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.

John Pyle Photography specializes in High School Senior Photography and is a three time national senior portrait artist (spa) winning studio. He and his wife, Sallye Anne, own and operate John Pyle Photography in Columbus, Georgia and enjoy their soon to be 2 year old daughter, Julie Anne. Follow John on Twitter.

When I first began specializing in seniors (about 4 years ago) weddings were the buzz in the photography world.  People were laughing because I was on “that Facebook site.” Others thought all you needed was “passion”, a 5D camera and a 1.2 lens to become a wedding photographer. Now it seems that everyone with a camera wants to photograph high school seniors. The marketplace and Facebook have become saturated with photographers tilting the lens to create images for high school grads. So how do you separate yourself from fan pages, logos, and self proclaimed “artists” in  a growing and crowded senior market?

My point is you don’t have to sink in a massive pool of mediocrity if you are doing what it takes to stand out.

Competition

Before full time photography I was in pharmaceutical sales. I sold one of the most popular drugs in the market with only one competitor for 6 years. When a new competitive drug launched, everyone was panicked that our market share and business would crumble. But the opposite occurred. Despite the drug being slightly cheaper than the one our company sold OUR sales grew! Why? Because there was more noise being made about the market, the drug, and the disease state it treated. Sometimes competitors can actually grow your business. Especially if your work and sessions clearly stand out. 

Yesterday a client told me she was surprised at how many “photographers” are on Facebook when she began looking to book a session. She also said that it was actually very clear who did quality work because so much of the “noise” coming across Facebook from other “photographers” was not ”good at all”. 

My point is you don’t have to sink in a massive pool of mediocrity if you are doing what it takes to stand out. This may start by educating your clients on what quality is and by valuing what you do. If you don’t value your own work then people aren’t going to randomly decide to value it for you. Worry about your customers while competitors worry about you. 

Know Your Customers

When photographing high school seniors you better target everything to seniors right? WRONG. Seniors are a unique population to photograph because you are essentially targeting several clients in one; seniors, parents, family, siblings, peers, classmates … etc. Meet with the seniors and their families prior to shoot to clearly define the goals, likes, and dislikes before a session. You want customers to be thrilled with your images, excited about the session and be proud enough to show off the images. Sit down and analyze your customers to include defining who you want your ideal customers to be.

I talk with a lot of wedding photographers who are frustrated that they aren’t attracting brides who value their work, invest in their business, send referrals, and praise them to friends on Facebook. Some are advertising 75% off of everything, giving away free books, free CDs, free engagement sessions, etc. That’s fine if you don’t need income. But if you do need income you can’t be afraid of the word “profit”. It is still a business and being blessed enough to create images and work in your “passion” is still not enough to pay for gas or buy groceries.

Knowing your customers means knowing business also. A great lesson to be learned is if you sell on price, what happens when you aren’t the cheapest anymore? And if all your customers choose you based on price then that may be the only thing they value about you. Perfect your craft and learn how to run a business.   

Social Media

When utilizing Facebook and a blog/website make sure you show what you want to shoot. If you are constantly posting images of flowers, babies, concerts, airplanes, the beach, brides, and parks while claiming to specialize in senior photography don’t be surprised if your senior business doesn’t grow. You can’t sell what you don’t show. 

Customers (current and future) don’t need to see 463 images from a session. Limit what you show and choose what you show very carefully. This includes personal pictures and information as well. Personal pages are as much business pages for people and political statements, bad jokes, angry comments, and insults turn everyone off. Remember teenagers, seniors, parents, and grandparents are on your Facebook now. It’s also a good idea to monitor the images you post online for inappropriate comments. Every picture we post we are tagged in for this very reason.  

Network

Seek out other businesses outside of photography including those that target your market. Find out what they are doing right, and what works and doesn’t work for them. 

Invest in yourself and your business. Joining professional organizations, online forums, attending quality workshops, and experiment with new styles of shooting and lighting.

These will all improve your business and your creativity. The days of secret locations, mystery editing techniques, and hiding in darkrooms are over. You cannot be complacent in the senior market.  

Finally seniors are a very rewarding population to photograph. They keep you young and force you to stay current. But you must enjoy interacting with people and creating experiences on your sessions if you want to grow this segment of your business. Seniors only graduate once. You can’t even say that about people getting married anymore.  

This is a guest blog by Blair Phillips, a national award winning high school senior photographer and educator located just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina in the economically deprived “Mill Town” of Landis. With over 40 weddings and 600 studio session a year, Blair Phillips Photography has taken little and turned it into a lot because of determination and unique marketing. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter.

The internet is a wonderful thing. It brought us the ability to educate ourselves further than we could imagine, immediately connect with the rest of the world’s population and keep up to date with global trends. What it also did is change how photographers connect with potential high school senior clients almost overnight.

The “Net Generation” have grown up with the internet so they’ve never had to write a letter or even read a newspaper. Instead, they communicate with the world through email, instant messaging and numerous social media outlets. The fact of the matter is that this is here to stay and it’s our job as professionals to use it to our advantage.

A couple of years ago, we decided to send out about 10,000 mailers to all the seniors in our area letting them know that they didn’t have to get boring photos made at the high school. The entire send out cost us about $5,000, which was easily our largest advertising cost in the history of our studio. Now, I’m sure your wondering, “How many Seniors did you book with that mail out?”

Five.

That’s right, five seniors. Needless to say, we threw away a lot of money for nothing. Now, several years later, we average around 300-400 high school seniors a year and the best thing is that we don’t spend a dime on getting them here!

Facebook, of course, is one of our main avenues for reaching and contacting our high school seniors because it’s free and there are over 500 millions users. Now, we don’t simply update our status every other day in hopes seniors will “Like” our fan page. We always try to be a little more creative so, we have been utilizing our HD video capable DSLR to produce short, to the point videos that visually share information to our seniors rather than using text posts. When we recently launched our 2012 Senior Ambassador program, not only did we post a teaser video to our wall for all of our high school senior fans to see but we also sent prospect Ambassadors a link to our Vimeo account where they could watch a password protected video giving them details about being a Senior Ambassador, what we have to offer and what’s in it for them. The “Exclusive” password protected video helped reiterate the fact that our Ambassador program is very selective and it helps make the senior feel even more “chosen.”

Creating the video is simple but there are some things to keep in mind when producing it. You can’t just sit a camera up on a tripod, say a couple of lines and expect 300 seniors to come pouring in the doors. A video, especially geared toward a high school senior, must have plenty of movement and stay around 2 minutes long, if not shorter. The attention span of a high school senior is rather short these days so anything longer than 2 minutes is usually never finished, especially if it’s just a talking head. Incorporate some filler shots and footage to help fill in the gaps and to help maintain their attentions.

Another tip when creating videos where seniors are targeted is be very specific. Don’t try to cover 3 or 4 different programs in one video. Create 3 or 4 separate videos that highlight each program separately. By having different videos for different purposes, we’ve been able to target a more specific audience much more effectively, without throwing too much at them all at once.

Also, if you direct your video toward seniors, make sure that in the video you tell them to let mom and dad watch the video as well. You want to be completely transparent to the parents because after all, they’re paying for the photos. The last thing you want to happen is to come off as a creep and loose a potential senior client.

At the end of the video, we ask that they talk to mom and dad, then call the studio to set up a time for a consultation. The consultation is the deal maker because it then becomes real. They see the studio, meet the staff and begin to visualize their photos months before we actually do the shoot. We’ve never had someone watch the video, come in for a consultation and not book their session!

Most likely, you have some sort of video camera and editing software like Final Cut Express or even iMovie so why not take a stab at it. All it costs is your time.

Check out our Senior Ambassador video. Use the following password: radio

Do you already use video in your marketing? What have you found works best for you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below. One lucky commenter will win Blair Phillips's Workflow DVD, a $129 value! Winner announced on April 22, 2011. GO!

Photo consultant Selina Maitreya discusses a rarely used approach in client sales meetings. Check it out in the video below.

Did you like Selina's business tip for photographers? Want to get more of these tips and for FREE? Selina offers a free 5 day video course, “Building the Ideal Professional Photography Business.”

In addition to that, Selina and 13 other experts will be presenting a FREE two-day online event on February 11 and 12, called Clarion Call. [aff] You do need to register to get access to these awesome speakers. Remember, it is FREE, so why wouldn't you sign up?

If you miss the live event, you can still order the recordings, which garner you a bunch of very cool bonuses.

What sales tip could you/would you share here with your peers? Please comment!