The year is 1965 and youʼre inspired by the writings of C.S. Lewis.

Youʼve just discovered Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters and you want to get a group together to discuss and read through these books.

What you want, you realize, is to connect with a group of like-minded strangers—so you walk down to your local coffeehouse and post a flyer for your new book study group, maybe even inviting other regular patrons to join.

The world is filled with places where people meet on common ground to connect. This is the driving force for most libraries, community centers, outdoor parks, and quite a few bars. These places-between-places are not where people live, work, or spend most of their time—but theyʼre crucial to cultivating community offline.

Social Media and Photography

Where Online Community Happens Online, social media works much like a coffeehouse or bar—itʼs a 24/7 global place-between-places. Friends and strangers alike pass through, connecting over common interests (and a good drink).

For this reason, social media is a great place to go to find like-minded people and build your own community, with your content as a conversation-starter of sorts. When you have a message to share and need an audience to share it with, social media is a good place to go.

Itʼs not a good place to go to create viral content, get millions of likes, or follow thousands of others—but to connect to new people with similar interests, who like what you create.

Be Somewhere Social

To leverage social media for your photography business, you shouldnʼt try to be everywhere—but instead pick a few choice locations to hang out and build new connections online. This is one of those situations where less is better, where focusing all your attention on a primary platform creates far more impact than dividing your attention between three or four. However you approach social media, you should treat these platforms as outposts or embassies, where your goal is to connect to new people and bring them back to your independent home base.

If youʼre going all in on Instagram, you could publish a page with your content and also engage with like minded photographers or your particular genre of photography.

If youʼre going all in on Twitter, you might participate in strategic conversations around photography hashtags and post 10 times each day.

If youʼre going all in on Pinterest, you might create image-heavy, step- by-step content and post that on strategic shared boards.

Share a sample of the value you offer, and invite people back to your website to join your growing community.

Weʼve nearly completed the puzzle, so you may start to see the patterns yourself. Once youʼve connected on social media, you need to move the conversation elsewhere, building a deeper relationship via your email list. The point being - use social media to direct people to you own website and get them added to your email list.

At this point, you have the pieces required to build an engaged online audience—but the final missing piece completes the puzzle, allowing you to step out with the assurance that you will succeed.