Hello again my photographer friends! Welcome back to week 2 of our Photographer Series. This week we are focusing on our Photo Shareflow.
A shareflow is my made-up word for your “sharing photos workflow”…pretty fun right? This is my simple formula for ensuring that my images are posted and shared. While I might not always be perfect with it, this is the structure I’ve set and followed for the most part.
Shareflow Steps
We are going to start with the same workflow we had previously in which we have a client who has invested in an engagement session along with their wedding day coverage. This process begins after you’ve already photographed your couple, so your engagement workflow is already underway.
1. Send Your Client Preview Images
I always send every client (no matter what session) a preview within 48 hours of their session. After I’ve downloaded their images (completed my backup workflow!), I edit a quick handful from their engagement session. This is to keep the hype going to make sure my couple feels super excited that we captured something awesome!
2. Airdrop Preview Images to Your Phone
After you’ve sent the images (via text or email), I will always airdrop these images to my iPhone so I have quick access to them.
3. Post these bad boys to your Instastory!
Tagging your clients in a social media post is so dang fun! It’s a FREE and easy way to market your fresh work and have your clients share it with their families and friends.
4. Add Preview Images to Instagram Planning App
I personally use the PlannThat app for my Instagram planning. This app allows you to create a “gride” with category squares. These squares can be labeled whatever you like, in whatever frequency you like. It helps to diversify your feed, share consistent content, and keep track of it all.
5. Deliver Final Gallery to Client 2-3 Weeks after Session
Using Pic-Time I will send the final gallery to my client within 3 weeks of their session date. I try to hit 2 weeks but during high season it can sometimes hit that 3 week mark.
6. Using Narrative, Craft your Blog
Narrative is an amazing desktop app that you can use to design stunning blog posts. The best part is that Narrative hosts your images on their servers which doesn’t bog down YOUR site with all those files. Super nice and keeps loads times fast!
This app also has lots of SEO tools to help your website work for you.
7. Using CoSchedule, Schedule Your Posts
CoSchedule is a social media publishing app that allows you to publish content to multiple platforms at once. It has a WordPress plugin, making scheduling so easy because you can schedule from inside WordPress itself.
I schedule two things using Coschedule.
- Initial post just to share the awesome new content
- An “It’s Wedding Day for these two!” post, that reposts the blog to social as a fun wedding day hype post.
CoSchedule will integrate with all your most used social media platforms and even import the data as you get views, likes and comments.
8. Using those top 20-25 Images, Make Pins for Pinterest
This is where integrations are freaking awesome. You can go about this a few ways, but this is the simplest and fastest way to drive traffic to your website.
Using Tailwind, download their browser app. This allows you to pin anything on the internet super fast.
Go to your blog that you’ve just posted and click on the Tailwind app. All of your images will appear in the app where you can then assign them to boards, pick scheduling times and hit “Go Schedule!”
You can then type in your unique descriptions, add keywords and be off to the races.
The Wedding Gallery Shareflow
This workflow is basically a rinse and repeat of the engagement session shareflow. There are a few key differences:
- Previews are 100-200 images
- Instagram posts include Vendor Tags (super important!)
- 6-8 Week delivery time
- 50-75 blog images
- Secondary CoSchedule post is for the Anniversary instead of the wedding day
- More pins for Pinterest
Another key separator is that you can choose to submit your weddings (and frankly, engagement sessions too) for publication and/or send your vendor teams a copy of the gallery.
I will note, if you chose to send vendors’ galleries, please outline specific guidelines of the ways they can and cannot use these images. I lay out these guidelines in an email that I’ve made a template of for easy rinse & repeat. The gist is, they can only use them for portfolio usage with proper credit both on their website and on their social media platforms. ANY use of my images in advertisements, print or digital, requires permission and costs a small fee. This is because no one else owns the rights to the images but me. My clients have their print rights, but the copyrights always stay with me. If a vendor uses these images in a way that violates the rules set out, I invoice them. If they do not pay, I have a lawyer for copyright infringement. In order to be able to call upon a lawyer for this, you MUST have in your contract with the client that YOU own the copyright. Otherwise, all bets are off.
The Wrap Up
WHEW! Again so much information but I hope it’s super helpful! This is the simplest form of sharing photos that I have found for myself. I’m a person who loves strategy and methods…if you’re a wing it and fly, this might not be right for you, haha! But hopefully, you’ll now walk away with a few ideas of how to post and share your work via your own Shareflow process!
