How did I get the offer?  Well, I spoke with their team about the top 10 mistakes wedding photographers make with their web marketing and SEO.  Noting that there is nothing but opportunity in the wedding photography industry online and web marketing is the PERFECT medium to gab with brides to be.  Pictures are so personal, each one has a story, each one has meaning.  Being in the middle of transition between 10 years of web marketing to full time wedding photographer has been a fantastic experience but one of my big goals is to speak to photogs and empower them to do more with their websites to drive leads through the door.  Coming from an outside perspective hopefully is a refreshing angle…

SEO and web marketing is not the sexiest thing to talk about – especially at 8 pm at night after dinner!  Oftentimes it’s a “oh, I should do this” rather than a “I gotta do this.”  Or even if wedding photographers want to, sometimes they don’t know where to start, the right questions to ask to hire someone, or what is a typical budget and realistic goals for SEO.  That’s what the basis of the presentation was – a beginning.  A beginning of foundational topics to build traffic to your website, get the visitor to do what you want them to do and measure the results.

Total left brain?  Maybe, but I brought local brew as incentive and it worked well

Many thanks to the bootcampers for keeping wide-eyed and bushy-tailed during a brainy topic late in your day!  I look forward to your one-on-one reviews today with Kevin and Clare and answering your questions individually.

*Bootcamper incentive: Don’t forget wedding photographers!  SnapKnot wedding directory is offering bootcamper attendees 1/2 off the first month premium membership (comment below if you’re interested!).  *Expires Nov 12th

**Presentation Notes: Bootcampers, if you would like a copy of my presentation, leave a comment below and we’ll get you a copy.  Thanks!

Best,

Wendy

PS.  Special thanks to my hubby for all his support and snapping some shots for posterity   Love you babe.

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.

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

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!

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.

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:

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….

If you’re a wedding photographer and only want to shoot outdoors with creative brides, that should be the majority of what imagery you show on your website.  It’s not just your ‘style’ but the subtly of only demonstrating the types of clients, locations and personality you want to do more of.  We all say at one point, “gosh this couple is awesome, I want to clone them!”  Ask yourself why that particular wedding was so great and demonstrate those traits to attract more of that type of client.

For us, we want clients that are outgoing, outdoorsy and adventurous – even a little quirky!  Our goal is to attract creative, non-traditional couples that are head-over-heels in love and carefree.

So, always think of your branding/marketing/website as a step ahead of where you are with the business now.  It’s a simple way of visually creating your destiny.

Here’s a sample of one of our brides going the extra mile last weekend…