Andrew “Fundy” Funderburg, is no stranger to Tiffinbox. Read his previous contribution about his album designing program for wedding and portrait photographers. In full disclosure I have to tell you that he and I are collaborating on SociRoll, the social media marketing tool he discusses briefly in this guest blog post.

I’d like to start off by saying that I am at the top of the list of haters of social media tools being used to spam people. Do not use social media to spam your followers.

So, the question is, why would I invent a program for automating Social Media marketing. The answer is simply that I have more things to share with my friends and followers than I have time in the day to share.

Social Media is all about making connections with people. For me it is about making deep connections. I’m not the type of person always tweeting and posting a ton of personal information. Sure, I’ll hop on Facebook and Twitter during the weekend and talk about the movie I’m going to see or whether my kids won their basketball games. But, during the week, I post a few personal things–mostly information about photography and the business of photography.

We strive to collect and provide some of the best content in the wedding and portrait industry. Content that we create and share today is still valuable in one or two months. If we manually update everything on Facebook and Twitter, all of this old content is lost. We constantly have new followers and friends and these new people will be just as interested in our old content as our new content.

Since August of 2010, we’ve written 150+ blog posts. More than 100 of these blog posts are related to the business of wedding and portrait photography. There are articles on everything from how to price wedding albums to how to sell portrait packages and everything in between. I want to make sure that our followers see this info.

It would be physically impossible for me to make sure that each one of these blog posts is featured in a tweet once a day. I would lose track of what I shared yesterday, probably miss some things, duplicate some things, etc. The point here is that if I have SociRoll auto post one of my blog posts every day, or even twice a day, we won’t repeat sharing a blog post for 3 months. And then we take into account the fact that if something doesn’t show up in your Twitter in the last five minutes, we won’t see it. The chances of someone seeing repeated Tweets is very low.

Now, let’s take a professional photographer. Let’s say the average wedding photographer shoots 30 weddings and 40 portraits a year. That’s 70 blog posts a year. Then let’s say they have been in business for 3 years. That’s more than 200 blog posts. Sharing one of these (or even two of these) events on their Facebook fanpage every day will seriously add to their brand and their site traffic.

So, do we set it and forget it? No. We let SociRoll do the heavy lifting for us, and we work hard to respond to people, retweet our friends, add personal touches, etc. But we know that our content that we’ve worked extremely hard to create is being shared among our friends and followers. Here's how to get started with SociRoll.

Yesterday we had John Pyle talking about how to specialize in photographing high school seniors.Today's guest post is by Jen Basford, a highly successful Edmond, Oklahoma-based photographer. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.

Like most photographers, I love what I do. I mean, I REALLY love what I do. And my biggest passion is marketing to seniors (which is JUST slightly above photographing seniors, however on most days I tend to love them just the same). And to be truly honest, I just love marketing in general. It is quite possibly one of the biggest factors in the success or failure of portrait studios in today's world. So you need to take a hard look at how you're approaching things.

First of all – who are you marketing to – the senior or their parent? In general, I am marketing to the senior. However, don't ignore the parents entirely or it can come back to bite you. So with that in mind, I look at ways in which to reach my target market most effectively. Oh, and I also should let you in on another little tip – I like to do EVERYTHING differently. And I like to do it my way. :)

For me, that means doing what everyone else ISN'T. I've done a LOT of research over the past several years into what gets the attention of teenagers. And I can tell you that it is NOT direct mail. Everyone mails pretty little postcards to seniors with the same things on them – here are some images of what we do, here is our latest campaign, and here is an offer to get you to come in and have your portraits made. And I can tell you that every single one of them looks alike. Sure, the colors may be a bit different, and many people use WAY too many fonts, but they all look like they come from a photography studio trying hard to get your business. Which will bore the daylights out of a soon-to-be senior.

Who, by the way, is quite possibly way MORE marketing savvy than you are.

Teenagers are marketed to nonstop from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep (and some might argue even well past that point). They can spot a fake, a gimmick, or something cheesy from 3 states away. They aren't interested in discounts. They aren't interested in deals. And they aren't interested in the fact that you can photograph really great well-lit images (though you'd better at least be able to do that if you're calling yourself a professional).

What they ARE interested in is fame. Being important (or made to feel like they are). Helping others. Relationships. Being REAL. You get the gist here.

So how do we reach them? By developing relationships with them and giving them once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Our 2 main marketing ventures for high school seniors are our senior model program and our annual Lights. Camera. Fashion! show we put on every spring. And these two things work hand in hand with each other. We recruit our models each year from the current year's junior class, and give them options in which they can choose to participate. And this isn't your parents' ‘rep' program designed to make kids work for referrals and discounts. Our model program offers the kids so much more – fame, the chance to be a top model for our studio, the chance to be a national senior portrait artists (spa) model winner, and the opportunity to be a runway model in our annual fashion show. We do offer incentives for direct referrals, however our model program is designed such that if they don't directly refer seniors to us we still benefit from indirect referrals, and the model then becomes a full-paying client. It's truly a win-win in all situations for us.

Our fashion show that we hold each year is the biggest event of its kind in our area. The focus is on the upcoming fashion trends, and we show high schoolers what types of clothes they will be wearing for their upcoming senior portraits. We also show them what a great time they will have at our studio, and how senior portraits are SO much more than just having your photograph made. They are about an experience. A feeling. A passion. A love. About everything you've worked your whole life to be, and everything you're heading off to become. It's a point in time that will never be repeated, and we want to make sure they realize the value of their senior portraits and that our studio can provide them with the best experience possible.

To support and supplement our model program and our fashion show, we effectively use Facebook, twitter, our blog and our website to create personal interaction and relationships with our models, clients and potential clients. One thing you have to realize, however, when using social media is that you HAVE to make it personal. Making a connection with your audience goes a LOT further than making it ONLY about business. High schoolers especially will start to tune you out before they even really tune in. Simple posts such as ‘Monday-1, Jen-0' on your social media can spark connections with almost everyone, as all of your target markets can relate to this humorous quip in some fashion or another. Keep it fun, make it personal, and use it effectively to enhance your business.

And keep it up. Regularly. If you don't, your audience will soon become bored and wander elsewhere. So it's your job to continually engage them and keep them coming back for more.

Assuming you are good at your craft, by giving some attention to your marketing and looking at how you can differentiate yourself from the pack you will be able to drive your target client towards you without the need to compete in the same arenas as ‘everyone else'. You must find out what makes you different, and start to capitalize on that. Because if you continually do things the way everyone else is doing them, eventually you will burn out and find that you are just a commodity to your market base. And people compare commodities on price – a war you will NEVER win, no matter where your pricing falls.

So play hard or go home. Because if you're marketing isn't on its ‘A' game you're going to be left behind.

Today's guest blog post is by Rosh Sillars, a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College of Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. He owns the creative representation firm The Rosh Group, Inc. and teaches photography at two universities and serves as a marketing and social media consultant for Synectics media. Rosh is also the coauthor of the book Linked Photographers guide to marketing and social media.Please visit his new project The Driven Business.

Is it really possible to increase dramatically your photography income?

Yes.

Photography has changed over the last 10 years. Digital cameras have made everyone a photographer; many of the basic point-and-shoot jobs have been lost. But, that doesn’t mean the opportunities are gone.

The truth is, there are more opportunities than ever. The secret is to make your competition irrelevant.

How?

Great photography and your creative ideas are the answer. Photography can be combined with writing, video, Photoshop, and other digital technologies to help you create unique offerings.

You must find your niche.

If you don’t have a good website, you are not in business. Make sure it is easy to use and well-optimized (If you don't know what that means, find out.) to attract the people who are searching for what you do. Don’t take search engine optimization lightly. Make sure you have a blog that is updated weekly with great images and text.

Get out of your home, office, or studio. Business is about people and developing relationships. Go to at least one networking event a week. Make sure you have business cards, portfolio cards, and your freshest images ready to share on your smart phone or tablet. Always have a portfolio available. You never know when opportunity will come knocking.

Follow up using the social web. Keep your new connections alive through social media. Develop new relationships using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Don’t sell to your followers, educate them. Teach them how to find leads for your business and you return the favor with opportunities and valuable introductions.

Create partnerships with companies that focus on the same target market. Develop packages and market your products in cooperation.

Don’t just sell your product. Sell the experience of working with you. You can’t hide behind your products. Photographers today need to understand that if they are going to be successful they are part of the product. Customers, in many cases, are buying the photographer more than the photography.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. It is important to protect your copyrights. If copyrights were not important, people wouldn’t be working so hard to take them from you. Keeping your copyrights will increase your income by providing more opportunities to resell your images at the appropriate time. But, the issue of copyright, business practices, and contracts doesn’t have to be an us versus them battle. Keep it simple.

Unless you photograph events, you should be using the per-image-pricing model. Your rates should be based on the value of each image, not your time. It is much easier for customers to justify a few hundred dollars per commercial image than $1,500 a day for the photographer's time. This model can easily be adjusted and applied to portraits and family photography. Each image has value; never give away a valuable CD full of images.

Don't forget to follow up.

Communicate regularly with past clients. They are the best referral sources you have, so make sure you collect e-mails and addresses. Don’t let them forget what a great experience they had working with you. Keep them up-to-date with you newest images. Give them the tools and the opportunity to refer you.

The best marketing campaign you can participate in is to regularly send hand-written thank-you notes. People like to be appreciated. Your appreciation is often rewarded with additional income.

What strategies will you employ to grow your photography income? What are you trying now? Willing to share so that can learn from each other? Post your thoughts below!

This guest blog post is by Robert Norman, a wedding photographer based in Trumbull Connecticut. He has 21+ years experience as a professional photographer and has photographed models, actors, President Obama, celebrities and, a zillion weddings. He does a fair amount of travel photography in an effort to keep his sanity. He has photographed events throughout Connecticut, New England, New York as well as Ireland, London and Italy.

I recently returned from Inspire Boston – a really cool 3 day conference in Concord, Massachusetts filled with learning and networking.

It also filled my pockets with a ton of business cards.

I’ve been researching a way for quite some time now to digitize all of my collected business cards. For years I kept them in an ever-expanding card binder; handy but not practical to reference on the fly. Last year I looked into Evernote, one of my favorite apps ever, which you should definitely have on your phone or use at home online!) But while I could scan cards, get them in there and access anywhere – there was no database per se where all the info would go into. It was just a bunch of scanned cards. (not to mention that their free service limits your monthly uploads, which I blew through by mistakenly scanning the cards at WAY too high a resolution! OOPS!! I have since upgraded to the $50 a year plan, which substantially increases your monthly storage space.)

Then I looked into Shoeboxed, but found their system of paying and mailing in cards so they could scan them kinda clunky and didn’t allow me to easily add a card or to. They also kept calling me which while potentially helpful, I felt quickly became too much a sales call for an upgrade or something of that nature.

I also kept seeing the NeatDesk scanner advertised, and almost hit the ‘buy now’ button on Amazon on many a late night shopping frenzy. But after reading the reviews, a lot of folks seemed unhappy with the NeatWorks software for the database. The unit is also $200-$400 which was expensive enough to give me pause.

So I think that I MAY have finally found the solution with CardMunch, an iPhone app that lets you photograph business cards and then adds it to both it’s own database as well as your contacts, automatically! They CLAIM that ‘real people’ (as opposed to Fake People) are on the other end checking that all the info is correct, which may be true but hard to believe as the app is free (maybe they hire prisoners?)

Still, it’s easy to use and actually pretty darn accurate. Only a few cards did not read properly – generally where something is REALLY small, or the contrast between the ink and paper are low. Also since you use 4 brackets to ‘frame’ your card before it automatically shoots it, certain oddly shaped or proportioned cards would not read (including my own card!). CardMunch is unhappy if the object doesn’t neatly fit in the specified area. If the card does a partial read, the contact comes up as ‘unknown contact’, which you can then go in and manually correct. Since the ‘real people’ are overseeing this sometimes it can take a couple of hours for the contact to be added to your phone. It also is suggested you use it only with an iPhone 4 as the camera focuses at the distance needed which the previous iPhones will not.

StillI gotta say – for a FREE app, CardMunch works pretty great, and I’ve even venture to say that I’d pay for it (did I say that out loud?)

Tell us, what do you use to corral your business cards? How do you keep track of all your contacts?

As an Adobe Community Professional, A.J. has been an enthusiastic representative in the creative community for several years. It's not surprising he's been ranked the #1 Adobe Instructor WORLDWIDE more than once. Students enjoy his straightforward teaching style, and the ability to communicate ideas in the simplest of terms. An active NAPP Evangelist, A.J. posts Adobe tutorial videos each week on YouTube. Follow A.J. on Twitter, post your questions to his Facebook page, and catch the latest insights on his blog.

Catchy huh? Yeah, I'm not once to mince words although, I generally like to spin a tale or two. It's my pleasure to join you today, and I appreciate the invitation Seshu extended to me quite some time ago. He is a gracious & patient host, and I hope my thoughts leave you wanting… Wanting more like Charlie Sheen's 2nd performance in Chicago, not wanting to leave like the angry mob that caught him in Detroit. Where was I?

Oh yes, harnessing your talent, your desire, that passion which many of us find in photography. It's rather difficult to focus on that passion when you're bogged down with the day-to-day running your photography business isn't it? There's the marketing, the office paperwork, the website, dealing with clients, to Facebook or Twitter, the list goes on, and yet many of today's photographers seemingly do it all. Maybe you're just starting out, and you haven't thought about your business plan or the logistics of making money from photography. Perhaps you're a seasoned pro, and you're wondering how you'll stay on top of all the changing technology, and the wolves scratching at your door. It's a wonder you get to take any pictures at all. That's okay, I'm here to tell you:

To discover your talents you have to recognize & acknowledge when you suck.

It's a common philosophy I share with my students, and many interpret it as a direct statement about their passion. Like Simon Cowell, I'm somehow there to obliterate their dreams. Let me clarify the statement with some editorial tweaks:

To maximize your talents you have to recognize & acknowledge where you suck.

I know plenty of folks who at some point were caught in company downsizing, and ended up being one of the lucky ones who had more job responsibility for the same or less pay. Oddly enough, I see the same types of folks launch their businesses with DIY zeal only to suffer from burnout or stagnant growth after a year. Yes, you have grand ambitions, some talents, maybe a kickass plan or two, but you're just one person. What you need are minions … I mean a support group … umm … network –- You need to develop your network. Just like that lone crusader Batman had a sidekick, and spent some time with other superheroes in the Justice League of America. (Wait … what do you mean a comic book reference kills my credibility?) Focus–a network.

Leverage your strengths, outsource your weaknesses.

When I talk to photographers about networking events many of them mention social mixers based around getting clients or connecting with peers. Generating leads is a must, and mentoring other photographers or finding a mentor is a wonderful thing. However, those connections do not address the immediate issues of office management, marketing or managing your website. I highly recommend finding those people at the networking events they attend. Where do you start? Your local Chamber of Commerce is a good place. Another good place is Meetup.com. Any hobby, popular fad or obscure interest can be found listed at Meetup.com. The best part is meetup groups are specifically designed to get people together live and in-person. Now I know what you're thinking, “That's a good way to generate client leads!” Point to you dear reader, that's a takeaway bonus for hangin' out with me this long.

But let's stay focused. I don't want you networking without purpose. What you should be doing is building your network. Your team of professionals. The people that you can call to handle the portions of your business that are really best suited to be handled by someone other than you. If you suck at website design, then by all means hire someone to do your website. And if you're great at website design, why in the world are you spending your time as a photographer? My point is by building your network, you can focus your energy at the really important tasks. My good friend Glyn Dewis is a fine example. He had a hand in building his first website, and it wasn't bad. It got the job done. See for yourself. However, Glyn's passion for photography literally oozes into everything else he does, so a good website wasn't good enough. Now he probably could have spent the man-hours himself building & retooling his website, but he found someone better suited to the task. Scott Kublin is another fine example. You don't know Scott? He enjoys HDR photography. He's friends with another HDR guy–Trey Ratcliff. *heart pounding from sheer awesomeness* You can read the backstory on Scott's About Me page, but the summary is Scott wanted to learn HDR and Trey needed some top-notch SEO for his website.

Leverage your strengths, outsource your weaknesses.

Thank you for taking a moment to read this post. As a fellow-overachiever-one-man-band-DIY-caffeine-infused-control-freak, I know it's tough sharing some of the parental responsibility for your growing business. However, it's the best way to ensure your business does grow. I want to thank my partner in creative shenanigans, J Schuh for illustrating my thoughts in the opening cartoon. Feel free to buy a t-shirt if we've tickled your funny bone. Oh, and where are my manners?

Here's a quickie Photoshop tutorial for you: