Social Media & The Photography Business

Social Media & The Photography Business

by William Lulow

I have been feeling more and more compelled to say something about social media because I still use it as a kind of advertising platform but I feel that it has become a dangerous place to conduct legitimate business. It’s free and sometimes can help in giving images some “press,” and because I have set up my website as a kind of interactive venue for those interested in learning more about photography both as a business and an art form, it can be valuable. But, it has to be used with a HUGE AMOUNT OF CAUTION. 

I have always encouraged folks to ask questions and/or submit their pictures for critiques and it has been used as such many times. In that regard though, I had a recent exchange with someone not about photography but about one of my other passions: golf. After using INSTAGRAM as the platform for communication, it became clear during the course of several posts that I wasn’t at all sure with whom I was communicating! And therein, lies the danger with much of social media itself. One is never completely sure who the people doing the posting really are and what drives them to use the posts in the first place. For this reason, I always encourage anyone trying to find out information about me or my services to use direct messages,  email and even better, a phone call. In addition, more and more these days, people are relying on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and CHAT-GPT for their posts on social media. So now it is very difficult to tell the difference between a post from a human being and that of a robot! Which is why so many folks are using an app like CAPTCHA to ascertain whether someone posting something is actually human! 

If someone is truly interested in booking a photographer, they usually make a phone call first! They DO NOT use social media! I have had other instances where there was a post on Facebook (which I no longer use), inquiring about a photographer for what sounded like a very good job. We communicated a few times until the person wanted to pay using a “cashier’s check.” Having had an experience with this once before, I politely said I was no longer interested. It turned out that this person was a scammer.

There are many business practices that have been used time and again by serious practitioners both clients as well as talent. Those are the ones you can usually trust. Most jobs posted on social media are bogus! If you use a platform with which you need to register and confirm who you are, what geographical areas you serve and what your qualifications are, these are usually safe to use. But I have seen scammers use these as well. Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok or any of the others CANNOT BE TRUSTED. Period. I no longer use any of them for serious communication. My Facebook was hacked and I will not use X because of the owner and his policies. The only social media outlet that I continue to trust is LinkedIn, because most users maintain fairly strict business standards. There seems to be very little grifting on this platform because it seems that people respect how it is intended to be used. But EVEN THEN, I have seen people on LinkedIn trying to sell their brand of business sense or charge money for information that I usually give for free. You can spot grifters because they will usually publish a “come on” line like “wouldn’t you like a simple way to get rich?” Only to find out that if you click on a link the “Dragnet” will be able to have all your contact information and only to find out that they want money up front for any information. 

With all this said, I still post some images on Instagram as well as LinkedIn. Although in the roughly ten to twelve  years I have been on these platforms, I have never landed a job directly due to my posts, I feel it is a way of publicizing some of my favorite images, that’s all.  And I explain how the images were made, free of charge. I do this because after a 40+ year successful career as a professional photographer,  20+ years of teaching photography at various levels and having attained masters degrees in TV/Film and Education, I feel that trying to educate others is a way of “giving back” something to the field that I have loved all these years. These days, most of my clients come from word of mouth or listings on Google, Bing, Yelp and other search engines. I have devoted a lot of study to SEO keywords and techniques and I can usually be found on the first pages of most of these search engines. Sometimes I am the very first listing and none of it has cost me a penny.

My caveat is YOU CAN NEVER TRUST ANYTHING YOU SEE, READ OR HEAR ON SOCIAL MEDIA. When you access my website, you can be sure that the items you see and the content you read have been carefully prepared and researched for as much accuracy as I can muster and devote to them. Also, I never publish anyone else’s work unless I get written permission beforehand and the images are used to make a point on a blog article. Also, anyone asking you for ANY INFORMATION of any kind, phone number, email address or social media handle is a SCAMMER. As I said, anyone legitimately interested in you or your services will pick up the phone and call you. If all your communication with potential clients is via email or social media, I would discontinue contact with them immediately. When people hire a professional photographer or anyone else for that matter, they want to talk to them to get a feel for their personalities and listen to what they have to say about any project. So, if they’re not interested in talking to you, it’s a SCAM!

If you have questions about any or all images I post on this site or any questions about photography as art or business, you can be sure that if you call or send an email from my site, all questions will be answered promptly and diligently.

We need to get back to communicating with each other by phone, email or snail mail. Social media platforms are too subject to falsehoods and misinformation.

My website shows my recent as well as past work. Sometimes people use quick searches or “nano searches” while they are waiting for something else. Maybe they are standing in line waiting for tickets to a show or to pick up a bakery item. They will search for something while they are waiting! Often, they don’t delve deep enough into a website to find out who the people really are. Or sometimes they find a post on social media and follow a link, which can be dangerous enough because often we don’t know if the post is real or not. 

Sometimes people just glance at websites without really exploring them fully. My website contains all sorts of images from the various subjects I shoot on a regular basis. Don’t just look at people’s posts. Study their websites to get to know them. And, don’t communicate with prospective clients via social media. Use direct messages, email and THE PHONE! Do business the old-fashioned way: safely! 

These days, a website is really a photographer’s portfolio! Since most business is done online now, being “out there” is really one of the only ways to attract new business. So, it’s incumbent on us as photographers to be careful about how we conduct our business.