Twitter is probably the least understood of the major social media channels, with many people signing up, playing with it for a while, and then abandoning their accounts because they don’t “get it” or they don’t see any real potential in marketing their business.
While it’s true (for most professional photographers) that our clients are generally not big Twitter users at the moment, their numbers are steadily growing, so it’s likely that more of them will be tweeting along with the rest of us eventually.
Free Content
This content is free
Photography Website SEO
manage flitter, social media, twitter, twitter strategy
Yesterday, I posted the first part of this article on marketing (Photography Marketing Is Not Dead Yet), with the premise that many photographers are apparently still stuck in the old mode of thinking when it comes to the subject of marketing; the old methods are far less effective now than they used to be, and it’s time for a change…
Welcome To The [Social] Machine
The dawn of the social web is here; actually, it’s been here a while now and it’s already mid-morning, but there’s still time to hop on board before lunchtime.
The long and the short of it is that consumers no longer want to be marketed to – they’re fed up with being assaulted at every turn with commercials, advertisements, pop-ups and junk mail. I’m sure, as consumers ourselves, we can totally understand this position. Instead, our customers want to become part of the marketing and, through the socialization of the web, they’re able to do just that by trusted peer-to-peer recommendations.
Times have changed rapidly over the last few years – interruptive marketing methods are no longer effective, and we have to make the switch to permission-based, collaborative methods that revolve around the nucleus of the social sphere in which we now operate.
Free Content
This content is free
Sales & Marketing
facebook, LinkedIn, marketing strategy, photography marketing, social media, twitter
SEO For Photographers – The Value Of Inbound Links
Most of you reading this who have a photography web site understand the importance of inbound links when it comes to SEO, and having your own site rank higher in the search engines. The more links we have pointing to us, the better (generally speaking).
I’m sure you also realize that some links are better than others and we’re always looking for “quality links”; that is, links from well-ranked, trusted and respectable sites that are relevant to our own business.
Free Content
This content is free
Photography Website SEO
facebook, marketing, photography, social media, twitter, web site
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.
Read more…
Free Content
This content is free
Sales & Marketing
email newsletter, facebook, marketing, newsletter, photography business, social media, twitter
The week ending March 13th 2010 was an apparent and important milestone in the world of social media networking, when Facebook surpassed Google in the count of most site visits in a week in the United States (full story can be read here. This was not the first time that Facebook overtook Google, but it was the first week-long victory, and it has the potential to become permanent.
As the number of subscribers to Facebook continues to grow, with the “population” of Facebook being compared to that of actual countries, it may be no surprise to see it become the most-visited site on the web. After all, the “Google” population is able to grow only as more people gain access to the internet, whereas Facebook still has a large pool of currently unregistered internet users to draw from. Eventually, the two populations might stabilize, but then the war really starts about who will attract the most visitors.
Read more…
Free Content
This content is free
Sales & Marketing
facebook, google, LinkedIn, social media, twitter
One of the intriguing things about Twitter is its complexity disguised as apparent simplicity. On the face of things Twitter appears to be little more than a very simple communication system involving the exchange of short (often meaningless) messages, very similar in concept to a text message on a mobile phone.
In fact, text messaging was the fundamental inspiration for Twitter in the first place. Under the surface, though, things are more complicated, with properties emerging from Twitter that may not have been foreseen in the beginning.
The Power Of A Few Words
Most tweets can be divided into one of several categories:
- Mundane items of little interest to anyone with a life
- Attempts to sell get-rich-quick schemes
- Promises of thousands of new followers (none of whom are interested in you)
- Other types of spam
- Political and religious messages
Read more…
Free Content
This content is free
Photography Website SEO
communication, complex system, emergent property, tweet, twitter
At the risk of giving away my age, I wonder how many readers here remember the famous song by Genesis called “Follow You, Follow Me” from their 1978 album “Then There Were Three”. Of course, Twitter was something birds did in those days, but the title could easily be the theme tune for what we know today as one of the largest social media networking sites on the web.
If you aren’t already using Twitter, or have tried it and wondered what all the fuss is about, you might want to think again. When I first ventured into this strange new world of tweets and followers my first reaction was bewilderment. I simply couldn’t understand why everyone now wanted to text online, as if mobile texting wasn’t enough (blimey, I just realized the word “texting” is now a verb, and wasn’t in my spellchecker). Why, I thought, do all these people need to know that Bob’s cat has fur balls? It seemed like everyone was spreading the totally mundane 140 characters at a time.
Read more…
Free Content
This content is free
Sales & Marketing
marketing, professional photography, social media, twellowhood, twitter
Unless you’ve been away on an extended expedition to another galaxy, you should be aware of the recent and rapid rise of social media networking – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace and so on.
Everyone agrees that social media is the latest and greatest way to connect with our niche markets – following the adage “go where your customers are.” In contrast to traditional marketing methods, social networking is a method of directly engaging our market by contributing to the flow of conversation and sharing their lives.
For example, consider trying to market yourself at a cocktail party. How could you go about that? You might cruise the room, handing out brochures to everyone you see. Perhaps you could hang a huge banner on the wall, advertising your services. Or, you could engage your target market in real-time by listening to the conversations and joining in with those that catch your interest or provide the best opportunity to make productive connections. In a social scenario, it’s pretty obvious which of these strategies would be the most effective.
Read more…
Free Content
This content is free
Sales & Marketing
facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, networking, photography, social media, twitter
Recent Comments