Photographers and Social Media - Do They Mix?

Tonight by the power of Google I had the great pleasure to visit the web site of Photographer Guillem Lopez. 

Guillem has produced the most powerful photography and you would do well to spend some time appreciating the images on his web-site.

In his latest blog Guillem discusses the extent to which a photographer should engage with social media and  and concludes 

A photographer among many other should take pictures, research locations, contact and deal with clients, learn from other photographers, edit, keyword and caption uncountable images, be good at business, pay your bills and hopefully have some spare time to enjoy your family if you are lucky enough to have one. 

All excellent ways to progress your career and value your home life but I question that social media should be excluded from activities rather, social media should be embraced and added to this list.

If you already have sufficient contacts, clients and exposure to other photographers then you may feel you have no need to widen your circle any further. Indeed, there is only so much work one can take on.

But for many I feel sure that social media outlets are excellent ways to display your talents, make contacts, keep in touch with clients and perhaps weave a little personal social magic into your life as well.

Look at how social media can help you. Decide what messages are you trying to convey and apply the tools accordingly. Yes, social media can suck you in so  make sure you plan what you want to achieve in a session or an amount of time you can afford to dedicate to it in a given day or week and stick to it. Treat social media like any other business tool and I am sure you will reap the benefits.


Kevin
Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/kevleighton

New Blog Page for Social Media

Followers of this blog (thank you followers) are used to seeing mostly photographic posts with other comment from time to time as takes my fancy.

I've decided to create a separate page for Social Media comment as this is an area of interest to me as it may be to you. It's on a separate page so as not to break the photographic continuity.

Please drop in and comment as you see fit. It's an evolving world out there - be a part of it!

Is Social Media Marketing a fishing trip or a proven approach?

It appears that using Social Media for trying to elicit a two way dialogue is a bit like using sonar on a submarine. You ping out a lot and occasionally you might get a response back. Once you receive the response you have to evaluate it to see if it's meaningful and then do something useful with the information received.

In recent days I have experimented with sending Tweets which should have elicited some kind of response. Some were to specific individuals or organisations who are active in their own channels and regularly push information by Twitter and some were general requests for information to the greater Twitterverse.

My return rate was very poor, not surprisingly perhaps for the general broadcast Tweets but the targeted Tweets asking for information or help remained mostly unanswered. One response was very non-committal and after a second exchange was phrased in such a way as to encourage me to go away.

Social Media Marketing is becoming the latest buzz word (or is it phrase?) and there are a lot of people about who can help you to manage this. I would be very interested to know of cases where management service can both improve a potential customers experience and an organisations return on investment in Social Media Marketing.