How are you marketing your photography business online? Are you relying on social sites?

Social sites are great tools, and we’re relying on them more every day. Most social sites are free to use, have a ton of features. We use social sites to share ideas, thoughts and connect with our friends and colleagues and post our latest creations. We view the latest post or image and comment to share our opinion. Mobile devices like smart phones allow interactivity while we are away and on the move. Social sites are well, amazing.

We’re even seeing some sites begin charging for an upgraded account, offering us even more benefits and features. Even with the pay accounts, you signup, agree to a laundry list of terms and services, and assume you can now use the account in any way you choose. And in some cases, photographers are using these tools as their sole way of connecting up with prospects and clients.

Now imagine having a vast library of images stored onto an account, large numbers of interactions and friendships, all created over 3 years of time,  removed with a simple keystroke! Recently this unthinkable act happened to one of our fellow photographers, Deepa Praveen. Her paid Pro Flickr account with years of work, lots of images, connections and interactions was recently deleted.

While social accounts seem like magical places to post and hang out, they also control each part of your online persona. If you rely on one source, what would happen if that one source suddenly vanished? How would it impact your business?

The reason you have a website, a blog, a Flickr account, a Facebook account, etc, is to connect up with different people in different ways. Branding is important. And so is covering what you do.

If this has struck a nerve, there are a couple of things you can do right now.

1. Build on multiple platforms, and never rely on once source to showcase what you do. Websites, blogs and social profiles are too easy to get to rely only on one.

2. Back up your social accounts. Search for ways to backup every social site you use. For Flickr, there is Flickr Backup, Flump, or Backupify.

image by Deepa Praveen

first read about on Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection