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If you have been following our Social Media miniseries you are undoubtedly excited to start executing your new strategy (if you haven’t already).  This week liveBooks is going to help you improve user engagement by looking at two of the variables you can control: what content you share and when you share it.

What types of content should photographers post to social media?

Few other marketing platforms let you reach so many people so quickly and for such a low price point as social media. It is important when you’re starting to use social media that you publish a variety of content to see what sticks best with your audience. As a photographer you’ll have a lot of visual content to share. Research suggests that images promote higher engagement than any other type of post. In addition, you can try sharing information about different causes you support, things you find inspirational or other cool projects you know about.

To improve engagement you can and include Twitter handles, Facebook tags, and other hashtags to your posts. Tagging others can often work as social currency and people are in turn happy to tag and share your stories. Also, you can try focusing your postings around different themes. For example, if you’re expanding your commercial photography business into high fashion you might try devoting your Friday posts to fashion-related themes on your Facebook or Pinterest profile. Maybe you connect with a local fashion blogger and share his/her content on your Facebook page. You can then see what types of content your followers are latching on to.

Remember that social media is SOCIAL! Think of each post that you put up as part of a larger story you are telling about your brand and the other social communities you align with.  Your followers want to share good stories and will reward you when they feel connected to the type of content you’re posting.

I love creative Twitter campaigns because they happen in real-time. These days the more creative you can get about how to engage your audience, the more successful your efforts will be. Here are some great examples that you might be able to draw inspiration from:

• Jeep put together an awesome campaign that creates a huge amount of engagement by encouraging its users to complete a puzzle. Watch this video to see how they did this.
• Artist Greg Burney (@GregBurney) vowed to sketch the first 3000 people that followed him on Twitter and in one month went from 70 to over 5000 new followers.
• Wendy’s created a gameshow on Twitter using the handle @girlbehindsix to promote the open slot they had on their burger menu. Wendy’s would ask viewers to do fun things like snap and tweet pictures of their headphones or engage in other interesting things to create buzz around Wendy’s. The campaign has over 20,000 followers.

As you can see, there are many fun ways to create buzz using Twitter. If you don’t feel like planning a full social media campaign, try to incorporate these tips into your marketing efforts.

• Research suggests that Twitter messages with 100 characters or less have an increased engagement of 17%.  This may not seem like much but every “favorite” or “retweet” further expands your reach.
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then using Twitter’s new photo embedding function may speak beyond your 140-character limit.  More data will follow in the coming months, but we can assume that photo sharing will continue to increase engagement for Twitter users much like it has for Instagram and mobile Facebook.

When should I post social media content?

So you have all of these ideas to spice up your posts, but when should you be posting to get the most out of your time?  The answer to this depends on what you’re posting. If your message is about an upcoming workshop, consider posting on Sunday or Monday when people are planning out their week. If you have a serious call to action you might consider posting towards the end of the week when people can take time to follow up with your content.  If your clientele is largely working professionals, you might focus your posts around later times in the day when professionals are available and tuned into social media. Be diligent about posting and find the times that work best for your audience.

Stay tuned next week as we help you use tools to monitor your social media presence.  If you haven’t already, join the conversation and let us know what is working for you at resolve@livebooks.com. For the latest news from liveBooks, and for added information and access to tools that will help you grow your photography business, stay connected to liveBooks through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Last week we looked at getting you started defining your social media strategy. Hopefully by now you’re starting to have a clear idea of why you need social media in the first place. Answering why you need social media by aligning with your larger business goals will get you on your way to having a more valuable and dynamic social media presence. Next, you can determine “who” you’re going to market to and “how” you’re going to connect with them.

Segmenting Your Social Media Market

As a photographer, each of your marketing goals is in someway tied to a market segment. To attract new segments you may want to focus your energies around platforms in which content is very rapidly shared like Pinterest or Twitter. New clients will be roaming across these platforms to quickly find content and information that aligns with their interests. If your goal is to further develop conversations and deepen the relationships with your existing customers, you may consider using networks like LinkedIn or Facebook. Determining who you want to market to will help you determine which platform will be the best to use. Below are three tips to help you do this.

Defining your market segments and “who” to market to:

1. List your top three revenue sources in the last six months and how you currently communicate with them. For example, galleries, online purchases, studio drop-ins etc…
2. List the top three types of customers or groups of people you want to attract. Some of these people may already be in your top three revenue sources.
3. Begin listing similarities and differences between your current and desired customers. You can start by asking questions like: How do they shop? What do they say about my work? What do you want them to say about your work? What marketing efforts are you already using that you can you further leverage?

Remember that social media is an avenue and not a destination. In most cases you want use these platforms to drive people to your website where they can make a transaction. Once you have decided “who” you want to market to you can focus on “how” to get them.

“How” to craft the right messaging for your social media goals:

1. Do a little research: Talk with your clients and find out how they like to use social media. What platforms do they use and why?
2. Keep an eye on the competition: Look at how your competition is using social media. How do they add followers and build their online community? What kind of content do they post?
3. Keep it simple: Based on the time allotment that you developed as a result of our week one post, focus your energies on crafting messages across the platforms that your market uses most. It is much easier to add to your social media mix than downsize and refocus if it becomes too much to maintain.

As we suggested in week 1, start slow and build out your strategy. At the end of each week look at the progress you’ve made toward your larger goals. Has social media helped you get closer to being successful? Document any successes and failures you have along the way and learn from your mistakes. You may find that your goals are changing, and so then will your social media strategy. This is good! The more you can align your social media efforts with your goals as a photographer, the more dynamic you can be at responding and using social media to enhance your business.

For the latest news from liveBooks, and for added information and access to tools that will help you grow your photography business, stay connected to liveBooks through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Defining your social media strategy begins with knowing you.  This week we’ll get you on the path to building a useful strategy that aligns with where you want to take your photography business.   If you haven’t done so already, check out my Week 1 post, Social Media for Photographers: Where to Begin, as I’ll build on that information this week and each week throughout this series.

The Photographer’s Social Media Strategy

As often as we see and interact with social media, it’s uncommon for us to think strategically about how we use it.  If you’re like many, you dabble across the different social media platforms and wonder which ones you should be focusing on to get the most return.  This is where many photographers go wrong. Instead of asking, “What social media do I need to be using?” you might instead ask, “Why do I need social media for my business in the first place?” It’s a simple question, and one that’s often overlooked, but even attempting to answer it will help you begin to look at social media as a tool for achieving your larger business goals. And when you begin to do that, you are definitely on the right track.

3 Steps to Help You (Re)frame Your Social Media Strategy

Before you can game plan your social media attack, you must first understand why you’re in the game to begin with.  Try following these three steps to (re)frame your social media strategy.

1. Identify a series of end-goals and set a time frame for achieving them. Keep it simple, but definable. For example, “I want to increase the amount of wedding-related inquiries I have by 15% over the next three months,” or “I want to expand my client base 50 miles beyond what I normally do now.”  List timely goals and prioritize them.

2. Identify what’s limiting you from reaching these goals. Maybe you feel you need to have more people see your work, or you feel like you don’t have enough exposure in public venues.  Be clear about what you think is holding you back. Doing so will help you focus on overcoming such barriers.

3. Identify what you’re currently doing to be successful. As you begin to define your process, and to implement social media strategy, you should start to see some success. Document your methods of achieving that success and build on it. Then continue to try new ideas.

Once you’ve identified your businesses goals and begun to think about ways to achieve them through social media, you can begin to look at specific platforms for achieving success. For example, you might use real-time Twitter updates or Foursquare promotions to encourage people to check out your location. Or, you can use Facebook to build your community and advertise an event. Whatever you come up with, you’ll be much more effective with your social media time by connecting it to real, measurable business goals.

In conclusion, it’s important to recognize social media as a series of tools and not a be-all-end-all marketing solution.  At the end of this exercise you should have a clear idea of what larger goals to focus your social media efforts around.  If you’ve taken the time to define the “why” of your social media strategy, the “who” and “how” will naturally follow. Good luck!

NOTE: Tune in next week for Part II of this post, when I’ll help you segment your social media market and clarify action steps to reach the various segments.

For the latest news from liveBooks, and for added information and access to tools that will help you grow your photography business, stay connected to liveBooks through Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re like many photographers you’ve already experimented with social media, either on a personal or professional level.  For many, the challenge is how to use social media more effectively; where to begin? Our goal this week is to highlight ways you can use Facebook and Twitter to get more business as a photographer. We will introduce how other photographers use Facebook and Twitter, discuss features of both platforms and conclude with suggestions on how to best manage your social media time.

An Introduction to Facebook and Twitter for Photographers

Social media is an invaluable tool for any business because it enables the free and easy distribution of content in real time. For photographers, using Facebook as a platform provides an easy way to share one’s work with friends, clients and future clients. On the back-end of Facebook are analytic tools that provide valuable insights on how effective your different efforts are. One major advantage of using Facebook is that you can learn what types of content your target audience is interested in and craft your future messages around these subjects.

Wedding photographers at Emilie Inc. use their Facebook pages to post album previews of the weddings that they capture. By including links with these albums they can drive traffic back to their blog page and increase their SEO presence. Fraenkel Gallery uses their Facebook page to keep members abreast of different events and photo openings. As a photo-centric platform, Facebook provides the opportunity to be very creative with how you market your content. According to Facebook, posts that include links, photos and albums receive 100-200% more engagement than those that don’t.

Twitter is an exciting platform that allows you to share short messages, including photos, links and other media content. liveBooks client Chase Jarvis uses Twitter to supplement his video brand and share exclusive, on-scene content. Sport photographer Brad Mangin uses Twitter to energize his followers and talk about sports in real time. The key to using Twitter effectively is to keep your content catchy and interesting. You only have 140 characters to convey your message; research suggests that the most successful tweets are less than 100 characters.

Regardless of how you use each platform, doing social media well takes time. Below are three simple tips for being more effective with your social media presence.

• Start small: It’s easy to get excited about social media, and just as easy to burn yourself out on it. Only expand once you have a good handle on one or two platforms.
• Focus your time: Set a daily goal for something you want to accomplish through social media. Maybe you announce exciting news every Monday or add 10 new followers throughout the week. Setting small goals will help you stay focused on improving your business.
• Have fun: If you aren’t enjoying creating content, chances are people aren’t enjoying reading it. Use your abilities as a photographer to create energy around what you do.

A Final Word on Social Media for Photographers

From this point, liveBooks wants to help you build your social media strategy. Tune in next week as we take you through developing your social media goals. Each blog post in this series will build on the last one and help you get a little bit closer to achieving an effective social media strategy.

Be a part of our Social Community! Like us on Facebook for unique photos and content you won’t find anywhere else, and follow us on Twitter.