This past week I was interviewed by Rodney Washington of Photo-Marketing-Mentor.com as part of his Photo Marketing Tele Summit. I had a great time sharing the virtual stage with some big names in the industry including Rick Sammon, Jim Zuckerman and others. The interviews can be downloaded for a few more days for free at which point the entire 3 day event can be purchased on CD. Click Here for more Information.

In my talk i mentioned my personal Fav 7 WordPress plugins when it comes to helping market your blog. These are what i consider the mandatory set of plugins and the ones that i install with every deployment of WordPress for my sites and my clients sites.

Akismet - Spam has proliferated to the blogosphere and just like email spam you need a way to fight it. Akismet checks incoming post comments against spam database and automatically filters out the offending comments. Once the questionable comments are detected they are quarantined for manual approval. Akismet is installed by WordPress by default but you do need to register for a key before using it.

Feedburner – Feedburner is RSS on Steriods. It not only allows you to syndicate your posts and podcasts but also allows you to track subscribers as well as gives you statistical information. Feedburner has recently been purchased by Google and if you have a google account you can manage your Feedburner feeds within your Google account.

What Would Seth Godin Do - This Plugin with the funny name allows visitors coming to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. This is a great way to help build your RSS Subscriptions.

Platinum SEO - Platinum SEO extends the basic SEO functionality of WordPress and is a must have to help you in your quest for getting picked up by the search engines. Platinum SEO helps generate relevant meta tages for every post and page. It’s competitor is All In One SEO but i’ve had better luck with Platinum.

Google Analyticator - Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging.

WP to Twitter - The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter. The plugin sends a default tweet but allows you to override and customize your message for each blog post.

TwitThis – TwitThis places a small icon on the bottom of your blog posts and allows readers to easily tweet about your content.

If you are serious about your blogging efforts and are using wordpress, I strongly urge you to take a look at the above plugins and add them into your your blogging arsenal.

3 years after the inception of our main site ProPhotoResource.com we are proud to announce our new parent site ProPhotoNet.com. ProPhotoNet.com is the launching point for all sites in the ProPhoto Network including the release of 2 new websites online and ready for viewing today!

PHOTOWEBGUY.COM
From the creator of ProPhotoResource.com and Photographershandbook.com, Cris Mitchell is happy to bring you PhotoWebGuy.com. PhotoWebGuy offers personalized professional online coaching and consulting with Cris Mitchell himself. If you are a Photographer trying to do business on the internet PhotoWebGuy is here to help get you on track and online in the least amount of time possible. From website design to how to use social media networking to increase the visibility of your business online, Cris is here to help you every step of the way.

APERTUREHOST.COM
ApertureHost.com was created to solve the web hosting needs of photographers and creative professionals. If you’re tired of dealing with the large impersonal web hosting companies that don’t care about anything other than taking your money than ApertureHost is just what your looking for. Beyond our rock solid hardware and our generous offerings, ApertureHost offers technical assistance unparalleled in the industry. The support staff at ApetureHost.com is available to help each of our clients with all your photo hosting needs, everything from WordPress blog installations to full blown Photo Gallery deployment. This is a hosting company specifically built from the ground up for Photographers by Photographers.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I’M ON A PRO PHOTO NETWORK SITE
Starting today you’ll notice the addition of the ProPhotoNetwork Toolbar at the top of every site in our network
Including:

• www.prophotonet.com
• www.prophotoresource.com
• www.photographershandbook.com
• www.photowebguy.com
• www.aperturehost.com

Will all proudly display the Network Toolbar allowing you to jump from site to site in our network with ease.

WHATS NEXT
We aren’t stopping here! In February we will be launching new photography related sites to our network so if you want to stay up to date and in the know just add your email address to the “Stay in the Know” Mailing list in the sidebar and you’ll be the first to know what is happening in the ProPhoto Network.

If you’ve heard me talk or read my articles you know one thing that I firmly believe in is Social Media. This new method of marketing your business can help you reach new customers and stay on the pulse of existing ones.

If you’re a photographer who wants to compete in this fast changing and competitive online marketplace now is the time to start getting your feet wet with Social Networks like Facebook, mySpace, Twitter, Flickr etc.

If you don’t understand how social media works I urge you to find a friend, colleague or consultant who can teach you how to leverage the power that Social Media Networking can offer.

There is no better way to obtain real-time feedback about you or your brand than there is through what is called Reputation Monitoring.

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We are proud to announce that PhotographersHandbook.com is off and running and is going strong. To celebrate this we wanted to run a New Years Giveaway with some AMAZING PRIZES!

Entering this contest couldn’t be easier! Simply enter your email address into the “Sign up for the Handbook Email Newsletter” area in the sidebar then click Subscribe.

That’s all there is to it.

As always, we will never sell or give you email addresses away, however we may on occasion send out an email announcement with some usual information for helping you market your photography business online. You can cancel anytime.

So what are you waiting for Sign Up Now and take a chance at winning some of these great Prizes by our fantastic sponsors Amherst Media, BorrowLenses.com and Picture Code. Prizes after the Jump (more…)

I just wanted to give folks a quick update on yesterday’s post regarding Facebooks Terms of Use policy.

Several people had asked if this issue could be bypassed by including an RSS feed from your images hosted on Flickr.com or by using one Facebooks API software hacks to link to an external photo gallery on flickr, picassa or other online photo galleries?

While both of these solutions are easy to do, neither of them provide you protection from Facebook using your images for whatever they deem appropriate.

I posed this very question to legal expert Caroline E. Wright www.photoattorney.com and she responded with the following.

However, you’re still “posting” content on the site, which is included in the Facebook license – “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant . . . to the Company.”

So in a nutshell until Facebook changes their Terms of Use, you are in no way protected from them using your content.

It was also brought to my attention there has been a Facebook group started which now stands at over 42k people protesting this very practice. Please join and hopefully together we can get Facebook to change the way they are doing business.

Ok I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always the most diligent about reading those long Terms of Service Agreements that pop up when you sign up for a website. I mean it’s a lot of legalese and who’s got time for all that, gulp!

After spending the last few days posting some of my photography to my Facebook account for everyone to enjoy, it was brought to my attention that I might want to take a look at the Terms of Use agreement for the site as it sates the following:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant . . . to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

This immediately sent up a red flag in my head, so i thought it best to run this by ProPhotoResource.com Legal Expert Carolyn E. Wright to get further clarification on the matter. Carolyn has since posted an answer to this issue on her blog www.photoattorney.com (I highly recommend you bookmarking Carolyns site).

It is true, but putting any of your work up on Facebook you are giving them carte blanche to use your photos, artwork or writings for anything they want including, advertising, promotion etc…

So the next time you sign up for a website and are about to upload your prize winning photos to it, please be very careful and make darn certain to read the terms of use beforehand.

I’m happy to to be able to provide an audio playback of my interview with Rodney Washington of Photo Marketing Mentor. This interview originally aired January 8, 2009.

[audio:show109.mp3]
To download the audio file visit BlogTalkRadio.

In Part one I shared with you what a domain name was and how to go about setting up your own personal domain name.

In part two of this series I’ll take you step by step through the process of finding and selecting the perfect web host to fit your needs. I’ll also give you my recommended feature list when selecting a web host and then we’ll wrap up with showing you how to connect your domain name to your new hosting service.

WHAT IS A WEB HOST
In a nutshell and to make things simple, a web host or server, is simply a computer that lives in a data center remotely someplace else in the world. Though possible to setup your own web server locally, I recommend opting to pay a reputable hosting company to serve up and manage your site unless you are the ultimate control freak and have a budget to hire a server administrator at which point I still say opt for having someone else host it and save yourself a world of headache.

A web server is the place you store your website, blogs and online galleries, when a web surfer types in your url such as www.prophotoresource.com a DNS Server (explained later in this article) re-routes them to your web server and subsequently the browser displays your page. I know it all seems like magic doesn’t it.

Most hosting companies offer a variety of choices when choosing a new account, the most important at this point are whether to choose a Windows or Linux based server. My personal preference is Linux. This isn’t the place to get into a deep heated debate with all the Microsoft fans out there who think Windows is a superior hosting environment, both have their advantages and disadvantages, but for my personal needs the Linux platform offers everything I need to get the job done. Do your research, talk to your web developer and find the best solution for your needs. (more…)

There is no question that in the ever-competitive photography industry you need every advantage to set yourself apart from your competition. It’s no longer enough to just place an ad in the local Yellow Pages and wait for the phone to ring. You need to start thinking outside the box when it comes to your advertising efforts and you need to start now.

Unless you have been living under a rock or have been so busy the last couple years, in which case you probably don’t need to read this article, you’ve heard of social media networks such as MySpace and Facebook. These websites are generally used to connect with friends and family, but lurking just beneath their exterior is a wealth of marketing gold. For little to no money you can tap into the over 100 million registered members that comprise the facebook network alone. Try doing that with your local yellow pages.

At this point you are probably still wondering how this is all applicable to you as a photographer, so let me show you how by placing a small facebook advertisement you can directly tap you into your target audience.

For example, if you are a High School senior photographer you can use the Facebook advertising system to locate all 17 – 18 year old kids in your local town that have accounts on facebook. Each day as eager young high school kids in your home town log into their facebook accounts, your ad will be served up in all its glory for them to view.

Let me walk you step by step through the process of creating a facebook advertisement of your own and get you well on your way to generating new leads for your business.

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