Lessons
Lesson Info
Social Media Branding
Social media branding. Okay let's talk about that. More than becoming famous, right? Let's talk a little bit about it, how to get a following and so forth. And the first thing is that you gotta have interesting and compelling content, right? You gotta be uniquely you. There's something about you that's different than everybody else. Or maybe you're a boring person. You can't be boring. Be unboring. I don't know, go bungee jumping or something and record it. This is a kind of like a wakeup call for us because if we're gonna penetrate social media, we have to be interesting. We have to live interesting lives. Okay? And so if we're not interesting, no one's gonna give a rip about us. Okay, so something about you or what you create has to be compelling and interesting. If it's not, you're not gonna gain any traction. I don't care if you post every single day. If it's not interesting and compelling it is doing nothing for you. Okay? Have an opinion about something, right. I don't necessaril...
y say you should talk about religion and politics all the time because that's kinda divisive right now (laughing) but at least have ideas or concepts about something or your concept about photography. What is it? You know maybe you're a natural light guy or maybe you like creating, I don't know whatever, have an opinion about something and stick out there and so what you're on an island. You're the only one, that's great. People like that. People gravitate to people who have opinions. It's just like you know, a lot of times I would drive a lot and the only thing that would keep me awake would be talk radio. So anybody here listen to talk radio? Talk radio, you can't go on and be a talk radio host and be like everything is good and everything is wonderful. (audience laughing) Right, oh that's a great point, I agree with you. (audience laughing) If you're that type of person, you're not gonna have a job. And that's the same thing with social media. Take a stand on something. Be something. Right that's gonna gain you more traction than trying to please everybody, trust me. Okay be an expert in your market, whatever you're trying to do, whatever service it is, continually learn. You wanna be an expert at it. And so some, you are the guiding light for somebody because you are the expert. And that's the only way you're gonna gain traction is if you're an expert. Move people emotionally. Okay somehow some way, either through it's your images, right, as you get better. Now this is hard to do in the beginning because we're not as good, right, and our images aren't as good. So it's harder but we're working towards it, so maybe it's by the words you say. Or maybe it's by featuring somebody else's work that you admire. Right it doesn't have to be about us, but we just have to show the world maybe something that you've discovered that was amazing. Right and so it doesn't always have to be us all the time. It should be primarily us, but once in awhile you could just have other guest images or guest posts or something like that. But it's gotta move people emotionally. Why? Because you can only sell something to somebody if they are moved emotionally. If they don't have an emotional attachment to whatever you're trying to sell, whatever it is, they're not gonna buy it. So that's why you've gotta really hit on emotion. I have this friend who was a financial planner, right, and he manages millions of dollars for people. He doesn't talk about money when he wants to get their money. He talks about oh that money can provide your son an education. You should invest and here's how we do that. Oh that money could provide you a great life in 10 years where you could just see your family all the time. You get it? He's moving them emotionally to get that financial money, right, and that's what we have to do. So when somebody sees your images or sees the slide show that you do, and they go oh my god that's so beautiful, (audience laughing) you got 'em, right? You gotta move 'em emotionally. Use video. Video's getting more and more popular. You gotta use video. You gotta be sincere. Don't be fake, okay. Don't be fake, but be sincere about what you're doing, you know. And so that's important, you gotta be real a person and you gotta be consistent with your posting okay. You gotta have regular posting and regular content. Get involved. That's real key. You just can't create these Twitter accounts and your Instagram accounts and Facebook and just post it and just leave it there and expect to get hundreds of likes and followers. It doesn't really work that way, especially in Instagram. Instagram is about a community, right. I like you, you like me, you're for me, I'm for you, that's the whole Instagram movement. (laughing) It's like I just experimented with something right and so I got my Instagram account and it's like, oh I really should try to get my likes up. And so I go, well you know I got this idea. Whoever I follow, right, because I see my daughter do this, right, I go hmm okay. (audience laughing) She's 14 years old. And so whoever I'm following, whatever post comes up, like everything, everybody, if the picture's horrible, if it's great, it doesn't matter, I'm just liking every single one of their pictures that I follow and it comes up. Guess what? My picture likes increased by like just by doing that. But what is it? It's getting involved. What's even better than that? Commenting. Right didn't Chase Jarvis say that when he said, yeah if you like some photographer just like all his images. He's right man, I know all the people that like my images. They're my best friends, right? And even on top of that if you start commenting about it, that's what I, hey you know what, like if I see Sue Bryce's stuff or whatever I just don't like it. I leave a comment so she reads it, right. Because if you wanna penetrate, like you know how many likes and stuff that she has, but if you look at how many comments there are, very few. So there's a very high chance that they're gonna read your comment if you comment. So all those people that you love, that you adore, get involved, like it, comment it, get involved and you will just see your, it's like cultivating, it's like farming, right. You've gotta, you just can't put it out there, but you gotta cultivate it, you gotta farm it, you gotta get involved. So that's why I can't do too many. I mean basically Facebook and Instagram, ah, I don't have time for anything else. (audience laughing) Because if you're gonna get involved, you can't get involved with every single one. It's impossible, okay? All right, Instagram versus Facebook, I feel that Instagram is kind of like the younger generation and it's great for that community type stuff. Facebook it's a older crowd. Man there's money there in Facebook because most, there are a lot of like housewives, (laughing) old people like myself, maybe they're a little bit more established in their career but they wanna keep track of their family. There's money there man. And so don't give that up because there's some high dollars in Facebook. Because that crowd is a little bit older. There's YouTube, a lot of people create YouTube channels and very successful at that. So there's I mean those three are pretty good, and there's a little bit of those differences. I'm not, if you're gonna do YouTube, a lotta times the production value of the video has gotta be pretty good in order for you to really gain any traction. And sometimes that's hard to produce really high quality video. You know like CreativeLive, super high quality, right? So anyways that's just what I found. It's hard for me on YouTube because I just, I feel like my production value is I'm here me talking my iPhone, like wow, right. So anyways, but the key thing is what? You gotta add value to your audience. It's all about value, value, valuable.
Ratings and Reviews
Laura K.
Scott Robert Lim is one of my all-time favorite instructors. He is humble, honest, engaging, funny, and down-to-earth. Most importantly, he truly cares about his students' success. You can tell he truly wants to help less experienced photographers to grow their business and their skill sets. He is brutally honest in a good/helpful way. In this short class, he provides numerous "nuggets" of information - specific things to think about when analyzing where you stand/where you want to go....things you may be doing that are holding you back...and specific and actionable suggestions for getting out there and drumming up new clients/work. His beliefs/values/ideas all resonate with me. Glad he is still teaching at Creative Live. Hope to see more classes from him in the years to come.
Margaret Lovell
Scott is one of my favorite instructors. Very engaging, and you know how much he loves what he does. He's enthusiastic. My biggest issue is in marketing myself better, which is why I signed up for this course. I'm glad that I did. The material was on point, concise, and Scott provides many actionable tips that can be used right away. I highly recommend this course.
Kaela Comontofski
Great class! First time hearing Scott Robert Lim speak and I really enjoyed his personality and presentation. He was concise but covered a wide range of topics and gave helpful examples. He was knowledgable and although some things I already knew it was said in a way that sparked ideas and excited me to try new approaches.