Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be covering a bit about statistics… the results of measuring traffic to a blog or website. Before we get into specifics of what the numbers mean (or even what software should be used to measure them), let’s start at the beginning and define a goal.

Generally having more visitors to one’s blog or website is good, but beyond that it’s hard to dive into statistics without knowing the purpose of the site. Are you using your website primarily to gain new clients? If so, you’ll want to make sure that folks can view your work, find your contact information, and take the next step to obtaining your services.

Are you using your site primarily as a showcase of your work? In that case, driving folks to the contact page might not be as important, but rather you’ll be concerned with whether or not visitors are reaching all areas of your site and spending a decent length of time before browsing away.

Are you using your site to post articles that will provide information for folks about a particular subject? You’ll probably end up being concerned about how well your site is doing with long term search engine traffic for those topics.

Think a bit about the main purpose of your site… what’s your goal?. Later this week we’ll continue our look at stats and analytics by comparing a few popular software packages.

Photo by DRB62, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
analytics,
stats,
traffic,
webstats

It’s time for another installment of our series on web statistics and what they can mean to a photographer. We talked about about web statistics goals, looked at web statistics software, and asked what hits, bounce rates, and unique visitors mean. Today we’re going to look at referrers, exit pages, and outbound links.

Referrers

Referrers (sometimes misspelled referers, to match a misspelling in the actual web specification) are the web pages that are driving traffic to your website. When a visitor arrives on your site because they clicked a link on another site, the URL of that other site is recorded by your stats software as the referrer. If someone does a Google search and clicks on your site in the results, you’ll see google.com in your referrers list. If they clicked a link on your Flickr profile to get to your site, you’ll see flickr.com as the referrer.

Referrers are important for a couple of reasons. First, when you see a referrer you don’t recognize, it probably means that someone linked to your site, and it’s worth checking out the page. The other use for referrers is to know (over a time period) where most of your traffic is coming from. If you’re spending a lot of time on a particular forum in order to drive traffic to your site but find that it has only sent you three hits in a month, you might rethink that strategy.

Exit Pages

Exit pages are the opposite of entrance (landing) pages. Exit pages indicate where a visitor was on your site immediately before they left. It can be interesting to know where people are leaving your site from. Sometimes you might want to look at the top exit pages and figure out why they’re driving people away.

Outbound Links

If your analytics program can track specific outbound links, not only will you know which page they were on, but you’ll be able to know precisely which link they’re clicking.

Wrapping it Up

With the various web statistics blog posts thus far, we’ve talked about quite a few metrics and what they mean. Next week, we’ll talk about one more specific statistic (search terms) and then start bringing it all together to increase traffic, leads, and readership.

Photo by AMagill, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
analytics,
exit pages,
outbound links,
referrers,
webstats

Happy Monday! I’m not sure how things are going for you but I’ve been really busy lately with a variety of photo gigs. I have a bunch of random social media tips and tricks laying around here gathering dust, so I figured I’d put together a list post and share.

• Don’t get folks into a Twitter->Facebook->Website loop. We talk about blogging, and using Facebook to promote that blog, and also sometimes tweeting links to your work. Make sure that you aren’t tweeting a link to Facebook which then forces someone to click through to another site to read an article or look at your photos. If you’re sharing a link, that link should go directly to the source material.
• Check out your Facebook Page insights. If you’re the administrator of a page, on the left side under the page’s photo you’ll find the insights section, where you can click through to get some information on who is a fan of your page and what they’re doing.
• Realize that folks don’t monitor Twitter constantly. It’s a good idea to post a link a couple times at different hours of the day. Make sure that you don’t post too often or folks might think you’re being a bit spammy.
• Network online with vendors related to your area of photography. If you shoot weddings, make sure you’re keeping up with local florists. If you do a lot of music photography, it doesn’t hurt to stay tuned in (pun intended) with what local production companies are doing.
• Better yet, once you’ve established relationships with those vendors, partner up for some online cross-promotion. You can talk about how great they are to do business with, show some photos of their products or services, and potentially send some business in their direction. You could offer them some of your photos (ideally showcasing their wares) for use on their blog or online materials. It’s a win-win.
• If you’re active on Twitter, you’ve probably got a lot of other photographers (pro and/or hobbyist) in your area that are following you. Host a tweetup/photowalk! Most photographers would enjoy the networking and photo opportunities of getting together for a couple hours and wandering around taking pictures.
• I’ll wrap up this list with a reminder that social media isn’t a “get rich quick” system: if you’re doing it right, you’ll build up followers and trust over a period of months and years. You’re developing relationships that will (hopefully) lead to increased business and a higher profile for yourself and your business.

What other ideas are on your mind this morning? Have a social media tip to share? I’d love to have you leave a comment and share your knowledge.

Photo by tombothetominator, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
analytics,
blogging,
facebook,
photographers,
photography,
social media,
tips,
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