Don't Trade Links
Trying to climb as high as possible on the social networks ladder can very quickly degenerate into a war for likes and followers that some social network users may wrongly consider to be some kind of internet points that will help them win the "Game of Social Networks".
But how it often is in the World, even for this situation applies the rule Less is More. Having hundreds of Twitter followers or Facebook likes maybe looks nice, but it is pointless to you if you don't communicate with any of the people who follow you or "like" you and nobody shares or in other ways supports your work (there is usually very little of the most important constructive criticism).
It's better to have just a few dozen followers, but communicate with them frequently and be interested in each others work. That goes for chasing likes too, especially when Facebook itself started to penalize pages with more likes and lesser followers.
It is also pointless to fill your social networks with your work just so you can get wider recognition on the Internet. It is OK to upload your photographs on social networks if you have just made some good ones, but do not force yourself into making a new picture just because you said to yourself you want to upload a new post on Facebook today. If you will start to make more photos than you are actually able to fully concentrate on, your productivity will start to stagnate, of which your followers and friends will be very well aware of. More so if you are forcing them to view your photographs every single day.
Don't Succumb to Popular Trends
Like with any other media, even social networks are filled with plenty of modern and tastewise usually questionable trends that you need to watch. If you own expensive equipment for professional photography, you really don't want to use it to fill your Facebook profile with a tun of selfies.
In a similar way, beware of the "in" trend of uploading your food on Instagram. If you really want to snap some food, be sure it is for a restaurant that is paying you for it and that doesn't want any Instagram filters on their photos.
A similar problem comes with so called #hashtags. Yes, hashtags on Facebook or Twitter can be a relatively useful tool that can classify your posts to thematic categories, however the rule Less is More applies here also. #Writing #every #word #of #your #post #as #hashtag #is #one #of #the #worst #things #you #could #do. Hashtags aren't so powerful that it would pay off to fill your whole post with them, so try to limit your hashtags to two (three max) per post. So choose wisely, which ones you want to use.
The exception to this is Instagram, where it is sometimes better to use a lot more hashtags, through which your posts can be more easily traced (on Instagram, as opposed to Twitter and Facebook, written context isn't that important, so you can use more hashtags instead - Instagram allows using even 30 hashtags per post).
Sharing your content on multiple networks
If you publish your work on Facebook, Twitter, and also Instagram, it's good to know how to share the same content on various social networks. If you publish work mainly on Instagram, you can share your post from it straight to Facebook (or you can upload it there with original text description or maybe a little story about your work).
However with Twitter, you should post your content there as a new original post. Yes, there are some apps that can automatically post your Facebook posts to Twitter, but that is really inefficient and these linked posts don't even allow any sort of image preview of your work. That's why you need to upload your photos again on Twitter with new text content and only a few hashtags. Twitter also has the advantage, that through the at symbol, you can tag other @users and contact them, keep in touch with them and show them your work.
Don't Overestimate Social Networks
Social networks are a nice thing that can to some extent definitely help you with the propagation of your work. The current boom around social networks however often press us to expect miracles from this medium and to ritually sit in front of it in hopes of some new likes popping up.
Because the best thing for highlighting your position in a collective of photographers is to meet with them in person and share your experiences and useful advices. And that will give you more than a thousand Facebook likes could.
You can find more about how to best connect your website with social networks in our series of thematic articles.
