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.

In CommandI know I follow the blogs and photo websites of some of our regular commenters, but I know there are a lot of you who have websites and blogs and Twitter accounts that I might not know about.

Tell me about it. Leave a comment on this post full of nothing but shameless self promotion. Give me the URL to your website. Let me know your Twitter @name. If you’d like me to connect on Facebook, drop that URL into a comment as well.

I want to make sure I keep up with the great things you’re doing.

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Build Your Network by Leaving Blog Comments
  2. Photoshelter Updates: Better Customization, Better Sitemaps, Better URLs
  3. Social Photo Podcast #3: @dailyshoot Update, Flickr to Twitter, and Short Flickr URLs

Tagged as:
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Conversation

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.

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

Here’s the slightly-delayed episode ten of the Social Photo Podcast. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about entry-level cameras, social media being used for broadcast vs. conversation, and more. This episode is about sixteen minutes long.

My Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XSi)Links to Things We Mention

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 10 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 Al Ianni, used under Creative Commons licensing

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These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Social Photo Podcast #12: How Do You Learn? Twitter Contests, Barriers to Blog Comments
  2. Social Photo Podcast #20: Twitter Stats, Twitter’s Future, Being Where Your Clients Are
  3. Social Photo Podcast #3: @dailyshoot Update, Flickr to Twitter, and Short Flickr URLs

Tagged as:
cameras,
Conversation,
dslr,
podcasts,
social media,
social photo podcast,
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.

Twitter Pack Jason Falls posted an interesting piece yesterday on Social Media Today in which he notes there are Four Styles of Marketing on Twitter ranging from the Conversationalist to the Spammer.

I’d suggest you check out Jason’s piece. I’d argue that if you’re purely in his “Spammer/Broadcast” category that you’re not really participating in social media at all, but rather you’re blasting a one-way message much like traditional PR campaigns.

What’s your Twitter marketing style? Are you engaging in conversation? Tomorrow I’ll have a significant post that challenges those who want to use social media without the inconvenience of having to actually, you know, interact.

Photo by carrotcreative, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Looks Like Antisocial Media to Me…
  2. Social Photo Podcast #10: Conversation vs. Broadcast, Twitter, and Cameras for Beginners
  3. Social Media is about Conversation

Tagged as:
Conversation,
social media,
Twitter

I had an interesting experience last night where I almost left a blog comment (but didn’t). Here’s a short video I made to discuss what happened… I’d love to hear your reactions or thoughts if you’ve had a similar situation:

What do you think?

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. A Tuesday Assignment: Leave a Comment for a Teacher
  2. What Should a Photographer Blog About?
  3. If You’re Blogging Without Comments… Don’t

Tagged as:
blogging,
comments,
Conversation,
videos

In January I had the pleasure of speaking at the first WordCamp: Las Vegas alongside some really bright social media minds. Chris Brogan gave a great talk on the human aspect of social media, being helpful, and social media success. Here’s a video of his talk, it’s about an hour long and covers a wide range of social media tips:

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Chris Pirillo on Community
  2. The Basics: Introduction to Social Media for Photographers
  3. The 30 Hour Day: New Ways to Use the Web for a Cause

Tagged as:
chris brogan,
Conversation,
social media

What happens when you tweet too much? A better question would be how much is too much?

Yesterday I got a question from one of my Twitter followers and decided to respond in the form of a blog post. @MarahMedia asked:

How many tweets per day do you think is an acceptable number to be engaging to followers without seeming too “spammy”?

I think there’s a couple questions here. The first is a question of quantity: how many tweets are too many tweets? At what point might your followers seem overwhelmed? I’m not sure there’s a single right answer. I’m a fairly heavy twitter user, and I will often tweet 20-30 times (or more) per day from my @ahockley account. Some of these are original tweets, some are retweets, and some are @replies to specific users. I wouldn’t worry too much about pure quantity… just as there’s no one single way that folks read Twitter, there’s no single quantity of tweets that’s “right” for Twitter.

splatThe second question is how to avoid appearing spammy. In my mind this gets more to a question of how many of your tweets are self-promotion versus how many are general conversation or promoting the work of others. A few months ago I wrote about how to promote your blog on Twitter without being spammy, but a couple quick guidelines would be that your self-promotional tweets should be a minority… and a significant minority. Chris Brogan routinely talks about promoting others’ content twelve times for each one time that one promotes their own content.

Here’s some specific examples of how I’ll engage in self promotion for my photography on Twitter:

  • When I post on the blog for my photography services, a link is sent to my Twitter stream. I always schedule blog posts for the morning.
  • Later that same day (approximately 6-7 hours later), I’ll tweet a similar link, preceded by “Earlier:” so that folks know it’s something I posted earlier. Because folks won’t read everything posted on Twitter, it means that if you only tweet about something once, a good portion of your followers may never see it.
  • I’ll tweet about projects or clients as I work with them, but generally no more than a couple tweets per day during the project or photoshoot.
  • I’ll occasionally post a teaser as I get ready to launch a new service or project. My 20art10 project is an example of this – I posted a few teasers before launching the sale of Rural Winter which is the first print in the project.

That’s it. Of my 20+ tweets per day, it’s rare that more than a few will be self-promotional for my photography business. The rest of my tweets are conversational, discussions of everyday life, tweets about photography (but not directly promoting my work), or promotions of others’ work.

What do you think? How much self-promotion is too much self-promotion?

Photo by venetianeye, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. How Many Times do you Tweet Links to Blog Posts?
  2. 14 Things a Photographer Can Tweet About
  3. Schedule Your Tweets? Should You? How To?

Tagged as:
Conversation,
self-promotion,
Twitter

Drop.threeSocial 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

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. If You’re Blogging Without Comments… Don’t
  2. Social Photo Podcast #12: How Do You Learn? Twitter Contests, Barriers to Blog Comments
  3. It’s the Relationships, Damnit

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

Three wise monkeysI mentioned blogs and comments when I talked about social media being about conversation but I wanted to expand on that thought. Your blog needs to have the comment feature enabled. It’s one of the things that differentiates a blog from a traditional one-way press release.

If you’re blogging about your services or a new package you’re offering, why not give readers a chance to say what they like (or don’t like) about the offering. If you’re posting some examples of your work, let folks leave a few thoughts… those comments will almost always say positive things about your photos. If your blog is aimed more towards other photographers, you’ll be talking about techniques or gear or some industry news; why not let your peers chime in with their thoughts?

You might be thinking But what if someone disagrees or wants to argue?. Let them. Opposing viewpoints won’t hurt. You might learn something from what the commenter is saying, or it might give you a chance to respond and clarify your statement.

The power in social media is the ability to have two-way conversation. Blog comments enable this conversation.

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Build Your Network by Leaving Blog Comments
  2. Looks Like Antisocial Media to Me…
  3. Pressing Publish Means You’re Half Done

Tagged as:
blogging,
comments,
Conversation

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.

One of the cornerstones of my definition of what is social media is that social media features conversation – two-way interaction instead of traditional marketing which often consists of a one-way broadcast. There’s a certain type of social media user that really wants to keep things one-way… I refer to that as antisocial media. Here are some specific examples as photographers:

No more words

Blogs Without Comments

Comments are the usual method of enabling the “social” side of blogging, although there are a (small) number of bloggers that feel they don’t want feedback via comments. In the marketing world there’s Seth Godin, and in the photography world we have Scott Bourne at Photofocus. Even though these folks have some good ideas, they’re missing out on the opportunity to participate in a conversation. Yes, there are a variety of reasons why comments can occasionally become a burden (trolls, spam, etc) but modern blog systems contain anti-spam measures and the issue of how to deal with trolls is one which has been discussed to death.

Twitter Without Conversation

Yesterday I linked to an article talking about four styles of marketing on Twitter. Coincidentally, a couple days ago Nicole Young posted Ten Twitter Tips for Photographers. I disagree with her on this one:

4. Minimize your personal conversations. If all I see are random conversations between you and another person (or several for that matter) then it’s the same as being in an elevator listening to another person’s conversation when I have no idea what’s going on. Usually the “ignore” flag goes up and I move on. Replying to people is awesome, but when it goes on-and-on then your tweets are viewed as “diluted”. You want to try and maintain at least a 80/20 ratio … for every ten tweets you do try to keep about eight of them relevant to photography.

I’m in the opposite camp… if someone isn’t having conversations, I won’t follow them. I don’t want to hear someone only talking about themselves and ignoring feedback. Even if it looks like someone is having tons of conversations, you won’t see all of them. Twitter only shows @replies when you follow both parties in the conversation. If you’re following me, and send an @reply to someone that you’re not following, you won’t see that reply. The rest of Nicole’s tips are pretty good, but I think that discouraging conversation is the wrong way to go.

Are you using social media tools as mechanisms for conversation? Or are you perhaps being a bit antisocial in your usage?

Photo by Katie Tegtmeyer, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Social Media is about Conversation
  2. If You’re Blogging Without Comments… Don’t
  3. The Basics: Introduction to Social Media for Photographers

Tagged as:
blogging,
comments,
Conversation,
social media,
Twitter