Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

As I explore Flickr and look at others’ photos, here are some tips I’ve learned about effective photo tagging (as well as one pet peeve to avoid):

• This one is almost too obvious, but always tag. Add some keywords so that folks will find your photos.
• Add some “concept” tags. Think of the emotions, feelings, activities, or general concepts that might apply to a photo. Does the photo depict happiness, reading, or the idea of busy? Add those as tags.
• Be consistent with plurality: Choose car or cars. Choose airplane or airplanes. Choose flower or flowers. Pick one method and stick with it, rather than some of each. Or better yet: use both.
• Understand spaces: You have two choices to deal with spaces in tags. Either surround the tag with quotes like this: “new york” or simply remove the space and use newyork. If you simply type new york into a Flickr tag box, you’ll end up with two separate tags: new, and york.
• Avoid this pet peeve: If you’re uploading a group of photos, take the extra couple of minutes to correctly tag the individual photos. If your batch of 10 photos contains 2 that have rainbows in them, don’t tag all 10 photos with rainbows — folks will get frustrated as they wonder why photos without rainbows are showing up under your rainbows tag.

By following some consistent guidelines, you’ll result in more exposure for your photos on Flickr. Feel free to comment with any other tagging tips.

Photo by sheldonschwartz, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Is Anyone Using Flickr’s People-Tagging Feature?
2. Tag! You’re It on Flickr
3. Facebook vs. Flickr: Where to Share?

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keywords,
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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.

Last time we talked search engine optimization (SEO), we talked about how keywords relate to SEO. Today let’s take a look at links (the HTML anchor <a> tag) and how they factor into ranking on Google and other search engines.

Links matter for a couple different reasons. The first is the general assumption that the more different sites which are linking to your work, the more useful it must be. As a content creator, there’s no single way to get your work noticed and linked, but it’s good to keep in mind that the more links you get, the more likely that Google, Bing, and other search engines are to rank your site higher in results.

The other thing to know about links is that the text used for the link (between the <a> tags) matters. In general, it is preferable to have the link text be the keywords or phrase that is on-topic for your website. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer in Boston, your potential clients are likely to search for “boston wedding photographer” and having inbound links using that phrase would be excellent for your search ranking.

This matters in a couple scenarios. When creating links internal to your own website, use descriptive words for your links (for example, at the beginning of this post I linked up “keywords relate to SEO”). Don’t just link to “gallery”, but link to your “Denver wedding photography gallery” or such. Outside of your own site, when you’re leaving a message on a forum or a comment on a blog and you’re linking to something on your site, use appropriate keywords in that case as well. Don’t link to “tips”, but link to your “best Flickr tips” – see the difference there?

Don’t be spammy. Don’t use keywords or links that don’t naturally fit into the flow of the message you’re posting. Nobody wants to see someone show up only to promote their own work. If it makes sense in the context of the message to leave a keyword-loaded link, go right ahead, but if it doesn’t read like a natural sentence, you’re probably crossing the line.

Have any other great tips for SEO and links? Leave a comment below…

Photo by *clairity*, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. SEO Basics: Intro and Keywords
2. Web Statistics: Referrers, Exit Pages, and Outbound Links
3. The Web Stat that Leads to SEO: Search Referrers

Tagged as:
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links,
seo

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.

If you start publishing content on the internet through a website or blog, one of the terms you’ll come across fairly quickly is SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s an area that should get some attention from every blogger or content creator.

Search engines such as Google and Bing use automated programs to “crawl” the web, indexing web pages. Based on what is found, they deliver search results to folks who are making queries for a particular topic. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of ensuring that your website or blog is displaying content in a manner which makes it easy for search engines to find and using methods so that your website will rank higher for the terms you want.

We’ll be exploring a few basic SEO techniques over the next few weeks. A good place to start is to talk about keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases that you expect people to use when searching, so you’ll want to use those words and phrases on your blog. A great first step is to make sure that your blog post titles (and the title for the blog itself) contain keywords. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between a vague and enticing headline to draw readers in vs. one that contains keywords for long-term search results.

Another place where keywords can boost ranking is in the post URLs themselves. Using keywords as part of the post’s permalink (such as /tweet-photos-smugmug-twitter/) will boost the ranking over a generic URL such as post_id=123.

There’s a couple basic SEO keyword tips for you… next time we talk SEO we’ll talk a bit about how keywords relate to tags (of the HTML variety).

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. SEO Basics: Links
2. Tease Me, Stuff Me, or Fill Me with Facts: Effective Blog Post Titles
3. The Web Stat that Leads to SEO: Search Referrers

Tagged as:
blogging,
keywords,
seo

Last weekend I had the honor of being the primary photographer for 30 Hour Day, a first-of-its-kind charity telethon held entirely online as opposed to traditional broadcast media. I was in the studio taking photos as well as processing and uploading selected photos to Flickr. Clients love quick turnaround, and by putting the photos online it gave telethon viewers a glimpse “behind the scenes” into the people and workings of the studio.

I got some questions both from people in the studio as well as online about my workflow and how I quickly pushed photos to Flickr and Twitter. As background information, I was shooting with a pair of cameras using CF cards. I had my MacBook Pro with a card reader and Lightroom. I use Jeffrey Friedl’s Lightroom Export plugin for Flickr. Here’s how I did it:

1. Every hour or two, I’d offload files from the CF cards onto my computer and import them into Lightroom.
2. During the import, Lightroom was automatically assigning event-specific keywords as well as adding my copyright info to the EXIF data.
3. All of the photos were then placed into a Lightroom collection for the event.
4. A generic description for the event was added to every photo – in this case “From the studio at 30 Hour Day”
5. I’d quickly go through the collection, rating each photo with one, two, or three stars. One-star photos aren’t good, two-star photos are okay but not my best work, and three-star photos are those that are candidates for uploading. Lightroom tip: if you turn on Caps Lock while rating photos, you’ll jump to the next photo as soon as you hit the number on your keyboard.
6. After rating, use the Library Filter to only show images in the collection that are three stars.
7. Go through the three-star images and make Develop adjustments to the ones I was going to publish. For the most part I wasn’t making any substantial edits, mainly white balance adjustments and the occasional exposure adjustment (either global or with the adjustment brush). I was probably spending 30 seconds (or less) per image on average.
8. After making Develop module adjustments on an image, when it was ready to publish I’d label it with the green label (using the keyboard shortcut – the 8 key – to make this quick).
9. I created a Smart Collection with the following criteria, used throughout the event as I processed photos:
   • In the 30 Hour Day collection
   • Rating at least 3 stars
   • Color label is green
   • Has not been uploaded to Flickr (this is a custom property set by the export plugin)
10. Go through each of the photos in the Smart Collection (to be uploaded) and give them a title.
11. After each batch, upload the photos to Flickr, placing them in appropriate groups.
12. While exporting, use the plugin’s option to send out a tweet – include the event’s hashtag (in this case #30hd) and a link to my Flickr photoset for the event.

With this system I was able to quickly and easily get photos online from the studio in a fast manner that also pushed the photos to Flickr and Twitter.

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Keyword Synonyms for Usernames
2. Social Photo Podcast #4: What to Tweet, Holiday Gifts, Upcoming Poll on Workflow
3. How to Export Photos from Lightroom to the iPad

Tagged as:
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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’m going to borrow a slogan from Nike and suggest it as a mantra for organization of photographs. Just Do It.

Whether your photography medium is film, slides, or digital, as you take more photos you’re going to end up with storage and organization needs. I know a couple guys who have gradually accumulated thousands of photos which they organize simply by burning them to CD and writing on the CD. I suppose that’s better than a complete lack of any system, but when you need to find a photo, it’s a challenge to guess when it was shot and to figure out which disc it might be on.

When it comes to storing digital images, there are several programs specifically for that purpose. I use Lightroom and will likely write more details about how I use it in the future. Regardless of the organization system you choose, here are four things you should keep in mind:

1. The system should allow for images to easily be found my multiple criteria. Those criteria might include date taken, subject matter, photographic style, time of day, and other information specific to the types of photos you take. For example, I take a lot of photos of trains, and I can easily find those of a specific railroad.
2. The system must scale. What works for keeping track of 100 photos might not be practical when that collection grows to a few thousand. Choose an organization method that allows for expansion both in the quantity of photos, as well as the types of material being tracked, that is, to have new categories or ways to find the material.
3. The system should be easily backed up. If you’re using a software program, there should be a feature to backup the database. If you’re storing something in the physical sense (slides, prints, negatives, etc), your organization scheme should allow for a duplicate set of material.
4. The system should be able to be used fast enough to be effective. If you avoid cataloging your photos because it’s too hard or too time-consuming, the system won’t get used, and you might as well not have any system at all.

How does photo organization relate to social media and online community? It’s hard to share your photos if you can’t find them. A strong keywording and tagging system as part of your organization system will translate into a strong set of keywords and tags when you post photos to Flickr, SmugMug, or another online location.

Spending a few minutes to develop an organizational system will pay off in reduced frustration and time spent looking for photos in the future. In a future post, I’ll dive further into the world of digital asset management software and offer some specific information on my program of choice, Lightroom. Regardless of the system you choose, the important thing is to have system, and use it.

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. A Social Photo Workflow: Posting Photos from the 30 Hour Day

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Asset management software such as Lightroom, Aperture, and iMatch are great tools for managing a large photo collection. Here’s a quick tip for tagging and keywords.

If you photograph weddings, portraits, headshots, or other “people” photos, you’ll probably be keywording the photo with the person’s name. If you know they have an online presence using a handle, nickname, or username, it can be helpful if that keyword is associated with the photo online as well. For example, I recently photographed Tara Hunt (pictured); she’s also known online in many locations as “missrogue” so I wanted to be sure that keyword was associated with her photos along with her name.

Shown is the Lightroom keyword dialog; take a look at the synonyms box. Words added here can be automatically included on export; in this case, when I uploaded the photos to Flickr the “missrogue” synonym went along and is now included with the metadata and searchable. Configuring synonyms for online identities is a great way to maximize the searchability of your photos.

Tagged as:
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Workflow

One of Facebook’s popular social features has been the ability to “tag” people in photos. Users can indicate who is in a photo, and that indication becomes a link to that person’s Facebook page. Yesterday Flickr added a similar feature, calling it “People in Photos” (Yahoo must’ve cut the funding for any sort of innovative or catchy name).

How to Use Flickr’s People in Photos

From a Flickr photo page, users can identify people in the photo. Along with the feature Flickr has launched a slew of new options that control privacy and permission settings so that one can control at what level he or she wants to participate in people-tagging. Check out the People in Photos FAQ for more information.

What Does it Mean for Serious Photographers?

While being able to tag your friends or family in photos is great, the feature could present some challenges for professionals or for serious hobbyists who are processing large numbers of pictures. My workflow (and I suspect that of many others) includes adding metadata keywords (tags) as part of the post processing before uploading to Flickr. Thus far I’ve added keywords for people that I’ve identified in photos, and those keywords will flow upstream to Flickr.

From what I can tell, there’s no way to perform Flickr people-tagging outside of Flickr (and there’s not any fast/efficient way to do it on Flickr either). For a photographer who occasionally delivers work via Flickr, expectations that people are tagged could potentially result in a significant new workload.

How will it shake out after the feature has been in the wild for a while? My suspicion is that those processing large groups of photos won’t be doing the people-tagging and that it will be more of an afterthought where individuals and viewers will add people to the photos casually and over time. It’s a nice new feature that will be quite a bit of fun, but like any sort of metadata the value will be proportional to the completeness.

What do you think? Are you headed over to Flickr to start tagging people?

Photo by selena marie, used under Creative Commons licensing

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