How To Get More People To Your Facebook Page

The only way to get more people to your Facebook Page is to tell more people it exists.

It may be easy to send people to it by providing a link in your email, or including a Facebook Badge on your blog, but what do you do if you are out networking face to face?

Why not try a Facebook Business Card?

I’ve always loved Moo – you can find a variety of posts on here talking about how to use Moo products in your marketing materials.

Now they are helping you market your Facebook page as well.

Earlier this year, they launched Facebook Timeline cards – which was great for getting people to your individual profile. Now they are offering the same for Facebook Pages. And the best part is you can try it out … for free.

Each business can now login to Moo and get one pack of 50 cards for free. And even when your first 50 are gone, additional packs run $15 a pack. Very reasonable for a great marketing tool.

Making your Moo Facebook Cards is easy. When you sign in, make sure you click the “yes” when they ask for your data. This allows them to connect up with your Facebook account to pull the data automatically in.

Once your card is set up with your Timeline photo, personalize it. Make sure all your data is correct and its easy for people to connect up with you. You can add a favorite quote or phrase to the back of the card as well.

Tip: I love quotes and used one on the back of my first free pack. But you don’t have to stick with quotes. Think about what you do on Facebook. Do you provide tips? Do you share photos? Are you running a contest? Use that info on the back of your cards. It’s a great way to drive traffic if you’re offering an ongoing promotion.

Then purchase your cards. They are now shipping all over the world, so know matter where you live, you will probably be able to add this to your list of marketing tools.

Once you have your cards in place, use them in addition to your business cards. Yes, its okay to hand out two cards if they are both sending you to different places. When you are talking with someone, what would you like them to see? If you really want to feed them info from your Facebook account, hand over that card. If you want them to see your site for more information, hoping to convert them to a client, hand over your business card. And if you can tell they aren’t quite ready to convert to a client, or they are a great referral source, hand over both. The key is to let them follow you in the manner most convenient to them.

8 Things To Help You Grow Your Photography Business On Pinterest

Pinterest has hit another milestone – over 100 million visits per month with nearly 12 million  of them being unique visitors.

If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, now is the time. Pinterest is used primarily by women, and because of the visual aspect of pin boards, they spend a lot of time on the site.

Currently you can use Pinterest by signing up through either your Facebook account or your Twitter account, giving you double the traction for half the work.  If you connect through Facebook, keep in mind that currently it connects with your personal profile, not your page. So if you want to keep it business related, sign up for a special Twitter account to connect it to.

Then let the pinning begin.

1. Pinterest will start you out with five pre-determined pin boards. You can delete these and create your own. Plan out your boards with your business in mind. So instead of “photography” be specific towards your niche market. Also break it down to give your potential customers ideas as they are searching through your boards: what to wear for a portrait, posing ideas, location ideas. Be specific and use them to direct people to what they like the most. However, don’t just fill it with stuff from your site –  be a resource as well. Its okay to post fresh ideas from other sites and resources online. Be an industry expert and share your talents and knowledge freely.

Dig Deeper: The Code For Blocking Pinterest … And 12 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use It

2. Google recognizes Pinterest profiles, so they can appear on the first pages of search results. Because of how Pinterest interacts with Google, be sure to create boards using your key terms so its recognizable and will deliver you results within the most popular key searches.

3. Currently you can rearrange your pinboards to have them showcased on your profile in any order you choose. Yet the pins within each pinboard are shown in order of when you pinned each item. If you have a closed board concept – meaning you are creating a board with a select number of pins and you know ahead of time what they will be – lay out the order first so they will appear in the order you desire. [Read more…]

Can You Make Money With Your Photography and Chime.In

What are your favorite pieces of each of the social networks you use? If you could build another social network to use for your photography, what would it look like?

Back in October 2011, a new site debuted … Chime.In. Think of Chime.In as a way to share short thoughts like Twitter, a way to get more in depth with each thought like you would with a blog, and voting capabilities like you get on Reddit.

Instead of focusing on information, Chime.In describes itself as an “interest network.” It has a newsfeed, profile pages and a system for following others – all like you are used to with other social sites. Instead of updating your status, you “chime”, which is a cross between an update and a post.

A Chime displays a headline, the first few sentences of the Chime, graphics (photo, video), your profile photo, interest tags, and options for liking, commenting or sharing. Your Chime can be up to 4,000 characters in length, giving you a lot more freedom to write exactly what you want to say. And once your Chime is up, people use a voting system to surface the best comments to the top of Chime.

While Chime may seem like just another player in the already busy social media field, it does have one unique difference. When you design your profile, you have full control over it, including the advertising and sponsors that run on your page. You can include your own ads on the page and keep 100 percent of the revenue. Or allow UberMedia to control the ads and split the revenue 50/50.

Chime.In is built with mobile in mind. You can access it via a similar look and feel as the web edition from one of its mobile apps, including iPhone, BlackBerry or Android.

Once you have your profile built, you can stay active in several ways. Type in your interest – photography – and you’ll be able to search through Chime by interests, communities or people. Then build up your followers list and start communicating.

Chime is simply another social site. Will it be popular enough to bring in a following that will help grow your business? It depends on your business and how you approach it. Yet it may be worth setting up a Chime to cover your basis and have one just in case. Remember, the key isn’t having one or two sites you rely on all the time. Its about spreading yourself out and being where potential followers may be. It doesn’t mean you have to be active all the time – just make sure you have a presence and watch it. If it becomes a big hit in your business world, by all means keep using it.

A Guide To The New Facebook Pages Timeline

You knew it was bound to happen. In January when Facebook changed Profiles to Timeline, you knew Pages would soon follow in its footsteps. And sure enough, they’ve just announced the launch of Facebook Timeline for Pages. But what does it mean for your business? How will it help you attract more business? A variety of new features are now available to help you out – here is how they work and how to use them to benefit your business.

Step One Activate Your Timeline

When you open up your Facebook Page, you will find a Preview button located at the top of your Page. Or you can visit the Timeline for Pages manager and select the Page you wish to add Timeline too.

One you enter your Page Preview, you can tour the new features, redesign your Page until you are happy with it, and Publish it once you are set. You can Publish it at any time. But be aware that on March 30, 2012, your Timeline will automatically take affect, so be sure to play around with it between now and then. [Read more…]

The Code For Blocking Pinterest … And 12 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use It

There are a lot of photographers out there up in arms over Pinterest.

Pinterest allows people to create visual pin boards by finding things online and “pinning” them to a board on their Pinterest account. Because Pinterest is a visual social site, what attracts you to click on things is the photograph. Yet you can look through the images on Pinterest without having to go back to the site of origination to view who’s images they are. Which means there are many photographers upset by copyright infringement – can people really “move” your images around and share them in a variety of ways without crediting you, the photographer?

Dig Deeper: How To Boost Your Photography Business With Pinterest
Dig Deeper: Get Creative With Your Marketing: How Others Are Using Pinterest

Like any good business, Pinterest heard what people where saying and decided to offer a solution. So if any photographers are out there and upset by the way Pinterest lets you use images, you can now stop people from pinning your photographs and images.

Head over to Pinterest and copy the code for disabling the pinning technique. Then when anyone online tries to pin from your site, they will see the message:

Sounds great, right? After all, you wouldn’t want people sharing your photographs all across the web for free, right?

We started our Pinterest account less than two months ago. In the past 30 days, almost 2 percent of all of our online traffic has come from Pinterest. Which means we’ve gained well over a thousand views to our VirtualPhotographyStudio site in a way that wasn’t available to us back in 2011. We would have missed those connections without focusing our efforts on connecting with people through Pinterest.

Reason #1 Gain traffic to your site

Why are you online in the first place? If its simply to have an online brochure to send people to, Pinterest might not matter. But if you are trying to attract new people whom you wouldn’t have met any other way, Pinterest is a great way to do so. Remember, Pinterest is heavily weighted towards women. If you are targeting women, Pinterest holds their attention.

Reason #2 You can share posing ideas

With Pinterest, you can build as many boards as you choose, and can label them in a way that makes sense to your followers. Why not create a posing board. Then your clients can find images they love and ask you to duplicate it with them.

Reason #3 You can share location ideas

Do you shoot all over town? Why not highlight the best locations with a pin board. Many clients have a hard time understanding the difference between locations. Showcase urban scenes and park settings. Let them find something that suits their lifestyle.

Reason #4 You can collaborate with a client

Is a client putting together an event they would like input on? Start a pin board just for them. You can change the setting to allow others to have access to a board. Then you can post ideas on it together. That way they can share ideas with you, and you can counter with your own ideas. Your client will be super excited by the day of the event.

Reason #5 You can learn your clients’ style

Instead of building a board yourself, turn to your clients and have them start a board.

Ask them to build boards to showcase their style. They can put together color ideas, location ideas, even different clothing choices.

Reason #6 You can increase your exposure

Photographers worry about other photographers stealing their ideas. Yes, you will have the photographers that linger and “stalk” without doing anything themselves. But the more you share, the more you will receive recognition for what you are doing. Who has a bigger business, someone with lots of exposure or someone who keeps their ideas to themselves?

Want even more? The Photographers Guide To Pinterest is now available in PDF and Kindle format. The perfect step by step guide to help you join Pinterest and use it to bring in traffic…and clients.

 

The Basic Guide to Tumblr for Photographers

Is this going to be the year of the visual social sites?

Pinterest has been taking the Internet by storm these past few months, but by no means is it alone. Five year old Tumblr surpassed 15 billion monthly pageviews in January and to date has close to 17 billion posts on its site.

Like all other social sites, its free to use, easy to set up, and fun to manage. It’s a lot simpler than WordPress, and you can customize it and personalize it in minutes. All content is hosted on Tumblr, meaning you won’t have control over your data. If Tumblr goes down, your site is down.

Tumblr’s audience tends to be young – 56 percent of the monthly visitors are under 34, and is slighlty skewed towards males – 52 percent. If your target market falls in that demographics, Tumblr may be worth a try.

Set Up Your Tumblr

Setting up a Tumblr account is an easy process. List your email, choose a password and designate a URL for your Tumblr account – the URL will be www.yourname.tumblr.com. Match it up to your business name or a niche you are trying for. You can also give it your own domain name – follow the steps here. Then customize your Tumblr – you can pick a theme, choose colors, upload a header and profile pictures and write up your summary. They have everything from a collage layout (perfect for photographers) to a more linear, newsfeed layout.

Start Posting

Tumblr makes it easy to post just about anything. People want short, valuable information. And visuals do very well on Tumblr (just like they do on just about any site these days). From your dashboard, you can quickly post seven different options: text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video. Try the photoset feature – a great way to share multiple images quickly.

[Read more…]

How To Boost Your Photography Business With Pinterest

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Facebook and Twitter have been the social phenomena for many months now, so eventually some other site had to come along and see what they could do to gain traction.

It may be with a site called Pinterest. Pinterest is a social site that calls themselves a virtual pinboard. It allows you to organize and share all of the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, organize their wardrobe/closet, and find favorite recipes. Yep, if that sounds like a place the female population would love, you’re right. Its heavily weighted towards female users who love sharing and commenting on everything fun.

While Pinterest is simply a pinboard, meaning there is no true way of selling or getting people to buy your products, it is a popular way to showcase images with links back to the original source.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Pinterest yet, now is the time. Use these ideas to set up and draw attention to your photography.

Spend the time

Pinterest is just like the other social sites in use today – you get out of it what you put into it. Find the movers and shakers of Pinterest and build relationships with those who are known for quality “pins”. Once they recognize you, they are more likely to post about your photography. [Read more…]

An Advanced Guide To Using LinkedIn

Like all of the other social media tools out there, LinkedIn is a way of creating and nurturing relationships. It’s a way of allowing you to be approachable, visible and helpful to those in your circle of influence.

With more than 135 million people and over 7 million companies, there is definitely potential. But like any other social site, you have to use it to gain potential.

As a photographer, its easy to write off LinkedIn as a business site – how can it help you reach consumers? Yet that’s the wrong approach.

Think of LinkedIn as your base or foundation, and build from there.

It’s a great way of having content about you and your business, make it findable in Google, and then build from there.

To start, you have to have a great profile and a great company page. Don’t just build them like you would a resume or a business summary. Instead focus in on keywords and how you will be findable in the search engines.

Dig Deeper: 3 Ways To Make Your LinkedIn Profile More Powerful

LinkedIn isn’t about “chit chat” and conversations. Instead it’s a place for research, learning, and finding out who your viable prospects are. It’s a place to do research and learn more about the people you would like to do business with. [Read more…]

25+ Photographers To Follow on Google+

Are you on Google+? Then you know it has literally exploded over the past few months, giving Facebook an honest run for the money. In some ways its more intuitive than Facebook, and allows you to communicate in slightly different ways. It’s a way to split your resources into more than one area, and connect with people that may prefer this method over some place else.

Dig Deeper: The Basic Guide To Google Plus For Photographers

When I looked at who you should be following on Google+, I looked at it for a variety of things. Do they show off great photography? Are they posting regularly? Do they communicate with others? Are they sharing resources and links? Do they have large groups of influence? All of the photographers below fit that bill in some way. Can you recommend more?

 

Alex Koloskov

Alfie Goodrich

Andrew Osterberg

Beau Kahler

Cassius Wright

Catherine Hall

Chris Marquardt

Colby Brown

Damien Franco

Dane Sanders

Dave Beckerman

Don MacAskill

Elana Kalis

Jim Goldstein

John DeBord

Lisa Bettany

Mike Olbinski

Mike Shaw

Neal Urban

Nicole S Young

Penny De Los Santos

Scott Jarvie

Scott Kelby

Thomas Hawk

Trey Ratcliff

Vivienne Gucwa

 

5 Reasons Not To Quit Facebook

A few months ago, I spoke with a friend who was fed up with Facebook. She spent way too much time on it, wasn’t quite sure how to bring her business into it, was tired of the constant “noise” in her newsfeed, and decided it was time to say goodbye. So with well over 500 friends in her list, she clicked the button and shut down her Facebook account.

A few weeks ago, I noticed she’s back on. With a few weeks away, she began wondering what everyone was doing, and started reading more information on building a business using Facebook Pages. So she headed back online and opened up her account. Now she’s at 200 friends, and is looking closely for guidance on how to use Facebook the right way this time.

She’s not alone. In fact I see people all the time that have a “Facebook breakdown” and make a quick decision to call it quits.

Would you do the same with your website?

Of course not. That’s your business.

Yet shutting down your Facebook account if you run a small business is pretty much doing just that.

Yes, Facebook is free. Yes, it has its own purposes. But it’s a tool you can use to attract and gain new clientele. If something like that has purpose, the last thing you should do is shut it down. Instead, take some time away  no one will realize you’re gone – and restrategize. Discover the true reason you want to use it, and start in again. You won’t have to rebuild your profiles and pages, add friends and followers, and you’ll have a much easier time of moving forward.

Facebook is the Social Reach of the World

Facebook has only been around a few years. The world survived before Facebook, and I’m pretty sure it would survive if Facebook suddenly went away. Yet Facebook has become the window of opportunity to learn all about your friends and family. If your niece posts new pictures of her baby, where else are you going to see them? If your son shares his college experiences, don’t you want to know what he’s doing? (Okay, maybe not) And what about the bookclub, yoga class and travel meetings? How will you ever know what’s going on without Facebook? Because people are on it all the time, it’s a great place to meet new people, network with new people, and find new clients. If you are in business, can you really ignore one of the most active places on Earth? [Read more…]