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!

Our March specials are here - and many are under $10!  With Mothers Day and graduation coming soon, it is a great time to offer these gift items as specials to your customers and take advantage of these savings. 

 

Frames

Stone Coasters 

Hardboard Coasters

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Set of 4 Hardboard Coasters         $22.00
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Mirror Compact

Mirror Compact -      $8.75
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Money Clip  

Money Clip -   $12.40
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Pewter Key Ring

Pewter Key Ring -      $8.80
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Business Card Holder

Business card Holder -  $9.90
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Digital Wallet Special - We have extended this popular special for one more month!

48 or more wallets from one image $.12 each
Standard Service Only (H&H Color Corrected)
Lustre paper only  
Enter Coupon Code: WalletSpecial2010

 

 

10x20 Standard Digital Print

Lustre Surface -    $7.45
Pearl Paper    -    $8.50
Enter Coupon Code: March10x20

 

Economy Proof Special - This is another popular special we are extending for another month! One Low price for your economy proofs! Don't Wait! 

Luster proofs for only .25 cents each
Pearl proofs for only .33 cents each

3.5 x 5 ; 4x5; 4x6; 5x5 only

Enter Coupon code EconoProof2010

Professional forums today are filled with discussions about safeguarding digital files. Things were a lot simpler with film, when the only decision was the kind of sleeves to use. Today there are two good digital solutions, while we are encouraged about some developing technologies that might make life a lot easier in the future.

Permanently Keep Your Files on Hard Disc Drives

Since your image files are already on a hard drive, you can just leave them there!  Obviously, today’s professional camera files are big, so you will have to add more disc space for your new shoots as well as to keep enough free space for “hungry” applications like Photoshop. Fortunately the size of add on drives has increased and most are currently relying on reasonably priced 1 TB external drives. Although you will see 2TB units, most experts feel that only the 1TB units have shown enough reliability for day to day studio use. There are lots of options and decisions to be made regarding how to power and connect these drives. You can directly connect them to one computer or put them on your studio network (NAS)? As usual, if these are Greek to you, get some help where you source your hardware. A lot depends on how your studio works. Of course, even though 1TB seems like a tremendous amount of free space, you will be looking to purchase additional drives as your space requirements evolve. Unfortunately, although you have all of your jobs a “mouse click away,” you still need to address the issue of archival backup since you literally have “all your eggs in one drive.”

Big drives are great, but relying on one is too dangerous. Camera negatives never spontaneously decayed (since nitrate!), but disc drives can and will fail without much warning and the word archival never appears in the same sentence with hard disc. At a minimum, purchase and install a second identical drive to act as a backup and install some sort of “mirroring” software, to automatically keep the second drive an identical copy of the first. Hard drives are not forever and they will fill or fail or worse yet…both! You may want to consider a slightly more expensive RAID configuration (disk array), where multiple, identical drives are configured to automatically “mirror” each other automatically. Save to one and you are really saving to both. There are lots of options here and they need not be terribly expensive. RAID configurations will assure more automatic reliability in the event of a drive failure and also often give some nice drive “health check” warnings.

No matter how good your systems get, most hardware experts consider multiple hard drives, even in a RAID configuration, only as a solution for protecting against hardware failure of dynamic “in process” work, since working files cannot practically be archived as they are far too dynamic.

However, after a job is shipped to a customer, the probability of file access or modification drops precipitously. These jobs can be “archived” and protected against hard disc failure or even against accidental deletion.

Archive Completed Jobs to Writable CD or DVD

The most cost effective and by far the safest archiving method today is writable CDs (700MB) or DVDs (4.7GB.)  To be sure, you will hear a lot of horror stories about discs that fail to read or “fade” in a few months.  Chances are these failures were either not written correctly to begin with or were written to very low cost, unstable media. Like photo paper, there is good blank optical media and not so good blank media.  Use only media that incorporates a gold (that’s real 24 carat gold) reflecting layer, since the most common environmental failure for optical discs, besides physical damage, is humidity and heat attacking the disc’s reflecting layer and rendering it completely useless.  Even though it take a little more time when burning discs, only use recording software that supports “verify after write.” This feature will automatically read all data after recording and verify that the disc in fact contains all the data that you wrote AND THAT IT IS ALL READABLE! Digital technology allows for identical copies, so make 2 copies of each disc, and store one at another location…in case of a catastrophe! Chances are you won’t use an archive disc for a while and if they are stored reasonably (dark, clean, cool, dry) they will easily last longer than you need them to. One bonus of archival CD and DVD materials is that they can’t be erased… intentionally or by mistake!

Evolving Technology…Archiving and Backup to the “Cloud”

Today there is growing discussion of “cloud storage” and “cloud computing.”  In this model, your computer system automatically (and continually) copies all of your important files to large, secure and redundant storage facilities on the internet. This model could conceivably eliminate not only your backup hard disc but your DVDs well.

Thousands of consumers and businesses today rely on cloud backup services, from vendors like Mozy, Carbonite and Sugarsync, to automatically preserve all of their important personal files, images and music. Big commercial data centers are also adopting the model. The appeal is simple. Lost or stolen machine…no problem. Hard drive crash…no problem! Simply login to your service, download a new sync application walk away! The system automatically retrieves all your files, restoring everything back to its state at the moment of failure. Today, most of these services are used for backup of files that are on your internal drive, but the technology can do much more.

We’ll keep you up to date as things develop, but for now, stay with mirrored disc drives and archive to good quality DVDs. You won’t be sorry.

Don't forget: This week is the last opportunity to take advantage of our January/February print specials!  Click here to see them again.

Remember, all orders must be received before midnight on February 28!  Order your product in eZSuite, enter the coupon code, and save money!

I continually get questions regarding applying logos and watermarks in Photoshop and it is a lot easier than you might think! I put together this easy 4 part tutorial on getting that real professional look without a lot of hassles or technospeak. Parts 1 & 2 take you through creating and saving your logos as custom shapes and putting them to work as separate Photoshop layers. Parts 3 and 4 will cover how to create separate “actions” for vertical and horizontal images as well as how to set the whole thing up to detect individual image orientation itself and automating the complete logo and watermarking process! Here is the first video:

Here is the second video:

Keep checking back, the next two videos of this series will be up soon!

Bentley

Didn't make it to St. Pete's for SYNC?  Click below for a bit of video of team H&H and the booth:  (It's a fairly large file, and may take a few moments to download.)

Jeff's video

Today, virtually every successful professional photographer has a sales website. Many even have implemented some sort of marketing plan to aid them in selling their creative services.  Few however, have even begun to recognize the tremendous advantages of implementing and adding an effective social media strategy.

Social media marketing is very different from conventional website marketing. Success in social media venues doesn’t follow from directly advertising your services or product. Social media marketing revolves around delivering valuable and compelling information to target consumers.  The viral nature of social platforms will make them extremely effective “on-ramps” for your existing website by separating you from your competitors in those inevitable Google information searches.

5 Simple Tips to Get You Started on the Social Media Bandwagon.

Tip #1 Create a Blog

If you don’t already have one, create a blog and connect it to your existing website.  Start with simple, one page posts of general interest to your target audience.  Keep the articles short, but try to post something new at least once or twice a week. You are not trying to impress your fellow photographers, but are trying to provide information to your actual customers. You would be surprised how many consumers would be interested in knowing simple things like how solid colors work best for pictures or how a fundraiser can be enhanced through event photography.  Post about an environmental or child shoot you did and include a few selected pictures.  Show off, but don’t try to sell a new product or service. You don’t need to do extensive research, just write about things you already know and have already done. Be creative and offer up some of your experienced advice and tips. Here is a link that may get your creative juices going.  Be sure to set up an automatic email system (Aweber or Constant Contact) to capture resulting leads. 

Tip #2 Sign Up on Social Media Sites

Join and have a complete profile on at least 2 social media sites. Actually, we suggest you join three.  Our top three choices would be Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.   The “help” functions on the sites themselves are pretty comprehensive and should get you get going with little trouble.  You need to remain aggressively active on these sites, making connections, monitoring and continually posting new and valuable content. Sign up for Lazyfeed or Google Reader, either of which allow you to automatically monitor specific topics of interest and easily see what other people are blogging about.  Pass interesting blog links on to your followers.  Join groups on LinkedIn as they are a terrific source of good information on what your colleagues are doing.   Relax, this is not nearly as hard as it sounds and I guarantee that you will be amazed at the visibility, clients and referrals that will come your way as you become a visible expert in your area.

Tip#3 Utilize Video

Video is a uniquely powerful tool and today almost anyone with any digital skills can create their own web video content. In addition to YouTube, there are many other free video hosting sites that accept uploads.  If you want the best search ranking, video is definitely the way to go.  Do a video of one of your shoots, showing how you interact with your client. Show unique environmental hot spots where you take people for wedding or senior portrait shoots.  Animoto.com is another site that you can use, even if you don’t have actual video content.  It allows you to turn your best still photos and music into beautiful videos.  The great thing about Animoto videos is that you can easily post them to the various social sites as well as link to them from your blog and even sell them to your clients. 

Tip#4  Get Help On-line

If this is all new to you and you are not sure how to get started, there are a number of places on-line that have tutorials that will help you get started.  These are just a couple to get you started, but if you search Google there are many more to select from.  Here are a few links. 

Top 7 Twitter Tutorials:                 http://bit.ly/alBGO9

How to Use Facebook:                     http://bit.ly/9H7Fvu

LinkedIn 101:                                      http://bit.ly/aO5DjX

Free 5 Part Series on blogging:    http://bit.ly/bxgu4K

Tip # 5  Outsource or Barter Your Expertise and Learn From Others

If you feel that all of this is too much of a distraction from your core business, you can outsource everything to a rapidly growing list of companies and individuals that offer these services. As a photographer, you already have very unique skills that are in tremendous demand in the social media arena.  You are a visual artist and images are absolutely critical to this venue. You would be surprised at what you could arrange for by bartering a few head shots or by doing some absolutely trivial Photoshop (compared to retouching) work on a Facebook fan page.

Remember, unlike print or other media placements, your digital content remains available long after posting, continually adding to your positioning as a the “go to” expert in professional photography.

First, I'll share all of the images with you, since we all had such a great time looking over them.  There were no logos on the images during voting.  Here they are, in no particular order:

 Gil Brady:

Karen Mullen:

Shawn Zinke:

Nicole Cline:

Sophie Lane:

Janette Smith:

Shawn Zinke:

Sophie Lane:

Janette Smith:

Sophie Lane: 

Shawn Zinke:

Finally, we had a couple of employees who wanted in on the fun, even though their images were not up for voting.

Kyle Walker:

 Jeff Locklear:

The voting was VERY tight on this contest, but we do have a winner of the 6x6 soft cover coffee table book:

Congratulations, Sophie!  Drop me an email and I'll tell you how to collect your prize!

Jeff had a great idea for a contest, and I think today is a GREAT day for a contest!

We've probably all seen the current American Express ad campaign which shows inanimate objects with "faces."  They show a purse with buttons and a zipper making up the face, they show a bike parked above a rounded curb, with the wheels making the eyes, etc.  You can view one of the commercials here, from YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m56F4EKN9hg

Jeff captured this one recently with his iPhone:

He noticed that the doors sort of made a face.  Are ya with me?  Good!

Email your "face" images to me at rachelf@hhcolorlab.com .  No logos or identifying info on the image, please.  When I post the results and images, I will credit you with it...or you can send one with your logo for posting, and one without the logo to keep our judges (employees) impartial.

You can enter as many as three images, and we'll announce a winner next Friday.