Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Martin Tsai. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Martin, thanks for joining us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

People always ask me “hey, where do you post your stuff?” or “hey, how do you manage your account? by yourself?or…?” As a photographer or specifically a Marine photographer, an online platform is extremely important. Not only it allows you to share whatever you want to people, but it also allows you to have the opportunity to build up your connection and expand you online resources. To answer questions above, Yes I use Instagram only and Yes I manage everything by myself.

There are several steps to do in order to upload a proper and professional post. Of course under different circumstances there will be different ways to do so. But in my way the very first step will be taking photos and doing research. Move on to photo editing and including all kind of informations and “must know” related to what I’m posting into the platform. Then the most important part: hashtags and tag other user account. All these steps sounds easy, but the fact is each post will require at least 10-20min from editing photos to post onto instagram. You might ask me “So why not ask someone to do it for you?” Well, everything I mentioned above, I’m doing it every single day 365days non-stop, and for how much I love Savannah and understand Savannah River, I want to give myself the opportunity to run everything myself.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m Martin, I’m 23 and I’m an international student who’s currently studying Industrial Design at Savannah College of Art and Design. Photography skills are all self-taught. It all started back in 2018 when I first got into college. I didn’t even know Savannah is a port city by the time I got here. Until one day I was shopping at river street and saw a massive containership about to outbound Savannah. I always have passion to take photos of ships, trains, supercars…etc. But the main reason that triggered me to create the account is because of a guy name Mike I met at river when taking photos of ships. Then with helps from my roommate Drew, Savannah Ships Photography instagram account is officially created in 23 September 2018.

At the beginning the main purpose of the account is to share photos I took, then slowly transformed into sharing ship photos, informations and things visitors can do near Savannah River such as Port Tour operate by local company. Sometime even have some special missions to post related to shipping industry. Back in 2018 I started the account without knowing anything. By 2022, I wouldn’t say I understand everything, but I’m confident enough to say I understand decent amount of knowledge related to Shipping industry, Port of Savannah and The City of Savannah.

I want to mention what I think that really set myself apart from other photographers and accounts. Because of how complicated Savannah River is, I get to discovered specific spot and angle to do a perspective centered shot of massive container ships (scroll down for photo). I think this is unique because not every port city or country will have the opportunity to do this kind of photo shooting.

One most proud of thing that happened to me and this account is to work with ONE North America (Ocean Network Express) on their Pink Ribbon Campaign back in this year April. I got the opportunity to be part of it and take photos of the entire process while it’s in Savannah. This include when alliance ship Hyundai Smart inbound Savannah, unloading the specially painted Pink Ribbon livery container, being loaded onto the truck then onto train in Mega Rail and most importantly I get to do all these upclose inside Garden City Terminal- Georgia Ports (scroll down for photo).

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I may not have a lot of followers, but I do have my way to build it up. To me the way of how I built my audience on social media is not hard, but requires huge amount of time and attention. In order to build up audience, you have to think like one. Few questions worth thinking: 1. what do you expect the account you followed to post? 2. Is this account uploading post in a particular style? Now, if you are just starting to build the social media presence, I would recommend have your hashtag ready. This should be your priority. It may take hours or days but hashtags is one of the key to allow hundreds and thousands of people to see your posts. These “hundreds and thousands of people” is your future opportunity such as clients or collaboration partners or even just new followers. I personally had my hashtags ready within a week I created my account. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but at least get those basic ones ready so you can do future adjustment. If Instagram give you a limit of 25 hashtags, us all 25. Heres an example, Im a ship photography account then I might consider using something such as: #containerships #sailorslife #shiptagram. Once you have all these posting ingredients ready, set yourself a posting schedule. Last year September I set myself a goal of posting 1 post per day non-stop. In this case consistency is particularly important because it is very difficult to maintain that passion when you are doing it every single day. But this is what you might want to do, make it as a daily routine such as eating breakfast or brushing your teeth. To prove what I just said, from last year September when I only had 4000ish followers to when I starting to post daily and reached 13K in just around 4 months. I gained almost 9000 followers in such a short time period. Once again, like a good old friend once said, consistency is the key to success.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think back in 2018 I caught up at the perfect timing when ship watching is about to become a popular thing to do. By that time of course technology is improving in an extreme way. I have a decent camera to use which is also pretty nice. But there are some resources I do hope I knew earlier.

First thing will be drone. I do know drone exist by 2018, I just didn’t thought about combining drone and ship watching. Now thinking about it, it would be perfect to use drone as part of my equipment to do aero shots such as videos and reels. If I did it back in the days, I will be able to have not only ground photo shooting, but also aero shots. This could be a potential chance to make my account more diversified than it is right now.

Secondly, NFTs could be a potential resource to my account, but i wouldn’t have to much expectation due to how unstable the platform and market are. I used sometime to read articles and tried to understand how it works. But back to the reality, the amount of time and effort that I might need to invest is just totally not worth it. NFTs to me is a potential resource and it could be a game changer. However, the result is too unpredictable that I might to think over and over again. In other hand, if we’re taking about 2018, then I might not hesitate to use this resource.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sav_ships_photography/
• Other: Email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Martin Tsai (aka myself)