Professional Photo Lab and Photo Printing Blog

Look, we all make mistakes, but you don’t want your business to suffer because of some simple errors that most bloggers face, but are totally preventable.  You want to make sure that your blog serves its intended purpose of driving interest, increasing sales and creating some online attention for your photography studio.  But remember, if you focus on these aspects of blogging rather than the value you are adding for your clients, you run the risk of alienating everyone with your egotistical blog. Let’s run through the list of the top five mistakes photography bloggers make, and how to deal with them before they happen to you!

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Learn how professional photographers can use three great new social media apps to increase their social media engagement:

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It seems like every day a new social networking site appears.  If you haven’t heard about Pinterest, it’s a new social networking site with an “online pinboard” interface.   According to Experian Hitwise, this invitation-only site now has 40 times the number of total visits it had six months ago, now finding its way into the top 10 websites in the category of social networking and forums.

Women between the ages of 25 and 44 are the most popular users and they comprise 59% of its readership.

This newcomer in 2011, is a visual “corkboard” of sorts, think of it as a bookmarking site that allows users to tag or more appropriately, “pin” pictures that resonate with them. And each picture is connected to a link somewhere on the interwebs. The act of “pinning” is sharable, and can be seen by your friends through numerous sharing sites, such as Facebook.

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Groupon, Living Social, Quarter Off – you’ve heard the names of theses coupon and daily discount/deal websites. It sounds like a small business dream, right? You sign up, create specials or offers that their customers can access, and viola – you receive massive foot traffic and through-the-roof sales. Even better, this type of marketing is clearly measurable with codes, customers and promotional ROI. It’s got to be a marketers dream! Well, maybe and maybe not.

Some businesses might be allured into a false sense of security since there’s little up-front investment to join and set up an offer. But as any sound business person will tell you, do your homework! Do not let the idea of hundreds of millions of daily site subscribers cloud your sound business reasoning.

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Whether you’ve been a photographer for a short time or almost forever, you’re going to have days when you can’t think of what else you could do to set your business or products apart from the rest. Your products are just like all others…you feel like just another fish in the pond!

Have you noticed all those funny looking bar codes now appearing at places like Best Buy, Starbucks, Billboards, or even on business cards. You should wonder what they are for and why a consumer would ever use one.

They are called QR codes and you might be surprised to know that there are now more than 50 million people in North America that have and use an application on their Smartphone that can read a QR Code. ComScore found that over 14 million Americans scanned at least one code in the month of June alone? Everyday new ideas are being written about ways that businesses an individuals can use these codes, from a simple business card to detailed product information. There are even ways you can tie them into your Google calendar and create reminders.  Their is even some pretty wild new wrapping paper called QRapping PAPER™, billed as the world’s most interactive gift wrap!

Behind each QR code printed on this gift-wrap are original holiday videos that can’t be seen or accessed form anywhere else. With over 50 videos in all, they turn simple holiday gift wrap into a tiny holiday film festival!  The list goes on and on.

As a photographer, you can be much more creative and offer up products for your customers that can be uniquely engaging. So try some of these simple ideas for how to use this new technology to help you get out in front of the pack and offer a new creative products that your customers will love. (more…)