Most of these case studies come from emails my readers send me. With their permission, I share them with the names changed. I do this so that others can learn from what worked and what didn't. Have a story of your own? Share it with me.
- 1 to 9owner messages a month
- 4shoots booked
- 300 to 1,800people reached by a tagged post
Magnus’s Instagram grid looked like a camera catalog.
Lenses on a wooden table, a sunset over the bay and a moody black and white of his own hands.
Other photographers loved it. Shop owners in Green Bay never saw it.
Magnus is a brand photographer in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
His brand photographer Instagram account had 2,300 followers and brought him about one owner message a month.
Five months after he started posting for owners instead, he was getting 9 a month. Four of those messages became shoots.
The problem
Magnus photographs cheese shops, breweries, tailors and small offices.
His client work is warm and full of people, but almost none of it was on his feed.
He’d built the account the way he thought photographers should, around gear, light and mood.
He’d followed a few big photography accounts for years and copied what they did.
Their audience was other photographers, and so was his.
His grid had three main subjects.
The lenses
About a third of his posts showed equipment. New lenses, a camera bag and a lighting setup.
Other photographers commented and asked about settings. No owner ever asked about a lens.
The sunsets
Another third were landscapes from around the bay. They were lovely, and they got the most likes.
But they told an owner nothing about whether he could make her cheese counter look good.
The client work, untagged
The last third were client photos, posted weeks after the shoot with no tag. Owners never knew he’d posted them, so they never shared.
The photos sat on his profile, seen mostly by people who already followed him.
The solution
Magnus didn’t need more followers. He needed posts that owners, their customers and the town would actually want to share.
He made three changes.
Post for three groups, not for photographers
Before every post, he asked one question. Would the shop owner want to share this?
If the answer was no, he saved the post for a different day or didn’t post it.
Tag every client, and post the same week
He started posting a reveal within a week of each gallery, with the shop tagged and the street named.
When owners agreed, he made it a collab post, so it appeared on both profiles at once.
Add owner tips and answers
Once a week, he posted a short tip for owners or answered a question someone had asked him.
These posts got fewer likes and far more saves.
Owners started sending them to each other.
One tip, about changing a website’s main photo with the seasons, was shared by a local business group.
It brought three new followers who ran shops downtown.
The process that worked
Magnus posted three times a week for five months.
He used the eight post types from a guide to social posts that reach clients’ customers.
He also kept a simple tally of every owner who messaged him.
The cheese shop reveal
The first tagged post showed the cheese shop’s owner slicing a wheel of aged cheddar.
He posted it four days after the gallery, as a collab.
It reached about 1,800 people, compared with around 300 for his usual posts. Two owners messaged that week.
The cheese shop owner replied to every comment herself, which kept the post alive for days.
The brewery collab
The brewery’s owner wrote the caption with him, about the day they reopened after a flood.
It was shared by the brewery, two staff members and a local news account.
A tailor three streets away saw it and booked a shoot for her shop’s tenth anniversary.
She told him she’d never noticed his account before.
She’d seen the post because the brewery’s owner was her neighbor and shared everything he liked.
The Broadway roundup
In month three, he posted a roundup of three shops on one street, all past clients.
Each shop shared it, and so did the neighborhood association.
It became his most saved post ever, and it brought two messages from owners on the same street who wanted to be in the next one.
Instagram was the right place for most of his clients.
Roughly half of US adults use it, according to Pew Research Center’s social media survey, and his shop owners were among them.
The brand photographer Instagram numbers
After five months, owner messages had risen from about one a month to nine. Four messages turned into booked shoots.
His follower count grew too, from 2,300 to 3,100. Most of the new followers were local, which mattered far more than the number.
What we learned from here
A brand photographer Instagram account works when the owner wants to share the post.
If she won’t share it, her customers will never see it.
Magnus’s old feed wasn’t bad. It was simply made for the wrong audience.
When he started posting for owners and tagging them, his reach followed their reach.
| Post | Brought a message | Brought a like |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | A local shop and its people | A lens or a sunset |
| Timing | Within a week of the gallery | Weeks later |
| Tags | The shop, the street, a collab | None |
| Caption | A detail, a story and a next step | A camera setting |
| Extras | Owner tips and answers | More of the same |
The sunsets still have a place. He posts one now and then, because he loves them, but they no longer carry his marketing.
The biggest change was in who followed him. His old followers were mostly photographers.
His new ones were owners, staff and neighbors.
That shift made every new post easier. When he tagged a shop, people already knew him and trusted his work.
He also stopped worrying about likes. A post with forty likes and two owner messages was now a great week.
If your feed is full of gear and landscapes, scroll it like a shop owner would.
Count how many posts she’d want to share, and start there.
Then post one tagged reveal this week. The owner’s share will tell you more than any number of likes.
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