First and foremost I must apologize for my leave of absence, upon my return from this years WPPI photography convention in Las Vegas I was hit with a horrible flu/upper respiratory infection that took me out of commission for the past 3 weeks. I’ve returned and will jump back into keeping the photographershandbook as up to date with new information as humanly possible as I can. Ok so enough with complaining

There has been an interesting phenomenon on Twitter lately and those are posts prefaced with the # sign or what is called in computer lingo the Hash symbol.

Sites like Facebook make it very easy for users to tag their posts for searching tagged words and finding groups of messages on related topics. Twitter was really never meant to grow into what it has become, therefore this feature was never included in the core functionality of the program. This is where 3rd party developers really shine, the fine folks over at hashtag.org have taken it upon themselves to come up with a solution that solves this problem painlessly, let me explain how it works.

Say you want to start a twitter thread or conversation on a particular subject for instance Canon 5D Mark II (sorry my bias here) and want to easily be able to track what others have to say in response to your post. This is where the Hash Tag comes in handy.

Before you begin however there is one step you need to do before starting in with the hash tag and that is follow the twitter account of the folks over at HashTags.org. You can do so by going to www.twitter.com/hashtags and clicking the Follow button, they will automatically follow you back and you are on your way.

So say you want to solicit feedback or recommendations on the new Canon 5D Mark II. Anywhere within your twitter post all you need to do now is include the following #canon5dmarkII, that hash tag now notifies hashtag.org to start tracking any response that includes #canon5dmarkII.

At any time you can jump over to www.hashtags.org and search for your hash tag term, the results will pull up a grouping of all posts that include your term. You can even use their site to search for other keywords of interest to see what people are talking about. Pretty nifty eh!

Tip: Check with HashTags.org before creating a new grouping to make sure that the tag hasn’t been previously used

Hash Tags are a fast and effective way to follow topics of interest. Other ideas include Events, Tradeshows or even Disasters.

Just another quiver in your bag of social media tricks, I hope you find it helpful.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ&eurl=http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/[/youtube]

How often have you walked into a meeting or met with a prospective client just to realize that you left your business cards at the office or studio? I’ll admit it, I do all the time.

One of the oldest marketing tools in the book, business cards have traditionally been the easiest and fastest way to share your contact information with a prospective client. However, what good is a business card if you forget to carry them?

We live in a digital age of websites, social networking, instant messaging and email so why not take your business cards digital as well.

Through a slick online service called MyDropCard.com you’ll never have another one one of those embarrassing moments ever again. Who knows you might actually even look cooler when you pull out your cell phone and instantly deliver your contact information right to their email inbox, in turn saving them the time and trouble have having to re-key your info back into their computer based address book.

Let me show you how to go from Zero to Hero in a few easy steps.

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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.

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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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.

Have you ever wanted to put mapquest directions on your website or tried to send a super long URL to a friend by email only to have the link broken by the email client? If you answered yes to either of these questions it’s time to check out TinyURL.com.

TinyURL can take a url that looks like this:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

and turn it into a TinyURL like this

http://tinyurl.com/directions

The process is of making a TinyURL is a breeze.

1. Go to www.TinyURL.com
2. Paste in your long URL where it says Enter a long URL to make tiny:
3. Enter a Custom Alias Name such as Directions, otherwise TinyURL will make up one
4. Click the button Make TinyURL
5. Instantly the system will take you to a new page with your tinyurl, with most systems the new tiny url will have been copied to your clipboard and is ready to paste into your website, blog or in your twitter posts, wherever you need it.

I hope you find this useful, if so leave us a comment. Also be sure to tell us about products and sites like this that you use on a daily basis which make your online life more enjoyable.

Happy Sunday!

In a previous, more general post on Domain Name Registration, I eluded to to a situation I was currently in with a web hosting company that had essentially hijacked my domain name. In a moment of lapsed judgment a few years ago i opted to register a domain and hosting account with a firm that I found on the internet that had ridiculously cheap prices, instead of paying what would amount to only a few dollars more with one of the more reputable hosting companies. At first our relationship was fine, signup was a breeze, they gave me all the tools i needed to operate my site and were always more than efficient when it came time to renew my account with them. This is where the happy story ends…

6 months ago i decided to migrate all my existing web hosting accounts under one roof for the sake of making site management a bit easier. Everything went smooth until it came time to migrate over the site in question and adding even more insult to injury, this was my VANITY site, www.crismitchell.com Ouch!

I repeatidly contacted PagesGarden.com, the hosting provider, about releasing my domain name which they had registered for me as part of my package agreement. Each time I was promptly greeted with a return email saying that this issue needed to be escalated to their billing department. I sent them email after email asking for this to be dealt with, including a few not so friendly emails, to which I was never returned a response. Through the midst of all this, they continued to bill me for service, even though i had asked for my account to be closed and my domain to be released, I eventually had to go straight to the merchant provider they used for their credit card processing and requested that my credit card stopped being billed, to which they obliged. Why should one have to go to these measures?

Ok so to make a very long and not so pleasant story short, today my domain has finally expired and they can no longer bill me, my sentence with them is finally over, sort of. My domain now sits in limbo or what is called a grace period which could take up to a month or longer depending on the hosting provider at which point it will be released again and made available to register. I’m just hoping I catch it before another Cris Mitchell out there gets it If there is another one of you reading this post… Back Off… It’s mine

All in all this was a very painful lesson learned, the cheapest is not always the most reputable solution. If you are currently looking for a new hosting provider to host your website, below is a list of companies that i’ve worked with over the years, ones that are great and others that i’d stay away from at all costs.

I hope my misfortune can save others from making the same mistake.

Reputable Hosting Companies
BlueHost.com
GoDaddy.com
DreamHost.com
1and1.com

Hosting Companies to Stay Away From
PagesGarden.com
iPowerWeb.com

Side Note: If you have success with a hosting company please comment and let us know who they are so I can create a master list of reputable hosting providers.

Everyday I receive dozens of emails from folks who neglect to utilize the one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal as an internet marketer. What i’m talking about is the Email Signature. Emails signatures can be easily set up within your email software account preferences, and besides helping your market yourself, email sigs will save you the time of having to manually type in your contact information each time you send an email. Email signatures also give you the ability to share your websites and social networking urls, afterall isn’t it all about networking.

Below is the Email signature that goes out with each email I send. Every time one of my emails get forwarded or replied to by others i’m increasing my chances of exposing my websites and business to complete strangers.

So the next time you send out an email make sure to include your Email Signature.

Sincerely,
Cris Mitchell
Publisher
ProPhotoResource.com
cris@prophotoresource.com
805.441.1187

Follow me online at:
WEB: www.prophotoresource.com
BLOG: www.photographershandbook.com
TWITTER: www.twitter.com/crismitchell
POWNCE: www.pownce.com/crismitchell
MYSPACE: www.myspace.com/crismitchellphotography
FLICKR: www.flickr.com/crismitchell or www.flickr.com/followcris