The Digital Photo Experience

[Editors Note: This week is "Marketing Your Photography" here on DPE with Rosh Sillars. Rosh will be bringing you a new article every day this week, make to sure to check them all out!]

Traditional advertising uses a shotgun approach to finding new clients. Digital marketing is about targeting your specific marketing and testing techniques until you find what works for you.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), also known as organic search, is one of the best methods of marketing online. The goal is to attract people to your Web pages based on keywords related to your product or service.

Ultimately, search engines want their customers to have a great search experience. To achieve this goal, the search companies write algorithms that will index and find the best results for a query. Usually, the results depend on the Internet community, based on how many people link to the site and the quality of the links. Search engines also note if the sites are connected to relevant experts on the topic.

Make sure your Web site is well-optimized so the search engines know your area of expertise and that you offer quality information. One mistake people make in optimizing is focusing on who they are. Finding your name or studio name is not very impressive, unless your name is John Smith. Focus on what you do and where you are, such as Nashville portrait photographer.

Once you title a Web page, make sure everything below it supports the title (Nashville portrait photographer). Use the keywords in your text. Yes, you should have written content. It is amazing how many photographers use very little written content on their Web sites. Remember, search engines cannot read the 1,000 words your beautiful photographs represent.

Use alt tags for your photographs. Alt tags also are important for image search. You can drive good results through online image searches with well-captioned and tagged photographs, especially Google images.

If you can’t make your way to the front page of Google with organic results, consider buying your way to the front page with pay-per-click marketing. Photographers find varying degrees of results with search engine marketing (SEM). You can advertising on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google AdWords is the most common form of search advertising.

Google also wants the people who click on their ads to have a good experience. So they work hard to place the most relevant ads near the top of the page. This means you must make sure your advertisements relate to the page your ads are directed to. For example, if you advertise for the keyword Florida photographer and your ad states you are a senior portrait photographer and the page they are directed to talks more about fashion than senior portraits, Google could lower your quality score. A low quality score will cost you, the advertiser, more money. Google wants to see consistency throughout the process.

If you decide to use AdWords, do your homework. You will need good copywriting and SEO skills. Keep your ad groups narrow and focused. Not doing this will cost you money.

Some photographers are having better luck with Facebook advertising. Using Facebook, you can narrow down a target market. For example, you could advertise to 25- to 35-year-old women within a 50-mile radius of Dallas, Texas, who like design. Other options with LinkedIn and Twitter advertising are being developed. Banner ads are OK if you are developing a branding campaign, but such campaigns should generally be left to large budgets.

No matter what type of Internet advertising you use, make sure you create a special landing page for your ads. Make sure each page caters to the people you are targeting. Sending people to the front page of your Web site is often very ineffective. Always have a call to action and an method to capture your prospect’s information.

Always include analytics code on your pages. This way you can track quickly, efficiently and without wasting a lot of money, what works and what does not. By testing everything you can increase your sales with the right combination of advertising.

When it comes to Internet advertising, there is a powerful digital medium that is often over looked. We will discus it on tomorrow’s post.

This post is part of a series on digital marketing by Rosh Sillars, host of the New Media Photographer podcast and co-author of “The Linked Photographer.”

This post was written by:

Rosh Sillars - who has written 8 posts on The Digital Photo Experience.

Rosh Sillars is a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. You follow Rosh on twitter at: http://twitter.com/newmediaphoto

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[Editors Note: This week is "Marketing Your Photography" here on DPE with Rosh Sillars. Rosh will be bringing you a new article every day this week, make to sure to check them all out!]

Social media is here to stay, but it will not replace what is already working. It’s just another form of communication. You can use it effectively or you can waste time. Apply the same rules to social media as you would to your cell phone, e-mail, or your favorite chat platform.

Social media gives photographers the opportunity to share their portfolio with people around the world. Networking is a powerful method to grow a business. Social media gives good networkers the opportunity to put their skills into overdrive. The same rules apply.

The most valuable social networking tip is this: Educate, don’t sell, to the people with whom you are connected. They are already sold on you. Your job is to teach them how to find leads for you and to be enthusiastic promoters of your work.

Let’s take a quick look at three of the main social media sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These Web sites are the outer planets in your social media digital marketing solar system. These sites are where you engage with your community.

Facebook is usually made up of close friends, family and associates. Generally these are people you would not want to place on the hard sell. Use this platform to share your photographs in a passive way. Ask questions that encourage people to talk about your images. If you have photographed people in your community, make sure you tag them. Tagging people and sharing photographs is an extremely effective technique for wedding, portrait, and senior portrait photographers.

LinkedIn is about six degrees of separation. Wouldn’t it be nice to find out who works at the businesses, galleries and agencies before you call on them? How about knowing where a contact transferred to say connected. You can do all this and more on LinkedIn. Even better, the system will show you who you know who knows the people you want to know. In other words, LinkedIn gives you the tools to develop warm leads and referrals.

Twitter is a media stream. You share information that is of interest to you and you follow people who offer information that you find interesting. It’s like the People’s News Wire. Twitter is one of the best sources of traffic to my Web sites.

Remember Twitter is keyword sensitive. People find other people to follow based on the words they tweet as well as their biography. So if you wish to connect with a certain group of people, make sure you tweet about things they would find interesting.

YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, and FourSquare are a few of the hundreds of sites photographers could consider when developing an online networking solar system. Test them out and make sure the people you want to know are there. If not, move on.

Social media is not a fad. Someday it will not be new, but it will be a part of everyday communication. What standard forms it will ultimately take is impossible to know. What we do know is that if used well, social media sites will be some of the most powerful tools people will have to communicate with and reach the largest audiences for free.

I will present one of the most powerful digital marketing methods in tomorrows post. Ignoring it will cost you opportunities.

This post is part of a series on digital marketing by Rosh Sillars, host of the New Media Photographer podcast and co-author of “The Linked Photographer.”

This post was written by:

Rosh Sillars - who has written 8 posts on The Digital Photo Experience.

Rosh Sillars is a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. You follow Rosh on twitter at: http://twitter.com/newmediaphoto

Contact the author

Hey Gang,

We have a cool weekly feature here on DPE: Tuesday’s Talented Twitter Find.

Each Tuesday I choose a photographer who I find on Twitter  who is . . . well, talented!

I find ‘em by reading an interesting tweet and then by clicking on his or her web site.

This week’s Talented Twitter Find is Lars Tiemann.

Hey, you could be next! Keep posting cool stuff on Twitter!

Explore the light,

Rick

This post was written by:

Rick Sammon - who has written 145 posts on The Digital Photo Experience.

Canon Explorer of Light Rick Sammon has published 36 books, including Exploring the Light and Digital Photography Secrets. When asked about his photo specialty, Rick says, “My specialty is not specializing.” You can follow Rick on twitter at http://twitter.com/RickSammon and visit his website at http://www.ricksammon.com

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If you have not seen it yet, you must check out this new amazing viral video done for Levi’s jeans. But what’s truly cool about the video is that this was done not with fancy computer graphics or trickery, but by using good old fashioned photography. Amazing work, traveling across the country in an RV while taking carefully measured image sequences and combining those images to create a stop motion type movie depicting a person walking across the US.

We recently just had an article right here on DPE on creating stop motion/timelapse movies. Check it out: http://dpexperience.com/2010/07/21/creating-a-time-lapse-movie/

Very well done and a feast for the eyes.

Check out the “Behind the Scenes” video below.

This post was written by:

Juan Pons - who has written 179 posts on The Digital Photo Experience.

Juan is a wildlife photographer who lives in North Carolina. Juan lives and breathes photography and travels around the country making images, teaching and leading photo workshops. Juan's favorite destination is Yellowstone in winter. You can follow Juan on twitter at http://twitter.com/jpons

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[Editors Note: This week is "Marketing Your Photography" here on DPE with Rosh Sillars. Rosh will be bringing you a new article every day this week, make to sure to check them all out!]

Blogs are the foundation of your social media campaign. What makes a platform or Web site a social medium is the ability to respond to the content creator. This ability to respond and communicate engages readers and viewers. It lays the groundwork for developing a community of fans around your work.

In your digital marketing solar system, your Web site is your brochure and your blog is your personality. Blogs give your followers the opportunity to understand a deeper side of who you are.

Blogs offer the opportunity to share industry commentary, new ideas, your latest work or concepts. An added benefit is that most blogs are equipped with RSS (real simple syndication). This means people who like your work can subscribe to your updates through a reader of their choice, such as Google Reader.

Imagine 10 years ago (although RSS was around) telling people that your clients and fans subscribe to your latest work and can see your new images minutes after you post.

Build your community around your blog. It is hard to develop a community around a Web site, especially because it is commerce oriented. Blogs, if done well, are a much safer place for visitors. You can occasionally promote specials on your Web site for interested followers.

If you want people to comment on your site, make sure you comment on other blogs. People appreciate you taking the time to visit and comment. Make sure you thank and respond to people who comment on your blog. The more you interact around the Internet community the greater the opportunity for people to find you and visit your sites.

Just like on your Web site, is it important to have links on your blog to your other social media hangouts. Easy access to multiple methods of contact such as e-mail is also important. Make sure you have a big, easy-to-find link to your main Web site.

Make it easy to subscribe to your blog. Some people prefer receiving posts via e-mail. This option is available through services such as FeedBurner or FeedBlitz. FeedBurner is always good to run your RSS feed through to manage and track subscribers. The free service is offered through Google.

If you create a service blog for your community, advertising is acceptable. Otherwise, I highly recommend avoiding any advertising outside your own products and services on a personal or professional photography blog. It doesn’t go over well with the Internet community. Generally the pennies you earn from adverting represent dollars lost by put- off prospects.

A blog represents a deeper side of you and your photography. Art buyers are seeking out blogs before they hire so they have a better feel for who the photographer really is and what skills they possess that may not be reflected in their portfolio.

No matter how often you post, and this goes for all social media, be consistent. Be yourself. Let the world know how special you and your photography are. If you need a place to start, both WordPress.com and Blogger offer great options.

The next post answers the question: Is social media a waste of time?

This post is part of a series on digital marketing by Rosh Sillars, host of the New Media Photographer podcast and co-author of “The Linked Photographer.”

This post was written by:

Rosh Sillars - who has written 8 posts on The Digital Photo Experience.

Rosh Sillars is a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. You follow Rosh on twitter at: http://twitter.com/newmediaphoto

Contact the author