Do you send out a monthly email newsletter for your photography business? If so, kudos to you, this is another great way to “touch” your clients and prospects each month to keep your photography studio and your brand on their radar.
Perhaps the idea raises thoughts of, “I’d love to, but that’s all I need – more administrative work to keep me away from taking photographs!”
But then again, we need people in front of our cameras, right? In order to get those people where we want them to be, we need to market our services and get their attention. Not only that, we need to keep their attention once we’ve earned it.
If you aren’t sending out a newsletter, there are plenty of reasons why you should. Before I committed to sending one out myself, like many others, I was expecting Facebook, Twitter and my blog to do all the work that a newsletter should do. After all, it’s no big task to write a short blog entry to announce special portrait sessions. Adding a status update to Facebook is easier still and as for Twitter, well anyone can write 140 characters in their sleep, right? Plus, those things are a lot more fun than writing a newsletter – that sounds too much like being a journalist.
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Sales & Marketing
email newsletter, facebook, marketing, newsletter, photography business, social media, twitter
How much do you believe in stereotypes?
Do you think you fall into any particular stereotype category yourself? If so, how do you think it might affect your success in the photography business?
A favorite radio show of mine is Radiolab from WNYC and I was listening to one of their not-so-recent podcasts this morning while out driving. The podcast in question is called “The Obama Effect” and posed some interesting ideas.
Having listened to this, I asked myself the question, how much do our subconscious stereotype tendencies affect the way we behave in business, and what bearing might they have on our ultimate success or failure?
Personal Zen
obama effect, photography business, self-belief, success
Personally, I have a hard time fully adopting the word “Likers”, preferring instead the original and more pedestrian term “Fans”. Facebook fans, that is.
Photographers are working hard to capture as many fans as they can, perhaps feeling that having more fans (no matter who or where they are) must be a good thing. The same thing plays out on Twitter, too, where the volume of followers is [mistakenly] perceived as more important than the quality.
Anyway, I digress already, the topic of acquiring fans can be the subject of a whole other post…
The question of the moment is “How do we keep the fans we have? Especially the ones we actually want… How do we keep them happy so they won’t leave?”
Sales & Marketing
facebook, marketing, photographer, social media
There’s one thing that every file on your computer has in common – they can ALL be lost, and they will ALL face the ultimate demise of deletion one day…
Okay, I’ll put up my hand first and say that, yes, I’ve accidentally deleted files from my computer before now, and I’ve had hard drives bite the dust. It can happen to all of us, and probably will, at some point!
To protect ourselves against accidental loss, if we’re smart, we backup our files (especially those all-important photos) to DVDs, external hard drives, RAID disks or even tapes.
All of these are great ways to protect our precious data, but they’re all subject to possible degradation over time. DVDs can become unusable after only a year or two, external hard drives fail (far more often than internal ones). Not to mention that any of these can get lost, stolen, destroyed in a fire or flood etc…
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Photography Business Ideas
backup, photographs, photography business
To lead into this post, let me ask you a quick question. Do you, as a photographer, have a system in place to really find out from your clients how satisfied or thrilled they were with the experience of working with you?
If the answer is “no” then you could be missing out on a vital piece of the “success puzzle” for your photography business.
A necessary component of most complex systems is a feedback mechanism to either keep the system in check or to make a process more efficient over time. Without feedback, we can’t learn and it makes improvement harder.
For example, if a child touches something hot, the feedback of pain provides the necessary information for her to learn not to do that again.
It’s the same with our business – we need feedback from our clients to understand how well we’re doing. By feedback, I don’t mean a passing comment when you hand over the prints (“I love these”, “these are awesome”) and basic things like that. I mean a systemized approach to information gathering that can really tell us over time how we’re doing, but that also allows the client to say what they really feel without worrying about upsetting us or hurting our feelings…
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How To Be A Professional Photographer
client experience survey, client feedback, client relationship, professional photography
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the photography profession is not in the best of shape right now; in fact, it’s been ailing and sick for quite some time. The end of the so-called Great Recession notwithstanding, business still appears to be slow or non-existent for many photographers, and recovery is taking a very long time to materialize. Many of you possibly doubt that a full recovery is even likely or possible.
Personally, I feel that recovery is certainly possible and that every professional photographer can enjoy success, if only they would treat their business with the seriousness and attention it deserves.
We have an industry with few, if any, barriers to entry, no real code of ethics, pricing is anything but simple or organized, quality standards are all over the place, fly-by-nights come and go, and seasoned veterans are left scratching their heads in puzzlement at the sad state of things.
Maybe there are parallels elsewhere, but right now I can’t think of another profession where such anarchy and chaos prevails…
Photography Business Ideas
marketing, photography business, professional photography, selling
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