This guest blog post is written by Eric O'Connor, a Chicago wedding photographer, owner of Allori Photography and mylife-pages. Follow Eric on Twitter.

2012 will soon be here.

January is the perfect time to take a hard look at how to maximize profits in the upcoming year. These are a few recommendations that have helped me, follow all three and I know they'll work for you too.

1. What's in it for me?
2. Stay in Touch
3. Share the Love

What's In It For Me?

Your clients want information. They want to know every detail about their purchase. Give it to them! You are the expert. Share your knowledge and process with them. Whatever you do please don't wait until after the wedding to inform your client about the pre-design process. If you do they will feel cheated.  After they book with you make sure to take time or create a wedding album FAQ to walk them through the album process. This doesn't have to be complicated. Just a simple step by step from the day you shoot the wedding to the day you deliver their album. Set expectations and then deliver on them. It is important they understand you will be telling the story of their wedding day and you'll use as many pages as it takes to get it right. I always like to mention it gives them a great starting point. They can then customize the album to exactly what they want. Your clients will love this idea. Anytime they can take ownership in the process, you win!

Stay in Touch

Take a minute and think about the excitement leading up to the wedding. Your clients are excited about their wedding and then … BAM! … the wedding is over. It doesn't take long and they are back to real life. Catch your bride and groom in that first 30 days and their wedding day excitement will do the selling for you. You likely only have a 30 day window to take advantage of the wedding high. If 30 to 90 days go by and your bride hasn't seen pictures or a draft of her album it is much harder to add pages or sell additional albums. I make it a point to have everything to my brides 7 days after their wedding. I used to deliver images 30 days after the wedding and routinely life got in the way and the brides wouldn't even think about their album for a few more months. There were always a lot of album edits and very little pages added. Now, 7 days after their wedding they can view their Animoto slideshow, image gallery, and album pre-design right on their wedding website. I make sure to give my clients a deadline. We want to have the album completed and ready to print in 3 to 4 weeks. This helps give them a target to have their changes complete. Extra albums page sales have gone from a few or none to five, ten or more from every wedding.

Share the Love

Quick turnaround time is essential but I find coupling that with excitement from friends has really helped additional album page sales. A few years ago I emailed PDFs to my brides and they would leave me comments for changes. This was pretty efficient but didn't help me much when it came to advertising or extra album pages. I don't pay for ads in magazines and only have one ad online that I tested out this year and will discontinue Jan 1.  Word of mouth, SEO, social media, and over the top customer service do the job for me. The next iteration of album sharing was a slideshow posted on YouTube. I found I was getting quite a few hits and at the same time album sales started to increase. Brides started telling me their friends loved watching their wedding album movies. This was one of those common sense moments when the light goes on in your head. Friends of the bride love the album and they start telling the bride about their favorite pages. This process makes it harder and harder for the bride to remove or change pages.

Finally I arrived at the perfect solution, Share the Love! Wedding album movies on a post wedding website are essential to higher album page sales. With a favorites gallery, Animoto slideshow, and movie of the album, my brides have a constant flow of compliments from their friends about how much they love the wedding images and album pages. As you can see in the graphic the album movie in this wedding was viewed over 200 times in 6 weeks. I have been completely removed from the album page sales process. Yes, I have to take images my clients love but my brides' friends do the rest of the work for me. I do not meet with my clients to sell or add pages. These days they all add pages without sitting down with me.

Test out the three steps above. They are easy so don't cheat yourself and pick just one. Do all three. You will start to see a difference in sales. Click the image below to see how I display sample albums on post wedding websites.

Want to try a post wedding website? Your first site is FREE. Surprise one of your favorite clients with a wedding website with colors to match their wedding.

Today's guest post is by Nikki Peters, the community support manager for MarketMeSuite, the social media marketing dashboard you can use for free.

Publishing photos online is the new way of marketing your business, brand and even yourself and your own interests. Everyone can read a tweet or Facebook update and think nothing more of it, but to see a photo really does help you increase online engagement. As a professional photographer, it's vital that you get your photos out to your audience and even going viral. This article examines why photo sharing via social media can really help increase your online reputation and gain you a significant following. Here are 4 tools to help facilitate interaction and sharing of your photos.

1- MarketMeSuite – Photo Sharing From A Dashboard

MarketMeSuite, is a free Social Media Dashboard which has a Photo sharing feature called Photo.Me. This is excellent for those of you who like to upload and publish photos to all your accounts as it allows you to do so all in one place. Also, whenever you publish a photo via MarketMeSuite, it is automatically added to the official Phto.Me web page so anyone and everyone can see it. Every time someone visits the website itself, they see the images, and discover new Twitter accounts, people and businesses. It's a great way to get your photos seen, not just on your own Twitter/Facebook and Linkedin walls, but shared over a collective body of images where people can sit and browse at their own leisure and explore the photos origins.

Tips And Tricks For Using MarketMeSuite

Using MarketMeSuite's “Send To All” feature means you get to send your photo to your Twitter, Facebook profile, Facebook pages and groups and Linked.in in one swift swoop. Just check off the accounts you want your photo to be sent to and a link will be sent to all of them at the same time so you save time publishing your images to your audience. You have the ability to visit that photo at any time, delete it, see how many views it's had and grab the URL all from the MarketMeSuite app itself so you have everything you could possibly need at your finger tips to make sure that image is getting seen and by how many people.

2- Instagram – Photo Sharing From Your iPhone

Everyone with an iPhone is playing with Instagram, and why not, it's free and offers some pretty amazing photo effects that are easy and quick to apply. No fiddling, no adjustment, you pick the effect and they do immediately! If you are on the go and want to edit your images, Instagram offers you the ability to pick the desired photo effect and publish it to your audience quickly and whilst on the go! If you snap a great image and want to share it with your audience, there really is no better or more simple way. You can also post it to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr meaning it reaches the widest audience.

Tips And Tricks For Using Instagram

There is a common misconception that Instagram is for phones only. There is in fact, a cheats way of getting your photos on to it from your professional camera. All you have to do is upload professional quality photos using Dropbox and you can then pull them from your iPhone directly onto Instagram, and since it's a great network for sharing photos a lot of photographs and businesses alike are doing this. This way you don't have to sacrifice quality and pixels. Also, a Flickr plugin on your website can showcase all your photographs and you can hook it up to your iPhone to automatically share from Instagram.

3- Flickr – Photo Sharing On Your Blog

Flickr is arguably one of the worlds biggest photo sharing websites, it's certainly one of the more popular ones which is why it is a must for professional photographers. What better place to meet others with the same passion as you and share ideas and thoughts about it? With millions of people with an account, you are in good company! Upload your images and they can be seen under your username. Again you can structure your photos into albums so your work is neat and well organized so your audience can easily find what they like.

Tips And Tricks For Using Flickr

Flickr allows you to add plugins to your websites and blogs so you can advertise your photos on your website making marketing and access to your images easier than ever! Having content on your website gives people an immediate knowledge of your work and style so catches their interest. It also gives you the ability to let others use your images in their “Creative Commons” section meaning people can use and interact with your work so it gets seen by even more people. It's also a good idea to use tags so your photos can be searched for easily and you get a wider result of people looking at your work.

4- Facebook – The Viral Photo Share

It's so obvious it's easy to over look it. Facebook is the worlds biggest social network and when you add pages and profiles and gain a good following, it's a great way of easily uploading and sharing your photos. Whether you add them to a particular structured photo album or to a wall or share them individually, Facebook gets your photos to the masses. All it takes is one photo to be “Liked”, “shared” or linked out and you suddenly get a in-tune and appreciative audience.

Tips And Tricks For Using Facebook

With Facebook, you have so many options as to how you want to publish your photos and who can see them. Bulk load your images into content albums or upload them one by one, you have a limitless amount you can add and upload. The biggest tip with Facebook, is to publish photos that encourage your audience to get your photo's seen by liking and sharing. That's the best and most organic way of going viral as people trust their friend's “likes” and suggestions.

So Why Should You Use Any Of These Tools?

Words can't fully explain a sight, a time, a moment like a photo can. Not only can they inspire, they can help facilitate passive following. Your photos work for you even when you're not online engaging and trying to convert customers. Whether it's a photo of the office dog, of a new product for your business, or even just a beautiful photo, you have the internet at your fingers tips which helps you make sure they are seen and gain your exposure in your profession.

Which of the above tools do you use and why? Have you found clients or people interested in licensing your images because of these social media applications? Let us know below!

Let me start with two very public disclosures – 1) I received a 24×36 Acrylic print of one of my own images from Pictage to help in this review and 2) I simply love it.

Here is the image I submitted to Pictage (I shot this at The Westin Boston Waterfront, when I worked with Nabil Kapasi):

I am sure you are wondering why I feel so passionately about this one product. I recall hearing a photographer at Mystic Seminars say that if you want to stand out in the crowd, you've got to offer unique products to your clients. Well, let me tell you, these Acrylic prints will definitely be something I offer to my clients moving forward because the sample I received is STUNNING.

The combination of extremely clear and flawless elements and ultra smooth (transparent) finish sets these materials apart from more common Acrylic materials. The material, I am told, is extremely hard and is therefore difficult to scratch. (but not impossible). The edges are flame polished (melted if you will), to a smooth, safe, finish. It may take some knocks but why experiment, eh?

From Pictage's CEO, Jim Collins:

“The print affixed to the acrylic panel is not a silver halide photographic print. It is a giclee’ print quite similar to a fine art print. (just on different paper). As you are probably already aware, this process yields a print that carries intense colors, blacks and contrasts and this is responsible for some of the increase in detail that you can see in the print.

The acrylic serves two purposes. I guess you could say it’s not just a pretty face. The first purpose is obvious. Sex appeal. This is a very cool way to package a keepsake.  The second purpose may also be obvious to photographers, but I’m finding that this isn’t necessarily the case. In much the same fashion as a glass globe intensifies the output of a candle the acrylic actually intensifies the brightness of the print. The clear surface gathers light. This is one of the reasons why you really can’t take your eyes off of your new acrylic. That effect almost makes you want to study every detail in greater degrees.”  

No doubt this is a premium product and it comes at what I would consider a very respectable wholesale starting price that Pictage has brokered for wedding and portrait photographers.

Acrylic pricing for photographers starts at $84.50 for a 12X18 (the smallest available size), and climbs to about $750 for a 40X60. Interestingly, due to the giclee’ process, images can be printed at significantly larger sizes than traditional photographic prints, so stunning clarity even at Wall Covering size is possible. This will be evident in the two 40X60 panels Pictage will have on display at PartnerCon. Square and panorama formats will also available.

Photographers interested in these Acrylic prints will have to become a member of Pictage.

These prints become available first to photographers via their wholesale catalogs and Direct Order Tool or DOT, and then to consumers via photographer opt in. Most photographers who have an account with Pictage would do well to offer these prints to their clients because I know they will love them.

The Acrylic panel I received has a “museum” or “gallery” mount, with aluminum studs. See the image below. The other hanging option will be a recessed standout frame. Personally, I prefer the museum mount due to its look and feel.

I was going to post a video review of this product, including clips of me opening the box and picking my jaw off the ground when I saw how beautiful this print looks. I can't wait to install it on my home studio wall and show it off to my wedding clients. The Acrylic panel print from Pictage will complement my other product offerings like hand-made albums and museum quality canvases from the finest vendors in the world. And Pictage, I am told has other very interesting products launching soon. So, stay tuned and hopefully I'll get to review them as well!

Tell me below what marquee product or service you offer to stand out in the crowd? Has it helped your business? How?

A Japanese proverb goes something like this: “One written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold”

Granted this is a thinly veiled commercial for an online content marketing company, but this video is a must-see for all photographers.

a) It's for photographers who don't think blogging is all that useful
b) It's for photographers who have embraced blogging but only post images on their sites and don't express themselves in words as well
c) It's for photographers who spend their time only lurking on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and don't consistently engage with their audience/target market

Now that you know WHY words can make a difference I bet you are scratching your head about HOW to go about blogging for your photography business.

First, I highly recommend Zach Prez's ebooks – Photography Blog Success AND Photography Web Marketing Guide. These two guides are filled with great information and you can't go wrong. I am plugging them here as affiliate only because I think it is worthy of being promoted because they are so useful.

Still not convinced you should write? Hit this blog post I wrote – Read, To Write. Then go read Juan Mireles' synopsis of Jasmine Star's approach and what makes her so successful.

Other awesome resources for you to consider:

Blog Topics by Chris Brogan and friends – a weekly email that will help you come up with a variety of posts if you start to suffer from writer's block. “For $9.97 a month, you get over 40 topics and tons of writing advice.”

I am a huge fan of Kristen Kalp. Her ebook, “Circus Circus” is like a laser guided missile that will hit its target – writing for your business. It's not just about blogging, though that is covered briefly. If you need help writing even a bio, an about me page, a manifesto about what you bring to your target market that is unique, then you've gotta get it.

I am just getting into this book now – Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – but it came highly recommended, so I figured I would pass that recommendation along to you as well.

Today's guest blog is by Phil Hollows, the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, the email and social media automation service and premium FeedBurner alternative. He’s also the author of “List Building for Bloggers” – the leading book on email marketing and social media for people like us. See how to set up email services on FeedBlitz and follow Phil on Twitter.

Who, you? Neglectful? No, way!

Surely I’m talking about that other guy down the street. You take great care of your clients, your art and your business. Right? What could you possibly be neglecting?

You see, while we’re all busy worrying about blog posts and Facebook and Twitter, you’re probably neglecting your site’s most important asset – its email subscribers.

You’re not alone – tens of thousands of other bloggers, businesses and enthusiasts are making the same mistake right now. Tools, themes and widgets have enabled us all to become accidental email marketers, letting a fabulous resource go to waste.

The good news is, with a little work, you can make a huge difference to how quickly your list grows, how well subscribers engage, and – ultimately – into building your business through repeat sales and referrals.

Why? Because becoming an email subscriber is work. Squiggly letters to sign up. Dual opt in. Because of this work, though, these people are really committed to you. They loved what you say enough to put themselves through this process just so that they can hear from you again – what a compliment!

So don’t neglect them. Here are a few core tips, taken from my book “List Building for Bloggers” (use the code TIFFINBOX at check out for a 40% discount) that you can put into place right now:

1. Put your email subscription form above the fold.
2. Have exactly one email subscription form; choices can confuse.
3. Incentivize visitors with a reason to sign up.
4. Deliver that reward when they do using a custom landing page or autoresponder.
5. Brand your mailings so they stick in readers minds.
6. Subscribe to your own mailings so you get the real subscriber experience.

Once your list is growing and becoming more engaged, it can be used to help reward your most committed readers. A Facebook “like” is an air kiss – casual, with no commitment. An email subscriber’s commitment gets your foot in the door. Give them the same focus and attention they’ve shown you.

You can use that commitment and that trust. For example, as well as having your content emailed to them from your blog you can:

a. Ask for referrals.

b. Offer exclusive promotions and discounts (especially during quiet times of year)

So go on. Step it up! Stop being an accidental email marketer. Take a little care and take advantage of this powerful, universal medium. You won’t regret it!

So, do you have a list of people to whom you write to regularly? What lessons have you learned from your experience? If you don't have a list, would this blog post motivate you to start one? Let us know!

Remember to use “TIFFINBOX” when you check out List Building For Bloggers and get 40% off!