In this instructional video, Polly Barnfield, OBE, analyses the Instagram feed of award‑winning Herefordshire photographer Natalie Jolly (Jolly Photographer) to illustrate how emotional images combined with personal storytelling can drive follower engagement. Barnfield highlights the high visual quality of Jolly’s portrait and wedding work, the way each post includes a short caption that reveals a piece of her personal story (family connections, upbringing, motherhood), and the strategic use of up to 30 relevant hashtags (location, sector, topic) that make the content searchable and join broader conversations. She emphasizes the importance of replying to comments to nurture community, and shows how a logical, scheduled content plan—using the Mavis scheduling tool—helps maintain a coherent narrative across posts. The video concludes with actionable advice for creators: use high‑quality images, embed personal narrative in captions, employ targeted hashtags, engage with comments, and schedule content ahead to tell a consistent brand story.
Chapters
We're going to see how Jolly Photographer tells her story through emotional images to engage with her followers. If you have any questions, please use the blue button inside Mavis. It connects you to us all 247 and we love to help. So this is her Instagram feed. So Jolly Photographer is an award winning portrait and wedding photographer based in Herefordshire. It's Natalie Jolly and she clearly takes amazing images. That's obviously what she does. So that's what you'd expect to see on her feed is a, a really high standard of images and this doesn't disappoint her. Images are eye catching, they capture the moment perfectly, they capture the emotion, they capture the fun. You know, she, she clearly does an amazing job with what she actually does. But not only that, she's obviously sorted her content into different areas. If you were looking to see what she does, you can see, you know, her wedding content, etc. But what really stands out in her content is how she tells a bit of her story. So a little bit about who she is with each of her posts. So here, for example, lovely images, image warms your heart. But she's actually told a little bit of her story. So she's talked about celebrating family connection, then she's talked about how she was raised and it just helps you to get to know her as a person. She's combined that with a great use of hashtags on the post. So obviously that will connect her post to those different conversations on Instagram, but also make her content searchable too. So if someone searches for Wedding photographer, her content would appear or Hereford wedding. But she sparks a conversation. People, you know, people see the great image, they see a little bit about her and who she is and they converse back, they want to comment and they want to reply. And I think that's a really, really powerful combination. And she does this consistently. And we'll have a look at this image just here. I mean, this one really warms the heart. The image does speak for itself in terms of the moment. You know, it's the bride, a mother and her son. But then what she's actually done here is again, told a little bit about herself. So I'm a mum, my heart melts when I look back at these pictures and it just makes you, as the audience looking at this content, feel a little bit of that too. And that's exactly what the people that have commented here have done is they've looked at it, they've read what's been written on the post and it's warmed their Hearts and enough for them to actually comment and respond. And obviously really important when someone comments, comments on your posts, she's replied too. So she's, she's taken a great image, she's told you a little bit about herself and, and empathized with the picture, you know, made it, made it relevant in terms of what the photo is about and obviously what she's saying, you know, about her too. But it kind of gives you the impression she truly cares about her clients. She understands the emotion and the importance of the occasions that she's capturing. And you do really feel like you get to know her through her content. And if you can provoke an emotional response through an image and text on a social media post, that's very powerful. So it really does show on her feed that, you know, obviously the great images that she takes combined with telling her story. So every, every image, the text she puts with it tells you a little bit about her great use of hashtags and it really is a winning combination. It works extremely well on this feed and the feed looks great. But I think her approach and the text and the comments that she puts with her images are really what differentiates this feed. So what can we learn from this? Absolutely tell your story through social media. People deal with people. So having great images of what you do or what you offer is obviously really, really important. Your images need to be high quality. But also then tell a little bit of your story. You know, what, who are the people behind your brand? You know, what makes you who you are, what's important to you, because that's what people like to get to know. And here, you know, with Jolly photographer, if you were looking for a photographer in Herefordshire and you came across her feed and you looked at some of her posts, you would feel like you had already got to know her before you picked up that phone and made the call or sent her a message. You really would. And that speaks volumes and it's very, very powerful. So absolutely tell your story through social. Use high quality images on your feeds, but then obviously connect your posts to relevant conversations through the use of hashtags. That makes your content searchable, but it also means that obviously your content will be joined to relevant conversations. And definitely think about including your place, so where you're located, your sector, so obviously what industry is you working and obviously the topic of your post. But on Instagram you can do up to 30 hashtags. So obviously fill your boots, but make them count. So let me show you how maybe can help with this. So obviously when you're wanting to tell your story on social media, you might want to tell it in a logical order. Or, you know, you might want to talk about a particular area about your life, or, you know, what makes you you in a particular week. So what you can actually do is obviously schedule your content ahead. You can include naturally, you know what what you're going to say with each of your posts, and then you can review it just to check that you're happy, that it all hangs together properly, that it all says what it needs to say before that content obviously goes out. So that's obviously a really useful tool. It helps you to save time, but it also helps you ensure that telling your story in the right way on social media. So I hope that's been useful. If you have any questions, please use this blue chat button here inside maybe as it connects you to us all 24 7. And if you'd like to know more about any of the topics talked about on this video, like hashtags or images, use the search below and you'll find more videos on these topics and I'll see you on another video soon.
