What Would Happen If Your Pro Flickr Account Was Deleted?

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

The Five Necessities To Photography Success

What do you need to succeed as a photographer? A better camera? More equipment? More clients?

Every photographer has a different answer because every photographer is at a different point of the business game. A photographer with a brand new studio will answer differently than a photographer with 30 years of business experience.

Yet there are certain things every photographer needs in order to make it as a successful photographer. It goes beyond the equipment or the experience.

When we were first starting your photography business, we met an incredible artist. Our friend had amazing ideas, and his images had true genius written all over them. Yet he was an artist through and through. He held a small space on Main Street, and only sold his work (at way too low of a price) to people that walked through his door. Or came to him through referral based on his reputation. He survived, but never thrived. Today he is working other jobs around his photography in order to survive.

I see and hear stories like that all the time. They don’t fail because of talent; they fail because of lack of business experience. They fail because of lack of marketing and sales skills. A mediocre photographer with great sales and marketing skills will always do better than an outstanding photographer with few skills.

As a photographer, what do you need to succeed in 2011?

Blogging

Want to know the best tool available to you today? Yep, it’s a blog. Websites are a thing of the past because of limitations they have. They are created using a hodgepodge of coding that simply isn’t attracting the attention of Google. They rely on programming knowledge, which means the average person needs help to make changes and additions.  And they allow you to stay active in the social media arena. Traditional marketing is dead – if you aren’t using social in today’s world, you are missing out on huge opportunity.

[Read more…]

3 Ways Social Media Will Make Your Photography Business Fail

The world right now revolves around Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people text – even in business meetings. And have you gone a day without watching an online video – I know I haven’t.

Because of all of this, it’s pretty obvious that things are changing. Cameras are everywhere and in everything, so people become amateur photographers with just a mobile device, and some are quite good at it. Even pro cameras are seeing the change, and are pushing video on their still cameras. What does that mean for the pros? What does that mean for the industry as a whole?

It simply means its time to change.

So what does that change look like? And is it truly possible? The Internet is now been around long enough for a generation to grow up with it. Social is changing the way we use the Internet. With 1 billion people using Facebook, it should be obvious that its not just a fad, it’s a life changing application.

And change is what we will continue to see. So you have two options at this point. Do what you’ve always done and expect the same results. Or try something different. [Read more…]

The One Thing You Are Missing From Your Social Networking Plan

So you have a Facebook account. Who are your friends?

Many people tell me they just don’t get social networking. They have a Facebook account, but they aren’t getting any business from it. They love it and are on it every day – but where’s the business?

Who Are You Talking To?
Spend some time walking through your friend list. Who are you talking to?

If you are talking to your family members and best friends, they already know you. They understand your business and know you are looking to grow it. They tend to ignore your business talk.

If you are talking to other photographers, they are in the same boat as you. They won’t buy your services, and they won’t increase your business. While its nice to talk to fellow photographers and share stories, you won’t get immediate action from other photographers on social sites. [Read more…]

Monitoring The Social Networks For Growing Your Photography Business

So you have 100 followers on Twitter, and you’re not quite sure what to do from there. How do you find people to follow? And more importantly, how do you find people that are interested in what you do?

One way is to use social monitoring tools.

Twitter is a program that works best when used in conjunction with other Twitter tools. If you follow any number of people on Twitter, you know your tweet stream can be in constant rotation with items from people you follow. I can easily have dozens of new messages every minute or so. And what about the people I’m not following? There may be dozens of conversations taking place on Twitter that may be of interest to me, yet I know nothing about. That’s where social monitoring comes into play.

There are many sites that allow you to use social monitoring – Twhirl, Tweetdeck, Pageflakes, and my current favorite, HootSuite. Login to HootSuite through your browser, and you can have instant access to your different social tools. I can access all of my Twitter accounts, Facebook, and LinkedIn, which makes it easy for my to post to my accounts and to monitor conversations. I can watch what my friends are tweeting, create and save posts in draft mode, find out where my posts are being retweeted, and carry on personal conversations, all from one easy location.

What I like even more is the ability to find people and conversations that are taking place about keywords and things that interest me. For example, I’m on the constant look for people talking about photography business. Since this site provides a wealth of information to help photographers build the business, I’m always looking for resources, people that may be willing to guest blog or do programs together, or for photographers looking to build the business. So using HootSuite, I simply set up a column with the keyword “photography business” and I see every tweet in which that keyword is used. So I can scroll through that column any time, and connect up with people that may be of benefit to my company.

How can you use it? What keywords are you looking for? Looking for someone planning a wedding in your location? Try following a keyword like “wedding [your location]”. If a bride to be typed in a tweet about planning her wedding, you could find her. Or maybe a keyword like “wedding photographer” would help you find tweets in which someone says, “Out looking for wedding photographers today”. And of course there are many other potential ways to use Twitter – start slowly and build along the way.

Once you find people, don’t instantly tweet them and offer your services. That’s way too pushy in the social arena. Instead follow them. Respond to their questions and offer advice. Once they notice you and like what you have to offer, then you have a greater chance of connecting with them, and ultimately booking them as a client.

5 Ways You May Be Shouting To The Wrong Crowd With Your Social Sites

Are you using social media correctly? Are you making any money by spending time on social networking sites? If you aren’t sure or if you have questions about your social media plan, take a look at these 5 ways you may be shouting to the wrong crowd.

1. Using a social site where your clients aren’t.
Are you still using MySpace? Are your clients? How about your potential clients?

If you photograph bands, musicians, actors, comedians, MySpace may be the Using Social Sites To Grow Your Photography Businessperfect place for you. But if you’re working with high school seniors, they aren’t there anymore. They are over on Facebook. No matter how much you promote yourself as a high school senior photographer, you will never capture a market share. Because they simply aren’t there.

2. Talking only to your greatest fans.
How many friends do you have on a social site? 10? 100? Who are they? I looked through one client’s Facebook account and found the following:

  • 25 family/personal friends
  • 17 clients
  • 43 business associates and other photographers

85 people following just won’t cut it. If you were to mail out a postcard, would you honestly mail 85 of them to the people on this list? You wouldn’t be in business for long. [Read more…]

A New Social Site For Photographers – Google Buzz

If you’ve been out to your Facebook or Twitter account in the last two days, chances are you’ve seen the buzz, well, around Buzz. Google Buzz is a much anticipated, justgoogle buzz released social site that is built around Google’s gmail system. If you have an account, just login and you’ll notice a new button on your navigation called Buzz. If you don’t have a gmail account, now is the time to sign up. (Yep, it’s free, so no reason not to.)

Andrew and I have been Buzzing all over the last two days, and both of us are really finding it useful and easy to navigate. (Plus its even more fun making our daughter roll her eyes by saying we buzz and tweet all day – just tweeting was getting a little old!)

So if you’ve ever scratched your head wondering what Twitter is really about, now is the time to jump in with Buzz. Buzz takes the best of Facebook and Twitter, and rolls it up into one platform.
[Read more…]

14 Signs Social Media Won’t Bring In Clients For Your Photography Business

This past weekend I attended a networking event. I sat next to a wonderful woman whom I halets do businessd a lot in common with. We talked at great length, and she had some wonderful ideas on marketing a business. She handed me her card, and gave me her Twitter address for us to keep in touch. She was very excited about using Twitter, yet wasn’t quite sure how it would help her in the future.

When I checked into her Twitter account today, I wasn’t surprised to see she had 40 followers. Do you see yourself in any of these?

1. You have less than 100 followers/friends/fans.

2. You know every friend on your social account personally.

3. You talk about what you had for lunch.

4. You post a few times per week – when you have time.

5. You expect to make money the first week you’re on the site. [Read more…]

How Much Does Social Impact Your Photography Business?

If you follow me on Twitter, you received this tweet from me today:
twitter

I found a must-read post today entitled: How To: Plan A DIY Wedding Using Social Media. Whether you photograph weddings or not, this will open your eyes to the way people are now using the Internet to do things within their daily lives.
how to plan a DIY wedding using social media

The writer of the post, Josh, is planning his wedding for next July. As a part of the process, he shared all the different tools he and his future bride are using for the planning process.

  • Sites to plan out the color scheme
  • Sites to plan invitations to wedding collateral
  • Blogs to document the entire process
  • Mobile technology to work with iPhones and BlackBerry’s to keep everyone up to date
  • Registry programs
  • Honeymoon planners

The list goes on.

When you take a look through his planning process – and yes he still has 9 months to go – its amazing the resources that are at his finger tips. And how well he can use them.

Think any other newly engaged couples are doing the same thing?

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How To Attract Social Media Moms And Turn Them Into Photography Clients

So you’ve started up a portrait business and you are looking for creative ways to build your business.

You’ve got the gear, got the studio, have business cards in hand, and have talked to your family and friends. Yet clients are still few and far between. You don’t have a ton of money to invest in advertising – what do you do next?

Social media of course. Everyone is talking about Facebook and Twitter, so why not jump on board and reach out?

According to eMarketer, in 2009, 36.5 million moms are online in the U.S., with numbers expected to reach towards 39.6 million moms by 2012. And its not just Facebook and Twitter where thy hang out. Every day a new social site is set up to attract moms in different ways. Here are a few tips to help you attract and engage moms online.

Do Your Research

Reaching out to 250+ million users on Facebook sounds like a great deal. It’s free, right? But how is that going to help your business when you are in Des Moines, IA? Can you really do a portrait of a family who lives in San Diego? Does it really help you network with people all over the world?

Yes. And no.

[Read more…]