Before we talk about GIFs (and yes, I know that’s why you’re here) can we please talk about WHY we even need to be on Instastories as senior photographers? And what in the world we need to be posting!

The purpose of my studio Instagram account is to do 3 things - inspire, entertain and educate.

And I do target my messaging to teenage girls because that is who I am trying to reach. Now I may not always hit the nail on the head, but I do give it my best shot. Let’s dive into these 3 areas for a minute.

Inspire - Images can definitely be inspiring, but so can our words. Believe it or not, they are reading our captions. The words we speak are really important in building our brands online. Words can be powerful and moving, just like images. So don’t just haphazardly throw an image in your feed with a few emojis as the caption and 30 feature account hashtags. You are missing a great opportunity to impact your instagram audience here if you do.
Entertain - Teens are extremely visual. They can scroll for days on end. I know! As a mom of teens I’ve watched it happen! So our images and stories have to not only entertain them but also stand out among the masses if we want to stop their scroll and better yet - engage with us. They also want to know that we are real people, with a sense of humor and some fun personality behind our logos. They want to know WHO WE ARE so if that means getting real and getting silly we need to do just that.
Educate - And yep, we need to educate and bring them value. We need to talk about the things they are too shy to ask about when it comes to our businesses and senior pictures. We need to tell the story of our businesses and the experience they could have with us. Pretty pictures are great, but are you educating your potential clients along the way about what a senior portrait experience with your photography business is all about?

I’ll do want to touch on another topic real quick. Ready?

SHOW YOUR FACE!

Please. Show your face. We are photographers, and we are asking our clients to be bold and brave and step in front of our cameras. We need to show them that it’s not all that difficult (although, I know that sometimes it is). But we need to give what we expect in return. In a world of reality TV, Facetime, Tik Tok dances and YouTubers, teens want to know exactly who they will be working with. They want to like you, and they need to trust you first before they will ever fill out your contact form. They don’t need a perfectly polished look all the time. They actually prefer authenticity. That means no makeup from me on my stories sometimes. I will admit to loving filters though. Just sayin. Ok, off my soapbox :)

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Wanna know about those Instastory GIFs now?

As senior photographers showing up on InstaStories is really important, right? And not doing the same things over and over is even more important - refer to point number 2 above ;) I am always on the hunt for some fun and interesting GIFs to add to my stories, and I thought you’d like some of the ones I’ve found recently too.

These GIFs are so much fun to play around with and can really add some interest to an image, video or boomerang in your Instagram Stories. Give some of them a try and let me know what you think! And if you know of some other great ones please share :)