As a photographer and marketing coach for creative service professionals I’m always looking for new tools and strategies that can be used to help get the word out about their businesses.

In the age of Internet marketing and social media networking it’s critically important now more than ever for creative service professional to take advantage of every opportunity to get your work in front of and connect with our target audience.

With websites, blogs and social media tools like Facebook and Twitter just to name a few, they are more avenues than ever for pro- photographers to reach potential prospects. So the question becomes “if it’s easier to connect with our prospects online – how do I capture the leads I receive on my blog -or- website?”

(more…)

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.

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.

(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.

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.

(more…)

I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea how time consuming it was going to be to maintain a blog and as you can see so far it shows My last post was well over a month ago.

Between my normal day to day design business, running ProPhotoResource.com and working the upcoming Internet Marketing book, how the heck am I suppose to find time to keep a blog up to date. It’s practically a full time job keeping up with the pace at which technology is changing, we’ve gone from HTML to Web 2.0 in the blink of an eye and from blogging to micro blogging in a matter of months. One could spend their entire life just keeping up with their social networks.

I’m often confronted by photographers interested in starting a blog or who have tried starting a blog only to end up frustrated and overwhelmed by the whole experience. What started with great intentions, ended up in total failure, because they quickly got overwhelmed by the thought of having to continually feed the 700 pound gorilla that has become their blog.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, here are a few tips to hopefully get you over the hump.

1. Start Slow and Grow - Know your limitations, if you can only carve out enough time for one post per week, start with that and work up from there. Trying to do more than you have time for is only going to end up in failure.

2. Set a Day and Stick With It - Like anything in life if you can make a routine out of it, the better luck your going to have with it. Pick a day and say “Ok Monday is my Blogging Day”, put it on the calendar and stick with it.

3. Don’t become a Social Media Butterfly – Yes social networks are a powerful tool for increasing traffic to your blog, but at the same time can zap every second of spare time you have, time that could be better spent working on your blog. Pick a few of the most popular Networks such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and work those. If you find yourself with more time on your hands, then you can dabble in some of the lesser known social media outlets

4. Lighten up and Have Fun – Whether you are blogging just to share information or you are a serious blogger, making a living from it, remember why you started blogging in the first place and Just Have Fun!

Well let’s see if i can follow my own advice. I’ll make a point of keeping this blog a little more active if you promise to keep coming back

Until Next time.
Cris . . .