Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

When someone needs to hire a photographer, how do they find one? Regardless of whether it’s for a wedding, corporate material, senior pictures, sporting event, or editorial need, they probably follow this path:

1. A photographer they have previously hired.
2. A referral from a trusted source.
3. Someone they personally know who is a photographer.
4. Someone they don’t know personally, but is known as being proficient as a photographer.
5. A cold call based on the photography results of a search (search engine, etc).
6. A cold call to a random search result.

Five years ago, your position on that list was dictated by your past clientele and your physical activities – what events and groups you’d travel to, and where you’d devote dedicated time to build your network a few people at a time.

Fast-forward to our current environment. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook can help you end up in the number two spot on that list. A few days ago at Beer and Blog, I had a conversation with a real estate professional, talking with her about using Twitter to build relationships. By following local folks on Twitter, learning a bit about them (and sharing a bit about yourself), you’ll develop some personal connections. If you’re also sharing some of your photography experiences, those people will get to know you as someone that produces great pictures.

This is the value in the casual conversations on Twitter and Facebook. While sharing about your family, your hobbies, or your feelings won’t directly sell any photography services, you’ll be laying the foundation to build relationships. When your contacts start thinking about photography, instead of picking a name based on a Google search, they’ll come to you. When others mention needing a photographer, your contacts will refer those people to you.

And then, after you’ve won the business due to the social media referral, you’ll end up at the top spot on that list. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Photo by Horia Varlan, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Build Relationships Before the Sale
2. How Much Time Should a Photographer Spend on Social Media?
3. Social Media Tips Roundup for Photographers

Tagged as:
facebook,
influence,
relationships,
social media,
trust,
Twitter

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

Businesses have focused on customer retention after the sale for quite a while… but what about building a relationship before the sale? I’ve found this to be a very effective technique for my photography business. Using social media (Twitter and blogging on locally-focused sites), I’ve established relationships with a variety of people in my area and established credibility as a photographer.

In practical terms, here’s what I did that helped me develop relationships before the sale. I live near Portland, Oregon and there is an active online community – businesses and individuals from a variety of backgrounds and industries are on Twitter. The mayor of Portland routinely posts information for citizens on his Twitter account. I jumped into Twitter full-force, and started following a lot of local people. I interacted with those people, learning about them and sharing my life, including my photography, on Twitter.

Over time, by talking about my photography and sharing links to my work, I established myself as a photographer and my Twitter followers. People started contacting me directly about potential photography jobs. Better yet, when others would bring up the subject of photography, my Twitter followers would refer business to me, letting people know that they’d seen my work.

Studies have shown that people will buy from people they trust; Twitter is a great way to build up relationships (and trust) with a large group of people. By developing those relationships and trust over time, when people think about needing a photographer, they’ll think about that photographer whose work they keep seeing on Twitter.

photo by Aaron Hockley

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. It’s the Relationships, Damnit
2. Use Social Media to become the One to Call
3. Build Your Network by Leaving Blog Comments

Tagged as:
relationships,
trust,
Twitter

We’re now into December, and if you’re like me you’re wondering what happened to most of 2009. With the new year approaching, it’s worth spending a few minutes and doing a bit of a retrospective on the past twelve months. It’s a good idea for any business to periodically step back and look at the big picture… and for photographers, social media and social networking have been a big part of 2009.

As I look at my photography business and what I did with social media this year, I see a few major themes:

• I did really well at networking via Twitter and finding new business. I can name several specific clients or deals that resulted from Twitter networking or recommendations on Twitter from past clients.
• I blogged a lot more at the beginning of the year, and got very inconsistent later on. This is something I need to change by blogging more often both about work/clients as well as services. Frequently updated content (like blog posts) presents an image of a dynamic, active business to visitors as well as keeping search engines such as Google indexing fresh material.
• My Facebook presence (at least as far as my business goes) is late to the game. I only created a fan page in the last few weeks, and haven’t really spent any effort there actively marketing my work. I can see some potential in using Facebook to sell to existing friends/family but I remain skeptical of the ability to enter new markets or find new clients. I’ll talk more about this in a future post.

Next week I’m going to post the natural followup: a look at my social media plans for 2010, and they’re going to include a bit of a twist.

Photo by GcD^3 pictures, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
blogging,
facebook,
relationships,
social media,
Twitter

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

When personal computers still cost multiple thousands of dollars and the internet was somewhere that only technical geeks would be found, the term IRL came to mean “in real life” as opposed to an online interaction.

Here’s a reality check for those using the internet in 2009: online life and offline life are one and the same. In order to be authentic and in order to be trustworthy, your clients, colleagues, and other associates are going to expect that you are one person. As you build offline client relationships, those clients are going to expect you’ll treat them in a similar manner online. As you meet and get to know people online, your first offline encounter will be a continuation of the trust and relationship that has developed.

We’ve moved beyond the point where we think of online and offline as separate worlds. Your Facebook site is you. Twitter is real life.

Photo by JoshuaDavisPhotography. COM, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Social Media Connections of the Offline Variety
2. Build Relationships Before the Sale
3. Use Social Media to become the One to Call

Tagged as:
authenticity,
facebook,
relationships,
trust,
Twitter

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

I know a whole lot more people than I’ve met.

Watch this video and learn more about what I mean…

Have you had a similar situation?

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Retrospective on my 2009 in Social Media
2. How Much Time Should a Photographer Spend on Social Media?
3. 11 Ways to Say “Thanks” with Social Media

Tagged as:
blogging,
facebook,
meetings,
relationships,
social media,
Twitter

Social media can be all about networking and building relationships with others in your field. Through blogs, Twitter, Flickr, and other online resources I have “met” and developed relationships with dozens if not hundreds of photographers and other professionals. One of the best ways to build these relationships over time is also one of the easiest: leave comments on blogs.

Let’s quickly talk about the mechanics of leaving a comment. Leave your name, your email address, and (assuming you have a website), your website or blog’s URL. When it asks for your name, leave your actual name. Your name is not “Boston Wedding Photographer” or “Cheap Event Photography” or “Seattle Senior Pictures.” Some less-than-helpful SEO guys will try to convince you otherwise, but at this stage in the evolution of the web, trying to stuff keywords into blog comments is just spammy.

A good blog comment will (hopefully) provide value to both the person leaving the comment as well as the blog on which the comment is left. If you’re the one leaving the comment, you’re injecting yourself onto the radar of the blogger. Every time someone leaves a comment on one of my posts, I make sure to read it thoroughly and (if the commenter left a URL) check out the person’s website. If their website is interesting, I’m going to bookmark it or subscribe to the RSS feed. In short: if you leave a comment on one of my blogs, there’s a good chance I’m going to become a regular reader of your blog.

Over time, as one leaves comments multiple times on the same blog, you’ll start to be a known quantity to the blogger. Bloggers remember the people that leave meaningful comments on their blogs. Blog comments are a great way to do some virtual networking and build up relationships with peers, vendors, and other voices.

Do you leave blog comments as often as you’d like?

Photo by Barsch28, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
blogging,
comments,
Conversation,
influence,
networking,
relationships