Professional Photo Lab and Photo Printing Blog

Georgia McCabe has spent her 30 year career at the intersection of photography and digital technology.  As an author, speaker, trainer and social media and photography evangelist, her perspectives entitled  “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Friends…or Enemies” will appear in print in the upcoming book entitled The Relationship Age, by social media guru Mari Smith. Georgia is a frequent guest blogger for H&H and has put together this list of ways to promote a photography blog.

Promoting any kind of blog, in any niche, takes planning, time and effort. Once you have got some traffic coming to your Photography blog it’s time to get serious and set out a specific schedule. The scattergun approach, hoping that something will stick is no longer an option for any business that is planning on being around for the long haul! We’ll have a look at 5 tactics here that you can implement without breaking the Bank!

(1) Offline Promotion

It’s surprising how many ways there are to promote a blog offline. Any printed material such as business cards, flyers and so on, can include your blog URL. If you have occasion to mail a customer then it’s essential that you use this opportunity to make your blog known to the recipient. An idea that is often overlooked in the headlong rush to get online visitors is the Postcard Campaign. This combined with a special offer on your main website which requires the visitor to visit your blog can be effective. Use the back of business cards to craft an innovative offer which is only available from your blog!

(2) Social Media

The obvious place to start would be Twitter and Facebook. One of the Photo sharing sites such as Flickr would be a good way to highlight your talents. I think your main objective as always, is to create valuable content, excellent tips and strategies so that once people have found your blog you should be able to get them to spread the word and come back again and again. This takes time, so a solid structure to your blog is a prerequisitet before you ramp up your promotion.

Each new post on your blog can be broadcast on Twitter with a link back to your blog. On your Facebook Fan page you will need a link to your Photography blog and a weekly post here should bring more visitors.

(3) Corporate Website

Assuming your Blog is not a stand alone entity and it is linked to your Business Site then the opportunities to promote your Photography Blog are almost endless. You should have a link to your Blog on your home page, with a little write up and depending on your Site navigation, on each web page. You never know on which page your visitor will land so making sure they are aware of your blog with blanket coverage should ensure plenty of new visitors. Your website statistics program will aid you in evaluating the success of individual posts.

(4)Article Marketing

Getting a range of articles written and published on one or two of the top flight Article Directories will give you sometimes a significant boost in blog Traffic. Your headlines need to be dramatic and address all the major problems facing Photographers. A link to your Photography blog in your Author Bio will send people flocking to your blog if you have really provided valuable content in the article. Highlighting your knowledge and expertise in a series of articles on a specific theme is an excellent way of driving traffic.  A series of ”How To” Articles is always a good bet. If one article starts to show significant traffic then you could focus a series on this particular topic. If you specialise in short but frequent Blog posts then you have a ready made source of fresh content that with not too much additional effort can be expanded to traditional article length. What you are doing here is leveraging your original work and broadcasting it ever wider. Your collection of articles and posts can be combined to create a really excellent E Book which can be offered as a sign up freebie from your Blog alone. You would promote this on your main site thus giving you more Blog traffic!

(5)Influential Industry Bloggers

Interviewing any influential expert in their given field is a great tactic to promote your own activity but should probably be scheduled for a future date when you have achieved a certain level of readership on your own blog. This Tactic is perhaps the most involved but should bring substantial rewards given time.

In your daily blogging routine you should link to popular photographic blogs and leave comments. This will come to the attention of  the blog owner and his or her readers and your own blog will gain some exposure.

A really great way of gaining blog exposure is to craft a post using a concept that an influential Blogger has published and putting your own stamp on the article. Not so much a rewrite but an expansion of an idea. Here is your chance to shine and to show your understanding of the subject. As a courtesy gesture you could give credit to the original author and even link to the original post that inspired you. This will be much appreciated and will again get you and your blog noticed .You cannot copyright an idea or a concept so this is an area of great opportunity for you and one that you can harvest on an ongoing basis.

Georgia McCabe has spent her 30 year career at the intersection of photography and digital technology.  As an author, speaker, trainer and social media and photography evangelist, her perspectives entitled  “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Friends…or Enemies” will appear in print in the upcoming book entitled The Relationship Age, by social media guru Mari Smith. Georgia is a frequent guest blogger for H&H and has put together this video tutorial for us, explaining how to get started with a WordPress blog.

Today we’d like to offer a guest blog post, written by Teri Ritter, of Teri Ritter Photography.  Teri has been in business for 10 years in San Diego, CA and Dexter, MI, specializing in families, seniors, and babies.  Teri is also a Marketing Consultant and enjoys sharing marketing ideas and plans which boost the bottom line for professional photographers everywhere.

7 Ways to Boost Sales in Slow Times

1 – Summer Time is time to go “after” the high school senior market.  Find 5-10 2011 seniors and give them full sessions and a few products in exchange for showing your work around.  My philosophy has always been “If I can sit someone in front of my camera, I can sell at least 600.00 worth of work.”  Thus, I’ll give away my time and a little product in return for a lot of future paying sessions. High school seniors select their photographer based on word of mouth 9 times out of 10. What better way to get your name out there than have 5-10 people walking around showing your great work and selling you? Works for me!!!!

2 – This is peak time for street fairs and festivals.  Rent a 10×10 booth for about $100 – 150.00 and set up a beautiful display of your work. Use a pop up tent, as well as some tables and fabric to truly make it the class act that is representative of your work. Display all of your unique and different products. It is especially important to display some large (24×30) framed portraits and metals for the wow factor. Get people to stop and look. Have a special offer for a session that is only good when a certificate for the session is purchased at the festival. For example:  A family portrait session AND an 8×10 print for 75.00 (normally 150.00 price). You need to have certificates created that indicate the details and a “use by” date.

You may also want to have a drawing for a FREE product, collecting contact information on the entry card. This allows you to gather information to use for your email marketing campaign.

3 – Get serious about expanding into schools and/or sports.  Don’t just think about it, do it!  Target a league or two and go out and get it. Right now you can go after youth football and soccer. Sports and schools offer great revenue streams.  Check out the H&H Boot Camps and attend them to learn how to do this.  Don’t let it pass you by.  I have added thousands of dollars to my revenue stream by adding just a little sports into the mix.

4 – Fundraising auctions offer great ways of getting your work seen. Donate an item, or a sitting to the auction, asking one thing in return: The venue must allow you to display your work and information in a way that all people attending will see it. This is another low cost way to get your business exposed!!

5 – Use social marketing.   It is imperative, if you wish to grow your business and thrive, that you utilize social marketing to its max.  Keep your website up to date and have a blog on it that is added to at least once per week. Remember: Everything else you do is designed to drive people to your website.  Use your Facebook fan page to post slide shows of sessions.

Include a video of a session in your packages, especially for high school seniors, so that they may post it on their facebook page.  Just be sure that you brand it.  Each time this video is viewed, it is marketing your business.  Use Twitter to advertise yourself.  Twitter should be used to post about immediate events.  For example, if you do a street fair, tweet that you are at the street fair and the next 5 people to come to your booth will receive a free session.  Choose something very compelling.  Twitter should be in your marketing arsenal to drive immediate results.

6 – Look for fundraising opportunities.  Offer mini family sessions to your pre school as a fund raising opportunity for the preschool. The venue receives a portion of your reduced sitting fee AND 10% of all sales in return for allowing you to offer the special to their families.

7 – Consider pet photography.  Pet photography is one of the fastest growing segments in the photographic industry. Work with your local pet store to have a day in the pet store for owners to bring in their dogs and cats to create a fun portrait.

Bottom Line – You need to think outside your box if you want to Boost Your Sales in Slow Times.  These ideas will help you do just that

Photographers need customers plain and simple. Getting the word out on your photography services can be made easier with the help of social media marketing, twitter, Facebook and by running online contests. Facebook is free and easy to set up. It is no longer an option if you want a Facebook fan page: if you want to be a success, you need one!

Top 5 Reasons for a Photographer to Have a Facebook Account

1. To spread the word. The beauty of Facebook lies in the fact that most, if not all, of your high school, college and other business and social contacts most likely have one. Reach out to these people without purely marketing to them. Subtly reminding them that photography is what you do for a living may be enough to open up new business. These old high school buddies will have need of a photographer someday, or know someone who does and the simple reminder that you are a professional, may be enough to spark a job. Request friends of friends and build a network quickly.

2. To make new contacts. First and foremost, you will want to keep it friendly. Facebook posts and updates should not all be about getting new business or self-promoting, rather, allow your contacts to see both your work life and a glimpse at your daily life. People who feel comfortable with you as a person, will be much more likely to recommend you to their friends and family who need photography services.

3. To direct people to your blog or website. Facebook has a great function that lets people see whenever you update your blog. You could also update your status letting people know that there is a new post. This serves two functions: updating brings traffic to your blog and keeps your Facebook current. A current, active Facebook keeps people engaged with you and your name at the forefront of their minds. Link your regular blog traffic to your Facebook with a Facebook button or small screen shot and vice versa.

4. To network with other photographers. Join photography groups on Facebook. Use the search function to network with local and global groups that cater to photographers. Find a professional photo lab or discover contest ideas and successful photography marketing ideas from other professional photographers who market on Facebook.

5. To make a name for yourself. Having a Facebook account and Facebook fan page is a great way to brand yourself. The personal photo shot you post and the information you give all add up to a particular image. If you are careful about the information you share and how you share it, the rewards will be enormous. Build your brand by customizing your Facebook fan page and displaying the best photos you have to offer. Social media marketing is a matter of strategy and if done properly can turn into viral marketing, meaning that the people you reach would never have heard of you without the use of the web.

Guest Writer: Georgia McCabe
Georgia spent 30 years as a Sr. Executive in the computer and photo industry at IBM, Eastman Kodak and Fujifilm. As a driving force in conceiving and executing breakthrough approaches to the photo printing, sharing and delivery market place, she literally “changed the rules” for a category undergoing massive technological change and re-invention. She is a certified social media strategist, and is a market and branding consultant helping businesses utilize the tools and power of social networking.

Contact our professional photo lab to see how we can also help you market your business!

Top 5 Tips to Broaden Your Audience for Your Photographs

Great photographs are the intersection of three important factors – a great photographic eye, a great photographic situation and a substantial audience to view and appreciate the result. The old days where people anxiously awaited proofs, visited conventional photo galleries or requested and kept books from stock agencies are history. Today there are countless web sites showcasing the artistic craft of working photographers. These sites are often directly coupled with social media sites or employ technologies like Web 2.0 that allow real, two way communications between audience and artist. In order to get broad exposure of your work, you really need to make some of your best work viewable online. There are many good online vehicles that can showcase photographs. You can create an online gallery and connect it to your website or blog. Another option is to display your work employing dedicated photo-sharing sites like Flickr, Google Albums, HHImageHost or SmugMug or you can create display albums using popular social networks like Facebook.

Tip #1 Blog and Show Off Your Expertise

Most working photographers already have their own website, but if you really want to make the leap and create an online following, add a blog to your website. While your website displays information about yourself, your business and your products, it typically remains relatively constant. Your blog, on the other hand, should contain a wealth of information that continually changes and grows and is actually the focal point of your “social media” strategy. You can blog about any number of things ranging from simple tips and tricks to a narrative of an interesting and successful photo shoot. You might review interesting new tools or products.  Talk about your customers and your experience with them or perhaps even include comments from some of your customers relating their views of the photographic experience. Let your imagination go, but you will be surprised how easy it is to come up with truly compelling and interesting content.

Tip #2 Create a Facebook FanPage…It Is Free and Easy

With over 400 million members, Facebook is a great way to show off your work and subtly advertise your skills. You can create a Facebook “Fan Page,” name it and invite others to join. Run a simple contest, post images of your work, talk about your product and maybe even offer occasional specials. Most importantly, offer some simple, yet valuable advice to your target market. Give people a reason to keep coming back and they will become your social network “word of mouth.”

Tip #3 Heard of Google Knol…Give It A Try

Google Knol is an information sharing site (sort of a viral Wikipedia) that allows you to share your unique expertise and knowledge…and build a personal following. You create a Knol through any Google account. Since you are a photographer, make sure to show off your best photographs and include links to the other social sites you are on. Once you have informational articles written for your blog, you can change them up a bit and repurpose them as Knols.

Tip #4 Expand Your Reach With Be A Photo Sharing Site

Sites like Flickr are not only a great place for showcasing your photos, they are also a great way to store and reference collections of photographs from other web locations. For example, you can use creative tools like FlickrSlideShow generator to arrange multiple images into a slideshow. Once the show is created, copy the supplied HTML and add it to your blog, Facebook Fan Page or use Twitter to post a link. You can also use Flickr to get great feedback on your work. The network is large and people love to give feedback. If you are worried about copyright they have a great tool PicMarkr which allows you to create a custom watermark and place it on your Flickr images as well as exercise full control over printing and downloads. Not to be outdone, SmugMug, Zenfolio, and Photobucket are other sites that offer similar capabilities. H&H, like many professional labs, also offers studio branded image sharing and output services using our HHImageHost platform. There are lots of powerful options, but an on-line photo sharing and output site will definitely allow you to greatly expand your customer reach.

Tip #5 Twitter is a Powerful Tool To Awaken Your Audience

Twitter is a powerful publicity tool but is often misunderstood. When you have new content posted to your blog, photo sharing site or you own site, use Twitter as a pointer to your new content by publishing a few tweets! Remember to ask for feedback. You can us search.twitter.com with an applicable keyword such as “wedding photographer.” You can even constrain the search to a zip code or search within a certain mile radius. Once you search collects the applicable audience, tweet them with a link to your content! You will have to brief as Twitter has a message limit of only 140 characters. You probably want to use a URL shortening service such as Bit.ly or TinyUrl for your link to avoid using up too much of the message limit. Twitter doesn’t directly support any attachments, but as usual, a number of third-party services have sprung up to fill the void, although mostly for consumers without personal web sites or blogs. The list expands daily but you might want to check some of them out. Look at Mobypicture, Pikchur, Posterous, Twitpic and Tweetphoto.

As the web moves toward more and more two-way conversation, Twitter is clearly becoming one of the most important ways for people to highlight interesting content. Even though Twitter has a 140 character limit, as the saying goes, a good picture is worth well more than a thousand words!

The options for social media marketing in photography are endless. Used correctly, social media sites can represent powerful new marketing tools for photographers, allowing images and compelling content to be broadcast to huge networks of potential customers. But remember, social networks are virtual versions of crowded town squares, where catchy images and compelling content are required to grab the attention of the entire crowd. It may seem like a lot of work, but effective use of social media is a lot like “the miracle of compound interest,” your following and reputation will continue to grow as time goes on!

Learn more from our professional photo lab‘s experts today!