By Matt Brading


Most photographers seem to be aware about the potential of social media for their photography business but most do not know where to start, so they either skip it wholly or try and do too much and get it all wrong. The result is either a missed opportunity, or far too much time wasted on it with no real return for their efforts.

Most social marketing is about engaging with your current purchasers so it's best to pick just 1 or 2 services and focus on those. I'd suggest a Blog for longer planned posts and a micro-blogging platform like Facebook for short updates on the fly.

Whatever platforms you compromise on, give yourself a schedule and allocate a specific amount of time to post updates... And stick hard to it. For most photographys selling photography online, a regular update is lots so permit 15-30 minutes once each week to post to your blog, and 5 minutes a day to check your Wall, make a response to any comments and post your own update.

Keep a list beside your PC for post-ideas, long and short, and add to it regularly. Never go to your Blog or your Facebook page without a clear idea of what you're going to write about! Turn off e-mail alerts when visitors post to your Wall and don't fall into the booby trap of checking it continually like email! Instead allocate time each day to reply to all visitor comments fro mthe last 24 hours. You'll soon work out when the busy period is and time your visit after that.

Some platforms do have potential for 'prospecting ' for leads so you can work smart and use tools like Posterous to republish your blog and social content across multiple platforms hands-free, as long as you only spend time on your selected platforms.

Facebook appears to be the platform of choice for most people but there seems to be a growing interest in Google And among photographers. The huge difference so far is that Google states the copyright of any photographs you submit remains with you, while Facebook reserves the inalienable right to use anything you publish as they wish!

At this point Google Plus hasn't got anything resembling Facebook's business pages, but they're reportedly on the way... So that's sure to shake things up a bit for photographers.

If you're only starting out with Social Media the most important thing is to decide which platform you're going to use and stick hard to it. Then work out who your audience will be & what kind of conversation they might like to have with you? After that it is just a matter of telling all your business contacts and posting regularly till people turn up and join in! Keep it business-like but inject a little bit of 'you ' too. Talk of the work your doing, but also why you're doing it and what it means to you. Don't try to sell here!

Always remember the goal is to make your social page a center where your photo-buyer Clients can connect to you and with each other, so you have got to keep encouraging them to go there and keep urging them to join the conversation!




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