Today’s episode on the Book More Clients Photography Podcast, I am sharing how to use Facebook to market your photography business with Brittany Acklin, a student in my Blueprint Program.

In today’s episode on the Book More Clients Photography Podcast, I’m sharing strategies to use in order to market your photography business through Facebook.

Who is Brittany Acklin?

A family photography based in Oklahoma.

Using Facebook to Market Your Photography Business

Brooke: I would love for you to ask me your question for today.

Brittany: My question regards Facebook marketing. Facebook is where my people are at. They don’t even really mess with Instagram. I’ve been using a business Facebook page up until now. A lot of people use groups and I know you have a Facebook group. I want to know if Facebook groups is where I need to head? What’s the best way to go about that, getting it started and making it be able to work for me?

Brooke: So, you’ve been using a Facebook business page. Everyone knows that social media is going through another one of its dips where they’re struggling a little bit. With Facebook, when you think about the algorithm, I like to picture it as a ranking ladder. There are certain features of Facebook that are priority, if you will. It is a pay to play app. That is who they give their preferences to.

You still need a business page. It just has to exist. I don’t care if you’re posting to it. The reason why is because people go to social media to look up to see if a business exists, where it’s at, hours, all of those things. When I’m in town wondering if a boutique is open or not – I am going to look at their social media to see, “Did they post their hours? Are they open? Are they closed today?”

So. I just want to say it’s very important that you all have a Facebook business page. I’m glad that you have one. Now you’re probably really frustrated with it because it seems like all of the content that you put out, is not getting as much engagement or turning your followers into leads compared to what you want it to do. Am I right in saying that?

Brittany: Absolutely. The the posts are hit and miss. Some do really well and then some, you hear crickets.

Brooke: That’s normal too. There’s so many factors. You’re gonna come up against that in a group too. Back to the ladder that I was talking about. Facebook business pages are flat at the bottom. There’s just not a lot happening unless you are paying for ads.

Why You Need A Facebook Group For Your Photography Business

If you know me, you know I am the organic marketing queen. We do not need to use ads to have successful businesses. You almost need more of that successful business first. You need to know who you’re speaking to and all those things before you even have an ad strategy. No one needs to be using ads at this point. Facebook groups, though is something that Facebook is pushing.

How do we know this? Facebook has said that. Facebook has commercials out. For Hulu, they have seasons where they talk about Facebook groups. Through the pandemic, there were commercials about Facebook groups. So they’re rewarding you for using the feature that they want. Right now it’s Facebook reels. That’s their number one thing. That’s everybody’s number one thing but Facebook groups comes close to next to that.

I want you to understand why I push Facebook groups. If we don’t understand why then we’re likely to not do it. A Facebook group does a lot of good things, not only for that platform, but for your business as well. When people are in a Facebook group, you’re able to have community. You’re able to actually get to know your people and they are able to talk back and forth with you. Which is great!

How do you actually do this to use Facebook to market your photography business? There’s a full training in the Blueprint Program, but I want to personalize this a little bit to you. Here’s what I recommend:

First, name it as simple as Brittany Acklin Photography, Insiders, VIP, First to Know. Whatever you want to. There’s a second route, which is more of an SEO driven route. Let’s say that you’re really passionate about a certain type of family. For example, adoptive families. Maybe you have adopted a child, you guys are really big into giving to support families who adopt. That would be a tight knit community, you guys would have common ground. It doesn’t have to be that specific.

Or, Option A, which is the basic get started option. Using your photography name and adding “insiders”. Then, inside of your group, you want to be strategic from the get go. You only need to be showing up in there. I would say maybe four to five times a week, if that. One post per day, on the days that you want to be on social media.

For me, I’m typically posting on a Sunday evening, on a Tuesday or Thursday and a Friday. That’s typically what I do, because I’ve learned my people at this point. Then I take days off social media. You won’t catch me or really any of my group members in there on Saturdays, because of family lives. If I’m not on social media, my clients are probably not hanging out on social media either. Especially if they have multiple children. We’re now in sports season, you know what I mean?

I want you to know a lot of people are scared to do a Facebook group because they think it’s going to be more work. But if you will foster that community, get a really good grasp on the different content topics in there, you can really get that group to communicate and engage.

How to Post Content In Your Photography Facebook Group

The biggest mistake I see people do, and I don’t want you to do this, is that you don’t have to have every post relate to your photography business. That’s when it gets boring. That’s when they feel like they were invited to a sales group. We don’t want to do that.

Yes, it is about your photography. You still want to use your photography in there often. I would say maybe 70% of your content. But then we want to use 30% of your content to really talk about deeper issues.

In the Book More Clients Marketing Academy, we give lots of different content topics and ideas. That’s where you’re going to start, taking that content calendar that we give you and take those prompts and use them in your group.

For your Facebook business page. It’s your choice. You can keep posting in there if you want to. What I’m doing right now, if you want to know my strategy and in my photography business – I’m pivoting. For those that don’t know, I am pivoting into studio work. I am contemplating brand new social media. Starting from zero and building it up. I don’t mind doing that but it’s like, “oh, gosh, here we go. I gotta start over again.” With that being said, I do two posts on my business page a week. I’ll pick my top two days.

How do I figure that out? I look at the insights through the Meta Business Suite on Facebook. There’s no secrets here. It’s just learning to read analytics. Then in my group, we’re doing three to four quality posts per week and that’s it. That is how I use Facebook to market my photography business.

I have had bookings since January without having to over market myself. January, February, March. I mean, I have not bent over backwards trying to market my business, the past quarter. It works!

Ideas for content outside of photography would be getting more on an emotional level with your clients, right? Not always saying, “Hey, I only have three spots to book.” Sometimes we have to go deeper to why they need to book now. What are they going to miss out on if they don’t? Especially for newborn and maternity, really time sensitive things.

Other things would be, getting a lot more behind the scenes:

• How do you work in your business?
• Who are you?
• Why should they choose you?
• Sharing your values

All of those things together, that’s how to use Facebook to market your photography business with Facebook groups. Maintaining it is not hard.

Hype this group up for like a week straight. Make it your number one focus. If your goal is to launch this in May, you’re gonna use the rest of April to get this group up. I want you to go all in. You’re gonna feel like you’re being annoying because you’re talking about your Facebook group everywhere. But I want you to try to push as many people as you can to join your Facebook group that are interested in your photography, what you have to offer, things like that.

Inside of my Facebook group training, I do give you a couple of different ways to launch your Facebook group that are really fun and great ways to do that. The more hyped up you can be about it, when you first launch it, Facebook will reward your group. It will start showing your group to other people in your area. That’s how you can grow it quicker and have better engagement faster.

Aim for about 100 group members when you launch your group. I know that seems like a large number, but it’s really not. 100 will give you enough data for you to start tracking those analytics and insights for you to know what to do with it. Does that help?

Brittany: It does. I’ve been nervous about the group idea because you think in your head about maintaining them. The business page and maintaining the group. That seems like a lot. But I like your approach and your strategy. As far as just being real about the business page, it’s there but if it’s at the bottom level of where things are ranked, then my efforts need to be focused elsewhere. I’ve always liked what you said about, especially when it comes to Facebook, creating community. I’m in a relatively small town, too, not as small as yours. I know a lot of people here and I think that would be beneficial.

Brooke: When you create that community, you start learning what they love, what they react to, what they care about what they don’t care about. Then we don’t ever do posts like that again. It’s good because you get to know each other back and forth. Then, they eventually book you.

At first, you have people that just watch you. You can see how many people saw your posts. Even though they’re not reacting, at least, you know, they saw it. Whereas a Facebook page, that is not accurate at all. They’ll count it as a view, even if it’s in someone’s feed, and they’ve scrolled through it and stop for whatever reason, even if they’re not on it. Your group is a great way to get better insight, analytics community and eventually get those conversions for bookings.

How has the From Broke to Booked Blueprint impacted your life or business since you’ve been in it?

Brittany: It has changed absolutely everything. I was in another mentorship program early last year. That didn’t work out for lots of reasons. Then I signed up with you last fall for The Blueprint. I couldn’t rave about this program more. From the get go, I re-vamped my entire business from the ground up. I already had some stuff in place. But implementing the CRM and the systems and processes and everything has made all the difference. Before it was just flat out chaos. But once I implemented everything that you teach, it’s huge. I don’t even have the words to say how amazing it is.

For anybody that is on the fence about it, just do it. Just do it. It’s worth every single penny. All day long. I talk you up to so many of my other photographer friends. If I’m not preaching The Blueprint Program, I’m talking about your podcast. When I listened to your podcast, I went back to the very first episode and started from the beginning. Just listen to all the way through and I finished it a few weeks ago and I’m like, what do I listen to now?

Brooke: All that warms my heart so much. It just goes to show I poured my heart and soul into this program and into you guys because I love it. I struggle sometimes trying to explain the impact it can actually have on your life and business because it’s it’s just so much easier hearing it from people that have gone through it. But you have shown up and I think what’s really incredible for you is I get asked a lot. “Okay, well I’ve been in business 7, 10, 15 years – am I too far past The Blueprint?” You told us that you’ve done photography for over 10 but restarted your business, over a year ago. I think that will really help somebody that’s like, “Well, I want to but I thought what if I get in there and it’s not worth it?” I’ve heard that before too.

Having you vouch for that, you know doing it your way for so long and then going oh my god Just like I revamp my entire business, because of the strategies that I’ve learned, I think that’s I think that’s going to be gold for someone else to hear. I never want someone to come in and be like, “Yeah, I already knew all this.” I don’t even think that’s possible, because we’re constantly updating trainings and stuff. But I have heard that before. Thank you so much. I love having you in The Blueprint. anged about some things? What are my new strategies? So anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was a great question and I hope it showed you how to use Facebook to market your photography business.

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