Social Media Case Study: Wildlife Photography

Personal Instagram: Wildlife Photography

This case study looks at my personal Instagram and Facebook accounts where I often post about wildlife and nature photography.

Inconsistent Content

Before I start, I’d like to clarify that I am not a consistent social media poster, sometimes I would post once or twice a week. Other times I would not post for many months. That’s because life happens, family and work get in the way and often I was not feeling super inspired to post images on social media. Plus at the time I considered social media to be a bit of a distraction from my creative pursuits:

That being said, I am now convinced that social media marketing is very important for any business or creative person, wanting to get more engagement and to reach more potential customers.

1: Magpie Attack

And then one day on my ride back from the supermarket on my bicycle I was swooped (attacked) by magpie. So I went home got my GoPro and went back through that area and filmed myself getting attacked for a second time. It was pretty intense!

I cut this GoPro footage into a short video and put it on Instagram and Facebook and the results were quite interesting.

2: Echidnas and Kangaroos

Still Images Close to Baseline

Travelling up to Queensland I got lucky and photographed a beautiful echidna on the beach, something very rare to see and photograph. I posted it on Instagram.

I got above-average 52 likes, 3 comments and reach was 233. So about a 15% increase from my average still images - not a very big jump.

First Viral Video

The next anomaly was when I posted some wildlife camera footage at night of kangaroos eating our fresh produce that I was trying to grow.

This video went viral with about 15 times more reach than any other of my videos and I’m guessing a lot of people shared this video.

However the engagement rate is below what my other videos were, and this is probably just because people like to watch the kangaroo eating my produce. There was nothing of me in this video so no very social.

First Vertical Phone Video

I then created a fence around my little market garden so that the kangaroos couldn’t get in and I created a video.
This is my fist portrait orientation (vertical) video that I shot on my phone.

3: Uluṟu and Wild Dingos

No Increase in Engagement for Still Images

Travelling on my Australian Photo Safari, I photograph some amazing places.

One of my favourite images is this one of Uluṟu at sunset. A must visit for any photographer!

How did it perform - Average!

Sunrise - Blah!

How about this sunrise shot at one of my home beaches - Zenith beach.

Another average performance!

Back to Creating Short Videos (Reels)

I decided to create another story on my birthday about how I was trying to stop the kangaroos from eating my produce by installing an electric fence I bought on Ebay. I started the video with the wildlife footage and then created a voiceover and filmed the rest on my phone telling the story. No face to camera in this video.

The video views went up 50%, but engagement went down a little compared to the previous short video I created where I started with my face to the camera. I think the increase in views is because of the video thumbnail, better thumbnail gives people more reason to start watching the video.

First Planned & Scripted Reel

I took a course on how to create engaging short videos with a "hook" at the beginning. Something to get people to watch most of the video.

Ok, time to give this short video thing a proper test.
I went away and focused on creating a really engaging, authentic video about the photography that I love to do the most in Australia:
Wild dingo photography on the sand dunes.

I filmed it all on my phone but using very good audio so that I wouldn’t get any wind noise.

I started filming with my face to camera and then used still images for the second half of the video to show my favourite dingo shots I'd taken in the past.

I also created a better thumbnail image for the video.