Photography

Photography

In my opinion, nowadays photographers are busy people. They have many clients more than ever have before they have an abundance of information available to us at the click of a mouse. It’s always evolving; full of opportunity and at times. As you can see, the modern day photographer is a busy one indeed. Running a successful photography business has always been about much more than just taking great photos. As shown in the diagram above, the skills we need as a photographer in 2010 are much more diverse. The list could go on, but, I think you will see the most notable change in skills is the web such as website, blogs, facebook, twitter.

The website and blog combination is great for photography. Website is presenting your services and blog have active order to attract people and keep clients come back. Facebook also have a lot of very active photographers groups. There is a lot of trust in the photographer/client relationship and to think about that when developing your marketing strategy.

Many photographers can not make money from taking photos; they need to know about Photoshop, marketing, twitters. That is a new opportunity for them to add more clients and make a lot of money.

According to Todd Owyoung, He is a professional music photographer based in St. Louis, Missouri. His website is ishootshows.com

1. What are the elements used in your social media strategy? Which do you feel is the most effective?

The main social media elements I use for engagement are my blog, Flickr and Twitter. For me, they act as the perfect compliment to one another.

A blog allows for rich content, while Twitter gives me a quick and light way to engage with people working in the music industry, other photographers and readers of my blog. Flickr acts as a supplemental way of putting my work in front of eyeballs and offers dialogue through their discussion groups.

2. Do you feel the effort is worthwhile? Does it pay for itself? Can you describe any sales successes directly tied to social media?

I think one of the beautiful things about social media is that it's an organic, fresh way of presenting your work. For clients, this translates into an extension to a portfolio and photo archive.

In addition, photo buyers aren't just looking on Getty Images or Corbis. These days, Flickr, photo posts via Google Images and more are all fair game.

The funny thing about blogging is that, short of monetization, it doesn't pay, but there's no mistake that it pays off. I can't tell you how many clients I've talked to who said they found my blog through Google by searching for "concert photographer" or "music photographer."

According to Kendrick Brinson, He is an Atlanta, Georgia-based photojournalist, and member of the prestigious Luceo images photographer cooperative.

1. What are the elements used in your social media strategy? Which do you feel is the most effective?

Blogs are completely intertwined with Facebook and Twitter in LUCEO's social media networking. You have to have new material to post on those networking sites in order to draw in traffic. You can't successfully market your photography without content-- fresh new, always changing, always engaging content. That's why we wanted a site that changed everyday-- once you've seen a portfolio site, you never go back; we wanted LUCEO's site to become a destination that you check several times a day to see what's new.

Part of LUCEO's mission is giving back to the photographic community so we have regular columns and blog posts that explain how a shoot went, for example, or Matt Slaby's column that explains common legal issues for photographers. If readers know you will have a From the Archive column every Thursday, they'll check your site every Thursday, for example. Give them reasons to come back. Our regular viewers, I think, truly enjoy watching LUCEO's photographers' work grow and expand and the process that goes along with that. We want our "fans" and "followers" to get to know us through our words and images. A lot of photographers don't disclose how they got to where they are and we are an open book.

Of course we also promote other photographers' work and photo news on Facebook and especially Twitter. I try to stay up to date by reading lots of photo blogs and following photo industry news feeds on Twitter. I want people to hear news from us first and rely on us for keeping up to date.

Again, though, no content means nothing to post on Facebook and Twitter and no hits on your blog, archive, or site. New content is crucial.

2.Do you feel the effort is worthwhile? Does it pay for itself? Can you describe any sales successes directly tied to social media?

My social media marketing efforts on the behalf of all of the LUCEO photographers is without a doubt worth it. We could potentially sell ad-space on our site if our traffic rates continue climbing as they have been. Specifically, this is just one for example; I got a phone call from a photo editor at The Wall Street Journal after I wrote on Facebook that I was doing a shoot in Alabama for a client. That editor wanted someone in Alabama and passed the job on to me. If he hadn't seen that in his Facebook livefeed, he would have given the job to a local photographer. Right there, social networking put money in my pocket. This happens often.