Social Media Madness

The challenge of social media for me is effectively using it to get more "eyeballs" on my work.

Social Media Challenge

So I have spent the last few weeks immersing myself in Social Media. Geez, maybe I am just to old for this stuff…but I am having a challenging time figuring it all out. Here is what my experience is telling me at this point.

Participation And Time Investment

The first thing that I THINK I have learned is that the key to social media is primarily one of participation. Unfortunately, participation takes time! It takes time every day, and I believe that it requires a consistent time investment over a long period. Hmmm…kind of sounds like everything else in life, doesn’t it!

Picking Your Battles

Secondly, you have to pick your battles! There are so many social media options now that it doesn’t seem realistic to try and do them all…so you need to pick the ones that will work best for your particular business…and for your sensibilities…and good luck with that!

Google Plus

I am probably wrong about this, but it appears that Google Plus is mostly photographers looking at photography. While there are indications that being active on Google Plus will increase your SEO, who really knows outside the hallowed halls of Google?  I am, however, putting daily time in to Google Plus because, well, its Google.

Instagram

Instagram, in which I am yet to begin really posting to, appears to be an important option…a lot of people have told me I HAVE to be on it.  But I can’t seem to get started on it, and I have a hard time believing that I can get a lot of traction with my kind of work. Thomas Hawk believes it is a huge advantage to get in on the ground floor with social media sites…but the ground floor with Instagram is LOOONG gone. Oh yeah, and it is so mobile device centric that to post the kind of image I do requires a work around...and I hate work arounds!

Pinterest

Pinterest actually seems interesting to me. In the last two weeks I have seen my social media generated traffic to my website increase from 1.2% to 2.8% and that increase is pretty much due to Pinterest. I recall seeing some statistics indicating that people who hang out at Pinterest actually spend money. I can see that. You go to Pinterest to find ideas for home remodeling, wardrobe purchases and so forth…and maybe even to find photography for wall décor? If art directors and designers are looking for ideas and inspiration…I can see benefit in that. Of course, one must also take into account the demographic...and since Pinterest is heavily weighted towards women...perhaps it is a great place to promote my greeting card images! Anyway, at this point most of my efforts are going in to Pinterest…and I am even enjoying it a little bit (heaven forbid).

Twitter

With Twitter I am tweeting my blog posts…and the Blend blog when I like its material…but nothing else. I guess with Twitter I am doing the equivalent of keeping a toe in the water. Whether I will dive in any deeper remains to be seen. I seem to be close to my limit with Google Plus and Pinterest.

Facebook

Oh yeah, Facebook. Uh, you know, they are really diligent at reminding me to post on my fan pages…something I virtually never do. Oh well. I do look at my (what do you call it, my personal page?) every couple of days or so, though I also have two fan pages...the whole relationship of which I have a hard time understanding! I did check in with a photographer I know who posts a lot and has a humongous number of likes, fans and stuff…and he reports being unaware of any benefit to his business from all that (though I hear wedding and portrait photographers can do well with facebook). Then there is the fact that facebook only shows about 5% of your followers your posts unless you are greasing their palms... I do plan on "sharing" more images on my facebook pages via links from my site and Blend Images...so that will represent a small increase in efforts.

Tumbler
I did post for a while to Tumbler…but it didn’t provide me with the overnight success I needed to sustain the effort. Plus I have heard that Tumblr is not indexed by Google...and driving traffic to my website is the primary goal of all of my social media efforts.

500px
I looked at 500px but had the bad experience of seeing someone else claiming my work for his own, which kinda soured me on that. That has been pretty much my efforts over the past few weeks.

Social Media, Success And Real Life

We have all heard of the social media success stories…and they are out there just like the success stories from promo pieces, cool websites, email blasts and source books.  I think such successes are relatively rare in “real life”. I think that because success for most of us will only come with a prolonged effort, it is important to put your time into whatever avenues of visibility are most palatable for you. It would be a shame for me to bust my butt for six months really working social media and then quit (invariably just before success came).

Making Images And The Easy Way Out

Another question that comes up for me frequently is whether I wouldn’t be better off just doing my thing making images and getting them into the market. But then I keep thinking that is the easy way out and also that it is dangerous to stick you head in the sand in the face of change.  So onward I will press and experiment till I find my own “sweet spot” in social media.

What Are Your Thoughts?

And finally, I would love to hear from all of you what your thoughts and experiences are with social media in regards to your photography businesses. There is no doubt in my mind that a lot of people reading this blog will know a heck of a lot more about how to incorporate social media into a photography business and we can all learn a bit more if everyone shares their insights.

Follow me:

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/stockphotoguy

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+johnlundphoto

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stockphotoguy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/john-lund-photography/238446312160?ref=hl#

Tired Of Social Media

Social media can be a boon to business, or it can steal your time.

An Endless Stream Of Shared Photos

I’m fading fast…at least with social media.  I checked facebook tonight for the first time in a week (and realized someone had sent me an important message five days ago…). I have no desire to peruse Pinterest…not to mention that I have some doubts about their terms of use. My eyes start to glaze over at just the thought of that endless stream of shared photos on Google+. My only Linked In participation seems to be confirming people who want to link to me…people I either barely know or don’t know at all.  And speaking of not knowing people, my twitter followers just keep increasing whether I tweet or not, and lately it has been mostly not.

Social Media…And No Significant Effect

My primary interest in social media has always been to increase the traffic to my site. Google analytics indicates that just isn’t happening. Out of approximately 1500 unique visitors a day to my site, less than a dozen come from social media sources. While I am hoping social media can provide me with more link juice, that doesn’t seem to be having a significant effect either.

Tired Of Social Media

I guess I am just tired of social media. I seldom get tired of photography. I spent today prepping for a stock shoot I am doing on Friday. That was fun. Friday’s shoot will be fun. I would much rather be creating images that posting them on a social media site.  Of course I love it when people enjoy my photography, but not as much as when I enjoy my photography!

Creating Stand Out Stock Photos

I got into stock photography so I could really focus on what I enjoy doing, creating photos that I want to create and that can earn me a good living. Social media has been creeping up on me, stealing time away from what I truly enjoy doing…making those stock images.  I am not going to quit social media, but I will be doing just a bit less of it…and a bit more of creating what I hope are stand out stock photos. Stock photos that are needed in the market place, and stock photos that hopefully can stand up to the intense competition that is the stock photo world.

What Has Social Media Done For Me?

 A woman pauses to examine her world of social media, a sphere of portraits ranging from friends and family to business associates.

Checking My Facebook Page

This morning I began checking my Facebook page to see what was new and I realized that at least 80% of the posts were by people who I didn’t even know. I have the habit of saying yes to whomever sends a friend request. Now I have posts in Russian, Dutch, Thai, Spanish and languages that I can’t even guess at. Posts from close friends, people I barely know, and people that I don’t know at all.

Feeling A Little Left Out

I have mentioned before that when I peruse Facebook I sometimes start feeling a little left out…though oddly enough the things I feel left out of are things I am not really very interested in anyway. What does that say about me?

Keeping Up On Cool Images

For me Facebook seems to be primarily a way to keep up to date on the cool images that Colin Anderson makes…which of course makes me wonder why I don’t come up with cool images (okay…I do come up with some cool images…but certainly not with the style and romance of Colin’s work). My friend Shalom Ormsby shares his benevolent perspectives on life, Shannon Fagan shares his humorous adventures in China, David Sanger (and many others) share their cool iPhone pix (hey, how come my iPhone pix don’t look cool?), and everyday is somebody’s birthday…which since I only check every couple of days I am usually just finding out I missed someone’s birthday.

Two Thousand Followers And Irrelevant Tweets

Then there is twitter.  I have over 2,600 followers, hardly any of which I suspect ever see the once-a-week tweets that I make. I follow over two thousand twitterers (is that what they are called?), and how can you possibly stay on top of all those tweets? I sure can’t…and most of the tweets are totally irrelevant to me.  Once-in-a-while I do hang in there, scrolling down all those tweets till I find one that looks like it may lead to something interesting…though most the time what they lead to turns out to be something written by someone for whom English is their second, or third, language.

Goolge +, Klout and Linked In

I have a Google + account too. I visit that religiously…ever few weeks. I have no idea what do with it except make circles…but I already go round and round enough already! Klout sends me emails to let me know how influential I am…but I have no idea what the scores mean. I get requests everyday to link to people on Linked In, though mostly they are people I don’t know. I think I read somewhere that you actually are supposed to know the people you link to…of course, I say yes anyway because it seems like the polite thing to do.

Spam, YouTube and Vimeo

The first thing I do every morning is throw away the fifty-odd spam emails I get during the night, the ones my spam filter doesn’t catch. I have three email accounts two of which I haven’t looked at in months. YouTube comments on my video channel of mostly slow motion videos go to one of those accounts…last time I looked at it I just felt overwhelmed…and haven’t gone back since.  That reminds me…I started to put some stuff up on Vimeo, but never followed up with a second submission. Oh Well.

What Has Social Media Done For Me?

What has social media done for me? Well, if nothing else, it gives me something to do while I eat breakfast, something to do every few minutes at work, something to do while I watch TV in the evenings, and something to blog about!

Plugged In, Linked In, Tweeting...And A Little Lost...

"Plugging In" to social media is vital to our photo business, but how do we do it effectively?

Plugged In, Linked In, Tweeting…and A Little Lost

I have plugged in. I twitter, I’m Linked In, I’m working hard on SEO…and I am a little lost.  It is Facebook that really has me flummoxed! Facebook is so big, so pervasive and so, what, imminent…that I feel it must be vital to my goal of utilizing the Internet to advance my photography career and insure an adequate and continuing income stream. But how the heck do I take advantage of it?

Facebook, Building Community, and Clients

The bits and pieces are starting to come together. I can see how Facebook can work for a wedding photographer. One thing that really makes sense to me is the idea of putting wedding images online and tagging the people in the images. Suddenly your work is in front of everyone who attended the wedding (and who is active in Facebook). Cool! But, I don’t shoot weddings. I can see how Facebook can work in reinforcing and keeping your “brand” fresh by building a community that includes clients, but assignments aren’t my thing anymore.  For stock photographers, however, the usefulness is still eluding me.

A Fan Page For Funny Animal Pictures

Since I not only shoot stock, but also create my Animal Antics humorous animal pictures, images that are available as retail items in the form of greeting cards, coffee mugs, calendars and such, perhaps a fan page and growing a Facebook community might be in order. OK, I have started a fan page for the funny animal photos.  Not to complain, ah well, actually I am complaining…another thing I have to keep track of and contribute to! I have only had the fan page up a couple of weeks and I am already getting confused as to what images I have put on my blog versus on my Facebook page or fan page or whatever.

Information and Action

I have started going over Photoshelter’s Social Media guide…which seems really good. But it is going to take me a while to really absorb the information and translate it into action. In the meantime, I will keep dipping my toe in the Facebook waters, checking in on friends (though I feel like I am always getting to the “party” a tad late), uploading images when the stars align properly, and working at integrating my “social media” efforts.

Cold Calls, Taxes, Egos and Social Media

I would love to be able to just ignore Facebook. Heck, I would love to just worry about making images. But part of making a living at photography is dealing with all kinds of things that we don’t really want to deal with.  When I first started thirty years ago it was dealing with cold calls. Over the years it has meant investing in portfolios, source book ads, attending art director events, setting up a studio(s), executing the visions of others, dealing with cash flow issues, deadbeats, paying bills, dealing with taxes, dealing with egos (mine as well as others) and so forth. Now I believe it also means dealing with the Internet, Social Media, and SEO.

Irons In The Fire And The Most Important Thing

At any rate, I won’t pull the plug on my Internet activities. I’ll keep learning what I can, keeping all my irons in the fire, and trying not to lose sight of the fact that the most important thing I can do is to continue to stretch myself in creating the very best images I can.

Creating A Social Media Stock Photo

Social media and social networking are huge topics right now and there is a need for images representing them. They are also, in my opinion, difficult to create images for. That is a good thing. If I am correct it means there will be inherently less competition for the images that I come up with. In this environment of image over supply that is a critical criteria for me.

I don’t remember exactly what sparked this latest idea, but it was centered on the intention of coming up with those “social media” themes. Oh, I do remember! It was those “flickr photo clouds” that Getty is promoting. I thought, geez, I should do my own photo clouds. Somehow, when I see Getty, with whom I have such a large image investment, promoting their flickr collection so prominently, I tend to feel a tad anxious and resentful. The trick is to channel that hit of energy into creativity and productivity. Then it occurred to me that I could have a “photo” cloud around a person’s head indicating their “connections” on social media sites. The image could also work for networking, business connections, even communications in general.

I got pretty excited. Over the last few years I have shot plenty of images of people that I can pull the “cloud images” from. I browsed through some of my recent shoots to see if I could find a “base” image, one with a model in a situation and pose that would work. I needed an image with a fairly plain background. With all those smaller images floating around, the picture could get too busy very quickly. It is important that an image remain simple enough to be a quick read at thumbnail size, since virtually all images are first seen by prospective licensors as thumbnails. The photo should be a positive image with the primary model looking happy and confident. If the model was in a business environment it might help broaden the potential market for the image, expanding it into the realm of business networking.

It didn’t take long to find what seemed like the right image to work with. From an office shoot I did a little over a year ago, I came across an unused out take that in no way was a similar to any accepted shots. Once I had that image I just started looking through the numerous shoots that were readily available on my archive drives. Every time I found a likely shot for the cloud I just opened it, copied the portion I wanted, then pasted it into the base image.

It only took me a couple of hours and my image was done. Sort of. I sent the composite to my editor at Blend Images. He loved it. Hmmm, now the realization sets in. With so many pictures around the model's head, and some of them groups, I am going to have to come up with over a hundred model releases stretching back over five years! I wouldn’t be surprised if it took me two days to accomplish it! Well, guess I better quit blogging and get down to tracking down those releases!

Committment To Your Photo Shoots (And Photos!)

Commitment

Word on the street is that the “low hanging fruit” in the world of stock photography is gone, harvested by Micro stock and the glut in RF images. I don’t know if it is totally gone, but I certainly agree that the bar is being constantly raised. For those of us serious about making a living at stock photography, now is the time to bring a new commitment into our shoots. For me, that means being more disciplined, more organized and more prepared.

In the past I would throw together a shoot and not worry too much about getting the most out of it. I pretty much knew that whatever I shot was going to earn me money. My dilemma now is how to have increased efficiency without bringing in a dark cloud of concern, how to make each production dollar and minute be more productive without taking the fun out of my stock career. Keeping the shoots fun is very important to me. I didn’t get in to this business to have it become work! For me, success in stock photography is more than just money, it is also an interesting and fun lifestyle.

I pulled together a shoot last Saturday that is typical of my new way of working. I managed to still keep it fun while having it also be one of my most productive stock photography shoots to date. What I did differently: Checked my shot list with an agency art director (Blend Images); Rehearsed and set-up each lighting scenario ahead of time; Added a video component to the shoot; And hired an extra assistant with the understanding he would also do some modeling.

To keep it fun I kept the shoot to only five hours in length and allotted extra time for each set up. I also had a separate photographer there to shoot the video; all I had to do was add a couple of suggestions (I also provided the camera, lights, studio and models). Another very important ingredient to insure that I am having fun is to be working on shots that I am genuinely excited about. I am not concerned about squeezing every last drop out of a shoot, rather I want to have a well thought out production that gives me the resources to do the best possible job of creating images that are interesting to me, relevant to the marketplace, and as low-stress as possible.

I base my shoots around one or two central ideas; then fill the shot list out from there. The central image for me, with this shoot, was based on Social Networking or what is now called Social Media. The shot is comprised of endless hands reaching out to each other. In some cases the hands will be clasped in a handshake, in other cases the hands will be about to touch. The need for images illustrating Social Media is huge and growing. I wanted to create an image that could be used to illustrate and advertise themes based around the social networking groups such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like.

I ended up putting more prep time than usual into the shoot. I also hired more crew. The shoot ended up costing a bit more, but I was committed to the shoot and to the final images. In the long run, especially in these new more competitive times, the commitment to spending a little more money and a little more time (in this case pre-shoot set up) to get the best possible outcome will prove to be a very “economical” strategy…and a fun strategy as well!

Seeing the "Big Picture"

Seeing the big picture

I once read an interview with a man who lived in the Canadian Rockies. He was quoted as saying that "…the mountains are OK, but they sure do block the view". I'm not sure that exactly applies to my following thoughts, but hey, I always liked that quote!

Social media is great. I really like the fact that I can let a lot of people know right away when I have new material up by just sending out a tweet, or making a quick post on Facebook. Looking at the "Big Picture" however, I also realize that it is very easy to get caught up in trying to get a lot of followers, and in general, spending an inordinate amount of time perusing various posts. Some of those posts can be very entertaining, but few are actually valuable to my goals. How many SEO tips does one need to read? In one post it was guaranteed that you could be in the top 10 of search results. I wanted to ask what happened if eleven people followed those tips….

I currently have just over four hundred followers on twitter, and something like 200 "friends" on Facebook. I have seen some tweeters (don't know if I am using appropriate terminology) with something like 100,000+ followers! But even if I were ever to get anywhere near that number of followers, would it be worth the effort? I doubt it. To get the kind of traffic I want to get to my site I really need to come up very early in search results. As big a number as 100,000 followers might sound, I want that number of people, or more, landing on my site each month. Those kinds of numbers can be much more efficiently achieved with providing quality content and optimizing for search engines. Social Media can be a part of that effort, but for me it is all too easy to spend too much time scanning posts. I would be much better served creating a new image, putting it up on my site, and making sure it is well key worded; and that my site is thoroughly optimized for those search engines.

For some, who perhaps are seeking a "True Fan" base, or need a more intimate connection with their "clients", perhaps social media is a more important endeavor. For me, I believe I am better off getting back behind the camera, pushing pixels with Photoshop, and doing what I do best: making images relevant to the market for stock photos. OK, I’m off to create an image (and maybe tweet about it).

FOMO!

Elephant on his way!

A case of FOMO


What is more important, your career or your life? I ask this question because a lot of us get lost in chasing things; Chasing success, chasing money, chasing twitter, chasing Facebook. This morning I sought some solace from a good friend and fellow photographer, Shalom Ormsby (www.shalomormsby.com). I explained that to him that I was starting to feel a little frantic about not keeping up with all the tweets from twitter, and all the writing on the wall (Facebook). “You got FOMO!” he exclaimed, “You have Fear of Missing Out.” And it is true. My obsession with Social Media is starting to adversely affect the quality of my life! And that is what got me thinking about how important it is to put your life in front of your career. I already knew that, but a reminder now and then is necessary.

Don’t get me wrong, I have certainly enjoyed whatever success I have had, and not having to worry about paying my bills rates right up there at the top. But life does fly by all too quickly and it is important to enjoy every minute that you can. Whey young people come to me for advice on their photography careers, among other things, I advise them not to forget to plan their life as well as their career. Where do you want to live?
How do you want to live? What do you want your LIFE to look like five years from now, ten years from now? Build your career on those determinations, not the other way around. There is room for both a rich life and a satisfying career, but life needs to be nurtured as well as your career.

I am a huge proponent of visualizing what you want and then writing it down. There is some magic to that. Making your vision of what you want as real as you can, as detailed as you can make it, will propel you in that direction. I do not know if there is a metaphysical component, or if it is just because the more you want something the more likely you are to take the necessary steps to get it…but the process does work. A lot of experts have written on this subject and my favorite is Brian Tracy. I highly recommend anything Brian has written; give him a Google!

So while you visualize your life, I have to get back to my twitter account. I might be missing something!