Welcome to minis Made Easy, the podcast that's all about making your mini sessions simple, profitable and stress free. I'm Rebecca Rice, and I've helped 1000s of family photographers, just like you, build thriving businesses through mini sessions. Somewhere along the way, my students started calling me the queen of minis, and I'll gladly own it, because I love showing photographers how to maximize their time and profits while working smarter, not harder. Whether you're brand new to the world of minis or you've been running them for years and are ready to level up if you're in the right place, from pricing and marketing to posing and workflows, this is your one stop shop for everything minis. So grab your favorite drink, get cozy, and let's dive in. You're just one episode away from transforming your
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music. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of the minis Made Easy podcast today we are talking about why social media is not enough to book out your minis. And this is a topic that I feel like I could just talk about forever, because it's such a huge issue in the photography industry, where photographers think that, you know, posting to social media is a marketing strategy as a whole, and then they wonder, they get really frustrated, like I'm doing all the things I'm posting every day. Why am I not getting bookings? And so today, we are going to dive into what social media, what role it plays in a marketing strategy, and how to get outside of just our followers, because social media is not enough. Here is a little harsh truth about social media. Okay? Number one, you do not own social media, okay, so it could literally go down tomorrow, which, hello, we've seen that with Tiktok. Although it was not down for very long it was down. And so that shows us that the powers that be can shut down whatever they want at any point. And so if you're putting all your eggs in social media as your marketing strategy, that is not a safe game to play because you don't own it. And then the second thing is that only about 4% of your followers are actually seeing your posts, okay? And that's because of Instagram's algorithms. The limitations on visibility is so restrictive and extremely frustrating. And so you know you could put in all this work to putting out social media content and but if that is your only marketing strategy, you're gonna really, really struggle. You are not getting in front of enough people. Like, let's say you have 1000 followers, okay, that means only probably around 40 to 50 people are actually seeing what you post. That can be really discouraging, because out of those 40 or 50 people, let's say you're posting about spring minis. How many of those are actually going to book with you? Because not everybody who sees your stuff is going to book with you. Now we all have something called a conversion rate, where basically it is a small percentage of the people that see your mini sessions marketing are actually going to book with you. And you know, everybody has a different conversion rate, but for the most part, conversion rates are very low. And so we're talking like probably one to 3% of people who see your marketing are going to book with you. And so you know, if we're talking 40 or 50 people, what's 1% one to 3% of 40 to 50 people, not very many. And so if you want to book more, you have to get in front of more people outside of just the people who follow you, because relying on only your followers for one, it means that you're reaching pretty much the same people over and over. And then two, you're really limiting your reach and your visibility because of the algorithms, and so we've got to get outside of just who follows us on social media. Now that's not to say that social media cannot be the powerful marketing tool. It absolutely can, but social media is meant to be a piece of the marketing puzzle, not your whole strategy. So I absolutely believe that you should be utilizing social media, but that cannot be your end all. Be all for marketing. Anytime somebody is struggling to book, I see posts all the time in my minis Facebook group where photographers are like, help I'm not booking. I don't know why. You know this, that and the other. My very first question is, what does your marketing strategy look like? How are you marketing? And eight times out of 10 they will say, well, like I'm posting to my Instagram stories and my feed and all the things social media cannot be it that's not a complete marketing strategy.
Strategy, and so you want to think of it in terms of having, like, a multi touch marketing strategy, okay? You want to be able to give as many different touch points in as many different ways as you can, because good marketing is about repetition. Okay, people need a lot of touch points before they're ready to book with you. I think the percentage or the like number out there that they say, I don't know who they is, but the marketing experts say that somebody needs to see something seven times before finally taking action on it. That's a lot of times to be, you know, sharing about your mini sessions. And so I worked at a church back in the day, and they used to tell us one thing about working at a church is little side note that it is very much about marketing, which sounds kind of weird, but stick with me. Let's say we're trying to get the word out about an outreach that we're doing, or an event, okay, a free event at the church, then we're going to have to talk about it a lot for our people to start hearing about it. And our team used to say that when you're tired of talking about something, somebody is just now hearing it for the very first time. And so when it comes to your marketing for your mini sessions, you have got to get to the place where you are so sick and tired of saying the same things over and over, because at that point you still have people that are just hearing about it for the very first time. So marketing is hugely about repetition. Okay? Then we need to think about different ways to say the same thing, right? And where to say these things. You can't just say all of the things, and, you know, talk about your bookings and all the things just on your social media. That is not enough. We have to get beyond our followers to actually get more bookings. By getting in front of more eyeballs. To get more bookings, you have to get in front of more eyeballs. So what are some ways to do that? Number one is you can engage in like local Facebook groups or community groups or things like that. While, yes, this is on social media, it's a little bit different because there are 1000s of local moms in your city's mom group that are moms that do not follow you. They have no idea if you are. They don't see your messaging ever. And so by posting in those local Facebook groups and community groups and things like that, it puts you in front of 1000s of local moms that don't follow you for free. Okay, so that is a huge way to be able to market outside of just posting to your own social media. Another thing that you can do is you can partner with local businesses. You can team up with boutiques or hair and makeup artists or coffee shops or preschools pediatricians offices. There's so many different local businesses that you can reach out to and partner up with. The key is to find something that is mutually beneficial to you. So in exchange for them allowing you to market your mini sessions, maybe you offer updated headshots for their team, or you offer to photograph an event that they are hosting soon, or something like that. Like so many different ways that you can partner with local businesses and get creative, but that puts you in front of their audience of people that don't know who you are. So we're getting beyond just who follows us. Another thing that you can do to get beyond your followers is you can make sure that your SEO is where it should be. Your SEO is search engine optimization. So basically, when people are googling your city photographer, are you showing up in the search results? Because if you're not, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. Because people Google all the time, they are still googling. Google is the number one search engine. People are still searching for photographers on Google, and so it's free to rank on Google. You don't have to pay for that. All it takes is some strategic search engine optimization, making sure that your website is ranking on Google. And there are so many resources out there about SEO, I have a mini course about blogging and SEO that's included in my business and marketing course. So if you're not a member of my business and marketing course, maybe go check that out. There's a whole section on SEO in there, but you want to make sure that you are ranking through your website, through your blogs, all the things. Side note, if you're not blogging, you absolutely should be blogging your photo sessions, because that's a huge boost to SEO if you're doing it properly. I could do a whole episode on just blogging. I probably will at some point, but gotta move on. So we're working on getting beyond just who follows us on social media. You can reach out to local Facebook groups and community groups. You can partner with local business.
This is you can make sure your blog and your SEO are where they should be. Another thing that you can do is you can lean into email marketing. Now, if you didn't listen to last week's episode, pause here and go listen to that, because that episode, I dive super deep into all things email marketing and how that can help you boost your mini sessions bookings. I'm a huge believer in email marketing, and so if you're not doing that already, go listen to last week's episode. But then one more thing that you can do to go beyond who is currently following on social media, is you can run paid ads. Now, when I say paid ads, I'm talking about Instagram and Facebook ads specifically, it could be really terrifying to run ads, especially if you don't know what you're doing. But I'm telling you, when you get some education, you know what you're doing, paid ads can be one of the most effective ways to fill any remaining mini sessions spots that you have when students grab hold of this, it is game changer, because you realize it is a money making machine. You're able to if I had a machine that I said, you put in $1 and it spits out $3 every single time. Would you do that? I mean, absolutely, that's a great investment. And so paid ads is kind of like that when you know how to do them. Well, I would suggest getting some education on that. I've got a whole Facebook ad mini course available if you want to go check that out. It's also included in my profitable mini sessions course for those of you that are PMC students, running paid ads, can be a great way to get in front of your specific audience, because you can target. You can tell Facebook exactly who you want to get in front of. It is kind of scary how accurate their targeting can be and how specific their targeting can be. So it's a really, really great way to get in front of people that don't follow you. But here's the deal at the end of the day, like I said, social media is a tool, but it is not the whole toolbox. It cannot be your complete marketing strategy. It is a piece of the puzzle. And so if you want to book more, you have to expand your reach beyond just who follows you. And by doing that, we diversify our marketing, we work on our email marketing, our SEO partnering with local businesses. You know, Facebook community engagement and ads, these all play a role in a complete marketing strategy. And so if this is the kick in the pants, you needed to really start working on your marketing strategy. Do it today. Start today, and do something beyond just posting to your Facebook or Instagram and hoping that you get bookings when you start really taking hold of a true, complete marketing strategy, it will change the game for your mini sessions, bookings. Don't get overwhelmed. My goal for you pick one thing, okay, one of the new strategies that I talked about, and implement that one strategy this week, and then slowly you can start adding in, you know another thing and another thing, and build out your marketing puzzle one piece at a time. I know you can do it. It's going to take some intentionality, but it's going to make a huge, huge difference. If you want more mini sessions, marketing tips, you can join my free minis class. We've got it linked in the show notes here, so definitely go check that out. It gives some of my best marketing tips, and I'm telling you, it's gonna be so helpful for you. So go check out that free minis marketing class. And I hope this episode was helpful for you. If you have any other questions or things that I can help out with, or stuff that you would like me to talk about in another episode. Shoot me a DM on Instagram at Rebecca Rice photography, and I would love to answer any questions that I have or just chat there. It's really me answering your DMS. I don't have a team member in there, and so, yeah, I would love to be able to chat with you there. And yeah, with that, we're gonna go ahead and close out today's episode. Hopefully it was helpful, and I'll see you this time next week. Bye, guys, you.
