Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Market Yourself

Question is, how do you get likes on facebook when you start? I have a local photographer that has forty three thousand fans, I just started and there is no way that I'm near that. So my question from that is that how important is getting likes on facebook on a business page? Um, yeah, well, so, you know, I'm starting out today, I would do it differently than I did when I started out, I opened up a facebook page was my personal page, and when I when I hit a five thousand person limit, I was done, I couldn't grow right, and then it opened a second personal page for an overflow, not even thinking about a business it's like it just they were already there, it wasn't that long ago on dh kind of losing a lot of traction that way today, right away, I would open up a business page and I would be directing everyone towards that, and we'll talk about ways to do that. The second andi, I would keep my personal page pretty personal as a separate thing. I feel like I missed the boat on that, but bu...

t I would keep that something where you could have dialogue that you care about, what people are really close to you in that school and your business page. Is where you're bringing a lot of a lot of traffic through so ways to promote your business page of course a number of people will we'll click promote your page and pay for that I've never done that, but I have boosted posts where I want to get information out everything you say about what works for facebook changes in a month anyway because they keep changing but I would say today in this day and age right now the best thing you can do to promote your facebook business page is to be really careful about ensuring that you're putting that link in all the places people can find you and you're pushing a lot of things through there. So what I mean by that is if you have a twitter account that's doing pretty well but you're just starting to build up on facebook having your bio page a link to your facebook page have of course, your social media channels not only at the top of your website but every block post you d'oh have a share ability option underneath that connects people to facebook you, khun dio aa number of things in terms of course writing guests posts for different places if you feel like you're not just lay there as a photographer but goodness you're a good writer or you know about marking or you're in your past life, you're great at design whatever the case might be reach out people are constantly looking for contact I don't think it's I think I've ever been easier tio supply, I guess post someplace, so reach out with your content that you have and then make sure that every place people confined use looking back to your facebook page there's all those things that you can constantly dio on ge of course you can cross promote on social media not just on twitter but pinterest is becoming bigger and bigger every news everyone used to say it pinches would kind of flair and fade, but I don't think that I haven't seen that happening and so you could do things where you link out from on your same same thing on that bio page when people find you promote that facebook page but I mean that's just I could do this, we could go into a lot of things. The underlying thing that's true for whether you're building a business and building a portfolio are building a facebook page is the the quality of the content has to be there. That doesn't mean you have to create amazing content every day, just curating great content and sharing things that people kind of want to keep going back to is very helpful that's how huffington post built their entire website initially it was all curation of content posting really cool stories to one spot all the time being mindful of how you present yourself on social media I think it's missed a lot I'm always amazed at how many posts would start out by like that that and then goes off on somebody they just met in a park to photograph and how much they sacked and didn't appreciate them and how much they don't appreciate that I think those things have no place I'm social media because it gets seen by so many more people than you think and it lives on forever I would keep the the burst of anger to very private conversations if if you need to get him out on bond just make a concerted effort to spread more of what you want to see in the world. You know what about instagram? The question is from my friend daniela marketing we are opinion about instagram I keep hearing it is the place to be but I haven't been able to move my clients from facebook to instagram and mostly have photographer friend's they're me too yes so I mean opinions on if that gets into do you go where you like to be or do you your clients are how do you figure that out? I feel like I've got a really good idea who's going to which one of my social media channels and it's all different okay yeah, I could tell you right now instagram for me is mostly photographers and friends a few clients here and there that have seen me post to facebook, instagram, and then they go on to instagram, but I don't feel like instagram is where a book, a lot of clients and that's, where I have a lot of interaction with other photographers and obviously getting a lot of inspiration. Facebook, facebook, business days, personal, those air really heavy client I can see a direct connection between posting a really great shot that I just got back from a session and posted that image and the correlation between that and enquiries like it's a really common connection and of course, I'm also going out there. I'm actually I happen to be very interactive on social media, I try really hard to respond to people if you go toe my tamerlan photography, the business page on facebook, you'll see just go go in the last few kind of posts, you'll see a lot of response and answer, I like those exchanges, I talk about the ninety percent of things you love, the ten percent you don't, I actually love that. So I like having those conversations for me those those drive a lot of client business on twitter. If twitter is really good for business connections, you can actually make a lot of really good connections there with vendors, which I would not minimize. The relationships you would have with vendors can be almost like having partners in your business it's like connecting with partners I think a lot of people use a service and don't realize that if you get to know people there you can get a lot of upside in terms of how your business gets assisted when you work with vendors like print lab's like locations where you buy your your work everything like that you buy your equipment all those sort of places you can actually get a lot of extra little perks and bonuses by building relationships with companies on you can do a lot of that through twitter as well and google plus I personally think it's mostly photographers and ceo benefit so I posted google plus but mostly because google will search more favorably off of google plus than the other the other mediums and so I'll make sure that I have that information there too I do not use even though I use all those social media platforms frequently I do not use like a hoot suite or anything like that I think that's an efficient thing to do but I really like the idea of spacing out post sometimes so my facebook and twitter may go around the same time that google plus a little later on instagram might go a day later and I think that way you keep things fresh and moving and reached a different audiences as well but for me right now it's mostly facebook and pinterest and pinterest pinterest is becoming more and more a great way to find clients and get clients contacting you and I feel like that wasn't the case when it first started when I first started I think is mostly recipes and home to core I think finding clients finding you because I like your work is becoming a bigger and bigger thing s o pinterest and getting clean about yeah sorting out your page and a really clean way is helpful too if you talk to me two years about my pinterest page, it was pretty much all vegan recipes like all good recipes on dh now I've re sorted it so I'm having more focused categories okay? This is children and family for a tear my lackey this is commercial meditator termer lackey I'm getting more tags in everywhere and link outs to the website that are very clear on dh just doing that I have found pretty quickly has been a nice payoff fantastic one more social media question and then we'll go teo the video first video question how much time do you spend a day a week on social media what's your daily weekly work schedule including time on social media when how long uh how much what I say? I would probably say I easily spend about an hour a day on social media if I'm under estimating it for your business maybe you should pull over my career for my business for about forty five minutes or so yeah, I would say on social media and again it's one of the things I like and benefits my business so it's a win win in that regard in terms of schedule I've gone over my I have a really special pacific schedule for my weak that I follow and tweak and following tweak and I found that setting a really focus schedule we went over this in the work life balance course in some details but coming up with a schedule that for me at the time was a wish list of how awesome would be to have a week like this that's how I built my calendar I said I'd be spending this much time with friends and family I'd be spending this much time just relaxing and doing nothing work related I'd be doing this kind of work on a monday and this kind of work on a tuesday I would have my weekends off quiet I built out what I thought my calendar could be someday right down to I'm working monday wednesdays and fridays till two because they pick up the kids tuesdays and thursdays you know it's flipped or whatever the case might be my husband got on one day we've got a baby sitter one day kind of setting it all up and I slowly work towards that and I've been at that schedule for a while, which is kind of amazing to me but from a work perspective I actually have in there that I check social media three times a day and I and I try to post to respond a tely ste three times a day across the board because again I see a benefit to it and I never schedule shoots on tuesdays and thursdays I only shoot on monday, wednesdays and fridays so, um I have I have a calendar I can probably show, but in terms of the calendar I pay a lot of attention to its really tightly held it is a pretty good focus on social media. Thank you so let's, go to the video question. Ok, let us do that. Hi tamara it's, jennifer gilbert from jennifer gilbert photography and toronto and my question for you is what advice do you have for photographers who are struggling to get their message of value for the value of photography of two potential clients? Thanks so much. Um, so, uh this has been really so two for two john kane in my workshop in toronto. Yea, workshops so the question I believe can be taken one of two ways value as in thinks I'm worth it or thinks I'm worth paying for it or maybe that's all the same thing what do you think but you had you guys hear that question is getting the word out your clients of the value of what you d'oh, they're worth the money. Say again that you're worth the money that you were the money. Ok, yeah, so a couple things we talked about pricing right in terms of setting up your pricing. I truly believe that if you're looking around whatever else is doing and you're doing it too, you cannot stand out it's really, really difficult. That question comes up a lot like, how do I stand out? I think the first way you stand out is you make sure you drown out all the noise around you and just get hyper focused on who you are, what you can deliver and showcase that very, very well. Part of how you bring the value to the table is knowing what your value is and truly believing it, but also documented I have a mission statement, a reason for being for our studio, and it states the value of who we are and what we do and really clear and uncertain terms. It's about three sentences that says that wraps it all up. How are we to treat clients? What kind of attention we're going to pay to the quality of the work we deliver all those kind of little details in there so that I don't have to think about it each and every time and I could liken better believe what we do it's almost like repeating a mantra setting your idea identity which is everybody can do something different but I believe in in three or four words does that wrap up kind of the identity of who you are so that you can brand and market yourself very, very clearly and make sure everything that you delivered is a line that way so in my in my my words have to do with I look at my business and my my style as being the work is just like I like showcase beauty and I wanted to be authentic on guy wanted to be funny if it could be fun fun or funny on dh soulful if I want these qualities to be what people think when they see my work that I want to convey my entire brand that way my my website toe have a field that's a higher quality and there's a lot of beauty I want there to be transparency in our communications to our clients it's a holistic a bigger answer but the answer is to be consistent about your messaging know what the message is and constantly stay on message I'm talking like a campaign manager but is your the campaign you're managing your home campaign on dh there's something that's really, that will really, really help you stand apart from the rest is if you stick with that because most people do not. Most photographers do not have a very consistent look feeling message because they haven't figured out what it all is yet a lot of questions tomorrow coming up around this topic, there's a lot of how do you how do you go against or go against? But how do you deal with the rampant mindset in your local area where people do not really value you your work or just looking for reasonable photographer? How do you educate them? That's what? What we just talked about on dit comes up over and over again, but I like your answer your your thoughts around, just focusing on what you're doing for yourself and what you're building versus just focusing on what everyone's doing around you. Yeah, they really drain your energy, your confidence in your inspiration. So look, whatever else is doing, just we can't help but compare, and when we compare, we have this lesser version of our own selves, everybody else looks like they've got it easier and better and it's working more smoothly for them and that's just what we do by nature. But I think if you're kind of right here more in on yourself another factor that I want to bring up a zit relates to standing out if everybody is doing that in your market there's two things to consider one if everybody in your market seems to be priced shopping and wanting tio was the word you said basically wanted wanting cheap prints now and has the mind set that everything should be cheaper free to dvd year whatever whatever right is that right? I'm going to say yes it's late on day three so if the mindset there is what's dragging you down the way to stand out it's not be one of those photographers that is doing that that is that's what they're going to stand out is you are setting yourself apart by simply running in different business operation if the question is how do I stand out? You do that differently but even more importantly how do you educate your clients you actually start educating them if you've ever followed me on social media you see pretty frequently I do webinars I do photo critiques I have weaponize that everybody and go to invite my clients to them it's not just for photographers if you want a little bit more about what goes into this you can actually at any given moment started doing that for your clients and your clients an email that says tune into google hangout in two tuesdays we're going to look at some of my favorite work that I've shot in the last two week and I want to explain to you what goes into it, what I care about what the impact is why, if you could deliver that message, you will not only be educating your client's literally educating them, but you're going to gain this perception with them that you're cut above you've got a higher quality tio that you can do this and you can command these dollars because you've got this knowledge most people don't do that either, right and most the time when people are doing webinars and tutorials et cetera, it's all towards other photographers in this industry. But if you could do that very targeted to your clients that will stand apart although now that I just said it in creative life it's not that quiet but seriously I would I would do that I would write out the gate if I felt like that was a struggled to me I would start going instead of just saying I will teach you to take better photographs for your children which that alone actually khun khun go a long way instead of that you say I will teach you to better appreciate you know what the kind of photography I'm delivering is and all the components that go into it and why it does stand out let me better show you and if you will, the google was hang out, and one person shows that's your practice that's a free education, then the one that you hold in a month or in a couple weeks, you can start building this, you can have a library of the tutorials on your website that can lead people. You can have that right on your have an investment? Haven't you're investing in me? I'm a huge fan of art I you know, I love not only to produce art, but to teach it I mean, you see where you could go with us? I think that's an incredible idea and in terms of ways to educate your clients, I really also just like the idea of opening up the doors about what it is that you create and you do because we don't show it to people they don't know right on dh, you know, that's what we do here, creative live we have from the doors so that you can see what what the thing is that you know, that is there for you to have, um so anyhow, that's, what a really great idea tomorrow I'm glad you're here in this class, um yeah, I mean, obviously we've just gone over that in a great amount of detail I also to say after he finished the beautiful together segment yesterday and I was talking about examples of what people can do with your time she sent me an email and the only email said something like you know, I don't have an excuse to inspire not to do this and she put a graphic together that she's doing a whole thing of sessions teo benefit together which is also thank you alexis yeah like all those things were saying, you know, in keeping with the idea of educating your client not only having kind of a formal and again I think webinars are you know, free hang out is not that formal but having something like that where you can build up a youtube page with these again if nobody's tuning in and you're just broadcasting for ten, twenty minutes talking about some of these in great, you know, creating this whole collection of them and then key wording and putting in for s e o benefit keyword in your youtube videos as you build them and tying them into your website you're going to stand out with a whole different offering it's going to make a difference the other thing I love to do with my clients and like what I just did with emily a little bit but when we have a longer session because again, those sales sessions are usually about an hour and a half in a typical duration is is actually do some of that education as we're going talk about why crops in a certain way you explain the flow of why like something? Explain what I'm going to take something out so you know it won't interrupt the feeling between the two people. You better appreciated that the whole way through when you have that experience let's go to the next question that kind of switches gears okay, tio marketing and spending my camera I give in. I was wondering if you could tell me what percentage of your gross profit do you spend on marketing efforts and p s? I'm still very much fueled from your workshop last year in london, so thank you for all of your efforts by its awesome um, by so nice to see all these pieces s o the what percentage would I put towards marketing effort? So you need to break that down into pieces, right? Just like we're talking about with philanthropy, how you can give up your time or your money the same thing for marketing. So much of social media is an investment of your time on dh, yet that can bring quite a lot back one investment I would strongly encourage anybody with a wordpress site to invest in is the plug in ceo yost it's a twenty five dollars plug in is called f e o yost andan enables you to basically make sure that every single thing you put out on a page or on a post on your website is getting the maximum sdo possible, which means you're driving more more people to your site every time you create fresh content. Creating fresh content constantly is another thing that is free but takes time and that's something that that really will pull a lot of people in in terms of being able to find you, you don't have to if you hate blogging, you don't have to do it yourself. You could invest in somebody to do blogging for you. I am just starting to do that. I'm going to start working with a company to help me be able to produce blood post faster, because as much as I love writing, I can't get to it in time, so I could just throw down my writing, put in some imagery and then have it all assembled and put out for me that's something that you know will enable me I'm an invest financially and marketing, but and then manage some of the time so there's a million ideas in terms of what you can do from a market perspective and what expense and you could determine which way to go based on which you have less so from expense perspective, I would say and everybody's going to be different, but because I do invest a lot of regular time in constant ongoing marketing like some of these efforts as we talk about, I would say financially and probably somewhere around fifteen percent on dh marketing being a bring big term right? How much of that is identity? How much of that is branding how much of that is advertising? A few years ago I read iran and an ad campaign on npr local public radio station had really good luck with it. I just did it again a week and a half ago about a thousand dollar ad buy we've had such good luck the last time this time around, crickets as a cop and that's kind of how it goes things air shifting and changing so rapidly that you have to keep looking for new ways to market yourself and invest yourself, but you certainly have to keep doing it well. We market things in our studio every day and I noticed this times where I'm crunched where it's like that month I was heads down and just producing and producing. I see I see a low almost perfectly expectedly because I wasn't doing it so mark it is something they were ongoing doing all the time on dwi have ah marketing plan and a marking calendar that just keeps getting added to on day one of biggest suggestions I would make it again we do this sit down together with other photographers is come up with your marketing plan and actually put these words on a calendar and continue continue to build that out and then you just have to do the things you just have to it's not so difficult you just overcome your own resistance but yes marketing cash that's a whole lot of world yes, it is and turn right you have you have an extensive business background as well. Do you do any sort of analysis after you do your marketing to see what kind of return on investment you have? What do your suggestions for people on actually analyzing things after you put them out there if they were worth it it's so important to do that's what I mean, I mentioned the ad buy that we just did it recently that's a significant thing if I just said ok, put it out there and say I wonder if anybody comes in I just wasted my money we have to track it and see if you do simple things like having a drop down menu that you can click when people call in to inquire and say, may I ask how you heard about me and then just that's the easiest way in the world to just see where you get most your business from we know for a fact that the bulk of our business comes from marketing air comes from a word of mouth referrals ceo and social media so that's we're really clear on that that's where the time and effort has to be invested trying new things here and there can sometimes pay off really well and sometimes it's a bomb but yes, absolutely tracking things to make sure that you're even it's even worth what you're doing is important and social media is getting easier and easier for that. Twitter has analysts now facebook has insights you can see exactly what kind of leverage your posts are getting or not going you can see it sponsoring a post or boosting a post helps you and if it helps you to the extent you spent on it, you could see if after you boost or sponsor post you're getting punished for it afterwards which aa lot of people experience you boost opposed you get incredible reach and the next three posts you make nobody can see them because they've squashed your reach because they're like well we want you to pay again you start to notice all those trends and you change your market accordingly so if you threw a sponsor big post make sure your next few ones or does anything you know I mean there's little techniques that you come up with to be able to fit the current algorithm of social media