Facebook Strategy

[prince]

Hi,
I would like to hear from the community about their strategies to attract Facebook users to become a fan of your page. What incentives do you provide to your Facebook visitors to become a fan? I am struggling a bit to convert facebook users into facebook fans. I have spent few hundreds in Facebook ads but I am struggling to convert the visitors into fans.

I have narrowed down my target market so that step is done. I don't want to offer like price discounts to grow my fanbase.. Any other creative suggestions?

Please advise.

Thanks.

[RyanSandsPhotography]

Dharmesh,

First I would like to say congrats for putting yourself out there and asking an intelligent question in regards to your photography business.

Let me start off by asking you a question. What are your goals for your photography business? To only make some side money? Or to go full time and have your sole income come from photography?

Here are a few tips to get you going. I am in no way trying to be harsh...just as helpful as I can. First, lets start with your website. It needs serious attention. I would scrap the entire thing and start over. Same thing goes with your blog. I get absolutely no sense of who you are as a person let alone as a photographer. Also ditch the gigantic photo of yourself as the first image. It is actually very good to show multiple photos of you, the photographer...just not so gigantic and "in your face". Second...in regards to your site, I have no clue where you are even located? How am I suppose to know if I can use you if I don't know what state/country your from? That should be plastered everywhere.

Now onto your Facebook page. I see that you have dogs, model portraits, children, baby portraits. What avenue of photography are you interested in most? Think of the quote "Jack of all trades...master of none". Pick one avenue that your interested in and stick with that. Put all your efforts into attracting that customer instead of putting up 10 different kinds of galleries.

"Branding" Your font choice, logo design and color scheme for your site all don't work. Like I said before start from scratch. Get yourself a decent Wordpress based website and start with a theme...that will help tremendously.

"Business Plan" If you haven't already done so definitely write up a business plan. Come up with all the costs of doing business, what you need to make as an hourly rate in order to turn a profit and do the numbers. Run them 3X to get everything just right. You can't possibly know what to charge for any given service without doing this part.

That should give you a decent start to get going : )
A photography business isn't built overnight. It is a very long and involved process and one that needs many seeds planted before you start to harvest the rewards. Good luck to you!

[Biomech]

I ran a facebook ad campaign - it was completely useless.

The main way to get people to your facebook is to put content there that they want to see. You can also run competitions (but check first the fb comp terms have changed) etc to entice more people in. You can also link you twitter and blog posts to facebook to keep the whole lot updated.

For photographers, photo tags are your best friend. When you do a shoot, put up low res watermarked copies of your photos and encourage the client/s to tag themselves.

My main piece of advice is don't go down the route of numbers, for the most part*, numbers mean nothing. I have a friend who now has.... 3,200 facebook fans, 8,000 twitter fans (following 8,500). It just over saturates the content. In 2 years, he hasn't made a single sale. In contrast my facebook currently has 263 fans, but every one of them I've met and loves my product, this month alone I've had 319 leads from my facebook page.

Same with SEO, we just started a site together and he was amazed how I was getting top Google spots in a matter of days when he's been trying all sorts of hacks and tricks to get up the lists.

Remember, quality, not quantity.

* a very low number doesn't instill consumer faith

[baajero]

I agree with Ryan about your website and blog... disjointed... and the good photographs are lost in the design... and again... I have no clue where you are?

[prince]

Originally Posted by RyanSandsPhotography

Dharmesh,

First I would like to say congrats for putting yourself out there and asking an intelligent question in regards to your photography business.

Let me start off by asking you a question. What are your goals for your photography business? To only make some side money? Or to go full time and have your sole income come from photography?

My goal is to have a part-time photography business but by no means be a slacker. I want to dedicate 100% and be successful. I have passed that phase of making a decision on "if this is for me?".. so I am not just playing around..

Originally Posted by RyanSandsPhotography

Here are a few tips to get you going. I am in no way trying to be harsh...just as helpful as I can. First, lets start with your website. It needs serious attention. I would scrap the entire thing and start over. Same thing goes with your blog. I get absolutely no sense of who you are as a person let alone as a photographer. Also ditch the gigantic photo of yourself as the first image. It is actually very good to show multiple photos of you, the photographer...just not so gigantic and "in your face". Second...in regards to your site, I have no clue where you are even located? How am I suppose to know if I can use you if I don't know what state/country your from? That should be plastered everywhere.

Now onto your Facebook page. I see that you have dogs, model portraits, children, baby portraits. What avenue of photography are you interested in most? Think of the quote "Jack of all trades...master of none". Pick one avenue that your interested in and stick with that. Put all your efforts into attracting that customer instead of putting up 10 different kinds of galleries.

"Branding" Your font choice, logo design and color scheme for your site all don't work. Like I said before start from scratch. Get yourself a decent Wordpress based website and start with a theme...that will help tremendously.

"Business Plan" If you haven't already done so definitely write up a business plan. Come up with all the costs of doing business, what you need to make as an hourly rate in order to turn a profit and do the numbers. Run them 3X to get everything just right. You can't possibly know what to charge for any given service without doing this part.

That should give you a decent start to get going : )
A photography business isn't built overnight. It is a very long and involved process and one that needs many seeds planted before you start to harvest the rewards. Good luck to you!

I don't have a formal business plan but I have put together a pricing plan by running all the costs and the kind of services I want to offer.

As far as branding, I made a conscious effort on building the website, logo, colors and tying the color scheme together. May be it is not creating an impact. I will gather some feedback on the overall site and do the overhaul if needed.

I want to do portraits.. family, baby, senior, pets.. I don't want to pigeon hole any single one, which is why I have a different photographs.

Yea I understand it is a long process and that's why I am not expecting overnight results but at the same time I want to be doing the right things. Your suggestions are very valuable. Blog, especially is the weakest of all. I am thinking of even scrapping it or just buying a premium WP theme..

Originally Posted by Biomech

I ran a facebook ad campaign - it was completely useless.

The main way to get people to your facebook is to put content there that they want to see. You can also run competitions (but check first the fb comp terms have changed) etc to entice more people in. You can also link you twitter and blog posts to facebook to keep the whole lot updated.

For photographers, photo tags are your best friend. When you do a shoot, put up low res watermarked copies of your photos and encourage the client/s to tag themselves.

My main piece of advice is don't go down the route of numbers, for the most part*, numbers mean nothing. I have a friend who now has.... 3,200 facebook fans, 8,000 twitter fans (following 8,500). It just over saturates the content. In 2 years, he hasn't made a single sale. In contrast my facebook currently has 263 fans, but every one of them I've met and loves my product, this month alone I've had 319 leads from my facebook page.

Same with SEO, we just started a site together and he was amazed how I was getting top Google spots in a matter of days when he's been trying all sorts of hacks and tricks to get up the lists.

Remember, quality, not quantity.

* a very low number doesn't instill consumer faith

I am making a conscious effort to not have any random person on my FB page as a fan. That's a valuable piece of advice. I have put out few competitions and used FB ads to promote them. People click on them but hardly a couple choose to become a fan. My ads are very focused to my target market so it's not like I am randomly targeting. Biomech, can you give an example of a competition that worked for you? Thanks for your advice.

[prince]

Originally Posted by baajero

I agree with Ryan about your website and blog... disjointed... and the good photographs are lost in the design... and again... I have no clue where you are?

Thanks baajero. I have identified the blog design as a major weakness. That will be the very first one that will be revamped .

[Jim Bryant]

What I've done is try to post a photo a day or write a blog. This seems to attract folks to like my page and become followers and they in turn share the link with their friends as well. Good marketing!!!!!!!!

[Biomech]

Now the most important part that will really put you at ease. My 100% risk free guarantee. If, for some reason, I am not able to meet your expectations and create photographs that do not excite you, I will return 100% of your investment.

That's generally considered a very bad idea

Blogs take a lot work, I'm planning on scrapping mine. It really devalues your product when the last entry was 6 months ago (or in my case...oh I've already taken the link out lol... last post was April anyway.)

[CarlyRocksPhotos]

This has been touched on above, but you have to really utilize your social media on a very personal level, or you lose people. . .

Also: Word of mouth is your best marketing tool. That, along with social media numbers (the ones that count) just take time.

Good luck!

[Biomech]

Biomech, can you give an example of a competition that worked for you?

Sorry I missed that. I haven't done any myself yet. You can do like my page and a random person gets X etc a lot of big corporate pages are doing a lot of caption this photo and submit your own XYZ. Thing is, all competitions on facebook now have to be run through a 3rd party or you stand the risk of having you page removed

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