Why I Don't Post to Social Media Every Day

If you found my Instagram, LinkedIn, or any other social platform before you found my website, you may have noticed they're quieter than you'd expect from a working photographer. That is not neglect. It is a decision, and it's one of the better ones I've made.

I used to post to social media daily. That is what you are supposed to do, after all. People post every day to grow their engagement, collect likes and followers, and hopefully turn some of that attention into new clients. The whole machine runs on consistency, and for a while I fed it like everyone else.

It's exhausting. Honestly.

Not the posting itself, that only takes minutes. It's the way daily posting quietly rearranges your life. You start experiencing your own days through the question of whether they'll perform well. You finish something beautiful and instead of sitting in that feeling, you're captioning it. I'd rather live life today than document what I did yesterday.

The new way of chasing success

Somewhere along the line, engagement became the scoreboard. Likes, comments, followers, reach. It's the new method of chasing success, as if a like or a comment can dictate whether you are successful or not.

I disagree that that is the case.

My measure of success looks different. It's the person who walked in dreading their session and left asking when they can come back. It's the reviews written by people I actually stood in a room with. It's a business built since 2009 on referrals, word of mouth, and work that speaks for itself. None of that came from an algorithm, and none of it disappears if a post underperforms.

I'm not trying to be an influencer

Let me be clear about something first, because this post is not a takedown. There is nothing wrong with the people who are. Being an influencer is a real job, and the good ones work harder than most people realize. The daily creating, the consistency, the thick skin, the business savvy to turn attention into income. That is a genuine skill set, and some people are built for it and truly love it. I know photographers who light up making content the way I light up in a session, and their feeds are wonderful because the joy is real.

If that is your path, chase it with everything you have. My point is narrower than that. It's simply not my path. I do not have aspirations to be a social media influencer, and pretending otherwise, posting daily out of obligation while resenting every minute of it, would have made me worse at both.

I choose to let my life influence others instead. The clients I coach through camera-dread. The photographers I mentor. The people in my everyday orbit who see someone running a business on craft instead of content. If my way of working nudges anyone toward anything, I'd rather it be that.

Old school at heart

Maybe it all comes down to this. I am old school at heart. I believe in a firm handshake, in remembering names, though I'll admit I still struggle with that one. Faces, I rarely forget. In my line of work, that's probably the right one to be good at. And I believe in work that gets recommended across a dinner table instead of by an algorithm. The photographers I admired coming up built their reputations one satisfied client at a time, and nobody ever asked them for their engagement rate.

That might sound funny coming from someone whose clients get a custom-built portal, but I don't see a contradiction. I'll happily use modern tools when they make your experience better. The tools serve the values, though, never the other way around. Word of mouth is still the finest marketing ever invented. It just requires you to be worth talking about.

The oxygenated world

Here is the part I mean most sincerely. It is better for my mental health to exist in the oxygenated world rather than the virtual one. Real light, real faces, real conversations, the exact things my job is made of, funny enough.

The world is full of noise. The feeds, the notifications, the commentary about the commentary. Sometimes I crave the quiet. Not emptiness, just the ordinary hush of a morning before the studio fills up, a conversation that isn't performed for anyone, a day that belongs entirely to the people in it.

I'm a happier person for it. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the work got better as I got happier. A photographer's whole craft is presence, noticing the split second when someone's guard drops and their real face shows up. You can't be good at presence while half your brain is composing a caption.

What this means if you're looking for a photographer

It means the energy other photographers spend feeding the feed goes into the part you actually experience. The client portal that preps you before you arrive. The unhurried sessions. The coaching. The retouching I do myself. My marketing strategy, if you can call it that, is making sure every person who leaves this studio would send their best friend here.

So if you're vetting me and the Instagram trail runs thin, look where the evidence actually lives. The portfolio on this site, the reviews, and this blog when I have something worth saying. And when you're ready, book a session. I'll be easy to find. I'm the one not looking at her phone.