Are you thinking about how hot political issues might be costing you business due to your social media personas? Here are a few of my thoughts and warnings:

Do you mix these topics into the streams that your clients see? Why or why not?

How Tea Parties, Abortion, and Healthcare Can Affect Your Image is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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When someone needs to hire a photographer, how do they find one? Regardless of whether it’s for a wedding, corporate material, senior pictures, sporting event, or editorial need, they probably follow this path:

1. A photographer they have previously hired.
2. A referral from a trusted source.
3. Someone they personally know who is a photographer.
4. Someone they don’t know personally, but is known as being proficient as a photographer.
5. A cold call based on the photography results of a search (search engine, etc).
6. A cold call to a random search result.

Five years ago, your position on that list was dictated by your past clientele and your physical activities – what events and groups you’d travel to, and where you’d devote dedicated time to build your network a few people at a time.

Fast-forward to our current environment. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook can help you end up in the number two spot on that list. A few days ago at Beer and Blog, I had a conversation with a real estate professional, talking with her about using Twitter to build relationships. By following local folks on Twitter, learning a bit about them (and sharing a bit about yourself), you’ll develop some personal connections. If you’re also sharing some of your photography experiences, those people will get to know you as someone that produces great pictures.

This is the value in the casual conversations on Twitter and Facebook. While sharing about your family, your hobbies, or your feelings won’t directly sell any photography services, you’ll be laying the foundation to build relationships. When your contacts start thinking about photography, instead of picking a name based on a Google search, they’ll come to you. When others mention needing a photographer, your contacts will refer those people to you.

And then, after you’ve won the business due to the social media referral, you’ll end up at the top spot on that list. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Photo by Horia Varlan, used under Creative Commons licensing

Use Social Media to become the One to Call is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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When personal computers still cost multiple thousands of dollars and the internet was somewhere that only technical geeks would be found, the term IRL came to mean “in real life” as opposed to an online interaction.

Here’s a reality check for those using the internet in 2009: online life and offline life are one and the same. In order to be authentic and in order to be trustworthy, your clients, colleagues, and other associates are going to expect that you are one person. As you build offline client relationships, those clients are going to expect you’ll treat them in a similar manner online. As you meet and get to know people online, your first offline encounter will be a continuation of the trust and relationship that has developed.

We’ve moved beyond the point where we think of online and offline as separate worlds. Your Facebook site is you. Twitter is real life.

Photo by JoshuaDavisPhotography. COM, used under Creative Commons licensing

Online and Offline: It’s All Real is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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Businesses have focused on customer retention after the sale for quite a while… but what about building a relationship before the sale? I’ve found this to be a very effective technique for my photography business. Using social media (Twitter and blogging on locally-focused sites), I’ve established relationships with a variety of people in my area and established credibility as a photographer.

In practical terms, here’s what I did that helped me develop relationships before the sale. I live near Portland, Oregon and there is an active online community – businesses and individuals from a variety of backgrounds and industries are on Twitter. The mayor of Portland routinely posts information for citizens on his Twitter account. I jumped into Twitter full-force, and started following a lot of local people. I interacted with those people, learning about them and sharing my life, including my photography, on Twitter.

Over time, by talking about my photography and sharing links to my work, I established myself as a photographer and my Twitter followers. People started contacting me directly about potential photography jobs. Better yet, when others would bring up the subject of photography, my Twitter followers would refer business to me, letting people know that they’d seen my work.

Studies have shown that people will buy from people they trust; Twitter is a great way to build up relationships (and trust) with a large group of people. By developing those relationships and trust over time, when people think about needing a photographer, they’ll think about that photographer whose work they keep seeing on Twitter.

photo by Aaron Hockley

Build Relationships Before the Sale is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services allow one to reach out, make connections, and spread a message. Recently I was in a discussion with a few other social media professionals and one of them brought up the question of which was more influential: broadcasting a message that’s potentially seen by a large group (such as a blog post) or making a direct connection with an individual such as an email message or directed Twitter tweet?

Which is better? I say neither. And both.

A blog post can reach a wide audience. As a photographer, blogging about past client work, blogging about your services, or blogging about the photography experience is a great way to build a casual relationship with a large number of people. Readers will get to know you and what you do. A personalized touch such as an email, a blog comment, or a direct Twitter message is a personal connection that can be tailored to the individual.

From a recipients’ perspective, we know that blog posts, tweets, and other broadcast messages are just that… broadcast. While we gain information, they generally don’t provide a personal touch. Conversely, a message that is sent to only a single person or a personalized point of contact will be received and interpreted as such. We place higher value on personal interactions than on being the receiver of a large broadcast.

Which one is more valuable to build influence online? They have two different purposes. Broadcast messages such as blog posts and tweets will help make one known to a larger audience. Personal touches including email, chat, or directed Twitter messages will build stronger one-on-one relationships. Don’t bypass broadcast messages as a way to reach a large audience, but remember that the strongest connections come from personal touch.

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography, used under Creative Commons licensing

Building Influence: Broadcast Messages or Personal Touches? is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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One of the first articles on Social Photo Talk was a look at What Should a Photographer Blog About. In that article, I mentioned that it’s important to identify the audience for your blog. Another important aspect of blogging as a photographer is to decide how your blog fits into your business. Is it just another page on your website, or is your blog a core marketing medium? Are you merely providing more information on your existing services, or are you using the blog to reach others in the industry or as a revenue-generating service?

If you’re serious about your blog for your photography services, it should be treated as any other marketing/advertising activity, meaning that you’ll want to spend some time and money to become as proficient as possible. Reading Social Photo Talk falls into this category. It also might mean purchasing some books (either paper or E-books), listening to some photography podcasts, or attending blogging or social media related events.

Last weekend, I was in Seattle to present at WordCamp Seattle, a conference about blogging and the WordPress blogging platform. While some of the attendees definitely fit into the geek/techie crowd, a large portion of the audience were people with businesses unrelated to tech that are using blogging as part of their business strategy. While I was there, I recorded a few brief videos with these people; I’ll be posting the videos in the coming weeks as testimonials of the benefit of attending social media events even when social media isn’t your core business.

How do you learn about blogging and social media?

Photo by Randy Stewart, used under Creative Commons licensing

What Part of Your Photo Business is Social Media? is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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While searching Flickr tonight I noticed something that caught my eye:

That little “from Yahoo!” is new. Even though Yahoo acquired Flickr over four years ago, the Flickr logo had remained un-Yahooed until now.

What does it mean? Probably nothing too significant, other than to remind users that Flickr is the largest remaining Yahoo property that hasn’t yet tanked or lost market share in any big way.

For more thoughts on the logo change, view a Twitter search… at the time of this post it seems that most folks aren’t happy.

Flickr from Yahoo! and they Want You to Know It is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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About a month ago, I highlighted the situation of a Flickr user Matt Stigliano, whose account was permanently deleted without warning. At that time, I decided to rethink my use of Flickr and whether or not it was a wise choice for a professional photographer to publish work on a service that engages in such actions.

The last upload to my Flickr account was a photo of Portland’s Liberty Centre over a month ago. Since then I’ve uploaded a few photos in other places but have been thinking a lot about Flickr. My conclusion: I can’t afford to not be using Flickr.

As a photographer, my focus is events, often within the tech community. Flickr is the perfect site for showing my work and gaining exposure to my network and potential clients, and attempting to be a tech event photographer without using Flickr is a hard sell. Yes, I could use other websites to display my work but that work won’t be seen my the Flickr community. After consideration, the business marketing and exposure of actively using Flickr outweighs the potential impact of sudden drastic action on the part of Flickr’s staff.

What do you think? Am I on the right track? Have you altered your use of Flickr since their account deletions have come to light?

I Can’t Afford to Not Be On Flickr is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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Last time we talked search engine optimization (SEO), we talked about how keywords relate to SEO. Today let’s take a look at links (the HTML anchor <a> tag) and how they factor into ranking on Google and other search engines.

Links matter for a couple different reasons. The first is the general assumption that the more different sites which are linking to your work, the more useful it must be. As a content creator, there’s no single way to get your work noticed and linked, but it’s good to keep in mind that the more links you get, the more likely that Google, Bing, and other search engines are to rank your site higher in results.

The other thing to know about links is that the text used for the link (between the <a> tags) matters. In general, it is preferable to have the link text be the keywords or phrase that is on-topic for your website. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer in Boston, your potential clients are likely to search for “boston wedding photographer” and having inbound links using that phrase would be excellent for your search ranking.

This matters in a couple scenarios. When creating links internal to your own website, use descriptive words for your links (for example, at the beginning of this post I linked up “keywords relate to SEO”). Don’t just link to “gallery”, but link to your “Denver wedding photography gallery” or such. Outside of your own site, when you’re leaving a message on a forum or a comment on a blog and you’re linking to something on your site, use appropriate keywords in that case as well. Don’t link to “tips”, but link to your “best Flickr tips” – see the difference there?

Don’t be spammy. Don’t use keywords or links that don’t naturally fit into the flow of the message you’re posting. Nobody wants to see someone show up only to promote their own work. If it makes sense in the context of the message to leave a keyword-loaded link, go right ahead, but if it doesn’t read like a natural sentence, you’re probably crossing the line.

Have any other great tips for SEO and links? Leave a comment below…

Photo by *clairity*, used under Creative Commons licensing

SEO Basics: Links is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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If you start publishing content on the internet through a website or blog, one of the terms you’ll come across fairly quickly is SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s an area that should get some attention from every blogger or content creator.

Search engines such as Google and Bing use automated programs to “crawl” the web, indexing web pages. Based on what is found, they deliver search results to folks who are making queries for a particular topic. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of ensuring that your website or blog is displaying content in a manner which makes it easy for search engines to find and using methods so that your website will rank higher for the terms you want.

We’ll be exploring a few basic SEO techniques over the next few weeks. A good place to start is to talk about keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases that you expect people to use when searching, so you’ll want to use those words and phrases on your blog. A great first step is to make sure that your blog post titles (and the title for the blog itself) contain keywords. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between a vague and enticing headline to draw readers in vs. one that contains keywords for long-term search results.

Another place where keywords can boost ranking is in the post URLs themselves. Using keywords as part of the post’s permalink (such as http://www.socialphototalk.com/tweet-photos-smugmug-twitter/) will boost the ranking over a generic URL such as post_id=123.

There’s a couple basic SEO keyword tips for you… next time we talk SEO we’ll talk a bit about how keywords relate to tags (of the HTML variety).

SEO Basics: Intro and Keywords is a post from Social Photo Talk. Subscribe to the free Social Photo Talk e-newsletter

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