Archives : Web Marketing For Wedding Photographers

Grab Your Facebook Username – Limited Supply! Web Marketing For Wedding Photographers

Cheesy sales tactic I know, I know but this is important and takes literally 1 minute.

Why It’s Important:
Claiming your business Facebook (FB) username is as important as claiming your domain name of your website, once you secure it, no one else can get it.  It’s an easy way to change the URL of your facebook page…

FROM: http://www.facebook.com/pages/company-acme-photography/106869342666733 (BAD!)

TO: http://www.facebook.com/companyacmephotography (GOOD!)

Not only is it easier to market but it’s nice and clean in your Google results too (see example below)

How To Do It:

1)   Start a FB business page if you don’t have one already (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php)

2)   Gather at least 25 fans or friends/family that ‘like’ the page (down from the previous 100 required)

3)   Login and claim your username (http://www.facebook.com/username)

1. You must be an admin of the business page you’re trying to claim
2. Make sure you’re claiming your business page (It says ‘Set Username for Pages’ and NOT your personal profile with your business name – VERY IMPORTANT.

It’s difficult to impossible to change your username after you’ve claimed it or if it’s already been claimed by someone else (or your personal profile accidentally), you would have to get creative and come up with another username.

Now you have a marketing URL that’s easy to remember for your clients, great for Google and can be utilized on traditional marketing material, emails, business cards and more.  Don’t DELAY, go for it before it’s too late.

Kevin Kubota’s 20th Digital Photography Bootcamp Training (cue balloons!)

by: Wendy Roe

I sit here giggling in my seat from excitement and a littl’ bit o’ nerves as I write this post.  I’ve been invited to speak at Kevin Kubota’s 20^th Bootcamp and take part in a small portion along with the big boys: Doug Gordon, Craig Strong, and Bend’s own Ben Edwards with special appearances by Dane Sanders, Bill Sorenson, and Jules & Joy Bianchi.  Whew, now you see why?!

If you haven’t heard of or participated in the Kubota Image Tools Bootcamp, Byron and HIGHLY recommend it.  Byron went through it two years ago and it sent our workflow and focus into hyperdrive, saving us buckets of time/energy into our overall workflow, business direction and success.

As many of you know, I’ve spent the last 10 years in the world of Web/Internet marketing and just recently switched full time into wedding photography with my husband.  These two passions – web marketing and wedding photography are bound to collide.  My hope is to help photographers decode the world of web, including: SEO, design trends, links, paid advertising, blending traditional and web advertising, focused and trackable social media marketing, analytics and more!

Blah, you say!  Spending time with your brain’s other half isn’t always easy as artists but my goal in this session is educate and help photographers avoid common pitfalls.  There are many super common mistakes that photographers make with their websites and between a speaking session and one-on-one website reviews with Kevin and Clare, we’re bound to set you forth in a way that will shift your thoughts about the web.

HURRY, HURRY, these always fill up fast:
Full Kubota Bootcamp Details and Registration – November 7-13th, 2010
SummitUp Pre-Workshop Sessions – Novemeber 6-7th, 2010

“Kevin’s a real inspiration as he gives 100% of his enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge to everyone attending.  His Bootcamp workshops should be mandatory on every pro photogs checklist.”

- Byron Roe, 2008 bootcamper

Facebook Social Plugins Are Little Gems – Web Marketing for Wedding Photographers

Social Media, and for wedding photographers, especially Facebook (FB) can accelerate marketing like wildfire. We’ve heard this before, so here’s a few FB gems to learn more about and setup to light the match.

If you haven’t already checked out this page, here’s an overview of the plugins FB offers:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Now that I’ve scared everyone with techie jargon and CODE (yikes!), let me point you to two of my favorite plugins:

Facebook Like Button
The FB Like Button is relatively new and handy addition to your blog. With a minor code addition, it connects your blog posts to the viewers profile and notifies their network that they like your post – and the beauty is there’s a handy link to your blog post and SITE!

FB Like Button on Blog Example:

Results of ‘Like’ On Facebook Profile Example:

Facebook Like Box
The FB Like Box is also a great credit builder to have on your website to show new visitors that land on your site first that you have a FB page and have a network of past clients and friends that actively participate in your brand. You can customize this to show your feed or just link to your page and show your fan base. Cross linking your social profiles with your site is an easy, quick way to stoke the fire.

Website FB Like Box Example:

If you’re comfortable with light HTML, these may be easily added to your site and blog, otherwise, speak with your web developer for the best way to add these gems!

Planning Ahead With Social Media – Web Marketing for Wedding Photographers

Usually ‘planning ahead’ and ‘social media’ don’t really make it into the same sentence very often.  The pull of social media is that it is real live journalism happening right NOW!  So as marketers that poses a great challenge because it’s so easy to be consumed by social media (ahemm, Facebook for me).  Ya feeling me?

Because nobody really likes to see tweets in Facebook (FB) or FB posts in Twitter (with the ever obvious link at the end), it makes it difficult to not only get your relevant content out there for marketing but also easily repurpose it whether you’re writing in 140 characters or not.

One tool, that has been a life-saver and magnificent for pre-planning social media releases is Hootsuite.  It brings all your social networking to one, web-based platform and allows you to schedule tweets, FB posts, WordPress blog posts, LinkedIn status updates,  and more.

It also brings in keyword monitoring for Twitter, multi-account management and even a robust feature for user permissions.  So, monitoring and posting to multiple personal accounts, our business accounts and local AdFed accounts gets a little easier to manage.

Recent HootSuite5 features also include a handy thumbnail for FB images and Google Analytics integration which is just plain HOT.

Hope you like it as much as I do:  http://www.hootsuite.com

PS:  WAY better than Tweetdeck in my opinion.

You Want Me To Go WHERE? – Web Marketing For Wedding Photographers

There was a day and time (like 2005) where the trend in website design was to have the prospective customer ‘pick’ where they go next.  A plethora of menu options would be available and the client would go straight to the menu and bop around.  Sound like your website?

Stop! This is a trend that is slowing dying (thankfully) and it’s your turn to stand up and kick your sales into action.  Like any good sales person, you guide the conversation with your prospective client in your meeting based off of what you hear your client’s needs and goals are.  The web is no different.

One of the of the biggest assets your website can have is a pro-active strategy to guide your prospective clients through your site.  You do that by creating what I call a ‘Calls To Action’ for each page.

Each page needs to have a Call To Action to guide the customer to the next click.  Hopefully, like most wedding photogs, we want the customer to be guided to the contact page and phone number!

By making it big, bold, inviting and clickable, your inquiry contacts will grow.  Don’t rely on the slideshow imagery and a menu to make the sale for you.  Jump in there and guide the customer through what you want them to see and land.

Is the ultimate goal of your website big, bold, inviting and clickable?

Here’s an example:

Be Brave, Focus – and conquer all: Web Marketing For Wedding Photographers

Most photog websites highlight recent shoots and show variety because everyone loves variety, right?  WRONG.  Customers are looking for experts – niche dialed, experienced and focused.

Why you ask?
This is a cultural shift that has happened where with the onset of highly specific information available on the web, people tend to rely on and go to areas where information surrounding their interests reside.  If you want information on social media, you go to Mashable – not the USA Today.  You want info on photography, you go to WPPI, or PPA or [b]ecker. More and more, your customers are segmenting their information to align with their interests (which is why the newspapers of the world are suffering).

So, how do you do this?  The first thing you need to do is be fearless and know that by targeting your specific niche, you’re not pigeon-holing yourself for less work.  It actually works out the opposite.  The second thing is to identify your target market.

Who do you want to work with?

1)   Personality type

2)   Age

3)   Locations

4)   Travel or No Travel

5)   Traditional or Non-traditional

6)   ….

The last thing to do is to align your website/brand/marketing around your target market.

Please don’t fall into the crack of “I do weddings, portraits, pet, commercial, architectural, product, nature and landscape photography. What do you need?”

Be BRAVE, FOCUS in the direction you want to go – and conquer all.

And because a post is not as fun without a photo….