Category : Web Photog Series

55 Smart Web Ideas For Photogaphers – E-Book Launch Party

By: Wendy Roe

It is with great pleasure and excitement that I can announce the new web marketing e-book, co-written by myself and Zach Prez, has just been released.  The book is designed for wedding and portrait photographers to learn web marketing in a simple, easy-to-understand format.  Designed to educated one actionable tip at a time, the e-book breaks down complicated topics on Facebook, Pinterest, Blogging and SEO with Google in plain English.  You can flip through and choose a topic without even reading it linearly.  Web marketing made easy?  WHOOOPPIEEE!

I got the idea from Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography books, where he uses one headline, one image, one takeaway in an easy-to-learn format.  Web marketing can be complicated, let’s face it.  Technology is on-going and ever changing but that’s no excuse for letting it go by the wayside.  The book will teach you new ideas and tips to gain traffic to your website and market your brand online.  I’ve poured through topics that I see time and time again photographers not using to their benefit.  Just by utilizing these concepts, we gained exposure to grow our business in a short amount of time.  You can too

Why not learn from some of the best in the industry?  That’s the question we asked ourselves when putting this together.  So Zach and I asked a few of our friends to contribute tips they found to be most helpful to drive traffic.  Here’s a list of contributors and their topics:

Kevin Kubota: Send out a customer service survey
Andrew Funderburg: Using YouTube to Help SEO
Jules Bianchi: Showcase Vendors to get others talking about you
Jared Bauman: Blog writing tips for the non-writer
Khara Plicanic: Nontraditional posts attract comments and connection
Seshu: Generate traffic with Twitter
Michael Corsentino: Use a blog series for repeat visitors
Mike Rheaume: Stumble your way to the top
Marty Thornley: Own your content
Leah Remillet: Leave a trail with watermarks

Enough of the overview, let’s get to the details!

BUY NOW    |    LEARN MORE

Enjoy!

Wendy Roe

 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday SALES!

Give Thanks

As the year comes to a close, we are focusing on things we are so grateful for this year. First and foremost, our familes are so special to us.  They offer their love, support and encouragement and we are eternally grateful.  A special shout out to our parents, Ninfi & Byron Sr., who are celebrating over 43 years of marriage together years this week! Secondly, You…our clients, share your amazing personal stories with us and the world on our blog and we are grateful for the trust and zest each and every one of you have for life and your loved one!  It’s only through sharing your connection with us that we can capture this experience in life to always look back on.

Thank you! Lastly, to Byron…my love.  Thank you for being as Tina Turner would say, “Simply the Best.”

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,

B + W

Give Gifts

 

---

1) ON SALE Print Credits

What’s a celebration without giving GIFTS? We believe in the power of images.  Images that steal a moment, an experience, a treasure.  Something that lasts lifetimes and is visible to those you love around you. Because we believe in the power of specialty prints, canvas and albums, we invite you to act and print some of those images you’ve been meaning to already! As special thanks to all our valued clients, we are offering:

—> 50% OFF
PRINT CREDITS!

* If you buy $25 in a la carte print credit, you’ll get $50 to spend on Pictage!
* If you buy $50 in a la carte print credit, you’ll get $100 to spend on Pictage!

—> Buy Now; E-mail: wendy@studio-br.com

FINE PRINT:
Your gallery will be released again (if not already) for 14 days only to spend your gift credit (no exceptions or extensions).  Print credit is valid through 12/31/11.  Print credit is only valid a la carte and may not be used for previously discounted bundles.  Sale only valid for purchase from Fri, Nov 25th through Monday, Nov 28th.  Please include in your email what amount you would like to purchase ($25, $50, $100 or more).  You will receive a link to complete payment information and then will be sent a promo code.  Code is valid 14 days from delivery.

2) Photography Web Marketing Guide Books 50% off (Black Friday Only)

Friend and co-author of our soon-to-be-released e-book is offering 50% off on Black Friday his wonderful selection of ebooks including:  Web Design Guide, Intro Web Guide and Blogging Guide.  Check it OUT!

50% off Photography Web Marketing Guide e-books (Black Friday Only)

3) Kubota Image Tools – Spend $50, get $50 of Kubota Bucks (Cyber Monday Only)

We have used Kubota Image Tools Actions since the onset of our business and they rock our world.

Spend $50, Get $50 in Kubota Bucks

Liveblogging PartnerCon 2011: Let There Be Light with Jared Platt

We’re sitting in total darkness to learn from Jared Platt about lighting…love it   Let’s roll!

Session Topic: Let There Be Light

The master of photography understands light, can predict it, command and replicate it and bend its course to suite his particular needs. Yet a mastery of lighting techniques is worthless without a clear aesthetic understanding of light’s effect on composition and meaning. Join me as I discuss the philosophy of light in photography. We’ll leave the technical mumbo jumbo to someone else.

—

Light is a gift.  It was only when photography was invented that allowed us to see moments in action and see the blur of seeing someone walking down a staircase.  What is light? Light is actually physical particles (quantum light theory).  There’s visible light but invisible too (xrays and such).  Colder light is warmer tones, warmer light is cooler tones (think of a flame!).  But we want to talk about more than the science.

It can be summed up by:  “The world we live in is but thickened light” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We see light to describe passion and beauty throughout history as well.  Light is a descriptor of all that is good in biblical references as well.  Conversely, darkness brings a sense of sadness and fear, wickedness and hate.  We can dispel darkness through light. (Martin Luther King, Jr. quote).  The person doing good, growing…they become the ‘enlightened’ person.

” Sometimes I do get to places where God’s ready for someone to click the shutter” Ansel Adams

He’s showing the first photograph by Joseph Niepce in 1826.  [COOL]

“Photography is not about light.  But a photographer who does not understand light and how to use it, is a painter who does not know how to mix his paints, or a writer illiterate of the meaning of her words.”  – Jared Platt

We’re going to be talking about what light does and what it says to people looking at your photographs.

Finding Light:

(Non-Natural) | (Natural)
Hair Light | The Sun
Soft box | Northern Sky
Diffuser | Clouds, Fog
Gobo | Trees
Neutral Density/CTO | Smog/Dust

What Light Does:
1.Light reveals (examples)
2. Light separates (creating depth in a photograph think about light, dark, light, dark patterns)
3. Light creates volume (shading one side of a building or face to gain volume)
4. Light is texture (contrast of shadows in nature)
5. Light creates depth
6. Light contrasts (the more light there is, the darker the shadows)
7. Light directs and distracts (towards a subject or item…think spot light)
8. Light defines shape
9. Light illuminates joy, happiness and energy and love

“Light is love.” – Jared Platt

In the natural world, we always see light coming down, not coming from the ground up.  Seeing light from the bottom up sometimes may cause adverse reactions.

Technical Talk
1. The quality of the light is subject dependent
2. Direction of light  (you’ll get much more dramatic and powerful light from behind the subject)
3. You need to match the light when creating fill light (or it looks like he’s being cut out from the background)

Liveblogging PartnerCon 2011: Become a Content Marketing Machine

By: Wendy Roe

Wowwww, lunch was spectacular!  Thanks so much to Dammit, Jeff for sponsoring the yummie sandwiches   On a side note, I just acquired a pair of women’s dress photography pants (YES ladies, the answer to ‘what to wear’ when you’re shooting a wedding) by a fun meeting in the ladies bathroom.  Who knew you could network in the ladies bathroom?  That’s the love of PartnerCon! Thanks Julie for the awesome conversation in solving this constant dilemma.  Check ‘em out at http://www.photopantz.com.

Okay, next up is the talented panel on creating content for your marketing!  Let’s roll…

UPDATE: The ladies at the Photo Life put up the slides and worksheet for everyone to participate and download.

—–

Session Topic:

Become a Content Marketing Machine with Katie Humphreys, Erin Youngren, Rachel LaCour, Elizabeth Villa Ippolito

How are you using your blog, email and social media to build genuine relationships with your audience? How are you transitioning the relationships with that audience into paying clients? In this demonstration, The Photo Life content creators will show you how to use generous content to do just that. They’ll walk you through the process of creating a Content Marketing plan for your unique business. You will leave a Content Marketing machine!

—

(Katie)

What is content marketing?
1) Be authentic
2) Be consistent
3) Take a Stand
3) From that, we’ll feel the love and see the profit

You Don’t Fit in a Box:

- Don’t limit yourself to what works for others.
- There’s no magic bullet; there’s experimentation & customization!
- Differentiate yourself by providing for your unique clients

“Creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting potential clients into clients and current clients into repeat clients.” – Katie Humphreys

Basic Concepts: The Method to the Madness
- Creating and freely sharing valuable content.
- Building authentic and relevant relationships.
- Turning  these relationships into paying clients.

(Erin)—–

Creating and Sharing Valuable Content: It’s NOT about you!

It needs to meet a need.

1) You understand your ideal client’s likes, interests and needs. (What We Love, Recipe Sunday, Why You Should Do a First Look…)  (The audience is doing a hands on exercise on identifying characteristics of their ideal clients.)

2) Entertains: Infuse your voice and personality.  (The Boots that Made Me Swear.  Friday Night Pizza and Oreos.  Stripping the Layers)  A little imperfection on your blog is OKAY.

3) It’s easy to consume.  It can be read, anywhere, anytime, in a short amount of time.  Less is more.  Formatting is your friend.

4) Keeps Them Wanting More.  It was worth it, they got something out of it, and they feel good about it.  (Our Love Story: The Saga of the Hot Librarian.  Hot Tips for Your Engagement Session)

(Katie)—–

Building Relevant Relationships
Relevant relationships = an audience of potential clients.  But there’s more!

These are people:
1) Who you’d actually want to work
2) That would actually book you
3) and that aren’t your mom…

Be Authentic: You have to get naked. But, not totally naked.  (i.e Family Trip vs Family Argument; Genuine vs. Fake Interests)
Be Strategic: Decide what personal qualities or values are important to share. What is your VOICE? (Positive and Trustworthy; Modern, Hip and Unconventional; Traditional and Conservative)
Take A Stand: You can’t be everything to everyone.  You can stop trying!  Share your unique perspective.  Think “Jersey Shore.”
Be Consistent: If you build trust and are consistent in your content, this trust will carry over to your business!  Create content that your audience comes to count on.  Build trust by consistently posting great content.  Choose a medium that works best and you can be consistent at.  My favorite blogs are the ones where the type of content I know of a bit before I even go to the blog.

(Elizabeth)—–

Guide Potential Clients to the Purchase Decision: You’re offering an experience that your audience wants!

Your Online Sales Funnel:
1) Starting Point (Introduction)

Goal: Answering Questions and Removing Doubt
- Who are you? ABOUT ME
- Are your photos any good?  PORTFOLIO
- My kids could never sit still!  INFO PAGE
- I can’t afford it!  PRICING PAGE

How do they get there: Draw a clear path!  Starting point: Blog post –> About Me  –> Portfolio –> Session Information Page –> Pricing Page –> Contact Form –> Completed Lead Form

Create clear calls to action when you’re asking someone to make a purchase decision.  Add links within your pages and posts.  Create clear navigation on your blog and website and static text on blog post footers and columns.

“The foundation of content marketing is 90% giving and 10% taking” – Erin Youngren

“Look at content marketing as ‘courting your clients’ and it takes time.” – Rachel LaCour

—-
2) Purchase Decision (When the are ready to book you)
3) Completion

 

Live blogging PartnerCon 2011: Digital vs. Physical

By: Wendy Roe

Hey everyone!  It’s day two of PartnerCon and everyone is looking cheery.  Live blogging is a little bit of a social experiment of sorts, so all your feedback and comments are welcome!  Joe McNally opened this morning and the entire audience was in awe.  His honest and candid approach to his photography, sharing and obvious gumption radiated throughout the morning session.  It was the kind of session you couldn’t blog, you just had to be there and absorb his work, stories and adventures.  Next up is the panel on digital vs. physical products with: Samuel Lippke, Kevin Swan, Jody Gray, Ed Monahan, Michael Giordano, Jim Collins.

You can also follow on Twitter at #partnercon or @pictage.

There’s a recap of Day 1′s posts here:
1) Here’s a summary of the opening keynote from Jim:
http://www.studio-br.com/blog/2011/1…of-partnercon/
2) Communicating Social Luxury with Lawrence Chan:
http://www.studio-br.com/blog/2011/1…lawrence-chan/
3) Systems are Sexy with Leeann Marie:
http://www.studio-br.com/blog/2011/1…-leeann-marie/
4) Creating a Client Focused Business:
http://www.studio-br.com/blog/2011/1…used-business/

Session Topic: Digital vs. Physical

Are product sales dead? Do prints matter any more? These photographers will share the ways they’ve incorporated (or steered away from) physical products in their business as well as explore new ways they’ve found to take advantage of digital technology. Listen in to these solidly different viewpoints and be challenged to examine how you’re currently approaching digital and physical product sales in your own business.

*** Just a note that panels discussions are paraphrased and not direct quotes.

—-

Panel Introductions….

Q: Can you provide and overview of how you provide digital and physical products in your business?
A: (Sam) I do both; I give them an iPad with their images preloaded.  What happens when your iPad dies though?  I love printed, physical pieces too (for grandma too).  (Kevin)  You have to decide how to stage the story.  Every client gets an album, it’s just a matter of how many pages.  My clients get a 20 page credit to get started.  I just bring one or two to the initial meeting but until it’s their event, there’s a disconnect.  After the wedding within the first few days, we share the album layout to the clients and publicly.  Now there’s a connection and ownership.  Typically my clients edit 10% from the original design.  You can make the digital happen quickly and hook the physical product. (Jody) We want to give our clients a reason and a tool to talk about us in order to create brand evangelists for us.  We do an onsite wedding edit to build buzz and then the next day or two, we post images on Facebook (a sneak peek).  We always get the full party wedding names ahead of time and friend them after the wedding.  We’re sure to upload a photo of the bridal party so everyone can tag themselves.  We also create client sites with Showit.  For physical products, we offer smaller, little KISS album duplicate books as a gift that arrives after their album.

Q: How has the print media and image consumption changed recently?
A: In 2002, print production was at its peak.  In 2010, print consumption (image taking and viewing) has tripled; however print production has halved.

Q: Do you tell your clients ahead of time about sharing a reception slideshow? (Audience Question)
A: (Sam, Kevin, Jody) Yes, I do…but I don’t really tell them and don’t include it in the contract. The goal is to under promise and over deliver.  (Michael) Yes, and I charge extra.

Q: What about prints? (Audience)
A: (Jody) We only sell canvas and albums in studio and say ‘go online’ for Pictage prints.  We focus on the bigger ticket items that make the most of our time.  (Michael) People still buy a lot of prints and it’s all about the education you give your clients ahead of time.  We provide a digital thank you and ask for email addresses in order to send out notification when images are available. (Ed) Photo merchandise is growing through the roof (acrylics, bamboo, metals and unique products).  Prints aren’t going away but they are just not going to double.  Your job is still to document and show the emotional memory and use the new products to do so.

Q: Do you sell digital individual images?
A: (Sam) Yes, I sell digital download images on Pictage.  (Kevin) Yes, it’s a part of our customer service.

Liveblogging PartnerCon 2011: Systems are Sexy with Leeann Marie

Session Topic: Systems are Sexy!

Stop wasting my time! Learn how “Lean Engineering” principles can continuously improve your business, your customer base, and your bottom line. It’s not sexy. But it’s true. Our businesses are dependent on systems. Our schedules fill up and we have little time left to see how systems impact our businesses’ quality, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Leeann will introduce you to the core concepts of “Lean Engineering,” and show you how they can be implemented into your business. By eliminating complexity and waste, you can achieve superb customer satisfaction, higher profits, and more free time!

…. let’s begin!

—-

Creating systems isn’t about pigeon holing yourself, it’s about creating a lean machine in order to offer more to your clients and eliminate waste.  Leeann’s sharing more about herself, her background in industrial engineering and her photography business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…

Systems and Methods: A Way of Doing Things

Objectives:

1) What is Quality?
2) What is Lean?
3) 7 Examples of Waste
4) Implementing Lean Projects

Doing work to get it done, not just for the sake of ‘doing work.’

QUALITY

Why Use Systems?
Improve Quality – keep consistency up by using systems
Increase Profitability
Satisfy Customers
Eliminate Complexity
Reduce Waste

With No Systems, you get:
Quality Varies
Profits Fluctuate
Customer Satisfaction Changes
Things Done Differently Each Time

Your clients determine the level of quality of your business.

The Cost of Poor Quality:
Customer complaints
Poor reviews
Long cycle times
Missed clients
Poor reviews or overbooking
Excessive worrying
Missed time with family & friends
Potential closing of business

The things that our clients hire us for:
Expected: Taking good pictures
Performance: Answering emails, deliver nice albums, edit images quickly and well

The things that our clients hire us for that they don’t say:
Excitement: Blog images with story, remembering names, thank you gifts, providing other wedding related insights.

Through time, excitement becomes the expected…and the cycle continues.

LEAN

By being lean, you embrace change and eliminate waste, improving flow.  Anywhere work is being done, waste is being generated.

Being lean means:

1) Understand business, gaps and areas for improvement
2) Communicate well
3) Implement changes

Why Lean?  Because you don’t want to be in the ‘survivor’ category.  If you’re not doing it, than something else is going to be doing it better and coming up with something first.  There is ALWAYS room for improvement.

How do you find areas of improvement and identify areas of waste?
What is waste? Something that doesn’t change your final product, not done right the first time and a client doesn’t pay for…

WORMPIT=

W -Waiting (waiting for something to process for you to get things done; ex: images to import from a wedding, waiting for images to be edited, actions to process, waiting for album design or delivery)
Use Lexar Firewire Card Readers piggybacked
Import and backup simultaneously – using Photo Mechanic
Upload overnight
Enhance internet speed

O – Overproduction (How much of something to you really need to create?)
R – Rework (Are you creating great work from the initial input?  Do you understand how to use your tools?)
Reshooting
Cropping/Poor Composition
Exposure/White Balancing
Re-Exporting
…etc.

Leeann is sharing insight on how to share clear expectations to her second shooter so that you don’t create rework.  She has a specific list to share with her shooter.

M – Motion (How to reduce personal motion.  i.e. creating e-mail templates with simple personal messages or using keyword shortcuts for your editing with a Wacom tablet, RPG keys, etc.)

P – Processing (Are your client’s expectations matching up with your editing?  We’re all guilty of playing with images to get them perfect and often go overboard on the edits.  Get to the point in your emails…be short and sweet.)

Be artists at heart but let your business surround your decisions.  – Leeann Marie

I - Inventory (Excessive inventory can be a way to mask other issues.  Constant availability proves commodity status.)
T - Transportation (Do you plan your days and the amount of driving you’re doing?)

Lean projects:

1) Identify an area of waste
2) Identify where you are and where you want to be.
3) Write down your current process
4) Determine improvement methods
5) Repeat over time for additional savings
6) Continuous improvement

Standardize:
1) Delete old blog/FB watermark actions
2) Always import and cull the same way
3) Create vendor images in LR Web Gallery
4) Update workflows in ShootQ

It will provide, consistency, reliability, ability to outsource…

Improving your photography business:
What are your workflows?
How do you track and email clients?
What work do you enjoy/hate?
What do your clients pay you for?
What are you bringing to your “Excitement” category?

Leeann uses ShootQ for tracking and following up clients and maintains consistent workflow.  Uses ShootDotEdit and Pictage for Album design and editing.

SUMMARY:
- Think of quality from your customers standpoint
- Implement lean to compete in today’s marketplace
- Add to your ‘excitement’ category by streamlining the rest
- WORMPIT
- Implement LEAN projects, even if they are small
- Always continue to improve