How Knowing Your “Why” Will Change Your Relationship To Social Media - ISSUE 53
Frustrated with the algo and ready to give up? Try this exercise first!
This week I share a little bit about social media and where I see a lot of people go wrong in their mindset towards it. I know this isn’t everyone's favourite topic but boy do I get A LOT of messages from people in the photography community about how frustrated, confused and just deflated they feel when it comes to Instagram these days. I hope this helps a little.
This info is also something you can use across personal projects that have nothing to do with the online world so don’t skip this issue simply because you aren’t interested in social media.
GIVEAWAY WINNER!!
I am so excited to announce the winner of last weeks film + camera pouch giveaway courtesy of my good friends at Hung Supply.
Alice from Auckland New Zealand you are the WINNER! We will be in touch via email to grab your shipping details and get your awesome prize out to you ASAP!
Thanks to everyone who entered and if you really had your heart set on a Roscoe Pouch you can grab one as part of the Roscoe and Tee combo deal over on the Hung Supply site.
Can’t wait to do another one of these and thanks again to HS for teaming up with me!
Housekeeping
Something else before we jump in though. I have just finished up some regular sessions with Marco, a photographer based in Austria and here is what he had to say about our time together.
"I'm sincerely grateful for the incredibly enriching photography tutoring.
The guidance I got from Lucy extended beyond technique, delving deep into the psychology of photography, art nuances, and personal growth pathways.
Her proactive approach really fueled my curiosity and creativity and her immersive knowledge-sharing is definitely attractive.
Lucy's personality and unwavering support played a crucial role in making this learning journey memorable. Our discussions were both informative and transformative, deepening my connection to the art of photography.
I am from Austria (Europe), and Lucy has been incredibly accommodating in customizing our meeting times despite the 8-hour time difference between our regions.
In summary, these sessions have been a relevant milestone in my evolution as a hobbyist photographer. I really recommend her lessons to those delving into photography and creative self-discovery. My sincere gratitude for this remarkable learning opportunity!"
I have one spot left for 1:1 sessions in late September and a few free in October, so get in touch or book below if you want to secure a creative session with me. They have been extended to 90 minutes now which allows us to cover more ground and get all your questions answered too!
I do realize that not everyone can take advantage of these sessions due to financial constraints so I am working on some resources, both free and under $20, that will enable people to access an overview of certain topics. Make sure you are subscribed so you can be the first to know about these!
I do also offer portfolio reviews that have been popular the last few months! These have been absolutely amazing to provide and I thoroughly enjoy seeing all your wonderful work and being a part of the process with you. These are always available and open to anyone, anywhere, at any level of their photographic journey.
My virtual door is always open and I love to hear and connect with people in the community so don’t hesitate to say hello in the DM’s or send me an email with thoughts or quick questions!
Enjoy this week's letter
Forget Kevin…We Need To Talk About Instagram
Every photographer's most hated, but still used platform, has to be….Instagram.
It’s a visual platform that allows us to share photos with a global audience…and it’s free, so it’s no surprise we are all using it right? The issue is though, it’s become something much more complicated than just a photo sharing platform and unfortunately that is what tends to happen to these things. They get hijacked when the opportunity for money is spotted and it all gets turned into one big advert. I would like to point out that this is NOT a new occurrence.
Magazines and newspapers have adverts, as does television, billboards, buses and pretty much anywhere you can squeeze them in. So yeah, social media will obviously take their slice of the pie when it comes to advertising to you with sponsored posts, as well as appealing to people who want to get reach personally by allowing them to pay for it through boosting posts.
I know, it’s all yucky and gross and feels like the world is one big sales machine and all you want is just for people who you know would enjoy your photo to see it and comment with a few fire emojis….or is that what you want?
That brings me to todays topic, tip and big question for you when it comes to social media…
“Why do you want more people to see your work?”
“What is the deeper motivation behind this desire for your photography to be seen?”
Or perhaps more importantly - “What is your goal and what do you want to achieve and how does social media fit into that, if at all?”
These questions are where you should be starting off. Your main focus shouldn’t be on how frustrated you are with the lack of engagement you get or how the algorithm hates you. All that will do is make you more mad and negative, causing your problem to expand.
I am a reformed angry person and I can speak from experience when I say that what you expend your energy on will have a huge impact on what you do, or don’t achieve.
To help put it all in context I have answered some of the questions below myself. See me as sort of a case study and feel free to copy paste, write these questions down or do some typing in notes to figure out your why!
“Why do you want people to see your work?”
I hope to grow the community that surrounds my YouTube channel and help people feel inspired, motivated and in control of their creative future. That may be in the realm of personal work, stepping into professional roles or having their first exhibition, making a zine, or starting a channel of their own! Alongside this I want my social media presence to grow so I can attract more client work, sponsorships and speaking opportunities as well as cementing myself as a thought leader in the photography and content creation space. My goals span across many sectors and I would love to shoot a campaign for a big brand name and have my first solo exhibition in a gallery one day soon.
“What is the deeper motivation behind this desire for your photography to be seen?”
I have always told myself that only certain select people could make it as artists and whilst I thought I would be chosen by someone for opportunities I longed for, I realise now that I didn’t really try very hard to put myself out there, nor did I have many concrete, consistent examples of what I wanted to be chosen for. For a long time I made many excuses as to why things couldn’t work instead of forging my own path to make them a reality.
I have always wanted to be famous for doing something creative and felt I had a lot to offer the world but I didn’t know how to package that up and more importantly I was too scared to try in case it didn’t work out. If you have that mindset it can be very difficult to get the ball rolling as you won’t take risks, you won’t have the balls to put yourself out there and how the hell can you expect people to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. Cliché I know, but it's true.
So to get to the question, my deeper motivation is to conquer my fears and not let anything stand in my way on this path to creating a career out of doing what I enjoy and sharing it with others. Even if it doesn’t all happen how I hope it to, I have gained so many skills and developed as a person in such a massive way and that is invaluable.
I feel by sharing all of this with the photography community it can help others to start getting out of their own way too and lose the excuses and start making shit happen for themselves!
“How does social media help you achieve your goals and what you want within photography?”
Social media is a crucial part of what I do. Youtube is at the crux of it all. Had I not started the channel and stayed consistent even when it was hard then I don’t think I would be where I am now. Finding my feet on Instagram took a while longer and wasn’t something I felt was as enriching but I have now found my groove there too.
I am less concerned with traditional accolades in photography such as prizes, exhibitions, awards, printed features and other things that are steeped in the physical world. I am more motivated and interested by the online space as I feel I can reach and serve a larger amount of people this way and that is what is at the core of my mission with the channel and its surrounding elements.
I don’t view socials as something that I must keep up with or is against me, but rather my preferred way to get the word out there about myself and my work. My relationship with it is healthy because I realize that I need it, but I am also in control of it as long as I can be self aware, evaluate the performance of content and stay connected to both my audience and myself to provide authentic and valuable content.
I understand that there must be thought and consideration when using these platforms and without that I may not get the result I want. Ultimately though, the power is in my hands. I just have to learn, grow and remind myself of my goal to stay on track.
Okay so those are my totally honest answers, they were a bit dry but I wanted to really lay out to you exactly how I feel about, and approach, the whole social media topic in the hopes that it helps you to do this same exercise and then feel less frustrated, more organized and powerful!!!
How Will Answering These Q’s Help You?
All this soul searching and goal digging may feel a little overkill when we are talking about something as seemingly vapid as social media but trust me, if you haven't done this exercise then you are basically throwing spaghetti at the wall every time you post, then complaining it hasn’t stuck.
You need to know your why, before you can really get anywhere with anything. This applies to everything too so use this however you wish. When you exercise, are you doing it just cause you feel you should? If you are then it’s probably not going that well. You probably feel unmotivated and obligated to do it so you end up putting it off and then you feel guilty, so you beat yourself up about it and you think well I may as well eat that bar of Tony’s in the cupboard. Can you tell I’ve been there??
Flip the script on this and let’s say you are exercising to train for a half marathon coming up. That's your why and cause you have a why you are ten times more likely to stay on track, understand what you are doing and why it’s important to keep going. The you with a why is a better version of yourself. It’s clear, focused, driven and set up for success!
So sit down and think less about how you think you’ve been shadow banned and more about what you actually want to happen with your photography and how social media will fit into that?
If you wanna get 100k followers then you better start coming up with a whole list of content ideas, learn how to edit short form content like a boss and start engaging and taking notes from others who are where you wanna be. (Sidenote here-just getting 100k followers won’t solve your problems and chasing vanity metrics as your sole goal is not advisable, so dig a little deeper)
If you want to have an exhibition then maybe you should focus less on followers and viral content and all that stuff and instead follow galleries, dm people who have had shows, curate your work in a way that is conducive to this goal. Also maybe you are better off the screen and getting involved locally with people. That is why it’s so important to do the exercise above so you know your why. It may turn out that social media isn’t a big player for you when it comes to your goals and that is freeing AF!
Perhaps you wanna start a YouTube channel as an experiment and see where it goes. Just focus your time on learning about that and coming up with ideas for what you will share and talk about. What will be unique about your channel? You probably don’t need to focus too much on anything other than YouTube so make that your main thing.
There are endless examples here so get to the questions and start figuring out what it is you actually want as opposed to making another post and then feeling crappy because it didn’t pop off. If you don’t know what you want then it’s really hard for others to interrupt that and connect with you.
I’m so excited to hear all your Why’s so email me if you do this exercise or hit me up on IG to let me know if this was helpful.
Love Lucy xx
I find myself in this - it got me writing about finding my why - thank you for your inspiration
Liked this one Lucy! Reframing it as a tool is a great approach.