If your business isn’t already on Facebook you are missing out on one of the best ways to market your photography business. If you aren’t sure about getting started check out this article I wrote awhile back, Facebook for Photographers – 5 tips. Today though I want to talk a little about the changes for business pages on Facebook that you have probably already seen either with other fan pages or a similar view with your own Facebook page. Awhile back when Facebook launched the new Timeline view it was only for your personal Facebook profile, however all business fan pages will be converted to the new timeline view by March 30, 2012 so there is only a few weeks left to optimize your fan page.

So what’s new with the timeline style view other than a different look for your wall? THere are some pretty important things to keep in mind while setting this up to optimize the experience. First your fan page will have a cover photo now that gives you a nice 850×315 image area to really capture your users attention. This is a great way to show off one of your favorite images and since it’s such a prominent real estate on the page a good way to make your clients feel special. One idea to keep your customers visiting the page is to let them know you will rotate out the cover photo weekly and for them to check back to see if you choose an image from one of their shoots. Everytime you rotate it out let that customer know they are featured on your Facebook page. It can be a great way for them to share your Facebook page with their family and friends.

One of the biggest differences though is the links that you used to have on the sidebar show up on the top right side. You now only have space for 8 links and they show up as boxes underneath the cover photo. By default people only see the first 4 links and have a arrow to expand this and see all 8. Because of this you want to make sure your most important links are shown in the top 4. The first link for photos you actually can’t move, that has to stay in the #1 spot but all others you can. To move these just click the arrow on the right edge to expand the selection to view all 8. Then hover over one of them to see a edit button come up in the top right corner. Click on this to switch the position with another app or to remove it.

For our page (to be coming soon, still working on a few adjustments) we have our 3 most popular links shown in this area; a sweepstakes widget, a sign up form for our weekly email updates and a link to download our Free set of mini Lightroom presets.

If you haven’t checked out our Facebook page come on over. You can find us at http://www.facebook.com/digitalphotobuzz. Come on by and start up a conversation, you can always post questions on our wall, post photos to share with others (or to get feedback) and just chat about photography. Also I want to showcase some of your best work as our cover. If you have an image that would look great just leave a comment below or on our Facebook wall and i’ll pick a few to rotate out. Add your name and link to the image so everyone will know it’s your shot and i’ll also give you a shout out on our wall whenever we use an image.

Are you already using the new timeline view for your business? If so share a link in the comments so we can all check out your page!

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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As I am gearing up to review the new iPad tomorrow and reading all of the crazy news tonight with people already in line and camping out for the latest Apple gadget it always gets me thinking about their marketing power. If you look at the rise and fall and then rise again of Apple computer over the past 30 + years there are some amazing business lessons we can all learn from and many that us as creatives can really relate to. It’s pretty amazing that a company in a recession can release a $500-$900 gadget and have people waiting in line to give their hard earned money out right away. How do they do it and how can we have clients who are eager to spend thousands on creative portrait work of their families or artistic wedding photography?

Even if you hate them, you have to agree that Apple has built a very strong brand and a huge following of people who are very passionate about their products. How can we apply some of Apple’s principles towards our own photography business? How did they create such a hype that as I am sitting here writing this thousands of people are lining up at malls to buy the new iPad, camping out overnight and I am getting my alarm set to be there at 4am?

I think there is a ton of things we can learn from Apple about marketing, branding and just how they talk about their products. I know the artist inside me always wants to forget about doing any type of marketing and just focus on being creative but the reality in todays competitive environment is you have to not only be an amazing photographer to do well but also have to market yourself well. It took me many, many years to finally get this but once you do have a good marketing strategy in place you get more business and then get to shoot and be creative more.

The first thing I have learned from watching Apple over the years is their passion. When Steve Jobs used to get on stage to release a new product he didn’t just think they had a good product, he believed they have the best product ever created. If you listen to his keynotes he will talk about how their products are groundbreaking, revolutionary and will change the world. That is a very powerful statement to make! With the passion that he has for his products you are usually left really believing that product is revolutionary and just have to have it. Passionate people attract people, they are like a lighthouse against a dark sea. When our passion flows through our business it will be recognized by others. When you meet with a new potential customer don’t talk about price, types of albums you make or any specific product details. Show them your passion, show them what drives you.

Live your life with full passion! Put yourself into your photography business, don’t listen to what others are saying or doing but fully follow your heart!

Apples marketing is all about the expierience. Apple rarely talks about price, and they also put little focus on specs which really used to be rare in the computer world. With the new iPad launch they didn’t talk about RAM vs the iPad 2 but talked about non-technical things like the screen being “retina” and how amazing the experience is. Look at the video at the end of the article for the new iPad, it doesn’t really say it has 1GB ram, 32GB space or any other tech specs. What they do great if you listen to every word in the ad is show an experience and pull on your emotions.

We need to create amazing experiences for our customers. We aren’t just creating an 8×10 image for them but a life changing experience that will create memories for generations to always look back on and that are truly priceless!!!

So the question of the day for us photographers is… are we providing an amazing experience for our customers? Are we really creating work that we are passionate about and trying to push the bar up higher and higher. Are we communicating the experience and our passion effectively to our clients? Are we telling them when we first meet with them that our photography is unique, it can’t be matched by anyone out there?

Are we bold enough to fully believe in ourselves and share that true belief and passion with our clients? The buzz and branding that we create for our business really starts with us and how we speak about our work and what we do. Sharing our passion and confidence is key, so next time you are meeting with a potential client really pay attention to your words. Maybe even tape yourself if needed to listen to later, and watch the words you use to describe your business, your photography and the products you provide.

What do you think we can learn from the way Apple markets? Love them or hate them lets start a discussion in the comments below.

Also for everyone who wants to see the quality of the camera on the new iPad, images of the display and my thoughts check back tomorrow. I’ll post a few different reviews after I have a little time to play around with it.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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I have posted a few articles on Facebook marketing for photographers and will continue to expand on these. I think Facebook can be such an amazing tool to grow your business, and as the web continues to change there are new ways we can reach out to new clients. If you missed our previous articles here are the links:

Creating a welcome page for your facebook fan page

Social Media marketing for photographers

Once you setup your facebook page and are starting to get more fans what can you do to make sure you are being effective? Part of successful marketing is paying attention to the numbers and seeing what is really effective. Facebook offers some good stats that give you the ability to see how effective your posts are. It’s called Facebook insights and is part of your Facebook wall for any pages you are the admin of. These insights are really crucial to measure what is working on your Facebook wall and help you to get the most out of Facebook. While measuring stats isn’t as fun as being creative behind the camera its a key ingredient to any successful business.

So what can we measure with Facebook insights?

First built right into your Facebook wall you can see some very key information right below each post. This will show you how many times your Facebook post was viewed and the % of people who interacted with it by liking the post or leaving a comment. This really can help out to see trends and what type of posts people are reacting to and what posts people aren’t.

Next to view your full insights click on the Insights link on the top right of your Facebook wall. This will give you a couple top level graphs of your page. You can modify the date range of the graph at the top and it will give you a trend line of your Daily, Weekly and Monthly active users. An active user is someone who has either interacted with your page or viewed your pages posts. You will also see a breakdown of interactions with the number of Likes and comments on a daily basis. This is important to watch since the goal of a Facebook page is to create a community and you want as many people commenting as you can.

You can also view details about the people that are visiting your Facebook wall. Click on the users link on the left to see a detailed breakdown of the people who visit your page. This gives you a little more detail and a few things I think are very useful. First you can see a daily breakdown of how many people viewed your posts, liked a post, commented on a post or viewed your page. This way you can easily see days that your activity did great or not so great. Finding out these great days and then viewing the posts and what you were doing on those days will help you to keep going down that road and getting more and more people engaged. You can also view the daily new likes and unlikes. Did you post something that really didn’t sit well with a lot of your fans and a huge number of people unliked you one day? This will help keep your eyes peeled on that.

Another key piece of information here is viewing what tabs people are visiting on your Facebook wall. If you have different tabs on your page this really help to see what people are clicking on and also gives you a breakdown of where people are coming from to arrive at your site. If you are doing any marketing to push people to your page this is a good way to track where people are coming from.

Paying close attention to your stats will help refine the content you post and make sure you are delivering things that your clients want. Remember to have fun with your Facebook page, keep trying new things out and just like anything be flexible and change it up if you need to.

If you are on Facebook check us our here: http://www.facebook.com/digitalphotobuzz, always feel free to ask questions and post your feedback on our Facebook wall. You can also leave a comment on any of our posts using the Facebook feature at the bottom.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google:

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With all of the buzz lately of Google + I think some people are forgetting out Facebook and while Google + may be pretty hot the facts are Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon. Right now Facebook has over 750 million active users and over 50% of them log in daily! That is an insane amount of people and for us a great marketing tool. I think that is can be a very useful way for us to market our photography and with a little bit of time and effort an excellent way to spread the word about your photography all for free! Here are 5 tips on getting started with marketing on Facebook, if you have any of your own tips of comments please let me know in the Facebook comments section below.

Facebook for Photographers – 5 tips

1) Get a Fan page for your business on Facebook. – It all starts with your business fan page. You can also use your personal Facebook profile to promote your photography, I do that all the time and do add my clients as friends on my personal Facebook account. But you really want to start a business fan page and start to have all of your existing clients join you there. If you don’t already have a business page on Facebook it’s pretty easy to get one setup. Just go to the Facebook Create a Page and choose the Create a Page for a: Local Business button. The proceed to add your logo, contact info and other relevant details. Remember your logo doesn’t have to be a square image. You can use a nice vertical image to also include key things about your studio like your website address and other contact info.

2) Get all of your past clients on Facebook. – Once your fan page is up and running (and with a few nice galleries of portfolio images for people to see), it’s time to launch it to the public and get people to join.

3) Make it easy for new people to join your Facebook page. – After you do an initial launch of your Facebook fan page to your clients you need to consistently have it in front of new people to join. The first step is to share it with all of your existing Facebook friends. At the very bottom left of your fan page there will be a “Share” link. Just click this and you will be able to share your page with all of your Facebook friends either by posting the link and a comment on your wall, a friends wall, a group or by sharing the link in a private message.

After that you want to get the word out to all of your clients and other wedding vendors you work with. Always having a current email list of your clients and vendors is key and comes in helpful in many other areas for marketing that we will discuss down the road. Send out a email to this group announcing the opening of your Facebook business page. It’s also a great idea to tie in a few giveaways to get people excited. If you shoot portraits also I would suggest having a giveaway where you raffle off a free portrait setting for all new fans that join your page in the first week. You can also run a giveaway based on who comments on a certain post and raffle off a prize from there. That’s always a great way to improve the interaction on the page. Another thing I have done before is raffle off a gift card to the studio on my Facebook page. At the start its important to be active and drive excitement to your fan page.

4) Tag, tag and more tagging. – This is really the most powerful part about Facebook. Every wedding that I shoot I always upload a good 5-10 of the really strongest and most artistic images from the day. Then tag the bride and groom in the photos. This will show up on their wall to all of their friends and is a very powerful way to get your work out to a lot of potential new clients. A great image can be passed all around Facebook and tagging images with big groups like a cool bridal party shot can really bring you some great exposure!

5) Have fun and remember to be yourself. – Social media is all about being social and being yourself. Remember to engage with people, post some personal photos if you are comfortable doing so. People want to hire photographers that are not only great artists but people they also like. Especially with weddings since you are working so close with them on such a special day people really do want to know who you are. Your blog is a great place to share stories and some personal photos but your Facebook fan page can be another great spot to really let your personality shine.

Do you have a Facebook fan page? Leave us a Facebook comment below with your link so everyone can check it out!

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google:

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How to Enable Facebook Comments on WordPress

Marketing can be one of those tricky things that as an artist I have had to spend a lot of time over the past 10 years trying to master. There are many ways that we can market our art to the community we are trying to serve and with some of the ways that social media can be shared it opens up a lot more ways for us to reach people. Having a blog for your photography studio is a great way to connect with your clients and market your photo business to new brides. It gives people a change to see your latest and greatest work and also lets them see a little bit about who you are. I have had a blog for about 7+ years for my studio and have always loved how it has let me share a little about myself and does really give potential clients the ability to see who I am. A blog should also be 2 sided and allow for your readers to leave comments to open up communication. Awhile back Facebook created a way for any website to add a comment feature that would allow for users who were logged into Facebook already to leave a comment on the site. This comment can also show up on their Facebook wall and can be a great way to get extra visibility to your website. We added the Facebook comments feature to this site a little while back and it has been a great way to open up communication. If you ever have a comment, question or suggestion just type your comments in the Facebook comment section near the bottom of the page.

So how do you add the Facebook comments feature to your own blog? It’s fairly easy although does take some steps to accomplish. Here is a step by step walk through on how to do this.

1) First you will have to create an App in Facebook for your website. You can set this up here, and just need to name the app and provide your website blog URL Facebook App

2) Once you have created your app you will see an App ID number shown. Copy this App ID which we will need in a later step.

3) Click on the App Dashboard and go to the about section. Near the bottom under Manage Users make sure that it shows a Admin setup which is your Facebook name. You can add other admins if you need to, admins will be able to moderate comments and you can add as many other people as an admin to your Facebook App.

4) Before you install the comments code on your site you will want to install the Facebook Javascript SDK. For those of you that aren’t techie don’t worry its easier than it sounds. Installing this SDK will give your website access to many other Facebook features if you wanted to install them down the line and really plug into Facebook. Just go to your header.php file (in your wordpress admin go to Appearance –> Editor and then find this file on the right). As you always should copy and paste this text into a backup file somewhere in case you make a mistake. It’s always good to be safe and have a backup. In this file right after the BODY tag enter this text below, the only change to make is replace the “your app id” with your app id from step 2. You can also copy and paste the code from Facebook’s developer site here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>
  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({appId: 'your app id', status: true, cookie: true,
             xfbml: true});
  };
  (function() {
    var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true;
    e.src = document.location.protocol +
      '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
    document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
  }());
</script>

5) To enable the moderation for your comments you will need to add one more piece of code in this header file. In between the < head > and < /head > tags add this code

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="your app id"/>

6) Next head over to the Facebook Comments page and enter in your sites URL and any other customizations and click the get code button. Copy this code to paste into the next step.

7) Now all you have to do is paste this text into any page where you want your Facebook comments box to appear. Paste it in a blog post at the end to test it out. You can also add this to your comments.php file in wordpress to have the comments appear on every page. You don’t have to remove the existing wordpress comments feature if you don’t want to, they can live side by side. For this site I have decided to keep both comments since there were already thousands of great comments on old pages that have good conversations and not everyone is on Facebook.

8 ) To add the comments to all pages on your site navigate to the comments.php file and paste in the code from step 6.

Now you are on your way to connecting with your clients via Facebook comments.
There are other ways to add the Facebook comments to your site as well with wordpress plug-ins. If you don’t want to mess with the sites code you are just a plug in away from comments.

Let me know any questions you have and start a discussion below. I look forward to hearing from you.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends!

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A little while back I wrote about how to create a welcome page for your photography fan page on Facebook. Just like many things with the web Facebook has changed how you can create these and no longer offers Static FBML pages. If you already set yours up then it will still work but for anyone who still wants to setup a welcome page here is an update on how to now set this up.

First, why should you even have a Facebook welcome page? A welcome page can be a great way to entice people who come to your fan page to ‘like’ the page as well as strengthen your brand. Branding in this industry is so key to success, once you have a clear message and brand to deliver you have to make sure that this is included on all of your marketing efforts. With 600 million people on Facebook your fan page is an awesome tool to use for your photography business. With a welcome page any new visitor that isn’t a fan of your page will first see this page so you want to make sure it gives them a clear understand on what you do and provides then with a good reason to ‘like’ your page.

There are a few different ways that you can setup these welcome pages and it really depends on how technical you are and how much customization you would like. For our Digital Photo Buzz fan page, it uses HTML for the welcome page so that there are links and once you sign up you have a different page with a signup box for our email newsletter. These require some HTML skills as well as additional steps to setup, so today I am going to cover a few quick and simple ways to get a Facebook welcome page for your photography business.

Option #1 – iFrames for Pages from Wildfire. This is a really simple and free facebook app that will allow you to create a 520px wide welcome screen by simply uploading an image. All you have to do is go to their website and click the install button. From here simply upload an image that you would like displayed to non fans and then an image for fans. Once someone clicks on the new “Welcome” button on the left side of your facebook wall this image will now appear.

Normally you will want to have this image appear to non fans to see right when they come to your page vs. having them click a welcome link. This is really easy to do once you have the welcome page setup. Just navigate to your facebook fan page and click on the “Edit Page” link at the top right. From here set your “Default Landing Tab” to this new page. Now once someone who isn’t a fan navigates to your Facebook fan page they will be greeted with this new image.

Option #2 – Static HTML for Pages . – This is another great app that gives you pretty much the same functionality as the “iFrames for Pages from Wildfire” app does and is also free.

I would love to see what type of Facebook welcome pages you all have! Leave a Facebook comment below to share your fan page with us.

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This is part 2 of our Facebook marketing for photographers. In our first article (Social Media Marketing for Photographers) we talked about creating a business page for facebook and the importance of that. Today I want to talk about your welcome page and how important that can be to convert visitors into fans.

When someone visits your facebook business page and isn’t a fan you can install a facebook app that directs them to a special welcome page. This is a great way to explain a little about your business, your facebook page and entice them to be a fan of yours. To create a facebook welcome page you will first have to install this Static FBML facebook app. It is fairly easy to do but does require a few steps so here are the steps to create your own custom welcome page.

1. Add the Static FBML App

The different tabs that show at the top of your facebook page (wall, info, photos, etc…) are apps. Some like the wall are included with facebook but there are others you can add to your facebook account to customize it. In order to add a welcome page you will first need to add the Static FBML App. You can find this app at this facebook page, Static FBML App link. Navigate to this page and click the Add to my page link.

2. Customize the FBML App

After you have added the Static FBML app, click “Edit Page” link below your company’s profile image. Then click on the “Applications” link on the left. This page will show all of your current apps. Find the FBML app and click the “Go to Application” link. Here you will be able to set the title of the app which is what shows on the top tab.

3. Add your image
When you are in the application settings there is a section right under the Box Title, that simply says FBML. This is where you can enter any HTML code that will show on the welcome screen. If you have created a graphic and simply want the graphic to display all you have to do is post the image to your website and then enter the HTML to pull this image in. Don’t worry if you aren’t an HTML wiz this is pretty easy. Just upload the photo to your website and grab the URL address. Then enter in this code (replacing our website address with the address where you uploaded your photo to). < img src="http://www.digitalphotobuzz.com/image/welcome/jpg"/>. This is what it should look like.

Also since this is HTML you can do much more than just having a nice graphic show up. You can include a sign up form to your email newsletter, a link to your twitter account or website. There are many advantages to this page. Also once someone is a fan the welcome page can be customized to show a different graphic so you can have a message just for your fans. This does require some FBML coding to work so you do have to get someone to do it for you but there are plenty of people on the web that work on facebook integrations and it can be inexpensive to find someone to create a custom solution for you.

For our Digital Photo Buzz facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/digitalphotobuzz) we have a welcome message for new users that tells them to click the “Like” button above and a little about what our Facebook page is about. Then if they are already a fan this page will give the visitor a link to our Twitter page to follow us on Twitter, a link to Invite your friends (which posts on your wall) and a link to sign up for our email newsletters. It’s a great way to let your clients know of some additional ways to follow you and keep up to date with what you are doing. Check out our new fan page look and let us know what you think.

4. Make It the Default Landing Page

If you want this new tab to be the first page that people come to when they visit your business page, click on
Edit Page” from your main facebook page (on the left size below your profile picture). Then click on the “Manage Permissions” link. On the “Default Landing Tab” drop down choose the new App you have just created. From now on new users will come to your welcome page when visiting your facebook page. Once they become a fan then they will go directly to your wall.

That’s it, just a few steps and you can have a nice custom welcome page for new visitors to your Facebook business page. So start creating your custom welcome graphic and post away. Facebook can be a very powerful tool for your photography business and with more and more photographers on Facebook having your page as custom and unique as possible is key.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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OK, I know what you are thinking, not a Mac vs. PC debate. Don’t worry even though I am a huge Apple fan I am not going to talk about the benefits of their computers (at least not today). But rather how we can all take a look at the brand they have created recently and how some principles can apply towards our own business. As I sat down today to watch the Apple special event play out over live blogs on the internet I kept thinking what an amazing job they have done with their marketing. I basically took off 1 1/2 hours from work to watch them launch a new product and give me a marketing pitch. The buzz and hype that they create with new products is just amazing and the culture they have created over the past few years has really turned the company around.

So how can we as photographers learn from what Apple has done over the past few years? I think there is a ton of things we can learn from Apple about marketing. I know the artist inside me always wants to forget about doing any type of marketing and just focus on being creative but the reality in todays competitive environment is you have to not only be an amazing photographer to do well but also have to market yourself well. It took me many, many years to finally get this but once you do have a good marketing strategy in place you get more business and then get to shoot and be creative more.

I’ll cover a few different points over the next few weeks. The first thing I have learned from watching Apple over the years is when Steve Jobs releases a new product he and his team not only think they have a good product, they believe they have the best product ever created. If you listen to his keynotes he will talk about how their products are groundbreaking, revolutionary and will change the world. With the passion that he has for his products you are usually left really believing that product is revolutionary and just have to have it. Apple rarely talks about price (although they did today with the iPad), but instead focuses on how amazing their products are. And they really do describe them as AMAZING!!! (with all caps and exclamations, they shout out to the world that their products are the best). So the question of the day for us photographers is… are the products we are offering and the images we are creating truly groundbreaking and awesome? They should be and we should strive for that in all of our work. Then once our work is there are we communicating that to our clients, is the message we send out to them telling them that we are the best photographer they can choose? Are we telling them when we first meet with them that our photography is unique, it can’t be matched by anyone out there.

Are we bold enough to fully believe in ourselves and share that true belief and passion with our clients. The buzz and branding that we create for our business really starts with us and how we speak about our work and what we do. Sharing our passion and confidence is key, so next time you are meeting with a potential client really pay attention to your words. Maybe even tape yourself if needed to listen to later, and watch the words you use to describe your business, your photography and the products you provide.

What do you think we can learn from the way Apple markets?

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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