I don’t want to be liked, I want to be relevant!
I honestly admit, that in my career as photographer, there had been a time where I lost track of the meaning of being relevant to my ideal clients.
In those months, the height of the success to me was counted in the likes and comments I was receiving — vanity metrics. Opening social networks on my computer or phone every few minutes was a compelling action, but then I realised something…
Despite satisfying my ego, being liked did not transform into more business. Less than that, having 500 likes on a single image in Instagram was not telling me anything about how my photo was performing in my particular vertical.
If you are a professional photographer, paying the bills is more important than being liked
Similarly to what happens when we grow up, the career of a photographer goes through phases.
- Like a child, you need to be reassured you are doing the right thing.
- Like a teenager, you need to be liked.
- Like and adult, you stop looking for validation and you start relying on who you have become.
I realise today that the fact that I wanted to be liked was a phase, which I luckily grew out of quite quickly. I grew into a photographer who wanted to get paid and wanted to invest time and money in marketing with better return on investment (ROI).
What a thousand Instagram likes won’t tell you
Some of the images my wife, the active part of our photography business Faby and Carlo, has posted on Instagram have over 1k likes. While these numbers may look small to some, for the working photographers over 1k likes is a good result; however, there is an issue with measuring your success through a simple like count, and it is the lack of information this number brings with itself.
The “1k” won’t tell if those photographs have been liked from the people a photographer targets as clients or not. It won’t tell if those likes comes from your city or from somewhere on the other side of the world. It won’t tell anything helpful to your business as a photographer.
I want to be relevant!
Being liked is certainly a nice feeling. Looking at those numbers growing and growing is like receiving a pat on your shoulders and a “well done” from your boss, but it won’t pay your bills. More importantly it won’t help you understand how to become a better photographer.
In joining the adulthood of photography, I realised that having the knowledge of why a specific image was liked by whom was much more important than just knowing it was liked. Being able to divide the performances of an image from the performances in a specific vertical allows you to be relevant for the people that counts.
If you specialise in female portraiture, with your prices being the sweet spot for 30+ women in London, then understanding which images are trending better in that specific vertical is the relevance you want, because it is the information that will allow you to reach your ideal clients.
Generic relevance triggered by a raunchy photograph, is about the “Instagram likes” not real relevance!
I don’t want to be everybody’s cup of tea. I would rather be someone’s glass of wine.
How phlow tackles relevance over likes?
When people ask me how I got the idea for phlow, I candidly admit that I did not have an idea; I had a problem. phlow grew organically from a set of pain points we were feeling. The need to be a good social media networker more than a good photographer was a key one, but the inability to understand what certain people thought of my photos was a true drive to create something different.
Instead of asking an AI what it thinks of my photographs, phlow listens to readers’s behaviour to offer something more than a pat on your shoulders. This is a win-win situation for both you as a photographer and you as a reader.
- if you are a photographer, you can understand what a specific type of users (women, 30+, interested in portraits and living in London) are looking for. This can help you shape your portfolio and your proposition (if not your entire style).
- if you are a reader, knowing what people similar to you like allows us to provide you with relevant images that will match your tastes and passions.
This is one of the many differences phlow offers to photographers. If you are more interested in understanding your market more than being liked, if you mean business more than you need validation, then phlow is going to be the place to be.
