In this episode of Workbook Radio, podcast/photographer Daniel Bedell talks to wife-husband duo, Tropico Photo (Michelle Norris and Forrest Aguar) about their Instagram “game,” and more importantly, how they are building a successful following and how their personal feeds differ from their business feeds.
DB: “What are some of the ways you have been successful on Instagram? I see both your personal sites you have quite a bit of following, and your professional site you have quite a bit of following. For commercial photographers, you’re not quite influencer level yet; you’re knocking on the door. How have you done that? Because I feel a lot of commercial photographers, they’re posting a lot, but they’re just not gaining much of a following. What have been the tricks, secrets, happenstance that have helped you with that?”
MN: “I think we’ve worked on our personal Instagrams a lot, which we’ve had for a lot longer than the Tropico Instagram; Tropico we started 2 years ago [when] we launched everything else. But on our personal Instagram, we spend a lot time trying to figure out what was successful because both of us had it just for fun in the beginning. And then we got some momentum going where people would be really excited about, travel photos we took. And that’s evolved over time, like what we’re showing on there. But even as our personal Instagrams [in the beginning] got more clout and brought us clients, it also kept people interested in our photography and what we are doing currently, which is super helpful. But actually, my account got featured by Instagram a couple of years ago, so I got 10,000 followers overnight, which definitely boosted mine. Now I use it very differently. I mainly share travel stuff and my clothing tastes and outfits on my personal, now that we have Tropico’s [Instagram]. I think to me the most important parts are staying consistent, posting often, and making sure the content feels cohesive. And by cohesive, I don’t mean you’re always posting the same sort of thing as much as you’re choosing an umbrella of style and content that everything falls underneath.”
FA: “Yes, I would say highly curated accounts definitely do the best. So it’s about having a cohesive vision with the curation.”
MN: “I was going to say Tropico is [a little bit] unique because we always complain about how we have to work so much harder on our personal accounts and Tropico gained a following really organically. I think part is our style intersects with what is popular on Instagram. But then on top of that, I think it’s just the Tropico Instagram is very cohesive, and we curate it carefully. We don’t post all the photos from all of our projects on there because there’s a very clear line about the type of image that’s going to excite people on Instagram, and I think some of our work, while we really love it and think it’s awesome and would show it for clients, isn’t something that we would put on Instagram because we know what performs. And I do think people really like color blocking. I think people really like when there’s an action happening, especially when there’s a figure entering. We tend to stray from things that are purely product unless there’s some exciting element that we think is going to grab people’s attention.”
FA: “But I will say that actual client content that has a product in it does much better on our Tropico account than it would do on our personal accounts. “
MN: “Yes, I would never post product on my personal now.”
FA: “Like Michelle was saying, I think our style initially developed partially through social media, through sharing on Instagram, when we first started traveling together. We made that zine, but we were also posting stuff and were getting a lot of feedback from it, and that helped to mold and develop our style to a degree. At that time I think we were on the beginning of a trend, and now I think, like [Michelle] hinted at, I feel like the color blocking style is trending in commercial work. Having a separate Instagram account that’s just for our business and functions more as a portfolio, and a lot of our personal accounts are funneling tags and have mentions about Tropico into it, which I think helps to build the Tropico following. But it functions totally separately from our personal accounts and represents us more client side. I feel like the followers Tropico has are expecting that kind of content, whereas our personal account it’s more about our identities and us and our travels. So I feel that’s partially why our studio work, or our professional work, won’t do as well because it seems as if our following on our personal accounts wants more personal content, whereas on our Tropico is our business content, so people appreciate it more.”
DB: “Okay, I have a couple more Instagram questions. I feel like you have thought about Instagram quite a bit, and it does seem like you’re having some success there. When you said you were being informed by your feedback on Instagram, what did you mean? Was that simply how many likes you were getting? Was that actual comments? Were you being informed by ‘Hey, we put up this body of work and got a job’? What did you mean [by that statement]?”
FA: “It’s a little bit of both. And it can be a little bit of a struggle. I feel like early on I was responding strongly to how many likes I was getting on posts, as to ones that I wasn’t, and that started to dictate what I was posting. But then I had some personal pushback where I was like, ‘I don’t want to just be seeking like affirmation; I want to also be posting work that I’m interested in. How can I use that as feedback for what would be popular but also still feel like I’m in control and driving and not just being driven by my following?’ Something along those lines. I feel like that was early on. And I do feel like Tropico’s account reacts somewhat to a degree in response to that. Color has always been something people are really responsive to on social media and Instagram. We feel like style, happy expressions, art pop-y light. All of that I feel are things people have really responded well to and helps to curate our work initially and what inspires and helps us to develop our style. But at this point, I would say 80 percent of our jobs come from people finding us on Instagram.”
MN: “Yes, we’ve been reached out to by amazing agencies for really cool jobs, and when we’ve asked them where they found us, I would say they almost exclusively say Instagram, which seems pretty shocking. But Tropico too, I think it’s a little bit of what Forrest is talking about, where we’ve wanted to post things we know do better than other things, but we’ve also really stuck to our guns with thinking we want to have a successful account here, but we also want to stay true to what we’re making and what we’re excited to show, whether it’s clickbait or not. I think that has helped in the long run to build a [truer] following because we’ve great engagement on Tropico. Sometimes we get more engagement on that account than we do on our own. Like my personal account has twice as many followers, and I think a big part of that is you want to pay attention to how things are doing. We have apps that we can plan out our feed in and see statistics. But I think there is a danger of curating too much of what you know is popular for likes because you end up with a bunch of strangers who like it and who comment but who don’t follow you and aren’t invested in you.
“Tropico’s Instagram has built a really loyal following of people who are actually excited about what we make and who know who we are when we come up in their feed and who engage with things that are exciting for us. And it’s something you can’t build by just posting things you know will appeal to the masses for likes, which I think is where a lot of people get derailed. I think we fight that on our own accounts too. I definitely feel like I get bummed out when I post something I think is cool and it gets only 200 likes, versus another image I posted that got 1,000. It makes me think, ‘Oh, I should try to get more photos like this one that got 1,000.’ But I think the fact is the way I built my following, which is showing all sorts of things that I’m interested in and sharing that aesthetic voice in some way rather than trying to cater just to what I know is popular on Instagram.”
FA: “Yes, you have to maintain the genuine social aspect, which is this is tethered to your identity; it’s your blog; it’s what you want to share and what you’re personally interested in at that time. And if you’re constantly catering to your audience, then that becomes diluted and you lose yourself in that.”
MN: “Well, you lose people who genuinely care about what you’re doing.”
FA: “Yeah.”
MN: “Which is the sort of thing that carries these really successful Instagram accounts through: the followers are invested in them and invested in their success and what they’re making. That’s something you can’t really replicate by mining for followers.”
You can listen to the full episode below.
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For more Daniel Bedell, click here.
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