Or, I guess a better question would be WHERE... Where do you start? And, I guess there are a whole list of answers... No need to stress! This is Social Media for Photographers, Part Two... Part One was a short intro, worth a quick read if you missed it -> Here
Strangely, the photo above was a self portrait way back, the night before we were due to fly London => Denver for skiing, BA had declared that we couldn't take skis... err? Yes, that was real stress...
Anyway, enough about me... Let's talk about you for a while [bonus points if you name the song] how do you choose which network of people is the right one to approach? Where are your social efforts going to be most rewarded, be that with sales, bookings or just plain old getting your name out there.
It all depends what you're looking to put in, and what you want to get out of it... If you have an hour to sit down and collate your thoughts each day, then shuffle them into a blog post with a couple of your images from the shoot you had yesterday, maybe you should start yourself a Wordpress.com blog and go from there.. Wordpress.com is free, it's very flexible in terms of what you can post and embed in those pages.. You can also add a Twitter feed that takes your post for the day* and sends out a Tweet automatically** which can save you some time.
So, blogging, some people say it's dead? I say it's in a transition phase and that it's still a strong core function and very important for your web presence. You can update content frequently [see *] and you can generate good search rankings as a result...
There's one thing to keep in mind before all of this, and is a strong part of the reason you should take control of YOUR web presence (and, by take hold, I mean have some sort of self created social / web presence) ..if I am looking to take business or a service from a certain person these days, the first thing I'm going to do is to Google them... If they Google you and you're on the front page (who looks at page two?) nine times out of ten, they will form an opinion in their mind of you / your service -- so you want to make sure that what is on the front page is positive and that it was put there BY YOU. Go ahead and try it... Google "Simon Pollock" and see what comes up... What was coming up three years ago was a picture of me in the shower, not ideal... [even if it was pretty funny]
So... Have a think about the audience you're after, what you're trying to achieve and how you could connect best with your desired audience...
A really short list in my head...
Facebook = Everyone checks up on businesses / people on Facebook [Facebook = the new Whitepages] MySpace = Who? Potentially if your photography is music related? LinkedIn = Professional Network, Less trashy poking, more businessy connections. Twitter = A good mix of everything, but easily navigable to find what you're after.
Tomorrow we'll talk about content freshness and keyword type stuff a bit, maybe a bit about coffee and some about being social... and what being social actually means [or, should mean!]
*If you post once and don't bother to post again in three weeks, blogging might as well be dead! **No point Tweeting if you're going to AutoTweet and not ever bother to visit and "Be Social" with anyone that bothers to RT / reply, right?
--Sime
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