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Social Media

Now some cool social media facts social media could be used to showcase your personality and your identity. Small businesses rely on word of mouth it could be manifested through social media. Basically, what that means is you could be somebody can see you and fall in love with you before they ever meet you. They can literally look into your eyes and say she looks awesome or he looks like the coolest guy ever and that is really important to create emotional connections to people before you physically meet them, which is really important now website in this industry is absolutely necessary. Blogging formats are really popular. When I started thirteen years ago, I went to buy my first, uh, website to build my first website uh, I my price ranges were anywhere between thirteen thousand and twenty thousand dollars to build the website. Thirteen years ago, I picked the thirteen thousand dollars because it seemed more economical. It was the worst mistake of my life because, you know, fifteen t...

hird, twelve, thirteen years ago you had to pay a programmer every time he wanted to change a word in your website. So pretty much I put a website up for thirteen thousand dollars in a sad for eight years never changed an image never made a single change on it because I couldn't I couldn't afford to and I was too frustrated eventually, now you look at the blogging for mats in the companies that are out there. We have a website, we used photo biz and oh, my gosh, the rock, I have to send a shout out for them because we literally I was talking to them on the phone, I didn't even I just met these guys and fell in love with them because we were arguing over, not arguing, we're discussing websites, and I said, all right, I'll tell you what he said he could have a web set up for me in a half a day, and I said, yeah, right, because I've had a horrible experiences, and so they said, we'll call you monday monday at eleven, my staff went to lunch at twelve thirty they walked back in the room, I said, we're putting up a website today we built our senior website before four thirty at night we had the entire thing done with videos, everything, so I thought that was absolutely amazing. We're working on now replacing all of the websites, but to be able to do an entire website with multimedia presentations in less than four hours is breathtaking, so it's absolutely doable anybody can we also just put up this side? This is the other one was sandy puts photography dot com if you want to go there, don't crash it we're working on it. This is sandy push dotcom this one is actually more the teaching and the touring and all of our all of our things that way, but little by little, we're changing the sights we started this one on monday and by wednesday it's almost done and this one has links to all of our gear pages and our equipment. Everything I use is a lot more intense and it was a few days, so there's no excuse not to have one and thank you photo biz for making it happen for us because it was great. Fax functionality is the most important thing when it comes to building website use icons for navigation rather than simple text. People get pictures, see little bluebird you know what you're doing with it, right? You see the little blue f you know what it is it's easy for people to navigate that way, current design trends or a minimal that means clean space not a lot of words if you have a lot of copy and words on your website, you're making a mistake they don't want to read about you and they will leave your sight if that's case start with a good home page and include things such as who you are and why people should trust you this is a huge pet peeve it's, a baby soap box because when I go to your web site we do in studio workshops which are awesome, but before I meet you I'm going to require two things your price list and you website I will look at your priceless first because you're priceless tells me what you think you're worth um I will go to your website and I could tell you what I think you're worth as faras how they relate to each other if I go to your website, one of the very first places I'm going to go is the about me paige uh or about us or however you word it I'm going to go there when I click on that if your picture doesn't come up your personal face does not come up and a bio a story, a personal letter something that will connect me to you I'm going to be kind of frustrated with you and come find you because to me that is your first opportunity for people to actually meet you for them to look you in the eyes and say I love her story he looks like he's so much fun and that's how they're going to relate to you more so than your pictures and everything else we are selling ourselves not products and so this is your first opportunity to do that now you need to avoid clutter designs that overwhelm the readers graphics and flash there too slow to load uh this was actually I could take this out now because well I shouldn't take it out but honestly and this is truly not a plug for them although I love them this is not even an issue anymore flash is a problem like let me give you an example right now there is a consumer out there sitting in a doctor's office waiting for their child on their ipad going oh I have got get my daughter's pictures taken she goes to her ipad and let's say she googles in my case photographer littleton colorado baby she's looking for a baby photographer well, if she if I did my job right then my name should come up pretty quick right? We wanted to come up at the top so I'm the top photographer let's say she goes okay clicks on it now she goes to my sight if she gets that bar that says five percent ten percent eighteen percent twenty percent about twenty percent statistically guess what she's going to dio go back it's gonna hit the back button and she's going to go to the next photographer in line. So my question to all of you is how many of you have checked your websites? Most of us think we have fast websites because on your own computer understand that computers memorized you are l so once you go to your site it I might do that the first time, and then the next time you go there, it pops right up. So you think your gravy? Uh, when have you checked your friends? Computers? The local library computer is one that's very similar to the typical consumer. Uh, local hotels. These are people who have two to three year old computers, which is average, and this is where you want to check them, because if you get that bar every time a client's looking for you, they're going to the next guy and that's really important. So check your websites photo biz just as a side note, I was concerned because they have a lot of flash, but they have I think, what is an embedded flasher and embedded? Html or something toe where it does not slow the site's down so I'm sold. I will be making an awful lot of websites. Sorry about that staff. Make sure you include a clear call to action. Easy to find contact information clued in your location. This was in the second biggest pet peeve in websites. If a client's looking for you and you work out of your home, I understand why you wouldn't want to put your home address. I get that, however, if you don't at least put the city you're in you're making a big mistake people will always assume you're far away if they have no choice, so at least if you give them a general range they could make a decision and they couldn't say ok she's in littleton that's twenty miles I can get there so at least your location by city at a minimum, if not your address blogging seventy seven percent of internet internet users reed blog's sixty percent of bloggers are between the ages of eighteen and forty for that's your demographics correct corporate blogging on ly accounts for fourteen percent of blog's now this is important because what this tells you is I don't care how amazing a vacuum cleaner is if target goes online and tells this beautiful story about how smoothly this vacuum works, you are not going to emotionally connect to it. What we do is emotionally connected people read our stories about that little girl in the field of wheat with the little white dress and a little, you know, the little stroller pushing it through the field, you can bring people to their knees with that stuff and it's powerful, so understand that blogging is a powerful tool, this is what people don't understand about blogging bloggers use an average of five social sites to drive people to their block if you're a great writer and you have a great block and nobody's reading it it's, because you don't understand this because you don't understand, we use what we call pushers facebook, twitter, all their lots of amount there, but those are pushers to us. What that means is facebook is a tool that we used to push people. We we give him a little tidbit and push them back to our block for more information and that's important. So you want to make sure that you understand if you really want a good, successful blawg, you need to be pushing people from all directions to get them there. Now we do have a block, you can check it out as well. It's attached to the sandy put dot com if you check it out twitter well, I just wanted to know, are you going through the what the five are the fight? I'm sorry, the five social networks that you said you point that's exactly what we're going sorry help that's okay, cover them all twitter there! Three hundred thousand new users per day they're currently one hundred ten million users on twitter ah, sixty percent of people on twitter or outside of the united states so that's good good for you to know, but keep in mind for this those of us in the us, twitter for companies like creative live is very effective because it's a marketing tool but for companies like ours portrait studios, how do we capture their names and tweaked out to them and keep them active? So twitter to me is not a strong marketing tool for portrait studio however it is one of the pushers and we do use it but I also know that there are ten times more photographers than follow me then clients and so there's balance they're as well the only thing I'll say about twitter is just like everything else be careful what you say because you never know what who's listening I I said something when I that I thought was funny I tweeted something out what certainly wasn't inappropriate but was funny to me my mother called me and was like why would you say that? I was like why are you following me on twitter I e so it was just one of those things you just don't know be careful what you're doing we do have obviously a twitter feed and you guys are welcome we'd love to have you on their it sandy put so it's just as andy why puc all one word on we'd certainly love to have you following us if you're out there we really enjoy keeping up with you, facebook now we're gonna get exciting there six hundred million users and I'm sure that numbers change because that changes by the second seven hundred thousand new users joined every single day they're twenty five billion pieces of content shared per month that's just not even believable, but one million entrepreneurs and developed for developers from one hundred eighty countries currently exist on facebook. So what that tells you is facebook is no longer a social media, you know, social side, it is a business tool. However I'm coming with a strong warning for you social our facebook, I'm sorry. Facebook is an unsecure environment, and I'll tell you why number one, you all understand that when you put an image up there, you no longer own it, which is fine. What you don't understand is that they control everything. When facebook first came out, I got very excited about it, and I'll tell you in a few minutes how I came about my facebook journey, but I got a facebook page and I started standing out like I was creating designing all these marketing campaigns that were see us on facebook, follow us on facebook and I was putting money into getting people to see me on facebook. Well, one day I mean, I ended up getting thousands of people followed me one day I go to facebook to post something, my page is gone can't find it anywhere, and so I panic, looking around, thinking I pushed the wrong button and I check around can't find it well after a while I got some staff involved because I thought maybe I was just too dumb and they start looking can't find it so we went on a mission to contact facebook and actually get help, so we started looking for contact us or phone numbers anything we spent almost like two days looking for that information and you know what? It turns out that actually nobody works for facebook there's actually nobody there because after two solid days of contacting us and put pushing buttons and trying to find them, we never got a response to this day I have no idea where that site went, it disappeared and was gone forever. Now I put a lot of money into getting those fans and in a blink of an eye they were all gone and I lost them. And so what I'm telling you when I say it's unsecure, it means you have no control if they want to shut you down, they could do it tomorrow and you just lost every contact you have that's why more than anything in the world, we think that facebook should be a pusher because it's a great tool don't get me wrong you absolutely should utilize that you should be pushing people off of it to your block where you can capture their names and you can control winner when that goes on or off does that make sense so I'm not saying it's a bad thing it's a fantastic tool but it's an unsecured tool you don't own it and it could go down tomorrow and it's all gone all that work you put into it is all gone, so keep that in mind. Facebook has three peak usage times early morning, which is seven a m after work, which is five pm and late at night these air cool statistics I'm a huge statistic fan because this is interesting if you're thinking about marketing, this is actually the life cycle of most of us now I wake up in the morning I checked facebook, I come home from work, I took facebook, I'm gonna bet I'm editing I checked facebook it's almost every one of us is this this little addicting cycle thursday and friday's haven't eighteen percent higher engagement rate than the rest of the week? That's good to know, but there's something better to know. Wednesdays is the most important day of the week when it comes to business specific posts, and we all understand wise mondays and tuesdays or the grind wednesday's someday and thursdays and fridays, you're pretty much checking out wednesdays are literally when people are listening, so if you're all going to post something once a week, make it on a wednesday and what time are you going to post it? Well, it's, exactly brands that post outside of business hours have a twenty percent higher engagement rate? I was dead wrong when I first started working on facebook I kept just harassing my employees thing you've gotta have it up by nine ten o'clock later after that, nobody cares. I was dead wrong nine ten o'clock people are working, they're up early there a plate and that's when you should be posting these things if you want that content red post now, this one is the one that I want you to pay attention to post that our eighty characters or less have a twenty seven percent higher engagement rate. That's a huge number. Now the scary part is what you're looking at right here is just under eighty characters. I don't know about you, but when I post on facebook, I have to write a saga like I still the whole story and me and facebook have an issue we like into fights because when you see that you have posted over four hundred twenty characters, I just wanna cross through the machine and beat it. So I understand that this one's hard for me, this is this is, you know, meet preaching to the choir here, I think, because, honestly, I struggle with this. But if when you see a number like twenty seven percent that's a big number in statistics and you have to understand they have to teach yourself to do this so if you have something important to say, this becomes a pusher this is where you say ah funny thing happened on the way to work dot, dot dot click here and get more so that pushes them they go home what's that and they go right to your block does that make sense so important statistic their youtube there two million viewers per day ahead. Sorry, quick question. Okay, uh you got a time? I don't know for the for the time zones because if you have businesses that are in multiple time zones, have a nameplate teo your time zone but I mean, say you have creative, live way of people all over the world do you account for that? Well, obviously the majority of your clients in your case your clients are all over the world so you could equate for it. Just send a text out every two minutes and you'll be fine. So our case, our clients are typically our community our time zone so it's one of those that depending on your type of business you have to modify that tool but there's a fine line between harassing the heck out of people and marketing so you have to do that okay? You two two million viewers per day us accounts for seventy percent so that's a good thing however unfortunately over half of them are under twenty years old, so they're not your demographic however, which demographic are they high school seniors right there's a huge market there so what that tells you is your youtube site should be full of things that appeal to that age now this generation is known as the millennial generation they're born between nineteen eighty two and two thousand man those are some good looking kids there I gotta tell you I didn't know that's why I went in there they are cute their generation why now? This is ah really interesting group because they are geniuses literally I'm not speaking about my children I might be, but I'm speaking about this generation is the most incredible generation in the world because for instance I watched my youngest son he's a video get they're both gamers they like to play and I had an extra projector so I took a wall this big and made an entire gaming room and I only have five minutes but I do want to tell you this story because it's interesting theory he can sit there and he actually has a headset on and he has four games going up these air like world domination destroy the universe kind of thing he's playing four games in a row all the same time now he is also talking on a headset people all over the world meanwhile there pop up windows and people are talking to him like writing people who don't have headsets are writing to him he is typing like this and he's literally destroying four universes and he's typing a thousand miles an hour now I want you to stand he's thirteen years old you guys remember typing in high school we were like this and these kids are like this they are unbelievable how attack time when how what they could do so meanwhile he's answering questions he's destroying universities talking of the thing and their pop up windows with advertisements coming up and he's shutting them down to now these kids are thinking a thousand miles an hour this generation is your future in less than five years these are your future parent honestly if some of them are already going into this phase and some of them are a little younger but understand this is ten years marketing from now these are the people you're going to be marketing to how do you market to somebody that thinks like this and shuts down pop ups how do you pop up in their life and matter to them this is your future and you have to understand it so these social media aspects that we've talked about you have to understand them because these are the geniuses that are out there now they're an incredibly intelligent generation but there's some things that absolutely fascinates me about them as well because for instance uh cell phones you know, the united states typical child had eight not just ate and over has a phone you know, most children under the age of nine do not recognize what a phone booth this for they would not know that you could put money in it to make a phone call. You know a scary one. I took my sunday school a few weeks ago and our people months ago and pulled up and uh I got out of the car he got out of the car and he had three friends in the back seat of the car and all someone's knocking on the window and he was saying ms putsch could you open the door? I can't get out and I literally said there and I bent down I said, hey sweetie, see that little button right there if you pull that up you can get out all by yourself said it's manual labour but it can be done you know what? It was really funny to me but then it's kind of scary to because if you think about children we live in such an automatic world not one of those three children who had to get out of the door just by themselves they were knocking to get out. So I always think worst case scenario, an emergency or something do children really understand how things work? Because we're just used to things just happening for us, so keep in mind they are an incredible generation, they're super smart, but they're also your future marketing generation as well. If you want to reach them, you have to get online, you're gonna have to know this stuff websites not enough you've got to use all of those pushers all those social sites these kids this group looks towards their peers to make decisions on it is not a personal contact. My daughter is twelve has a cell phone. I've seen her use it two times actually use it as a phone two times she's a texter they don't speak to each other so it's a very different type of media. The reason it is years of advertisement bombardment has just overwhelmed all of us and people want a social connection, but to them, social connection is very different than what we think it is not necessarily face to face real quickly and then we'll wrap up lincoln, their members from over two hundred countries there's a new member that joins linked in every second this is one of those what I saw they went, oh great, another social media site kill me now but this is what I saw that changed my mind executive was reading an article, and it said executives from every single fortune five hundred company are members of lengthen every single forehand. So what that tells you is they know something these guys are very powerful, very smart and very wealthy if they're using lincoln there's something there now, I don't have a lot of time to explain it, but it is a network it's basically a linking service. You attach yourself to somebody, you can then attach yourself to their friends different than facebook, though, because you can't just go friend, everybody, if you over friend, so to speak, they'll shut you down and you have to have personal information about that person before you could move on, so use it, learn about it before you get too crazy on it. Important we live in a mobile world mobile device uses are twice as active as non mobile device users users, so that's something to consider when you're doing business, half of your clients are going to find you on the phone. Have you checked your website on your phone recently? You know that it's fast. Do you get that bar? Do they have to scroll left and right to look at it because you lost them if they do so? Check your phones just as much what does all this mean we're going to wrap it up? Social media is evolving it's no longer just a place to hang out it's a new platform for communication and information sharing now I have I'm going to be done in about four minutes but I do want to tell you my social media change over because when facebook first came out I was anti facebook I thought it was like the worst use of time ever I had a very interesting experience I went to china teaching and unfortunately when we got there somebody on the plane had the h one and one virus and um we were actually able to leave the plane and then they came and picked us up at our hotel room and took us to quarantine we were supposed to be in china for fourteen days. Quarantine was eight to ten days is what they were telling us uh the long and short of it is this first of all, I would like to say that china is absolutely my favorite country in the world. So what I'm about to tell you I harbor no ill will however we were taken from our hotel rooms driven about two and a half hours through the night and we arrived at what appeared to be a hotel big gates police cars, metal fences you know barbed wire they open the gates pulled in there were no there was no electricity at the time. Flashlights. Everybody was in a haz mat suit. You have to imagine just that alone is so overwhelming that it's unbelievable. So haz mat suits nobody speaks english. I have to add my two oldest children than fifteen and sixteen years old. Ah, we were very frightened one hundred ten degrees in the back of this ambulance. It was very scary. We pulled up, they took us upstairs. They put us in a room and, uh I went to get this was three o'clock in the morning. At this point we went to walk in and they stopped me and they nobody spoke english, but they signaled that my children were gonna have to go with them. And of course, at that moment, I had a panic attack. I thought no, no, no, no that's not gonna happen and so I put my hands up in the doorway. I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no when I tried to munich eight but they were very adamant that the children had to go with them because everybody had to be separated. I argued for several hours and police started to come and I could see I was well outnumbered, and that was very at this point the difference between my son and daughter my oldest son and daughter my oldest son's just cracking jokes the whole time he's just like me he thinks this is the funniest thing ever my daughter does not handle stress very well she had this point had been crying the whole time but at this point she's literally physically holding a bed screaming mom, please don't let them take me please don't let them take me please don't let them take me so you can imagine there was a lot of trauma going on so what does this have to do with facebook it's coming so at around this is late hours of the night my oldest son looks at me and finally says mom, if I go with them we do you think they'll just let you keep katie I don't care just let me go to sleep I quickly assessed how many there were there and I looked at him and I looked at them and I finally signalled I said okay, if you take him, can I keep her? And of course I think they were so afraid of her at that point they were so happy they were like yes and they took his little arm and they walk out the door and they shut the door and these were aren't lara, you know, alarmed doors and he was gone now you can imagine that the second they shut the door and I realized what I had just agreed. Teo I lost it. I just could not believe I had let somebody take my child in a you know, a foreign country that I didn't know where he was going, and I completely fell apart. I actually got my daughter to sleep. And then I lost it. I cried straight through the night. Now in the morning, I decided to take a risk, and I went to the door, and I knew it was alarmed. I could see it was alarmed, but I opened it up and alarm went off. Of course. Has not suits come running and trying to push me back in the door? Well, it caused some more doors to open up, and an american was crossed the door and I started asking, have you seen a boy? When did you come in? Have you seen him in a couple more doors open and we kind of started this little revival, and I asked there were nine americans of one chinese citizen, and I asked them if they would basically refused to shut their doors until I found my son. And so, of course, this was pretty dramatic, but eventually the chinese government officials gave up because we just all refused, so we made little offices in our doorways. And we set up shop there and we just talk throughout the day and of course by the time lunch rolled around there wasn't a lunch by the way but by the time afternoon rolled around I was pretty upset now this has been hours I could only imagine how traumatized my son must be at that point by himself locked up in a room and you have to understand these air not rooms like you're thinking when I walked in my first year was the ten thousand mosquitoes it was the least of the problems we had bedbugs so bad we came home with literally no cafs we were so shredded that was still the least of the problems for my daughter because the floor moved at all time there were so many mice that it was just custom movement so very dramatic situation around one o'clock and I'll finish with this I'm sitting there in this doorway nobody's speaking anymore everybody is literally in shock and we're sitting there and right in front of me is a door that has not opened I assume nobody was in there well around one o'clock the door opens the alarm goes off I literally look up like this and it's my son and my heart almost jumped out of my body I stood up and I said alec and I started to cry and I'm like are you ok? Are you ok? I'm so sorry let them take you and he is looking down the hall going mom, knock it off on I'm like I'm so sorry about your care you upset up so sorry and I'm crying and I'm making this big band everybody's looking and they could see I finally found my son and he's like mom knock it off and I'm like I finally looked at him and I said, what have you been doing? And he looks at me and goes, I've been on the internet now think about this there are nine adults that air basically in prison were depressed like you'd never believe and only the child in the environment actually thinks to look for the internet he had actually gone in this laptop and for whatever reason we have no food, no water and being eaten alive we had wife so go figure so as soon as he says this everyone's looking at each other going are you kidding me? I mean, we couldn't even communicate with anybody. So everybody of course grabs their laptops and for, like, eight days straight you had at nine americans sitting there with laptops in a doorway communicating with the world. This was my first use of facebook in china you can't get everything, but for whatever reason I could get facebook I literally went on and say hey, by the way I'm quarantined somebody say something to be that is how I contacted my family, my children, my staff. When I went to china, I had about three or four hundred friends on facebook. When I left china, I had over five thousand, I had to hit my five thousand max, and I had created this incredible universe. And for all those days, I can assure you that it was those people on dh there. Every second I was getting a hang in there, you're going to make it it's going to be okay, and I swear to you, it became the most emotional thing I've ever been through. So the point is, my experience was a little different, but I learned the power of social media. I understand how it affects people emotionally, and so these air tools that we've been given, and they work their very powerful it's, just understanding and unleashing, unleashing and harnessing that powers.