If you grew up in the industry shooting and writing for a printed newspaper, magazine, or even for a website, you need to see Social Media as another publication.

Too many editors, journalists, and photojournalists are too consumed by the story and not enough about the audience. In most traditional places, for news media to contribute the way it worked was somewhat of a mystery for the content providers.

The content was the carrot to get advertisers. But unfortunately, most journalists didn’t understand how their pay was created and concentrated on creating content.

Great content is useless if audiences don’t know that it exists. Today the audience is more accessible to reach than ever before. You don’t need publishers and large conglomerates to help you to get them.

Today when you post onto a social media outlet like Instagram, you show your portfolio. You have gone not to one photo editor but around them to their audience and asking them to respond.

Instead of leaving your business card, you leave them a link to your channel. They can then decide to follow you or not. If they don’t, then your content isn’t relevant to them. You search for an audience interested in your content or write content for your audience.

Now even though you are posting, say, on Instagram or Twitter, you are not really in front of your audience until you start using #hastags. #Sports will put you in front of Twitter #Sports or on Instagram. Think of Instagram as your cable company and the #hastags as a channel.

Twitter even shows you on your page the trending #hastags

I used to work for a Missionary Agency that had its magazine and used state papers to distribute their stories for years. However, their audience stopped looking at their content. Those audiences were, for the most part, local churches.

My church’s Facebook page

Today, those local churches have their own Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, and Instagram accounts. So now, if you know their #hashtags, you can, in essence, produce content and drop it right into their publication.

Take a moment and first Google an organization using hashtags like #firstBaptistHendersonville to see if you can uncover their audience. I found that they are using the acronym #fbchnc. If I want them to see my content, I tweet a sentence with their hashtag and then be sure there is a link to where I put the content. Wa-la, now I have just published on their pages.

If you have Facebook, search for those organizations and audiences you are interested in joining. See if they will let you join their group. If they let you join, you can post your content in the group. Again, just like a publication as a way to reach that audience. Now, as long as your content is valuable, they will continue to allow you to be a part of their group. However, if your content isn’t well received, they will block you and remove you from their group.

Now, if you are creating all that great content like the great journalist or photojournalist that you think you are, then you are on the way to becoming a household name.

Now, after a while, you may not need to go and publish as often on these social media outlets because you have so many “followers” of your own, and people are referring people to your content.

You can quickly get advertisers at this point.

For example, if you create video content and post it on Youtube, their top content creators earn millions. Check out the article on Forbes about the top earners in 2015 here http://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2015/10/14/the-worlds-highest-paid-youtube-stars-2015/#2715e4857a0b16cdcf7f542c

For those who don’t want to do all this and want to create content, you need to hook up with someone who is doing this and get them to let you help them create more content. Doing this ensures you will make less money than if you did it yourself.