual content to share. Research suggests that images promote higher engagement than any other type of post. In addition, you can try sharing information about different causes you support, things you find inspirational or other cool projects you know about.

To improve engagement you can and include Twitter handles, Facebook tags, and other hashtags to your posts. Tagging others can often work as social currency and people are in turn happy to tag and share your stories. Also, you can try focusing your postings around different themes. For example, if you’re expanding your commercial photography business into high fashion you might try devoting your Friday posts to fashion-related themes on your Facebook or Pinterest profile. Maybe you connect with a local fashion blogger and share his/her content on your Facebook page. You can then see what types of content your followers are latching on to.

Remember that social media is SOCIAL! Think of each post that you put up as part of a larger story you are telling about your brand and the other social communities you align with.  Your followers want to share good stories and will reward you when they feel connected to the type of content you’re posting.

I love creative Twitter campaigns because they happen in real-time. These days the more creative you can get about how to engage your audience, the more successful your efforts will be. Here are some great examples that you might be able to draw inspiration from:

• Jeep put together an awesome campaign that creates a huge amount of engagement by encouraging its users to complete a puzzle. Watch this video to see how they did this.
• Artist Greg Burney (@GregBurney) vowed to sketch the first 3000 people that followed him on Twitter and in one month went from 70 to over 5000 new followers.
• Wendy’s created a gameshow on Twitter using the handle @girlbehindsix to promote the open slot they had on their burger menu. Wendy’s would ask viewers to do fun things like snap and tweet pictures of their headphones or engage in other interesting things to create buzz around Wendy’s. The campaign has over 20,000 followers.

As you can see, there are many fun ways to create buzz using Twitter. If you don’t feel like planning a full social media campaign, try to incorporate these tips into your marketing efforts.

• Research suggests that Twitter messages with 100 characters or less have an increased engagement of 17%.  This may not seem like much but every “favorite” or “retweet” further expands your reach.
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then using Twitter’s new photo embedding function may speak beyond your 140-character limit.  More data will follow in the coming months, but we can assume that photo sharing will continue to increase engagement for Twitter users much like it has for Instagram and mobile Facebook.

When should I post social media content?

So you have all of these ideas to spice up your posts, but when should you be posting to get the most out of your time?  The answer to this depends on what you’re posting. If your message is about an upcoming workshop, consider posting on Sunday or Monday when people are planning out their week. If you have a serious call to action you might consider posting towards the end of the week when people can take time to follow up with your content.  If your clientele is largely working professionals, you might focus your posts around later times in the day when professionals are available and tuned into social media. Be diligent about posting and find the times that work best for your audience.

Stay tuned next week as we help you use tools to monitor your social media presence.  If you haven’t already, join the conversation and let us know what is working for you at resolve@livebooks.com. For the latest news from liveBooks, and for added information and access to tools that will help you grow your photography business, stay connected to liveBooks through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.