Best Social Media Platforms for Photographers

Social media presents photographers with excellent opportunities to gain more exposure for their art, connect with fans and followers, push traffic to a blog or portfolio website, establish name recognition, and network with other photographers.

Naturally, every social media platform has its pros and cons, and not every one of them is befitting for photographers. However, if you’re searching for the best social media sites to use, this list should help you distinguish those that can support you with your goals.

In social networking, it’s essential to ensure that you’re using these platforms with a goal in mind. Of course, you don’t need to put yourself everywhere, and it’s more beneficial to establish a strong profile on one social media instead of having a weak presence on different platforms. On the other hand, you can easily waste a lot of precious time on social media if you’re not cautious, so make sure to choose the right one(s) for you and use it with a goal.

Here are some of the best social media platforms that you might want to showcase your work on.

Instagram

Instagram logo

Ideally suited for photographers, Instagram isn’t only a highly visual site perfect for showcasing your art as a photographer, but it’s also super popular. It’s big not only with creatives and photographers but also with the general public, which means that it’s the perfect platform to gain exposure, fans, and potential clients.

With quality photographs, you can grow your Instagram following pretty quickly, as most users are pretty active and highly engaged. As a result, you can receive a lot of feedback on your work, and you may get them shared by famous Instagram accounts with many followers.

The only drawback to the platform is that it’s not intended to drive traffic to your blog or website, as you aren’t allowed to link every photo to a particular URL. Instead, you can put a link in your profile that users can click to learn more about your information.

Behance

Behance is a social network that was specially created with creatives such as photographers and designers in mind. Photography is only one of the categories featured on Behance, but plenty of photographers are active on the platform, and the works tend to be of high quality.

Adobe owns Behance, and if Adobe Portfolios powers your portfolio website, there are integrations with Behance. For example, once you make your Behance profile, you can set up collections and upload your work.

If you want to increase the exposure for your photographs and build recognition, Behance can be an excellent platform to do it. Most users are photographers or designers, so a considerable portion of the audience will be other creatives; though, other people also browse the site to find great design work or photography.

Creating your profile at Behance costs nothing, so there’s no need to bother about the price.

Although the main perks of using Behance include expanding exposure, you can link your site with your individual posts and your profile. Also, you won’t likely be swamped with traffic from Behance, but you might score new visitors to your site.

500px

Founded in 2009, 500px is a social platform for photographers. Contrary to Behance, 500px focuses particularly on photography and doesn’t cover design categories and other types of creative output.

You can create your profile on 500px to expose your photos to a large, global audience. There are different kinds of accounts available. You can begin with a free plan, allowing you to make a directory listing and upload up to 7 photographs every week. Paid plans will enable ad-free browsing, unlimited uploads, and other features starting at $2.99 per month. Upgrading to the Pro plan, which is at $3.99 per month, will enable additional features such as the opportunity to promote your photography workshops.

Other options include licensing your works through 500px. You’re required to submit your photos for approval, but they will only be qualified for licensing once they’re approved. You’ll have 60% of the license fee, and 500px will own 40%.

Pinterest

Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is another mainstream social media platform that is very popular and highly visual. However, there are plenty of key differences separating the two. First off, on Pinterest, vertical photos will receive the most screen space and usually do the best. In addition, you can crop your images to suit the ideal size for Pinterest, which is the recommended 600px wide and 900px high.

Another significant contrast is that Pinterest is much better for pushing traffic to your blog or site. You can link each pin/photo you upload to a particular URL, which other users can click to go through to your website. As a result, Pinterest is remarkably popular for bloggers since it tends to be an excellent traffic source.

When establishing a following and gaining exposure, Instagram is usually a better alternative than Pinterest. But if you want to generate traffic for your blog or website, Pinterest is the platform you’ll need.