If you are in the photography business, why should you take some time and effort to dabble with social media? Wouldn’t doing so take a lot of valuable time off your business? Wouldn’t having a website be enough to help you gain a foothold in the online world? Well, to be quite honest about it, simply having a business website just wouldn’t do. You also need to establish and boost your online presence with the help of social media sites, community forums and trade organizations.
Believe me; you need to do it if you intend to propel your business to greater heights. If you are ready to learn more about it, then let’s get started.
Image Source: techflexion.com
Reasons Why Expanding Your Online Blueprint Can Help Your Photography Business
You can expand your reach. Do you realize that by building and enhancing your online footprint, you are indeed providing potential clients multiple ways to reach you? By participating in various social media and other web 2.0 sites, you can spread the word about your photography business all over the web. As a result, you can expect more people to come knocking on your virtual storefront which is your primary business website. Wouldn’t that be quite interesting?
You can give your potential clients a way to reach you based on their terms. Let’s face it – getting hired for a gig and landing on new clients is not always as simple and as straightforward as you would like it to be. Yes, it would be idyllic if your prospects would simply click on your ‘Contact Me’ button to ask for your portfolio and hire you if you happen to impress them with your samples but that rarely happens.
So, the best thing that you can do is to provide potential clients with a number of ways by which they can reach you. Create a Twitter account so they can follow you there. Provide an RSS feed on your blog and create a Facebook page. Well, you get the idea. Do this and your photography business will surely get a lot of potential clients in the future.
You can establish and manage your brand more effectively. Having an extensive online blueprint can actually serve you in more ways than one. It can help you establish your brand, provide you a reliable way to manage your brand more effectively and help you build your credibility in the eyes of potential clients.
How is this possible? Well, we all know that most people often do internet searches to find information about almost everything – including deciding on a potential service provider. Now, if someone tries to find information about you or your photography business using Google, what would you like them to see? For sure, you wouldn’t want them to find any negative content that doesn’t support your brand, would you?
You would want them to see information that will help them see you in a better light and prompt them to decide that they want to hire you or do business with you. Well, that is specifically what they’ll get if you pay a conscious effort in expanding your online blueprint. Remember, positive results show way above the negative ones in the search engines. So, capitalize on it to build your business.
You can enhance your blog or website’s SEO potential. Having a lot of links pointing to your blog or website can improve your site’s SEO and that can be very good for your business!
Having an extensive online blueprint can do a lot for your photography business so you may want to start spreading your links all over the internet. Here are some ways to do it:
- Consider creating an account on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Create YouTube and Vimeo accounts.
- Create a Flickr account and showcase your best photos.
- Have your business listed at Google Places, Yahoo! Local and Bing Business Portal.
- Create your profile at trade organizations and local chambers of commerce.
- Start your own blog. You should also consider writing blog posts for related blogs (guest blogging).
- Participate in Q&A sites.
- Share content and podcasts online.
Are you ready to take these ideas for a spin to see if they will work for you? Go ahead. You’re in for a pleasant surprise!
I always include my course at the bottom of these articles via this link so you can get underway with your own photography customers when you’re ready.
Here’s to your success,
Ray Baker