Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

If you photograph businesses, company events, retail openings, parties, or the like, are you keeping those photos under lock and key or are you encouraging your clients to share? Hopefully you’re encouraging some sharing. If you don’t allow (and even encourage) folks to share your work, you’re probably going to be replaced by a photographer who will… or even replaced by the amateur snapshots or cell phone photos of the business’ customers.

I’m not advocating that you give away all of your work for free; take sharing into consideration as you price a job. Will the company want to use your work on its Facebook page? The answer is yes, they should. Are they going to use the pictures on their blog? On their Flickr stream?

How about something even less traditional? What if you license the photos such that the organization not only uses the images on their social networking presences, but allows and encourages their fans to take the images and use them on their own blogs, Facebook pages, or the like?

Sharing is hot. Social media and social networking are all the rage at the moment, and a lot of businesses and other organizations are struggling with how they can “be social.” As a photographer, you can help them. When you license your work, include sharing. Help your clients to help themselves.

Photo by *Sally M*, used under Creative Commons licensing

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Flickr’s blog integration has never been too hidden, but most users’ experience has probably been in using the feature to post one’s own photos. Allowing others to blog your photos can be a great way to have your work shared.

How do you allow this? The blogging permissions can be found by logging onto Flickr and then clicking on your username in the upper right corner of the site. This will take you to your account settings, and you can click the Privacy & Permissions link to reach this screen:

To the right of each item you’ll see an “Edit” link, using the highlighted setting you can choose who can blog your photos. Allow your contacts to blog your photos, or better yet, allow anyone!

You know where I find this really useful? When browsing my Flickr contacts’ photos, if I find a great one I love to share it with my Twitter followers. Since you can setup posting to Twitter from Flickr, I can use Flickr’s “Blog This” button to send a link to a photo to the thousands of folks who follow me on Twitter.

If you haven’t enabled the ability for me to do it in a couple clicks? Hoestly I usually won’t take the time to do it manually (get the link, shorten the link, open Twitter client, and post). I’ll simply move along and find someone who has made it easier for me to share.

Photo by mikecpeck, used under Creative Commons licensing

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At the beginning of December 2009, I signed up for a WordPress blog. If you asked what I was going to blog about, you would have been met with a tidal wave of ideas, but nothing concrete. I had no idea where to start, but I knew I had a voice that wanted to be heard. I had finally made the decision to take my photography further than simply taking photos with which to adorn my otherwise bland room.

If there was going to be anyone out there on the interwebs reading my blog besides my mother, I wanted them to get to know me a little bit before I started sharing what little snippets of wisdom might be rattling around in my head. My first few posts were an introduction to my life, my family and friends, and my day-to-day life. After writing that small handful of introductory posts, I shared a few posts about photographers whose lives inspired me to continue my photographic efforts.

After posting fairly consistently for a couple months, I decided to take the plunge. I consulted with a friend and told her my desires to begin posting 4 days a week. I was quickly met with a wide eyes and a twitch that I’m almost positive was a near slap. While she thought I might be slightly insane, she wished me luck, but warned that it wouldn’t be easy. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been able to kept up with a schedule of four posts each week, adding the occasional guest blogger to round out the number to 5 weekdays.

I am more than aware of the fact that my adventures in blog-land have only just begun, but I feel that already I’ve gained many things through all the posts. I’ve discovered a sassy storyteller, I’ve made new friends, and I’ve found an outlet for sharing my journey as a growing photographer.

Kate is a growing portrait and wedding photographer in Portland, Oregon. You can find her at her blog, or reach her by email.

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