• I was on the phone one morning talking with the Queen of Lighting, Bobbi Lane. About three minutes into the call we got disconnected. It was instinct, since I originated the call, to just call her back. Nothing rude, no “Can you hear me now?” I just started talking where I left off.  It happens to all of us all the time – what do we call it?
• The other day I called our health insurance company and got frustrated with the robot giving  me default prompts. I know it was irrational, but I dropped the *F bomb on the robot. I wasn’t swearing at a live body, just screaming out of the frustration of asking for customer service and not being able to get there.  Any thoughts on what to call it?
• Tuesday morning I was in the concierge lounge at the Marriott getting my free continental breakfast. I was all excited about making a bagel and egg sandwich with a little slice of bacon and tabasco. I toasted my bagel put it all together and took the first bite. It was horrible – I didn’t have my glasses on and didn’t realize it was a fruit flavored bagel. The whole concoction was simply wrong.   This isn’t the first time I got the wrong thing because my glasses were in my pocket! Years ago I bought a Bonnie Raitt CD in a music store in NYC. On the way home I put it on in the car and was shocked at heavy metal and just not my style of music. I couldn’t believe Bonie Raitt would release an album like this. Here it is again – I didn’t have my reading glasses on and bought Ratt – The Detonator Album! So, there are two words here – one is for morons who don’t wear their glasses when they need to, the other for simply making stupid mistakes!

I know there’s a difference, but it sure looked like Raitt at the time! LOL

• I was writing an email last night and thought I had sent it, but the hotel system sent it into the black hole and I had to completely rewrite it.  It just seems to have deleted on its own and disappeared into cyberspace. We’ve all had to rewrite things because they weren’t saved and wound up lost with Tron and the gang! We all do it, but what do we call it.
• Monday, at IUSA a woman came up to me and just started talking. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t even recognize her name badge. I smiled, talked a little and then a little insulted, she said, “You don’t remember me do you?”  I realized later she was the marketing manager for a company I once called on, but that was three years ago. She walked away insulted and I felt badly for not being better at hiding the completely blank look on my face when it came to recognizing her. Once again, what should we call those awkward moments when you don’t hide them well?

New words show up on our doorstep every day. In fact, think about it for a minute. It’s only been a few years since we started “chimping”, “googling”, “posting”, “tweeting” and “blogging”. They’re all new words we use every day! So, each one of these situations needs a word for Skip & Webster’s New Contemporary Dictionary.

If you can’t come up with a word or two that’s fine, just don’t tell me I’m alone in having these things happen.

You’ve got to Tweet several times a day for people to know who you are. You need to post at least three times a week or more. Old posts serve absolutely no purpose and you won’t build brand recognition putting up a post here and there. Building traffic is about consistency and you’ve got to be out there all the time.  In the last few weeks I’ve been really surprised at the number of blogs I’ve run into that just aren’t kept up to date and many of them by some of the best photographers in our industry.

Facebook is the same. You’ve got to be involved to build traffic. You’ve got to be making a contribution for people to remember you’re out there.

Make it a point to at least “hit” the social media button in your day, first thing every morning. Try and develop a routine for both contributing to your own pages and reading other posts from people you enjoy. Pretty soon it’ll be second nature.

That’s it – end of point. Post and tweet regularly or forget about social media becoming an effective marketing tool for your business.

What prompted me to give Scott an encore performance was something I ran into just a few days ago. I was searching for new blog posts from some very good friends and accomplished photographers. Sadly they haven’t kept up with their posts and it was one piece after another of old posts, blogs that are no longer active and old material.  So, that took me on the search to find Scott’s past post and all ten points are still valid today. In fact, with all the noise in our lives, they’re even more valid than when he originally wrote them!

At the time Scott wrote this he had 25,000 followers on Twitter. Today, he’s the most followed photographer on Twitter and is approaching 120,000 followers!  He practices what he preaches and has proven over and over again how these tips can help you expand your presence.

In keeping with Skip’s post from August  26, “You Snooze You Lose,” I am assuming
you are going to do SOMETHING. Here are some tips I’ve found useful as
I use these communications technologies to spread the word about my
work.

These tips have all worked for me. I don’t offer them as a set of
rules or even guidelines. I offer them as pure information that you
can use or ignore. Just remember, they worked for me.

1. Remember that blogs, podcasts and social media sites WHEN COMBINED
are 10 times more effective than when used alone. When I JUST blogged,
I had a good audience. When I started podcasting and blogging, my
audience grew much larger. When I added social networking (Twitter) my
audience grew tremendously. If you do just one of these things, you’ll
see benefit. Do all three and you’ll see that benefit multiplied by
more than three.

2. Blogging, podcasting and Tweeting are all about communicating. As
photographers, we all feel the need to communicate. Otherwise we
wouldn’t make and share photos. Remember that you need to be
accessible to communicate. I put my telephone number, email address
and snail mail address out there on almost everything I do. I want to
be reachable. What’s the point of sharing a photo that moves someone
if they don’t have a way to respond?

3. Respond to your audience when they ask for help or ask a sincere question.

4. Ignore your audience when they are complaining due to their false
belief that they are ENTITLED to something from you other than the
free gift you give them of your time. Also ignore trolls. No good can
ever, ever, ever come of responding to them.

5. Try to use your blog, podcast and Twitter sites to solve problems.
Everyone likes a problem solver.

6. Be consistent. Blog or podcast once every hour, or every day or
every other day or every other week, but be consistent. This applies
less to Twitter but you should try to Tweet at least once per day to
keep your followers interested.

7. Don’t spend too much time worrying about SEO and search marketing.
If you offer targeted, niche content of high quality on a regular
basis, you’ll outscore the best SEO-driven site every time.

8. When you first start out in blogs, podcasting and social media,
listen first, talk second. Listen more than you talk. Only talk when
you REALLY have something to say.

9. When you launch, you’ll have few in your audience. Be patient.
Don’t start counting followers on Twitter until you hit 1000. Then you
have real traction. Until then, you’re just ramping up and still
learning. Don’t be discouraged. Keep at it. It took me one year to get
my first 4000 Twitter followers. It’s taken me 10 months to add 31,000
more.

10. Be generous. Be generous with your time, your knowledge and your
gifts. Yes, prizes and giveaways are a form of generosity. It’s a form
I use well and often. But you need to also be generous in human ways
in order to gain real traction.

Scott Bourne

Think about it for just a second. Every morning you wake up and there’s at least one paradigm that’s shifted. There’s a new trend, a new app, an announcement of a change in technology that’s going to change our lives.  Think about all the tools at your fingertips. As Georgia put it:

The tools you have, literally at your fingertips are extensive. Just to name a few, you’ve got Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs, websites, You Tube, Google+, Groupon, FourSquare, Living Social, mobile marketing and QR Codes. They’re all different, but each represents an important tool for marketing and growing your business. 

I was excited to talk to her about the challenges in social media, but I found her comments not only helpful in developing the right mindset, but a foundation before attending her program as well.

Being successful in social media is no different than in any other aspect of business. You have to have the skill set first, especially in business and marketing. Without that understanding and respect you’re going to flounder. 

You need to have a plan and understand clearly what your goals are. For example, are you after more clients, more transactions, building brand awareness or new revenue streams?  Each component of your plan has a different path of success under the social media umbrella.

As she talked about the challenges of keeping up with the changes I began thinking about my own frustrations with social media. Twitter, Facebook, my blog all take an incredible amount of time every day, and I’m barely scratching the surface.  

New applications appear literally every day and in order to take advantage of them and follow through with the right application you have to understand every aspect.

This is only a fraction of what we talked about, but it got me thinking about the time all of us spend on the computer and engaged in some aspect of social media.  Every day there are new apps announced, new vehicles to help expand our reach. How do we stay cutting edge?

The Internet changed everything we do and social media has completely changed the way we communicate. Without a thorough understanding of social media and the respect for the growth it can bring to your business you can never reach your full potential.

Over the years I’ve sat through a lot of presentations in my career, some incredible and many disappointing. This is one program I’m absolutely not going to miss.  See you in Vegas at DIMA!  Finding out more about Georgia and her program is just a click away.

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow. Rupert Murdoch

I just spent five days out of the office in Sarasota. The blog was all caught up with two posts in the pipeline when we left on Thursday. The minus side of being in a routine is simply how hard it is to break, when you really want to. Five days on vacation and the latest I could sleep was 6:25 a.m. I still couldn’t do anything without first checking email on my phone. and often I’d find myself at my laptop, even though there was no wifi! 

So, I’m curious about your routines! I’m also curious how many of you have built into your routine the importance of checking your website EVERY day! I spoke at the IPI convention a couple of years ago and loved it when an attendee told me that there were five people in his business and each morning everyone has a different page assigned to them to make sure it’s loading the way it should.

From that point on I set things up so one of the first things I do, right after checking email, is to check the site, in this case Summer School.Then it’s on to email followed by the blog, then Facebook and Twitter. It’s just part of the routine. And while I have yet to find something major not working the way it should,  I have been able to do a lot of fine-tuning.

So, here’s the biggest question of the day – do you check your website every morning?

• Check your site on Explorer, Firefox and anything else out there that your client base might be using.
• If you have a storefront, check to make sure the appropriate links to Paypal, Authorize.net, etc. are working properly.
• Check a couple of pages at random to see if they load fast enough.
• Check any links you have to other sites: Twice I’ve found links not working and it turned out it was a mistake I’d made and never caught it initially.
• Last on the list – pick something to proof-read. Trust me – you’ll ALWAYS find a mistake!

Your website is no different than any retail store or office. Not checking it every day is no different than Nordstrom’s forgetting to unlock the door and then wondering what happened to business! Most important of all, and just like Nordstrom’s, keep your “inventory” fresh! Your galleries have to show your very best work and your promotions need to always be current!

My first week or two in the area we grabbed lunch.   Then he came to Summer School with his wife Perla.  Add in a party or two, another Summer School and the mutual love for photography and you’ve got all the ingredients of a great friendship.

Brian, Perla and their daughter Sara were over last night along with my stepson Michael, his girlfriend, Megan and our grandaughter, Isabelle.   While the kids played, we had a blast as Perla demonstrated her unmatched expertise in the kitchen, better than Emeril could have done, with a feast of Mexican dishes.  It was incredible!   At some point I clinked glasses with Brian, “Here’s to Facebook!”

One of my most favorite images of me and Sheila is all thanks to Brian and actually ran on his blog early last week.

We all get different things out of social media.  For some it’s a link to friends and family, others are about marketing, but whatever the reason, the most fun, be it Facebook or Twitter, comes from actually spending time with the friends you’ve grown to “know”.   Webinars, podcasts, forums, chat rooms and virtual trade shows are all fun and they enhance our education and experiences, but there’s still nothing that tops human contact!  

Make it a great Sunday!   Enjoy your family, friends or just your ability to procrastinate and enjoy doing nothing!  You’ve earned the right!

We all know the lizard from Geico…the golden arches of MacDonalds…if you’re local you can sing the Empire Carpet jingle and if you’re into any television series you know the music from all your favorites.  So, how are you going to get your target audience to remember your name just as well?

It would be the longest blog I’d ever written if I went into all the detail, but here’s the short version.  You need to weave a web around your target consumers.  You need to be in front of your target audience at every opportunity. 

1) Direct mail puts you in their mailbox.

2) Advertising gets you into the local papers and magazines.

3) Email blasts and newsletters get you into their computer.

4) Links from everything bring them to your website.

5) Community involvement gets you physically next to them on various projects.  This is about you getting to know the people in your community and your neighbors getting to know you.

6) Publicity releases get you into the local paper.

7) A great image on a holiday card brings you into their homes at holiday time.

 8) Your business card and stationery remind them you’re a photographer.

9) Cross promoting with other non-competing vendors gets you into their heads via association with other business entitites in the community.

10) Being active on Facebook and Twitter gets you into their world of social media and makes you more accessible.

11) Writing your own blog and keeping it fresh with a consistent presence gives you an opportunity to show off your work and your personality,

12) Editorial gives you an incredible level of exposure and gives your publicity and advertising crediblity.

That’s it – twelve points of contact and ways to reach your target and build your brand, but it takes patience.  It also takes consistency and an unwavering dedication to delivering a quality product.   But even more important is your passion for the craft.  If you love photography and always shoot with your heart, then you can create images that tug at people’s hearts and word of mouth advertising becomes the mortar between the twelve bricks listed above!

But remember, nobody can build this “house” except you!

I’m going to profile one photographer a day in alphabetical order for the next few mornings.  All the links to their blogs, Twitter, etc. will be right here , so expanding your horizons will be just one click away.  

Scott Bourne:  Scott’s become a great buddy and we’re involved in the GoingPro project  together, but that’s not why he’s teaching at Summer School.  I love working with people who I truly learn from and Scott is at the top of the list.  Professional Photographer Magazine wrote a story about him as the “King of Social Media” and he deserves the title – just his blog alone gets close to two million page views a month, greater reach than most of the photographic magazines.  

Scott’s message is so strong and his willingness to help people utilize social media is unmatched.  People used to say you can’t be in business without a yellow pages ad…well today, you can’t be in business without a website and in turn, social media is a critical component.  How are you going to make your blog more effective?  How are you going to use Twitter to expand your reach? 

He’s done a few guest blogs here on how to get the most out of Twitter.  Plus his background includes virtually every specialty in professional photography and he’s got a great marketing head as well.  Technically,  he’s pure geek through and through – on a constant quest to stay on top of technology.   And it’s the same for staying current with the latest challenges in our industry.

In his controversial January 25 blog regarding too-low pricing he wrote:

“It’s impossible to run a sustainable business over the long haul, deliver good quality and care for the client at lowball prices. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen dozens of businesses fail using this model and more importantly (and more to the point) have seen dozens of brides’ wedding memories ruined by photographers who had no business being there in the first place. There’s no do-over on a wedding. It takes a decent budget to get a decent result. Good reliable gear with backups cost money. Training cost money. Quality wedding prints, albums, books and gallery wraps cost money. If you sell a bride a cheapo wedding album that falls apart because you couldn’t make enough profit doing the cheapo wedding shoot, how does that serve the client? These are people’s lives you’re messing with. What could have more value than the wedding album – the first family heirloom of a brand new family? Think about it.”

Scott’s program on Visualization will kick off the first full day of Summer School on August 9 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas!  Then he’ll be helping me with some fun networking ideas at the end of that day.  One of the best parts of Summer School is just the ability to hang out with everybody and Scott will be there throughout the program to answer questions and help you with ideas to build a stronger business.

Want to learn more about Scott?  Follow his blogs, Photofocus and GoingPro.  Follow him on Twitter @scottbourne and @GoingPro2010.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at Joe Buissink, repeatedly referred to as one of the top ten best wedding photographers in America!

It was the headline of a story by David Dudley in the AARP Magazine this month and yes, I admit to reading AARP and damn proud of being old enough to have earned the subscription!   But the best part of the story is that for once I feel I’m actually ahead of the curve.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to talk more and email less.  Just this afternoon I caught up to a new friend, Joey Carman, and had a conversation about WPPI.  Every day I talk to my co-author and good buddy, Scott Bourne.  Jim Davis Hicks, founder of Thirst Relief is coming over to the house for lunch in the next week or so and I know, like last time he was here, we’ll spend the day coming up with new ways to create more awareness for the challenge of more fresh water around the world.

The issue is let’s find a way to talk more and email less!   We don’t talk to each other enough, but instead we Tweet and email.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but we all need to do a better job of doing both!  It’s especially important since we’re all part of an industry that thrives on human contact – we’re in the business of capturing those special moments – moments of people interacting, not communicating through their computer!

So, here’s the challenge – see if you can match one phone call to anybody you know for every email you send and texting doesn’t count.  This is about using your voice and really talking to friends, no matter where they are.   If we don’t talk more we’re all going to lose our ability to communicate.   I’ve already noticed that I’m spelling things phonetically as I struggle to capture a thought in just 140 characters.   While it might B gr8 2 B able 2 do, we’re even frgetting how 2 writ!   Photographers became photogs and then just togs…grammar is out the window, words like “at” has been replaced with @, two, to and too is just 2 and the list goes on & on & on!

David Dudley said it best in his close: 

“We’re in danger of becoming a nation of hyperconnected hermits, thumbs furiously working our BlackBerrys!”

PS. After posting this a few minutes ago, I can’t stop laughing over the link for Scott Bourne.  You’ll go directly to his lead story at www.photofocus.com on using Twitter for business.   So, let’s clarify my point…it’s a balancing act.  Social Media is as necessary to building your business as a website is today or a yellow pages ad was twenty years ago.  But, it’s a balancing act with personal contact and you’ve got to have both.  Keep the connections “live” with close friends and good customers and let’s not let having a live conversation with somebody become an obscure art form!

The Internet changed the way we share images, shop and communicate.  Digital photography changed the way we create and capture.  Social Media changed the way we connect and with who we connect.  Do I miss my life from ten years ago – NOT A CHANCE!

First, I love staying connected to an industry I truly appreciate.   Think about the people you “talk” to every day.  It used to be a year between friends connecting, often only at an annual trade show.   Now I’m connected to those once-a-year friends every day.

Second, the world is getting to be a tiny place.  I “talked” to Jerry Ghionis from Australia the other day who’s in Rome doing a wedding with Ryan Schembri.  And I’m connected to Yervant and Anie on a regular basis. I’ve never met Chris Fawkes and yet we regularly communicate, again on Facebook.    I can also keep track of where everybody is…Seshu, who I’ve also never formally met, a contributor to Charity Fest last fall, is on his way back to CT from India, Joe Buissink was in Russia and Charity Goh, a student I met at Hallmark Institute last year is trying to land a job in her home country of Singapore.  It’s all thanks to Twitter and Facebook.

Third, trends that used to take months to create, are out there in seconds in front of hundreds of thousands of people.  And if a manufacturer produces an inferior product, the word is out on a dozen forums in a flash.  Best of all, when you need help with a challenge, especially in photography, just post it on a forum like DWF and watch the number of people, many of whom you’ve never met, come to your aid!

Fourth, how about the way digital technology is changing our lives?  Jason Groupp, Charles and Jennifer Maring, Joseph Victor Stefanchik and Katherine Hall are leading the charge in Fusion Technology, while Jose Villa is shooting exclusively film and creating work that’s spectacular.  Bambi Cantrell and Dawn Shields worked a bridal fair recently and Bambi sent me an image on her i-phone that was good enough to post on the blog!   We’ve got the very best of all worlds at our fingertips.

The world shrinks a little with every step you take further into Social Media, but best of all is the power you have as a photographer to market yourself.    If you do it right and build your website and blog with a great attitude and the dedication to stay involved, you’ve got the power to communicate that just a few years ago only a national magazine might have had!  Scott Bourne’s PhotoFocus site has over a million page views every month, more than most publications!

So, every now and then I’ll complain that my day starts out with a couple of hours of blogging and I’m answering emails before the sun comes up.   But, would I go back to a nine to five job and not knowing what was going on until I literally opened my mail?  Would I trade in my computer for the silver letter opener my Dad had on his desk?  Would I trade in the excitement of “chimping” now and then for the pride of getting 38 exposures out of a 36 exposure roll?

The answer to all of the questions and the dozens we could all add to the list – NEVER!   In the history of photography, there’s never been a more exciting time and never more tools at our disposal to capture, create and share images.   If you’re not actively involved in staying on top of technology, as well as social media, you need to take another look.  I found the following quotes that seem so appropriate:

 ”Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
Stewart Brand

“The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”
Steve Ballmer