Use social media as a way to create awareness alongside the other marketing methods.
Choose the platforms where your audience will be. If you are mainly working with individuals, Facebook and Instagram will be your best options. Business people will obviously be using LinkedIn.
Certain types of photography lend themselves well to being shared on social media and you can capitalise on that, especially if your clients are likely to want to share the images you have created with their friends.
Other types of photography don’t tend to get shared on social media so much, if that’s the case for what you do, don’t beat yourself up.
I suggest everyone posts 2-3 times a week as a minimum on a couple of social media accounts just to show you are a real, living person and so that potential clients can get a sense that you are working and have a personality.
If lots of your ideal clients are heavy users of social media and you have a type of photography that is shareable, then investing time in building a relevant following could be worthwhile. You will need to post frequently and constantly interact if this is the case.
Remember that social media is just one of your marketing activities. How important it is to you depends on lots of factors including the type of photography you do, the age of your ideal client and whether they are personal or business clients.
You should set up:
Facebook Business Page
Twitter Account
Instagram Account
LinkedIn Page (you can set up a LinkedIn Business Page so it doesn’t conflict with your own LinkedIn Account if you have a day job).
Tools such as Buffer and Later will help you schedule your social media posts on all of these to minimise the work you have to do.
You should create a mix of content on your social media that is mainly useful, interesting and good to look at, plus share content by other people.
A maximum of 20% of your posts should be directly promoting your services.