Having an effective social media strategy is essential for pro photographers. Red Bull Illume photographer Dan Carr offers ten tips for photographers looking to improve their social workflow…

#1 It’s not all about Facebook
Late in 2013, Facebook made sweeping changes to their algorithm that determines how much content from fan pages is seen in people’s news feeds. In many cases less than 10% of your fans will actually be shown the content you post on your page. This means we have to diversify and not just concentrate on Facebook!

#2 Maximize your engagement with Buffer
Buffer is an incredible free tool that queues up your content and posts it at the time that will get you the most engagement. You can also use Tweroid to analyze your own Twitter followers and find out what times they are most active.

#3 Automation is awesome
IFTTT is a free service that allows you to automate many of your social media tasks. Connect all of your accounts together in one place and you can post your blog posts to Twitter and Facebook automatically or share your Instagram photos to Flickr and Tumblr. The possibilities are endless and time saved here is more time behind the camera which is where you are most valuable!

#4 Don’t forget about LinkedIn
LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to connect with potential clients and it’s probably the one that’s most underused by photographers. Did you know that you can actually include a portfolio of images right on your LinkedIn page at the bottom of your bio?

#5 Remain consistent wherever possible
Try to keep your social media usernames consistent across all platforms. I use dancarrphoto as my username on everything so that people become familiar with it and can find me anywhere without searching. (facebook.com/dancarrpho, 500px.com/dancarrphoto etc)

#6 Understand your goals
Managing many social media accounts and projects can be very time consuming if you’re not careful. You must clearly define some goals that include how you are going to profit from this time that you invest.  Simply getting more followers should not be the goal. The goal should always be converting those followers into clients, whether that is though print sales or new job commissions.

#7 Find content that resonates with your audience
As photographers we are sharing a lot of images on social platforms but it’s important to mix it up and share other types of content as well. Share some techniques, or a behind the scenes look at your latest shoot. Make the content genuinely useful and inciteful and it will often get shared far more than a single pretty photo.

#8 Keep the conversation alive
Set aside some time to engage with fans and followers who have sent you a message or left a question on a post or photo. Be approachable and genuine with your responses so that people can get to know who you are, you could be talking to your next client! If you need to liven things up a little, flip things around and ask them a question. Even if it’s as simple as asking what their favorite lens is, questions will usually get a much higher engagement than a simple status update.

#9 Find your target audience
According to Mashable, one third of women in the US use Pinterest. That’s three times higher than the number of men that use it. If you’re also in the wedding or family photography business then you definitely take a look at sharing your work on Pinterest.

#10 A photo is worth more than 140 characters
Twitter is becoming an increasingly visual platform with photos now appearing prominently in peoples feeds amongst the usual tweets. Try sharing a photo a day, tagged with relevant #hashtags and you’ll soon start to pick up new followers.

If you’d like to learn more from Dan, he has a free eBook that covers many other aspects of running a successful photography business, like e-mail marketing and image pricing. You can get that eBook right here. Dan’s writing and photography can also be found at Shutter Muse.

Photographer Kelvin Trautman recently covered athletes Ryan Sandes and Ryno Griesel’s record-breaking run in South Africa’s Drakensberg mountain range, notorious for its tough terrain and changeable weather. We asked Kelvin a few questions about covering the Drakensberg Grand Traverse:

How tough was it to set everything up?
It took three months of route recce’s, team meetings, hours poring over maps, back and forth with permit offices, to collate a 45 page production booklet that mapped out, in theory, how we (the film crew and myself) were to cover the event. I say ‘theory’ because as with any shoot in the mountains, mother nature often throws a seemingly faultless shoot plan out the window within a couple hours of starting.

How did you keep up with the athletes?
By helicopter and on foot. When on the ground I ran with Ryan and Ryno anywhere between 2 and 25km at a time (night and day). The remoteness of the area meant getting images out to the world posed a problem so we planned two helicopter ferries back to our mobile base camp during the attempt so that I could quickly download, tag and upload images for media.

What kind of shots were you after?
When in the air I looked to shoot images that put into perspective the remote, raw landscape. The time spent in close quarters with the athletes gave me a chance to shoot the more emotive, detailed images – I planned on shooting most of these images towards the end where Ryan and Ryno’s mental and physical exhaustion had no filter!

What difficulties did you face?
Since the Drakensberg mountain range is incredibly inaccessible, everyone had to be mountain savvy and vigilant about safety at all times. To be safe, we set aside a weather window of 10 days as to reduce the chances of running into any major weather nuances during the record attempt.

Finding the athletes was a major hassle as Ryan and Ryno could course their way along the escarpment wherever it suited. To avoid flying around aimlessly, the mobile base camp sent us GPS co-ords of the runners’ position every 20 minutes.

How did you gear up?
I divvied my gear into two bags. A helicopter bag and a running bag. The heli bag obviously contained a much wider array of gear when compared to the much lighter, slimmed down running pack.

The helicopter bag included the following:
Lowerpro Rover Pro 45L backpack
Nikon D4, D800 camera bodies
Nikon 400mm, 70-20mm, 105mm macro, 24-70mm, 50mm, 14-24mm, 16mm fisheye lenses
A Manfrotto monopod
Two spare camera batteries per body
Four 32G x800 Lexar CF and four Lexar 32G SD memory cards
A couple Hoya filters, namely a 77mm ND4, and variable density
A MicroPro LED LITEPANEL

The running bag included the following:
Lowerpro Rover Pro 35L backpack
Nikon D610 camera body
Nikon 70-200mm, 24-70mm, 14-24mm
A couple spare camera batteries
A Nikon SB-900 Speedlight plus a Pocket Wizard mini TT1 and Flex TT5 transmitter and transceiver
Two 32G x800 Lexar CF and two Lexar 32G SD memory cards

Be sure to check out Kelvin’s website or follow him on Twitter.