Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Orkut … oh, forget about Orkut, that doesn't exist anymore. Phew!

But still, can you imagine posting to every single social media platform out there? When do you find time to photograph? Or, spend time with your family? You can drive yourself batty trying to be everywhere all the time. (Here is Gary Vaynerchuk's advice to master the four big platforms)

It's true, my wife thinks I am also married to my iMac and I am always sitting in front of it posting to these social media platforms at all hours of the day and night. At some point I experienced burn out. And you will too. It's a sense that all of this “work” you are doing online is really a huge waste of time.

That's just your tired brain aching for a break. And you should step away from it all. Heck Zack Arias gives himself a whole month each year (I believe it is December) when he opts out of all social media circles. And good for him. As the new year approaches, he is ready to give it a big push and has the energy for it too.

As I said, whenever I have done it, it has always felt great. But is it always necessary to give yourself a time-out? While I really haven't missed any of the platforms, there is still a very tiny portion of me that wonders if I could still be engaging with my audience and driving traffic to my site, while I am on that well-deserved break.

The easy way out when it comes to blogging, and several other well-known bloggers have already suggested it, is to simply schedule your new posts in WordPress ahead of time. This very post you are reading was written several days ago.

But that only takes care of the blogging side of the equation. What about social media? I use an application called Buffer with some success, but it requires you to load your articles and links up ahead of time and then have them appear at different times of the day on different platforms.

However, I really wanted a tool that would be in sync with my blog – posting blog posts to different platforms, at different times from the very same WordPress dashboard I was using to write and edit my content.

Thanks to Kim Doyal, I discovered that tool to be CoSchedule. I've now used it for over four weeks now and I can tell you the very reason I am posting this review is because I couldn't do without it. It's a plugin that sits below your content editing area (see screenshot below) and out of the way. It springs into action the minute you want to “Create Your First Message”. The tool is smart enough to pull in your blog post's url and set it up in a way that all you have to do is simply add your own out-going message. Interestingly, when I wrote a message that was longer than 140 characters, the system smartly told me that it couldn't send it to my Twitter feed because it was longer than Twitter allowed.

CoSchedule connects to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr. Once you register your account, you are able to create as many messages as you want and thereby schedule the same post to appear a day, three days, seven days or even a month after it publishes, so that your audience will always see it front-and-center.

So, what are the three big reasons why you should use CoSchedule for your social media marketing?

1) Being Consistent

In any business, appearing consistent adds to your credibility and speaks of your reliability. When your posts consistently and frequently appears on all the platforms, your audience (aka. your potential clients) are going to be reassured that doing business with you is going to be a-ok. In CoSchedule, you set it up once and you just move on to the next blog post. You really don't have to do much more than that.

2) Drive Traffic

I don't have to tell you how traffic from Facebook has dropped significantly. The only way more number of people are going to see your blog posts on Facebook is if you make it a point to share your links at different times of the day, allowing for a greater number of people to visit your site. CoSchedule makes this happen very easily.

3) Encourage Engagement

Whether is Twitter, Facebook or even Google+, if your audience only retweets, likes or 1+'s your posts, you aren't going to go very far. What you need is for your audience to engage with your content and in the end, engage directly with you. CoSchedule‘s interface allows you to add your own flavor to the posts, making it possible for you to ask questions or displaying a call-to-action that will help you see results.

Want to know more? Check out this two-minute video overview:

So, do you believe you will use an editorial calendar like CoSchedule for your blogging and social media marketing efforts? Sound-off below to share your opinions with me. I trust CoSchedule will save you time and make you more efficient. It does for me. That's a win-win in my book!

Doug Levy is a New England wedding photographer and a good friend who knows his way around off-camera lighting. In fact, the first few times I ran into him were at the Inspire Photo Retreats where he taught a packed room of eager photographers the art of using off-camera lighting at wedding receptions. Subsequently, he conducted his own lighting workshop, which I attended.

Listen to our conversation about Doug's start in the business and what he looks forward to the most at Inspire Photo Retreats.

Doug will be back to teach at Inspire Photo Retreats, which will be held this time in Portland, Maine, from February 9th through February 11th.

Here is a sample of Doug‘s work:

Here is a list of other speakers who will also be presenting.

Register for this amazing conference here and now.

Michael Howard, a wedding photographer based in Nashville, Tennessee founded Musea, an online proofing solution for busy photographers.

Instead of establishing the same old basic business model that tonline proofing systems have followed, where a photographer pays the host a monthly sum and also surrenders a portion of the sales profits as commission, Michael chose to dedicate 2% of the 16% commission he receives towards Water.org. Plus, he eliminated monthly fees!

Among the topics Michael and I covered when we recently spoke were his intentions to start Musea, the new offering called Musea Lab and lastly the intimate conference he calls Musea Gathering that will take place from February 22nd through February 25th in San Francisco.

Want to learn more about how Musea is serving serious photographers like you? Listen to the many podcast interviews Michael has conducted with industry leaders.

MUSEA Gatherings are for those photographers that want to bring more intimacy into their work. Weddings and portraiture photography trends currently put much of the focus on amazing locations and the people are often interchangeable. Gatherings take a different approach by encouraging photographers to find vulnerability, connection and humanity in those we document.

PLEASE NOTE: For the next 24 hours, you can apply to win a seat at the Musea Gathering. Enter the scholarship giveaway now!

Behind The Scene Look: How I Got That Shot

The image you see below was created as part of an engagement session. It was towards the end of shoot when we were at a beach and sun had already gone down. The park visiting hours were already over and there was a cop driving everyone out. And it was cold, the chill factor in the wind was sending shivers down our spines. We quickly grabbed couple of shots and drove out of the park.

This shot was taken with the help of an off camera flash, Nikon SB900 inside a Lastolite 24″x24″ softbox, triggered with my trusted Pocket Wizards. The following is a lighting diagram showing the set up for this shoot.

The flash had a full cut CTO (color temperature orange) gel on it. I wanted to give the feel for the post dusk bluish night sky. So I turned my camera to tungsten white balance. This gives the blue tint to the whole image. To compensate the blue tone on the subjects and bring the skin color back to normal yellow/orange tones, the flash had the orange gel on it. The full cut CTO gel fully compensates for the tungsten white balance.

Another challenge was that we required the light to be very close to the couple and we wanted wide angle shot to include more of the background for context. So the assistant was in the picture.

The Photoshop Work

To fix that we took two shots, one with assistant lighting the couple and in the shot. Before the second shot, the assistant ran out of frame and switched off the light. So the second shot was taken with the couple without any light. Once we take these two shots it is very easy to do a composite in Photoshop:

1. Open both the images in Photoshop as layers, with the image with assistant as the top layer.

2. Auto align layers (Edit –> Auto-Align). When we don't use a tripod there is always a slight movement of the camera and the frame changes. To compensate for that, we have to align the layers.

3. Once the layers are aligned, select the top layer and use layer mask to mask out the assistant. Now we are using everything else from this layer except area where assistant was. That area is picked up from the layer beneath.

4. Make other changes as required.

And, voilá, we have our final image. Do you have any questions? Feel free to ask below!

This is the third guest post by William Bay, in a short series about customizing your website. Here are part 1 and part 2 of the series. You might want to read those first before jumping into this last part of the series. Thank you!

Even though developers and photographers get paid to do something artistic and technical, there can be communication pitfalls along the way. You can learn all about it in my new book entitled: Photographers are from Venus and Developers are from Mars. Just kidding. But in all seriousness, language-wise, photographers tend to be more on the artistic side of the spectrum, and developers tend to be on the technical end of things.

Another important aspect is that most designers and developers just want be in front of their computer coding, and not dealing with clients and business issues.

Does that sound familiar, photographers? Yep, you just want to do what makes you happy: photograph, and not deal with clients either.

The reason I’m telling you this is so you can remember these pointers when you feel some level of frustration coming on. All you need to remember is that you’re talking two different languages. The best way to communicate is to use a common language. So, be clear in your speaking and writing. Think before you send a set of instructions. A good thing to ask is “would a 10-year-old understand what I’m asking?” Use diagrams or screenshots if necessary.

Remember, this is your future website. It’s your responsibility to ensure that it turns out the way you want it to. A web developer is your facilitator to help make your dreams come into being, not your punching bag when you can’t understand each other. You’re on the same team.

Whatever you do, don’t “try” to speak the developer’s language. Mistakes will be made, and you’ll look silly. You know when Uncle Bob comes up to you at a wedding and tries to get into a technical conversation with you? Yeah, it’s kinda like that.

The Process

There are different phases to building your custom website. Below is a list of the phases that work for Flaunt Your Site. These are not hard-and-fast rules, and not every developer will go through all these steps. But I’ve found that, for me, utilizing these steps encourages more communication along the way, and minimizes the amount of errors that pop up.

* Wireframe: This is a very simple line drawing of the layout: what content will be on the page, and where it will go i.e. slideshows, content, videos, etc.

* Design Comp or Mock-up: An JPG or PNG image file of what the site will look like. This is usually done in Fireworks or Photoshop, so you can see what the site will look like before the building process starts.

* Scope: The mock up is then looked at very carefully and each element is examined to see if there is a function that it's supposed to perform, like what element links where, are pictures static or part of a slideshow, what things have rollover behaviors, etc.

* Development Site (the Building Process): Usually performed on the developer’s computer, offline. This is where the design comp is turned into an actual website. It’s best to build this offline so clients don’t see “how the sausage is made.” It’s not as disturbing as a slaughterhouse, but you don’t need to see the build process. It’s actually boring and slow.

* Staging Site: When the site is finished and you can actually see it up and running, we put it on a staging server. Many developers have their own server that they’ll use (e.g. client1.flauntyoursite.com). It’s online, so the owner can see the actual site in use. Final changes and bugs are found and fixed. This is also a good opportunity to import any existing content that you have on your site or blog.

* Soft Launch: I like to include what’s called a soft launch phase (not everyone does this, though). This is when the site is pushed onto your server in place of your old site. I know you’re really excited to have everyone come look at your new site, but before you invite the masses, it’s good to test everything in its final live environment. It’s a good practice to have just a couple friends with keen eyes look for mistakes, typos, and any final web gremlins that need to get squashed.

* Hard Launch: The pièce de résistance! All the hard work and months of waiting come to this point where you can blast the whole world, Facebook, and your email list that your new website is open for business. This is when you pop the bubbly.

A Word On When Design Happens, And When Design Changes

Design happens during the design phase. To drive the point home: Design does not happen during the build process or after the Soft Launch.

If you want to change the design that you’ve approved, we will charge you for going back and changing it (frequently called a Change Order). A small tweak might not be a problem, but don’t be surprised if we tell you that you’ll be billed for the change, or that you have to wait till after the site is completed and initiate a Phase 2 on the site. So if you’re on the fence about something in the design, get it resolved right away during the design phase. You can even ask for an extra week to sit with the design to see if you’re 100% happy with the design, or if additional tweaks need to be made.

Again, I’ll remind you that it’s your responsibility for the project turning out the way you want it. But if you’re looking for a quick way to make a developer go from an overweight nerd into a full-on, enormous green rage monster, just tell them that you’d like a design change while they’re in the middle of actually building the site.

Payments

What I’ve found that really works for my clients and myself is to base the payment structure on certain phases from the above list. This is how I typically work (again, all developers are different):

* Initial 1/3 payment: Upon signing contract. (This pays for my time to design a concept).

* Second 1/3 payment: Upon client approval of Design Comp. (This mean that the client likes what they see and they’re committing to building the site).

* Final 1/3 payment: Upon completion of website and prior to Soft-Launch. (This indicates that the developer has done his job and it’s ready to go live).

I do ask for final payment before launch. It’s just the preferred method of ensuring final payment for many developers. It’s our version of “delivery on payment.”

When Problems Arise

Yes, there will be problems. We’re not launching a rocket, but there are still a lot of things to juggle in launching a website. Web developers are people, and occasionally, we make mistakes, so try to be understanding. We’re on your side, and mistakes are just that: mistakes. We’re not intentionally trying to screw up your day.

If multiple mistakes are happening, and it becomes a competency issue, the developer isn’t willing to be open about the cause, or you’re just getting excuse after excuse, then you do have cause for concern. If you’re not sure what you’re dealing with, please feel free to call me. I have no problem helping disputes so feelings don’t get hurt, or people have to revert to legal actions (which is the absolute worst for both parties involved).

Life After Launch

This is not the time to make design changes! Okay, just checking to see if you were paying attention.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but there is the occasional client that waits until after the launch to raise design issues or concerns they’ve had. And while it’s a rather frustrating phenomenon for developers, it’s really just going to end up being costly to you – not to mention, you’ll probably end up at the back of the line of the developer’s client list, since they have promises to other clients. So, again, get your design done during the design phase.

Once you’ve launched, your focus should be on the content – this usually means blog posts and/or photo galleries. If you have existing posts, you may think about going back and figuring out what the best keywords for each post are, and re-optimizing them for search engines. If you have questions on that, Flaunt Your Site offers one-on-one SEO training and we can teach you.

For new content, I would suggest a regular schedule. Every week or every other week depending on how much you shoot. Again, you’ll want to focus on the right keywords for your blog posts (And I guarantee you, it’s not “Your City Wedding Photographer”).

Here Are Some More Tips On How To Take Care Of Your Site:

* Keep WordPress and your plugins updated! Part of the reason WordPress releases updates is because they increase the security measures constantly. Don’t lose all that hard work because you’re running an old version of WordPress.

* Keep the plugins to a minimum. Plugins are really great, but too many will bog down your site. And the wrong ones will open up your site for vulnerabilities.

* Use Google Analytics to track the effectiveness of your site. This includes things like:

o How many visitors do you get?
o What content is the most popular?
o What is your bounce rate for important pages?
o Where are most of your visitors coming from?

* Use the information from Google Analytics to make decisions about the content on your site.

* Visit Google Webmaster Tools every two to three months to ensure that your website is in good standing, and that the Sitemaps are being submitted properly.

* If you have questions about the usage of your site, ask your developer. It’s a good practice to stay in communication about things. I can’t speak for others, but I’m fairly available to my clients afterwards.

Above all else, be proud that you have something custom and unique. You totally deserve to give yourself a high five when you get compliments on how easy to use, or how beautiful your new website is.