Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

Subscribe via iTunes: – this link will launch iTunes for easy subscription

Episode 6 of the Social Photo Podcast is ready. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about photo sharing with family, WordPress 2.9, a contest, and a couple fun new sites for photographers’ amusement. This episode is around 10 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

• Flickr’s Guest Pass feature
• WordPress
• Photo editing in WordPress 2.9
• Trust Agents contest
• iStockHell
• Photoshop Disasters

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 6 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback – technical, content, or otherwise. Leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by Antigone78, used under Creative Commons licensing

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Social Photo Podcast #2: @dailyshoot and Sharing Work Online
2. Social Photo Podcast #5: Copyright and Property Releases, Stock Photography and Journalism, Photo Sharing Poll Results
3. Social Photo Podcast #4: What to Tweet, Holiday Gifts, Upcoming Poll on Workflow

Tagged as:
contests,
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
podcasts,
social photo podcast,
trust agents,
wordpress,
wordpress 2.9

We’ve published the fourth episode of the Social Photo Podcast. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about what (and what not) to tweet, holiday gifts for a social photographer, and a heads up about an upcoming poll on workflow. This episode is just under 9 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

• What Not to Tweet as a Photographer
• The Holiday Gift Guide for photographers

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 3 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback – technical, content, or otherwise. Leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by Bleuchoi, used under Creative Commons licensing

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Social Photo Podcast #5: Copyright and Property Releases, Stock Photography and Journalism, Photo Sharing Poll Results
2. Social Photo Podcast #16: iPad Poll Results, URL Shorteners, Andy Adams Interview, Call for Questions
3. Social Photo Podcast #2: @dailyshoot and Sharing Work Online

Tagged as:
holidays,
Photo Sharing,
podcasts,
social pho,
social photo podcast,
Twitter

Here’s the second episode of the Social Photo Podcast. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about the @dailyshoot project as well as a variety of issues surrounding sharing work online. This episode is just over 10 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

• @dailyshoot (on Twitter)
• @dailyshoot (backstory)
• Google’s stance on watermarked images

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 2 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback as we figure out the podcast (for example, this week I learned that apparently my mic wasn’t muted that time when I coughed. Either leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by ArunaR, used under Creative Commons licensing

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

Tagged as:
dailyphoto,
Photo Sharing,
podcasts,
social photo podcast,
Twitter,
watermarking

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Eye-Fi. All opinions are 100% mine.

Our poll last week indicated that 95% of the readers of Social Photo Talk use photo sharing sites such as Flickr or even Facebook. It’s a bunch of fun to share photos with friends, family, and clients, but like many things in photography there’s a few moving parts that are often involved. Many times I simply want to get the photos online quickly without having to get back to my desk, take the memory card out of the camera, put it into the card reader, and then manually upload to Flickr. In the past that has been my routine but you might have heard about the Eye-Fi card which changes that process.

The Eye-Fi is slick: it’s a SD memory card (hence, wireless) with built-in WiFi. It stores up to 4GB of images and works in any camera with a SDHC card slot. Once you’ve taken some photos, Eye-Fi can copy those files to your computer (storing them in date-based folders) and also upload photos (or videos) directly to photo sharing sites. Check out this video which explains more:

I don’t have an Eye-Fi card (yet) but I’m seriously considering it now that my Canon S90 uses SDHC and is the perfect candidate for wanting to be able to get photos online quickly. Lately I’ve been slacking a bit about pushing photos to Flickr and I might pick up an Eye-Fi card after Christmas.

What do you think? Have you used an Eye-Fi card? I think it has the potential to make photo sharing a LOT easier amongst the casual crowd that might not want to go through a bunch of manual processes to get a few snapshots up to Flickr…

Tagged as:
eye-fi,
facebook,
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
sdhc,
wifi

As part of some upcoming discussion on social photo workflow for the podcast, we’d love to know how you usually upload photos to photo sharing sites:

Thanks!

Tagged as:
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
polls,
smugmug

As mentioned in yesterday’s article, Photoshelter just released some new changes to their service. Better websites for free, better SEO, and easier customization are the themes of these updates.

More Photographer-Centric Branding for Free and Basic Accounts

Previously, Photoshelter’s free and Basic account types had Photoshelter-themed image galleries. With the latest updates, photographers on these limited plans will now have their brand featured prominently on a new default website template.

Better SEO and Google Optimization

Photoshelter will now submit Google sitemaps (including the new image sitemap features) for all accounts. Previously, users had to manually configure Google’s webmaster tools for Photoshelter. What’s a sitemap? It’s a file that helps Google (and other search engines) better index a website by describing the site’s layout and how often various parts of the site are usually updated.

Easier Site Customization

It looks like Photoshelter has added some additional customization features that will make it easier for photographers to edit HTML directly and have further control over their site templates. There are two new customizable page templates.

Shorter, Cleaner URLs

For photographers not using their own domain name, their Photoshelter site will now feature a cleaner subdomain URL structure. Instead of a URL like photoshelter.com/c/username, photographers will now have a website at username.photoshelter.com.

What Do You Think?

Are you a Photoshelter user? What do you think about the updates? If anyone is interested in signing up with Photoshelter, that referral link will save you up to $30 on a new account.

Tagged as:
Photo Sharing,
photography,
photoshelter

Last night Flickr announced direct sharing integration with Facebook. Sounds great, but as part of Yahoo’s attempt to stay relevant in the social space, it’s integrated with something called either Yahoo Updates or Yahoo Pulse (I can’t figure out if they’re the same thing or not) that adds one more layer of complexity to the privacy picture.

The premise seems straightforward: each time you upload a photo to Flickr, that photo is shared on your Facebook wall. Once you have things configured, that’s what happens.

How to Setup Flickr to Facebook Connectivity

First, if you’re already using the old Flickr to Facebook integration (which was, to put it nicely, flaky at best), you’ll want to disable that so you don’t end up double-posting. To disable the old system, on Facebook, go to your Profile. Click on Wall, then at the top find the Options link, then Settings, and if you see Flickr, click the little “X” to remove it.

Next go to the Sharing & Extending options of your Flickr account. Near the top you should see the blue button to connect with Facebook. When you click it, you’ll establish the Facebook connection, but you’ll also end up diving into a world of likely having to enable Yahoo Updates. What is Yahoo Updates? If you’re like me, you’d never heard of it previously. From what I can tell, Yahoo Updates is a social sharing system that spans Yahoo services. You’ll need to configure your Yahoo Updates to allow Flickr to share with Facebook (it’s a simple checkbox) and then, in theory, the connection will be established. At least, I think you’re configuring Yahoo Updates. That’s what it’s called in some places, but the page also brands itself as Yahoo Pulse. Pulse, Updates, who knows. It’s cute that Yahoo is trying to establish some sort of sharing platform, but really, are there many people where Yahoo is the center of their sharing world? I don’t know of any such people…

After enabling everything (and scanning Flickr’s Facebook FAQ to make sure I hadn’t missed something), I uploaded a photo to Flickr. About 10 minutes later, there it was on Facebook:

They’ve pulled the image title, description, and some tags with a link to view more of my photostream.

Go forth and re-integrate Flickr and Facebook.

It Works, But WTF?

Is this a good thing? Did Yahoo just spend a bunch of effort to fix something that wasn’t broken? Is Yahoo Pulse relevant? What if they’d done something truly interesting like allowed for cross-site photo comments instead of two silos? Flickr is great for getting comments from photographers, but what about comments from the wider population on Facebook?

Tagged as:
facebook,
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
social media,
social networks,
yahoo,
yahoo pulse,
yahoo updates

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

Tagged as:
blogging,
Business,
facebook,
flickr,
licensing,
Photo Sharing,
sharing

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

Tagged as:
blogging,
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
Twitter

I had a great post set for today about a website and link sharing project, but we’ll postpone that for a day to talk about something that caught me by surprise. Yesterday Flickr launched a new feature called Galleries. Read the announcement on the Flickr blog for more details, but the idea is that members can create a curated gallery of up to 18 photos (or videos) of other members and share that collection as one entity.

It’s like a Flickr set, but with two major differences: you’re limited to 18 photos per gallery, and a gallery consists of other people’s photos.

It’s that last aspect that makes me pause, because that’s what makes this different than any other photo organization or sharing feature that I can think of. Flickr previously allowed Favorites, but they were only able to be presented as a giant single set (which made them less than ideal for sharing). With galleries, Flickr has presented an easy way to share other photographers’ work. One of the aspects of successful social media users is that they share, and that they share others’ work more than their own. Flickr has just made this much easier to do from within their web interface. Personally I’m going to make it a goal to create and share at least one gallery each month that showcases some of the work of my great Flickr contacts.

For an example of a Flickr gallery, check out one I created last night titled Portland Bridges.

How will you use Galleries? Have you created one yet? Post a comment and share your link!

Photo by pareeerica, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
flickr,
flickr galleries,
Photo Sharing