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Print, Online, SEO and Social Media Marketing

we've talked about goals and metrics we've talked about. You have talked about why your business doesn't just shouldn't just be based on you, but has to be based on you has to be built around you. And then we've parlayed that into talking about how to create a system. A structure for your business, a business model, if you will. You know, we talked about how this model allows you to be able to then make more decisions on the behalf of your business. To have that flexibility have that freedom to grow that business in the direction you want to go and we're gonna look out now is marketing. And this is a topic that everyone is always asking me about and let me see here. I get my clicker right. There we go. I was blocking with my hand. So marketing is a topic that everyone is always asking me about. And what we're gonna do is go through all the different versions of marketing from the top down, and we're gonna look at each type of market. It's available to photographers, and what we're gonn...

a do is examine that we're gonna look at it and I'm gonna try to take you guys on the course and just share with you the ups and the downs that I've experienced in each one is that by any stretch of imagination, Ah, precursor for what you should do know is does that mean that you know your experiences to be the same as my experiences? Know what? I'm going to try to really do its share with you behind the scenes, why you should or shouldn't use each one and really, where we're headed with this, Where we're going is what I believe to be the most powerful type of market available to us as photographers and his entrepreneurs as Stella Preneurs is client referrals. So we'll get to that. And that's that's really the meat and potatoes of this. I'm gonna show you guys how to attract more client referrals because I think that's what nobody wants. I mean, I know I'm always looking for more climb referrals. They come in already ready. They're perfectly suited for my brand and for my style and my business. And they're ready to book. They come in excited, and so we're gonna go through how to get a lot of those because that's that's the angle. It's okay. Print advertising. That would be where I like to start. When I talk about marketing, this is This is a version of market that's been around for a long, long time. Now, print magazines have been there from the very beginning of weddings. It seems, since they could, since they could start printing. And the upside of this is the exposure. If you look at the upside of being having an ad in a magazine is the exposure. You know you're gonna get a ton of exposure. You're gonna get out to a lot of people. It could be local if you're in a local magazine. I know we have several local magazines in San Diego. Two or three main ones that have been around for a while produced some gorgeous publications. Some may be sometimes regional, you know that not has regional magazines or some regional magazines that are out there. There's also the national ones, the big ones, the Grace, her Monde's and the wedding style in those kinds of things. So there's many different levels of being in print advertising, and you could have many different types of print ads you could have it. Add that you place. That's an obvious ad for your company. Ah, big bomb and photographers logo and signature image and you know it has are our company information on it. It has the, you know, the website and all those different things. We've all seen the ads. There's also, you know, just getting featured in a national magazine or in a local magazine, whether that's through a real wedding, whether that's through, maybe a feature article that you write so this kind of exposure encompasses a lot, But really, we're looking at the print, and what I want to talk about today is the advertising component of it. So getting featured in a print publication is different then advertising in a print publication and a kind of meat. Two different types of things both have the same audience, but it's a different mindset going into it, trying to get featured versus trying to advertise. And I want to talk about the advertising because that's the kind of marketing that I get asked about the most. Do I advertising a magazine or do I not? So we know the upside. Is the exposure the downside? Well, The first downside is is very expensive, and you look at that compared to other kinds of marketing. It's really one of most expensive kind of marketing that we could do as photographers. I know that when we've done, I think this was full page or two page in San Diego just for a local magazine, not even regional would be somewhere between five and $10,000 so that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, especially when you look at the other two downsides. You're not meeting them at the point of sale, so you're not mean. But the point is that they're not gonna buy Purchase a wedding photographer at the moment they're looking through Ready Magazine. They're not ready to buy. They're not even by your portfolio. They don't even online. They're not even in your studio are nowhere near where they're gonna buy, And that's always been where the downsides of print advertising is. You meet them, but by the time they get to the point where they're gonna buy, you're not there anymore. That magazine has been moved on and kind of set to the side, so you're not reaching them when they're at a point where they want to buy. It's also very hard to track. And we all know this because we take I don't know about you guys. I took out my first magazine at and I was asking everyone. So where did you hear about us? From online. So on. So a friend or, you know, I was at the such and such venue and they talked about you and no one was saying I heard about you from the magazine. And if you're not careful, you just quickly, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater there and you're like, This is not working. This is definitely not working. No one is calling me from this magazine. And that's the thing. You're not gonna get many calls from the magazine. You're not gonna get any emails where they say I heard about you from the magazine. That doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't work. But what that really points back to is that this is very hard to track. Here's the thing about print advertising. I got engaged 455 years ago now, and the first thing that my mom did when she found out that we were my wife and I were engaged is run out and buy, Buy, buy, Buy Sarah everybody magazine that she could find the shelf. He walks over carries, plops him down. And my wife's kind of like, Oh my gosh, this is a lot of these are a lot of magazines and so they start looking through and, you know, and that's kind of what brides do when they first get engaged. And, you know, I think it's great because, you know, it's kind of a ritual. It's kind of, ah, thing that a lot of women do. I don't see many men right now to get the bridal magazines, but most of the bride. So in our target market of weddings that I'm talking about, that could be really great. You can apply this across to other forms of print advertising you might do in your market, but what you really have to look at is what's the goal here with the print hat and the goal with print advertising? If your goal is to book more clients, I don't think it's a great place to go. I really don't think that print advertising is where you need to be if your goal is to book more clients, and that's because of what we talked about her. In the downsides. It's a very expensive spend to get clients. You're going to spend a lot of money per client that you book to get that client like we're talking upwards of. I mean, if you spend $5000 in a magazine ad and you book clients, which I'm pretty sure one would tell you, is a lot of clients. The book You spent $500 per client to get to get that client. It's a lot of money to spend to get a client. If you're only charging $ a wedding, you spend 500 just to get that client. That's a lot of money. And so the downsides air really big Now There are ways to use print advertising that I do think make a lot of sense, and we used it for brand awareness and brand awareness sounds really flu fee and kind of like a rebrand. We'll have brand awareness this year, and it can. If you don't have a good goal in mind, it can just end up being that. But what we used it for is in 2000 and seven and 2008 when we started making a big push to be known in San Diego as a clear choice for for wedding photography. And we wanted other vendors to know who we were. And so what we did was we started taking out an ad or two each year, starting about 2007. That was the first year that maybe 2006 when we place the magazine and what we found Waas. When we previously we would show up at a wedding and we'd introduce ourselves to the deejay. We introduce ourselves to the florist and they'd say, Oh, Hai Hari and I say, Good. My name is Jared With bombing photographers like, Oh, it's great to meet you. Yeah, you know, you have a car to love the signature images and and that was kind of processing. When we started taking out the magazine ads, we show that wedding side goes to the same thing. I go to the floor, say Hi, my name's Jared. I'm with Bomb of Photographers and all of a sudden the tone started change and I traced it back to when we started taking out the magazine. Yet now the tone was, Oh, I'm so excited to work with you. Oh, my gosh, I've really been hoping we'd have a wedding together, and so all of a sudden, the tone started changing, and we're gonna talk about vendor referrals here a little bit later. But magazine ads can work really well when you're trying to. I guess at the end of the day, when you're trying to increase your brand and it can be a great opportunity for you to use to support another leg of where you want to grow your business and how you want a market on its own, I don't think it's the best form of marketing. I don't think it's great for purely generation alone. I, like Jeff, welcomes quote that he always to tell me advertising, and he'll be on later today. But his quotas half of advertising costs are wasted. The trick is knowing which half and I think that really kind of sums up the just the rial nebulous system that is print advertising nowadays, so it can be great. I hope I share with you one example of how could be great. But I don't think it's great right now, days for purely generation and just advertising a print magazine. So online advertising. Let's kind of move onto the next thing online advertising. And really, what we're looking at here is this is maybe to take out an ad on the knot dot com or another local publication. There's a lot of different ones out there, and some are national summer regional. Some serve national across the board, but then go into the regions that you're in. Others are specifically just for your region. And so this would be like an online ad. What are the upsides to these online ads taken out online version of basically what a print advertisement is? Well, it's a broad platform, and what I mean by Broad platform is that, you know, it just has a huge presence, a lot of opportunity for people to see People can search from all over the world. In San Diego, people are booking their wedding in San Diego from New York and from Paris and from up states in upstate California and from all over the world. People come to se you get married. Ah, print ad doesn't work as well because they don't get to see print ads when they're from out of town. You know, they have to come into town to see that print ad, but an online ad they can see from anywhere they can see that from anywhere, and a lot of people search online now. It also helps with your search engine rankings. You know, having a good link, a good, strong link back to your website and all that helps you rise in the search engine rankings and that that could be a very good thing. Brides shop online, and so it gives you a bookable presence. And actually, with those top to help to support a broad platform and the search engine brides do, they're searching online nowadays, you know, across the board a lot of bride search online, and the other thing is that compared to the other sides of advertising, it's actually pretty cheap. It could be 45 $600 for a year with some of these more regional ones. The not can be a lot more that I know, and there's others like that. That could be a lot more expensive but relatively speaking, compared what we're just talking about a second ago. It could be a lot cheaper than other forms of advertising. What are the downsides? Well, because it's so easy and because it's so cheap. There's a lot of photographers who do that. There's a lot of photographers who have ads, and it's very hard to distinguish yourself. You get what, like a little 75 by 75 tile and expected to try to make a difference. By with that, you get 100 words if you're lucky, so you can easily get lost in the shuffle. Here it's very easy to get lost in the shuffle. I just hope that that not be the data in preparation for this in San Diego, And I was I was like, Wow, they're a ton of photographers on here. Eso it. You know, there's just a lot that goes on, and it's hard to create distinction. You can really get lost in the shuffle. What's another downside? Well, you know, bad lease. You know, you get this from advertising or having an online presence, you get a lot of people who are just price shopping and just firing off that email to every single person. Like, I swear they just go on there. They just hit 100 people $100 on here. I got a lunch break. We'll just go through and fire often emailed every single one of them, and it's just the same email, and it takes your time and your energy to deal with those leads. And most of them don't in the booking. They're looking for the best deal. They're looking for the best type of price to value ratio, so it doesn't end up being a very good lead. And last once again, it's very hard to track. You know, people will search while they're at work. They'll search whether at home, at night, they'll narrow it down. They'll show their fiance. A couple of days later, they'll go talk to their friends, go to a whole host of things, and when they took the phone to call you, they probably won't say, Oh, yeah, you know, I saw you online. They might say I was talking to someone. So are you know, so it is very hard to track. Often times they will tell you. I heard about you on this website, but that's actually kind of rare. You know, it doesn't always go that way. And so my recommendation is that this could be really good when you're just starting out. Online advertising was what we used were just starting out, but otherwise I would avoid it in large quantities just because of the downsides. Over there, you get a lot of bad leads and you can typically really get lost in the shuffle. There we This is how we started as a company back when we were on optical realities. Photography probably still find some of her old ads in the archive somewhere. And we started by and really that was the only way I knew how to build my business back in 4003. I had no experience, no knowledge about this. I mean, Creativelive wasn't around to help me out. And so I just started by taking out all these online ads, and it worked because I got a lot of people calling me, and it felt good. Feels good when you just open your business and people are calling you. It's like a The phones were ringing, things were good, and if that whole feeling busy versus feeling productive and the phone's ringing and I would book a few of them. I was cheap. I was a great value. I didn't know much about how to get my name out there. And so it worked well, Looking back on it, it really helped. We're starting, but it's really was hard to book it on my bride. And it didn't take long before we came to a point where it no longer made sense to book that online bride. So those are the upsides and downsides. I know it's very tempting. Yes, probably. I'll get a Brazilian phone calls Ah, year from everything from the not to yelp toe the local, you know, the ones that e mails from the local regional ones, and so it could be hard to be very tempting to take a chance at it. And if it's the right thing at the right time, it can really work well. It can also, you have to be prepared for the different leads you get and how how many you get and how that doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing well. It just means that you're attracting a lot of people who are interested in what typically can break down to value oriented shopping. So next up would be straight up search engine optimization, and this is S CEO. So this is trying to rank high and Google, so supposed to be on a paid site. This is trying to rank when somebody searches such and such wedding photographer, San Diego wedding photographer. This is trying to make sure you show up at the top. And so one of the upsides of this well, natural is better. Everyone believes natural is better in surveys. People believe that when you're not advertising when they find you naturally in Google, that that is more authentic and is more representation of who really should be at the top. And a natural ranking site stands out far more than a directory listing two people. So you know, it's much better in the last one to rank to be at the top. Organic is very organic, you know. It has an organic presence, and people give more weight to that. And so inside of S E O. You can have paid organic. When you think about, you know, you go to Google and there's those paid ads in the right hand side. And then there's the actual search engine results, and people are starting to pick up that what's on the right is paid and what's found. You know, Google's done enough work to make sure that you can still see what's authentic and what is paid. Eso people give more ranked to the organic They kind of waited more so naturally, ranking high. The top of Google has a lot of advantages. I mean, people search thousands upon thousands upon tens of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of times just for terms like San Diego wedding photographer. If you just typed in Wedding Photographer, it's million's and million's and million's of searches, and it's so hard to rank their and so if you get to the top of that, it's a hard It's a challenge, and it's hard work. But what you really find is you do get a lot of leads because people search on Google nowadays and you get a lot of leads and a lot of leads leads to a lot of traffic. It's not necessarily a great quality lead, but you don't necessarily have that predisposition to the bad quality lead. So people that are searching on directories you typically whenever you get a lead from them, more often than not, it's gonna be a lead that's looking for a deal. That's just what I've learned over the years. That's a personal opinion, nothing more and ranking high and Google. You still get a lot of those kinds of leads, but you also get some of the others. So you don't like your eliminating or reducing the number of badly you're getting. You still get the same amount. You just get a few good leads in there. It seems to, you know, I was talking. I had lunch last week with one of my grooms, who he shot his wedding way back in a waiter 09 And he was saying Is telling me about how you just he brought it up. He's told me I found you on Google. I literally typed standing a wedding photographer and found you guys and met you guys. And I was like, This is perfect. You guys are so cool. And so he booked us. And so you know, Google can give you plenty of good leads. Just also will give you a lot of leads, and there's gonna be some bad ones in there as well. Downsides, price sensitivity and, again, people shopping online, you know, online is a great place to buy, but the terrible place to sell. So be a vendor online. If you're shopping online, it's a great place to buy. You can search around. You can find a great deal. What's awful place. So selling online is awful, and so is the person who has a business who is now selling online. It's a terrible place to sell, and you're gonna run into the same price sensitivity factors, and you do still get a lot of those badly. You're gonna get a lot of them. You'll get some good ones in there as well. But you're gonna get a lot of bad leave. We have. We have gone through the process of making sure that we ranked high in Google, and I can't recommend if you're gonna focus on that. I really recommend hiring a professional, make the investment of that song you want to do because there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of rules, and I didn't know all the rules, and so we rank very high and Google after a little while many years ago, and we learned some techniques to help us. But one little thing we didn't know and there's apparently a 1,000,000 of these little things need to know. One little thing we didn't know is that you can't have your font color be too similar to the background. So I said, Well, what's to similar? And they sent me a very long explanation. And this, like, you know, goes into detail about the color code and all that kind of stuff. But we got blacklisted from Google for a year and 1/2 because one of our font colors, which I wasn't trying to game the system. But one of our fun colors was too close in their eyes to the background color of our website. And so they delisted us from Google. And if you searched for bombing for democracy, still couldn't even find us. And I didn't know every rule. I thought I knew a decent amount. I didn't know every rule. So if you're gonna do it, I recommend hiring someone. I put up a name of somebody who I've used for our bombing photographers, Jason Grub and he's fantastic. Obviously, the point I'm trying to make is to hire someone professional, do this. And the second thing is to do it targeted. So don't just go for wedding. Photographer. Don't go for what you're never gonna get there. You're gonna be working for years. Don't go for even San Diego wedding photographer. Because while that might be a broad search and while you're right, you might be able to get that you're gonna get a lot of people who are just looking for a deal who are value shopping If you and as we discover together of the next three days, as we discover what you specialize in as we discover what you know what your business is based on the unique you, the authentic you. If you can find a message a purpose and then target that target those types of weddings target those types of clients those portrait's target, whatever it is you're in that niche you're in and target people and a search term that grabs those people. I really think this could be effective. This could be really effective because then you're not getting a bunch of bad leads, but you're only getting people who are searching for something very specific and want to find you. Other than that, it's You're gonna get a lot of a lot of stuff from it. You're doing a lot of a lot of leads, a lot of traffic, and it might or might not play out the way you want it to. Any questions so far from you guys? I want to ask you guys before we move on to kind of some of the next stuff. The 1st 3 we went over so far print advertising. We also went over, You know, both search engine optimization and online advertising. Have any of you guys have any experience with you? These? I'd love to hear from you guys before we move on and actually gonna go back so we don't jump too far ahead. Have any of you guys experienced any of these and I want to hear how it went for you, you know? And what you got? Start your Julie. I did a full page ad in a local magazine for about I think, a full year, maybe a year and 1/2. And I found the same kind of results that no one really booked me from the magazine. But if I was in a wedding consultation and I wanted to show them the wedding that I had published on my ad next to it, I felt like it added some credibility. Maybe with the parents or the spouse or whoever was there, But it didn't directly do anything that wasn't already gonna happen. Yeah, Yeah. Did it make you feel more confident? I know it is a little bit like that. It is awesome. Do you feel like there was any dish besides the meeting? Was there any additional benefit that you got out of it? Going to a wedding or, you know, on shoots or when you're meeting with people when you're talking with that bribe doesn't help to say that. Yeah. I mean, it felt like it did, but that's not It definitely wasn't worth how many thousands of spent. So yeah, so you might have been It might have felt like a little bit, but compared how much you spend? It was definitely not worth it. Exactly. Okay. Yeah, that's I hear that a lot from people, you know, from people that say guy, I didn't really see any results necessarily from it. Yeah. Anybody else with online advertising or social events are not social media search engine optimization having experiences all over you. And I did. I did, like, one year membership of the wedding wire actually did get a lot of leads. And in my experience, I got 1/ of them were pretty credible, You know, the 3/4 of it. You know, it was the same things that you talked about in terms of, you know, they would just kind of price match and see what you would offer. And, you know, usually the quarter that actually responded very well would actually meet me in person. I would actually, from that lead, I would go. Hey, would you like me in person? We can talk more about that. So my experience with at least with online advertising, it's kind of helped me kind of get my exposure out there in terms of my business. But it still felt the same. No, The downsides on that aspect. Yeah, there are some downside, no doubt about it. And like I said, we used it. We used the online advertising to kind of really help propel in the very beginning, and it was great because there is a point, your business when you're trying to just book clients and you're trying to get a lot of experience. You're trying to make sure that your booking, your booking, your get experience and then it worked great for that really did. And it wasn't until we wanted to kind of take that next step that we had to leave that behind because we weren't getting the type of clients we really needed from that cool and then ending from the online audience. You know, the next question from online is from a photograph. ICS Miami. Who says What are your thoughts on Facebook? Ads? Focus on your target market using demographics, which is a great question. And I see your next life. Yeah, we're talking about Facebook. We won't I don't like her Facebook and so actually touched on it right now. Facebook ads. I have not done much with Facebook ads, and so I'll just be totally transparent that I haven't done a lot with Facebook advertising. The people I've talked to have done Facebook ads have said, Yeah, it hasn't really brought any direct benefit for them and I think it goes back to again. The goal and the goal is if the goal is just to expand your brand, it could be great because you get more eyes on what you're doing from the people I've talked to. They said that Facebook ads haven't really lead to hold out of extra bookings because people Facebook is different than online. Facebook is about connecting, and so on ad doesn't seem to translate with people that's connecting. You know, it kind of feels almost like Starbucks selling their varies mo pod coffee rather than tea tea works well. The pod coffee doesn't work well because it doesn't promote the community experience. And I think that Facebook is struggling with ads and people buying it on that because they go there to experience community, they don't go there to buy. And so that's the only friction that I see existing right now with Facebook ads. However perfect transition. I think that social media and Facebook in general is a fantastic place to be, is a photographer and a fantastic place to go when you want to market your business. So let's talk about social media, How many of you guys are on social media. Go up good. All the cameraperson saw that too. Thank you. Social media is fantastic and I'm gonna talk about its upsides and downsides cause there are down sides still can still be fantastic and have a downside. So let's kind of go through social media and I'm gonna really be positioning social media here as Facebook. Even though I know there's Twitter, There's Pinterest is all those things. I think Facebook is the most powerful version for photographers. I think Pinterest is also great. So is Twitter, But I'm gonna be just phrasing everything from the Facebook standpoint and then if we have any questions about how that spins out, we can talk about that. Okay, So the upside the first upside to me is that this is the first thing we've talked about where you are truly branding you and it gives you the opportunity to customize and control the experience that people have when they go to your Facebook page. So again, a nup side here is that it's all about you and you get to control everything about that. So branding wise, you get to put what you want to put up. You get to say what you want to say. You have control that experience and it is truly an interactive experience. Remember, we talked about Starbucks and I posted the quote from the Starbucks investor the past reset. Now, now investor. He didn't talk about the product at Starbucks. I didn't talk about the coffee. He talked about number. He talked about the experience. He talked about how it was missing the EC Starbucks experience. And I like it because Facebook's the first thing that we've seen so far in this path, where we can start to actually incorporate the experience of being a part of our brand. We can actually start to talk and deal with the experience. And so your branding yourself and then you're also leveraging the power of the referral. It's funny because there are books and books and books and books, and I went to I went to school for business. So I'm telling you, we took classes on how to get to that second and third level of referrals. They talk about that first love of referrals. Is those people in our circle, you know? So if I'm friends with you or if I'm family with you and I book your wedding or a book, Your job, your portrait session. That's my first level. That's my first. My first level really of referrals. Now anybody who's my family or friends, that refers me out to their family or their friends and they book me. That's a second level. And in marketing, really, I mean, prior to Facebook coming out, getting to somebody's second level was the That was the Holy Grail. The more second level bookings you get, the better you're doing. I mean, that's that is where the dynamite is. It's kind of assumed. Yeah, I'll get a decent number of first level referrals and first level bookings. But how do I get to that second level? How do I empower my friends and my family toe? Actively Refer me, you guys. Facebook was literally invented for the photographer. I mean, no, I don't think that that's what What's his face said when he create the company had a movie about it, but I was waiting the whole movie, By the way, I was waiting the entire movie. The, uh what is it called? The social network. I was waiting for the whole movie for him to just come out and say, All right, everyone, I'm gonna come clean. I invented Facebook for professional photographers. There it is. The cat's out the bag because let's look at it. Can you imagine another platform where you can go upload a photo and you can click a button and tag people in that photo? And that photo now not only gets broadcast all of your friends and your followers, but all of theirs to with the click of a button, all you have to do is tag them, and you instantly hit the second level of not one but two people. In this case, the bridegroom. You shoot families. Oh, my goodness. When a person family event in upload that photo to Facebook, you just had eight people's second level again. That's the Holy Grail and marketing. And Facebook allows you do that for free in a community environment that supports that supports your message that supports your you know, your unique experience. I love Facebook for that, and the other one is that it can go viral. I mean, I'm going to show you guys in my next slide. You know how images just can start to go viral. This is just a small example of it. But I've seen images and we all have just get clicked on and clicked on it clicked on and liked and commented on all that and that just pushes it forward. And so Facebook has this power that when you work with people who love your brand, when you work with people who love you and know why they're working with you and you give them the opportunity to talk about it, you given the platform which Facebook is, and you give them that and they go out there and they talk about you and they encourage it with their family and their friends. By the way, they typically attract the same kind of person. And so all that boils down to a viral effect where images experiences can totally go viral. So where the downsides here? Well, the downsides of the Facebook can be a bit of a popularity contest, you know, it really can be a bit of a popularity contest. And, you know, obviously the more friends you have, the more reach you have. Obviously, the you know, the type of friends you have effects that if you're friends with a bunch of people who don't go on Facebook, it's not gonna have much effect for you. The more active your friends are on Facebook, the more active and advantageous it really is for you. So it is the best way I could find a sum. It up is a popularity contest. Sarah and I, my wife and I, we always kind of joke about it. We aren't really the Cubist couple out there, you know, we're not, like, way make it work just fine, trust me. But we're not, like, super lovey dovey and like posting all these photos of us like all that kind of stuff. And so we always joke that we weren't really meant for Facebook is like a couple, you know, we're not like like I don't comment on her wall or center anything. I don't have a probably that, by the way, but that's just not something we do like. I'm pretty sure Sarah didn't facebooking this morning was like, Good luck, honey. You're gonna degree, like, just kind of, you know, we're not really that cute. I guess we're not really current culture couple, but man I think that I think we always talk about how we'd be so much more connected, you know, with with our with our Facebook community. If we if we did stuff like that and it just isn't our first reaction, I still call people in their birthday. I know it's crazy, but I call I actually did a test. A couple years ago, I pulled my birthday on Facebook and I got one. Text was from my mom, and so it's fine, by the way. I signed up for that's why. But it's so funny how, like, you know, we don't get calls anymore. Texting her birthday, we get Facebook messages, and so Facebook can feel like a popularity contest, which you can use you to your advantage. There's no doubt about it, and you can also. It can also be hard for people who have a hard time with that. It could be hard for people who who don't embrace that. I guess I could say second is that it can be a poor platform about you guys all this week. It's been slow and unresponsive. In addition to that, you do have control of how you brand view But you don't have control of what you present, because there is that there, it's at their disposal, and so you don't have a whole lot of control when you post a photo, you know they could crop out your brands. You could cop crop out your your watermark, and all of a sudden the photo doesn't have, you know? I mean, there's a lot of things you can't control on Facebook. It's great when they actually decide to tag you or when they actually decide to share what's not. So great is when you post a photo and tagged them. They're like, Oh, that's awesome! They download it and they re post it and nothing happens from it, you know? And I think a lot of it just comes back to ignorance and them not understanding what we're trying to do is photographers and business owners. At the same time, you lose a lot of control cause a platform isn't necessarily suitable for a business environment, and that's why I think adds kind of struggle. Sometimes on Facebook it's not necessarily built for a B two B B to C platform and so you know, with that being said, I still think Facebook was literally built for photographers. So let me show you a little example of not just how Facebook can be used for your business, but a little twist on how I think would be used for business. A little insight on where I've seen value in Facebook. A little bit of advanced technique, if you will. So here we have on the left, I think left. Yeah, I mean left. There's a photo that I posted after White and I shot It was November 12 2011. And so I shot this one on November 11th 11. Remember? Because there's 11 11 11. And you know, man, we got a Gordon is a great couple. I'm still friends with him on Instagram. We still follow each other. I still keep in touch with them and great wedding down in San Diego, a Z can see we just got a gorgeous sunset. You know, it's kind of the classic photo. There's nothing really special about it, except the fact that it's an awesome, amazing situation and seen and, you know, we lit it so that, you know, they're all lit up in the foreground. We get some color there, and it's just it's a good photo. And I went home that night on the night of November 11th after shot their wedding, and it was my last wedding of the year. That year I get home, my wife has a bottle wine. Okay, it's your last wedding. Let's celebrate, you know, you know, let's just celebrate a great wedding season. And so I was like, I really want to go back and, you know, post my favorite photo. But, oh, it's the end of the year, you know? And so, you know, I post this photo the next day and I just made a comment. I tagged the bride. I wasn't friends with the groom on Facebook. You know, if you look down here in the bottom, right, it got 33. Likes 15 comments to shares. I'm sorry is fine. Like the shares are like the comments was Interaction 33 likes That's great. So I was quite happy with that, and I posted at about 24 hours after the wedding. What was interesting, though, is that in this case, I started looking a little more. I kind of started scaling down her Facebook page. I went back to her Facebook page about a week later. So first I started looking when I posted it, and there's already a bunch of other photos from people from the night off. So you know, there's the people that take their cell phone pictures a night of and instantly there posted it right there while the first dance is happening. It's like getting married. Oh my God, she is so beautiful. I'm crying and this is dark photo. You know, they're like sitting 16 tables away and so, like the foreground was in focus and they're out blurry, out of focus in the background. Or it's the grand entrance, you know, and a snap a photo and they're like, so blur. You can even tell what their face looks like. It's like she's so beautiful. My goes and there's like 25 likes and 30 comments and I love you. I love you. You're so beautiful. It was like, How do you can tell if it's her still far away or she's so blurry? And there's like 65 comments on these photos, and then my photo goes up and I'm like, Well, if they got comments on that. Wait till they see this. It's like crickets like Hello, Sunset. Well, it beautiful bride, dress flowing. Everything's perfect. And sure enough, I go back. A week later, this was still sitting there and she's emailed me. I love the photo. You're amazing where any minute Crete and her profile photo is still the photo that's focused on the chair in front of them with her in the background, out of focus and blurry. And that's her profile Photo Still kind of like, uh, interesting. The week before I had posted this photo. Another good photo was one week prior to that november 4th, 2011. And I love this photo, actually, like a lot. We got a double rainbow go figure was cool. It was raining. Sandy EKO, Go figure both both to rare things. A double rainbow and rain in San Diego. So we kind of took advantage of both of them. But here's the one difference with this. I went home and posted it that night. The week before. It wasn't my last way to the year, and so I went home, and the first thing I did was take that photo and posted online and tag the bridegroom And you might be saying, Well, it's a better photo, Jared. Well, I don't know. I mean, honestly, they're both too good photos. I might be partial to one of the other might say what you tag the bride and the groom will be honest. The groom has, like, 25 friends on Facebook, I can tell you that for a fact. What happened is I posted it the very night off, and that was the photo that was That's the photo that was their profile photo. That's the foot of the nobody commented on. That's the fourth everybody shared. Talked about it, got 47 comments as opposed to 15. It got 122 likes. So we're talking 567 times the exposure from doing it right away. You guys, Facebook is a fantastic platform, but you have to embrace what Facebook really stands for. Facebook stands for community, and it stands for the generation that it's meant to entertain, and that is a generation that wants it. Now. Fast is truly best. That's the model we take on it. Shoot dot edit. And I tell you that in the last two or three years, every single spot I've turned shows you how much people demand things quickly. And I think Facebook is fantastic when it could be partnered up with what people on Facebook want but the demands of Facebook and with what? The society with what? The type of people that use an embrace. Facebook. And so I think it's fantastic because, you know, I hit two and three levels and two and three layers for these people that I wasn't able to hit otherwise, and it was so awesome. I still have people who talk about this photo because they saw it on Facebook. How do you guys have had success with Facebook? Okay, great. Any questions about Facebook from the Got some question from the crowd here? Yeah, Hill is wondering and actually a za question that comes up quite often in our chat rooms about posting photos on Facebook or social media. And Hill says, Do you have to have a client's permission to post their photos on Facebook? Is that ever an issue that you've come up with? Well, I have in my contract that I'm allowed to use the photos for promotional purposes only. And that's a part of my contract that says that if I want to use any photo that I take of them, I'm allowed to as long as it's for promotional purposes, promotional purposes, meaning advancing my brand advancing my business. But I can't go out and sell them to someone. I can't go sell them to a magazine without their permission without added permission without an added released from them. And, yes, Facebook does fall into promotion, and it does fall into advancing my brand. So for my contract, I don't know what I would do if I wasn't if I didn't have that, my contract. But I made sure the years to put that in my contract so I can take the photos that I take and make sure I can advance my brand of them. That's a great question, and it's good to consider that before you gonna flip side of that, have a problem. We have a question from Psalm Neo to how prominent do you place your logo on a photo on Facebook? And how hard do you work to protect those images? I don't work too hard to protect those images. Uh, You know, As you can see, our bug is up in the upper right, per se the bug, not even the logo. And, you know, we do place. We've done a little bit more lately where we put actual web address bomb in weddings dot com. We've done that, and But, you know, the bottom line is they're gonna crop it out if they don't like it. And they have, they totally have that ability. And so I think there's a couple different methods you can use to take advantage. You know, if you get them on your team. You know, typically, people cropping out not because they don't want to support you because they're ignorant. They don't like Oh, well, they stuck that foot up there. I don't like that thing on, and I'll just you know, that's what I found. And if I explained to them having a post a photo of your facebook the night off and get them excited about it, and I'm going to say I would have, you know, we're gonna have our logo on it and it's gonna go up and it's gonna be the first photo that gets published of you and It's really cool. And often times I have seen their friends photo go up the night before it started the year before some like that. And if you get them to embrace what you're trying to do, then typically they're not gonna crop it out. They're not going to remove it. They're not gonna go do something that they're not supposed to do with it. But, no, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what happens to I know it's a common question and you know what? Oh, my gosh, is it gonna be used the wrong way or whatnot? I figured, you know, you've got to make a decision, and the amount of press I'm getting from this outweighs the downside risk, which there is some but the downside risk of them using it inappropriately or in the wrong manner where they were. These things also in your manual that you very much so. I mean this all this stuff that we have pre programmed into our shoot que that sends them the automatic email at different points along the road that they get these emails that prepare them. And that's why I like the automation component of that. And I like the fact that I can send on email out to a client, you know, six weeks before the wedding, and tell them here's what to expect for the next six weeks and, you know, and it maps it out and then actually way. And here's what to expect and stuff. So, yeah, we talk about kind of process that you go through after the wedding. We talk about, you know, like we like to post an image on Facebook like the Post one image on Facebook, and we like to post our favorite image on Facebook and then a couple of sets the wedding. We like to post a blawg post, and after that, we're gonna release your photos A couple of days later. We go through all the different tenants ahead of time with them, and that way, at the end of the day, they're not surprised by anything, and that's where most problems happen to. I got asked last week in an interview. You know, how do you avoid having problems with clients communication when they understand what to expect, you can you can actually embrace, you know, they'll embrace what you want what you want out of them because they're looking to be on your team. They want to be just like all your other brides. They want to be just like all your clients. They don't want to be different. They don't want to break the rules. They don't want to be somebody who bucks the system. They don't want to hurt you. I mean, if you're really, you know, booking clients that are truly right for you, then all you have to do is be clear with them about what is best for everyone. And I think that usually, you know, 95% time we have great results. Of course, there's always the occasional thing that doesn't happen that way. Question from inside jail This probably goes back to more of the popularity contest aspect of it. Um, I have actually a fair number of clients who don't use Facebook, and so I still, you know, want to post those things because I think it's still good for that page to be active and to show people Hey, there's work happening. But then you know it will be something, something that I think is an awesome image, and it gets like three lights on and it's me and my mom and my sister. You know, something like that. And so I sometimes struggle with Should I put this up or not? Because then what if that person does see it and then, you know, feel stupid or, you know, just like, Wow, I'm not I'm not as good of a client or all these other people are better or just other people seen it going well, maybe she's not that good of a time. When I go back to the upfront communication again, I make sure the message when you talk about with them and say, You know, we post this photo on Facebook and usually what happens is that you know that, you know, it's all of there. It's all of your friends. It will comment, and all of your friends will come and like it and what not, you know. And then that way you can open the door for a conversation with that person and they can say, Yeah, we're on Facebook away like five friends. None of our friends care about Facebook, and then that gives you opportunity. Say OK, well, maybe it's best we don't post your foot on Facebook. Is there another way? I mean, how can I share your wedding photos with your friends so they can experience and enjoy the photos that we took your wedding? Because if it's not Facebook, surely there's another platform we can utilize or another method we can interact with them with. I get that you're gonna hear in the next segment about how the clients that I work best with our professionals and as professionals with a capital P, lawyers, doctors, engineers. That's my ideal client. And not a lot of doctors have Facebook profiles. I mean, some do. But there's a lot that don't a lot of lawyers who are paranoid about putting their information up there like I'm not touching that Facebook thing. Gonna be lawsuits about that someday. You know, stuff like that, and so I totally get were coming from. But there's other ways. They still have friendships, they still have a community. And so it's not Facebook. You gotta find the platform that they do. They do congregate on and see if you can impact there. Friends and their network through that method,