As far as social media platforms go, Instagram is probably the number one for wedding photographers, florists and planners (excluding Pinterest of course). Your Instagram can be a way to showcase your brand and attract potential clients to you! Here are my top Instagram tips for wedding photographers, florists and planners.

1. Use a planning & scheduling app to curate your feed

Your feed tells your brand story and in the wedding business, the visual appeal of your newsfeed matters! You should be telling your brand story within the aesthetic of your feed. You can do this through using your brand colours, embracing negative space to draw the eye to focal images and using a variety of shots to make your grid look cohesive.

I use the free Lightroom to edit my photos using presets (not necessary if you’re a photographer of course). This makes all the images look cohesive on my feed. The only exception are my professional headshots as those are representations of the photographer and so respectfully, I’m not going to touch the editing!

For planning and scheduling, I use Planoly which also free! This allows you to plan out your grid in advance and schedule 30 posts at a time for free. This allows me to really create a balanced, branded feed and also allows me to plan my Instagram in advance.

For more information on this, read our blog post on 5 Tips for Planning your Social Media Content

2. Get personal

When it comes to choosing a wedding photographer, florist or planner it’s not enough to just see the work. Oftentimes potential clients want to get to know the person behind the feed. A wedding is one of the biggest days of their lives and choosing people to share in that day is important.

You should appear in at least every 9 photos on your Instagram feed. Lifestyle images and professional headshots are perfect for this. You should also go ahead and change your profile picture to a professional image of yourself. Yes your logo may be gorgeous but you are also part of your brand (and gorgeous too!).

Show up in your stories with tips, tricks and just everyday lifestyle videos. You should also add a highlight with a few of your favourite stores and title it ‘about me’. This way, anyone looking to learn more about you can find them easily!

3. Use your Instagram Stories

Our third in the list of Instagram tips for wedding photographers, florists & planners is to get on stories! Video is becoming more and more popular. Interestingly, the videos that do really well aren’t the highly produced videos but the more organic, natural content such as Instagram Stories. These stories are a great way to share in the moment content as well as a better look into who you are. Remember that social media is called SOCIAL media… if you treat it that way, you find you’ll get a lot better results.

For those of you who are cringing at the thought of a video of yourself, don’t overthink it. Those little imperfections that you notice are not going to be noticed by anyone else. It also gets so much easier the more often that you do it – I promise!

4. Optimize your name & bio

Where it asks for your name, also include what you do i.e. Joe Blogs – Niagara Wedding Planner. This way you are more likely to show up in local search for what you do.

Your bio is another place to showcase your brand and who your dream client is. This is the opportunity to sell your style and the type of clients you focus on. It can be tempting to make this more about your personal life and you can add a small line about you, but the important part here is appealing to your ideal client.

5. Use your website in your bio

It can be so tempting to link directly to a blog that you’ve recently been featured in or that award that you’ve won, but this is not helping clients find you! If they’re clicking on the website, they’re most likely looking for more information on you. Our fifth on the list of Instagram tips for wedding photographers, florists & planners is to include your own website!

If you want to add multiple links, you can create a page on your website for links! Check out www.schiftandco.com/links to see how we’ve setup ours. Another option is to use a tool such as link tree but the first option is better as it’s avoiding multiple steps to get to your website.

6. Make your location super obvious

Instagram is a global platform and I’m assuming the majority of you serve clients primarily in your local area. The first thing you need to be doing is adding your location to your profile. You don’t have to put your whole address in there but can set it to the city that you are located in.

If you’re also a destination photographer, florist or planner, this is something you can mention in your bio but I’d still recommend having a location set so it makes it easier for those searching for businesses to find you.

When posting images, you should also be including the venues in the post location field. If a couple have booked their venue, they may look at photos of the venue and your photos will pop up! They’re then more likely to view your profile and learn more about who you are.

7.  Hashtags

I’m going to be honest, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with hashtags. They were originally created to help categorize your feed and help people find you. Unfortunately, this has lead to bots and other types of Instagram growth platforms to be able to target your account.

When it comes to hashtags, use ones that are relevant to your image and the type of people you want to attract. I keep a few different lists in Planoly of hashtags that I like to use regularly. The ones that work well are location specific e.g #niagaraweddingplanner or venue specific #kurtzorchardsweddings. There are others that can help your image go viral if the company decides to share it.

When it comes to the number of hashtags, the number does vary. A recent study showed that around 5 hashtags was optimum and any more than that doesn’t have any additional benefit to you. As long as you’re keeping it true to the image, it will work.

Going back to those pesky bots, if you find that a certain hashtag results in more of those in-genuine comments and random follows, it’s best you avoid using it at all.

8. What do I even say?

Captions are probably the most stressful part of Instagram for the majority of my clients. I get asked what to say on the regular, and I’ve been there and I get it! When it comes to your caption, you can include a mixture of caption types:

• A personal story
• Education content
• Real wedding story
• Comment on the image itself

Your captions help the reader connect to your brand and tell your story. Mix it up and have a variety of caption lengths in there. The captions that encourage engagement with some sort of question are better. So don’t forget to include some prompts for engagement!

9. Engage with others & offer value

Instagram’s algorithm is powered by engagement. If people who see your feed then engage with it (likes, comments, video views & dms), they will then more likely see your content going forward. Similarly, if you want others to engage with you then you should be willing to engage with them! It goes both ways.

As part of your onboarding, you can also request your couples Instagram handles. That way you can follow along and engage with them along their journey. This will make them feel like you’re part of their story and will likely lead to some referrals along the way!

Implement our Instagram tips for wedding photographers, florists & planners today!

We hope you’ve found these tips helpful! Tag us in your most recent Instagram post so we can follow along with your story. Let us know which of these Instagram tips for wedding photographers, florists & planners you’ve implemented in your business and we look forward to seeing you on the ‘gram very soon.