Using Social Media for your Photographer Makeover
Most of you know me as a stock guy. And rightly so. Since that’s where I’ve spent the last couple of decades. Shooting commercial, travel and lifestyle imagery for every major stock house in the business. I saw record highs in 2005-2006. Then record lows in the beginning of 2007 to the present. Because of this decline in return-per-image (better known as RPI), I began exploring other potential revenue streams. To not just survive…but thrive. Enter social media.
I’m flat out making my business more web 2.0 centric. For me, that means migrating my role from photographer to publisher. From production to education. From stills-only to multi-media content. From word-of-mouth to word-of-mouse. From narrow marketing to viewing the world as my oyster. From stock-only income to a wide range of products and services – including photo tours, international shootouts, webinars, blogsites, eBooks, and consulting. All geared to this new connected generation of customers: photographers, producers and storytellers.
The amazing thing about virally making-over your core business is, while painstakingly tedious, once in place, it will allow you the luxury of focusing on what you’re best at. And perhaps shooting the sort of pictures that brought you to the dance in the first place.
Plunging into a photographic makeover of your business, so it’s more web 2.0 saavy and compliant, means taking all of those experiences, brand equity, good will, personas that you have painstakingly, over time, developed offline and creating the same – online.
I’m starting to be convinced that survivability no longer depends on ‘offline’ value only. You need both. Off and online equity and value. Working in concert with each other.
Invest the time now and the rewards will not only be immediate, but potentially lucratiave. It’s time for photographers to make-over their brand and business.
One Response to 'Using Social Media for your Photographer Makeover'
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Jack,
Amazing and pragmatic observation of how social media is paramount in our industry for business success. Thank you for your clarity.
As a fellow advocate of social media and its wonderful reach, I find myself defending its relevance to my peers. Deep in a total website and blog redesign overhaul, I am living “painstakingly tedious” but recognize that your brand and the equity linked in the virtual medium cannot be left to rust. It needs to be tended to, polished, publicized. Often.
When I first found/followed you on Twitter, you loomed large both in depth of personality, clear integrity, and lucid photography content. The virtual “halls” of social media are filled with two types: 1) the kind that only see SM as a bigger billboard for self promotion and 2) the kind who see it as a conduit linking people for positive (and profitable) change. You are the latter, photography’s positive change agent, Jack.
Thanks for opening the eyes of this little photographer, for one, and so many others online.
@fleurdeleigh