This is Aaron Hockley's third guest blog post. Aaron is a professional photographer and writer who tweets too much and blogs a few times each week. His professional work finds him working with businesses for events, publicity, and editorial work; he also creates abstract and travel photos for leisure. In addition to photography for clients Aaron often works with other photographers to help them understand and refine their online and social media presence. Read Aaron's first blog post here. And, his second post here.

How's your social media life today?

Have you Tweeted? Pinned? Instagrammed?

What about LinkedIn? Facebook? Flickr?

Feeling overwhelmed? You're not alone. There are a lot of social networks and social media outlets that compete for our time as photographers. One could probably easily fill an eight-hour workday with nothing but online social media activities. That wouldn't leave time for actually making or editing any photos!

How do you decide where to spend your effort with social networking? I think you can make those decisions based on three factors, and one of them is a bit of a cheat.

1) Where Are Your Clients (or Fans)?

When we look at social media marketing or social networking from the aspect of trying to grow one's photography business, the online world is no different than the offline world. If you're engaged in offline advertising, mailers, networking, or other marketing efforts, you're (hopefully) targeting your audience. If you're trying to sell your senior portrait services, you're targeting high school juniors and seniors rather than sending a mass-mailer to everyone in your city. The same principles should apply online.

Identify your ideal clients. We already mentioned high school seniors if that's what you do. If you photograph weddings, you're looking for brides and can make some generalizations about their age and, depending on your positioning, income levels. How many wedding planning boards are there on Pinterest? Thousands? Millions? If I shot weddings I'd be all over that. Do you make fine art landscape images? Odds are that you know something about your typical buyer. If you're a commercial shooter, you probably want to connect with marketing folks, agencies, art directors, and the like.

Figure out where those clients live online. For high school seniors, right now the buzz is that Twitter and Instagram are the most popular networks. Corporate types are found on LinkedIn and increasingly on Twitter. If you want to find brides, Facebook is a good place to be and to connect with others in that segment. I'm seeing a fair amount of discussion on Google+ that involves folks willing to buy fine art prints and books.

2) Where Are Industry Connections?

Building relationships with clients (both existing and potential) is one aspect of social networking, but the other big area that can benefit photographers is connecting with industry professionals. Developing connections with other photographers, manufacturers of photo equipment, and vendor partners can have various benefits to your photography. In some cases, “it's who you know” can lead to referrals. Perhaps getting to know other industry folks can lead to publicity or an “in” with a gear manufacturer. Maybe you just want to bounce ideas or problems off of someone who has been in a similar situation.

Right now, I'm making the most connections with other photographers and industry folks on Google+.

3) Do You Just Want to Have Fun?

If your purpose in social networking is purely to have fun, then heck, do whatever you want … but don't complain that you're not getting business results if you're not making social media choices based on business criteria.

So … Where Do You Go?

There's not a single right answer. I've given you some ideas above, but ultimately you need to look at your business and figure out what makes sense for you. You don't have to be everywhere, on every social media channel. You can't be everywhere. It's okay to ignore a social network that isn't relevant for your business or area of interest. Trying to reach retail photographer customers? They're not likely to book you via LinkedIn. You probably won't pick up a corporate job via your Instagram images. Look at what you do, where you want to be, and where your clients and partners are hanging out. Be there, and don't feel bad about about ignoring other places.

This guest blog post is by Aaron Hockley, a professional photographer and writer who tweets too much and blogs a few times each week. His professional work finds him working with businesses for events, publicity, and editorial work; he also creates abstract and travel photos for leisure. In addition to photography for clients Aaron often works with other photographers to help them understand and refine their online and social media presence.

As we reach the end of 2011, we’ll be reading various articles online and in print about resolutions for the new year. Much like the proverbial gym membership which goes unused after the first few weeks of January, I’ve seen photographers drift away from their promises to change their practices once a new calendar begins.

Looking forward to 2012, I’d encourage folks to look at their photography world from two standpoints: that of the art and that of the business. If you’re a hobbyist, the business aspect is irrelevant. If you’re a professional, you’ll find that the art and business are intertwined. Instead of making a big list of resolutions, I’d suggest photographers pick a theme or two for their 2012 goals.

An Artistic Resolution

From an art perspective, where do you want to go? Is it time to dive into the world of off-camera flash? Is this the year to spend some time learning how to make HDR images? Perhaps you want to get serious about black & white for output. It’s great to think about all of the things that you could do, but after that I’d challenge you to pick just one. Instead of a list, let’s choose one theme for the new year.

Getting Down to Business

If you’re a professional (either full or part-time), it’s also wise to make an objective evaluation of your business as we begin a new year. While each business is unique, here are a few items for evaluation:

• What aspect of your business brought in the most revenue in 2011?
• What aspect of your business brought in the least revenue in 2011?
• How much time and effort are required for each of the previous two answers? What’s the return on the time spent? We’re talking “bang for the buck.”
• What marketing are you performing, and what results can you attribute to each form of marketing?

After evaluating your current business situation, decide what will change in 2012. Pick a direction for a business change in the new year. Perhaps it’s the elimination of an unprofitable aspect to your business, or perhaps it’s time for something new. For my business, I’ve decided to begin marketing and selling my abstract photo art.

After the Theme: Action

So now we’ve picked a theme for something new or changed for the art and business of our photography. What next? Next is turning that big theme into actionable tasks. Sit down with your task planning system of choice. Perhaps it’s an application specifically for tracking tasks. Perhaps it’s a blank document in the text editor of your choice. Perhaps it’s a legal pad. It doesn’t matter.

Record your theme and then start brainstorming actions that will help you move towards that goal in 2012. The actions will be depend on your goal, but might contain:

• market research
• learning a technique
• going somewhere
• branding
• marketing plans
• studying others’ work
• connecting with other photographers in a genre
• outreach to past clients
• outreach to new clients

Massage your list into a plan. The next step is to do the work. Stop planning and start doing, starting January 1st if not before.

Checkpoints

Go to your calendar (again, either electronic or analog, it doesn’t matter) and add some items. Make a note to give yourself a checkpoint on your goals. Set checkpoints for at least once a month, with the first checkpoint no later than Janauary 15th. When you hit a checkpoint, take a look at your efforts and results. If you aren’t moving forward, why not? Do you need to adjust your goal?

Adjusting your goal based on situational feedback is fine and healthy. Abandoning your goal probably isn’t.

2012 can be a great year for your photography. I’d love to know what you’re planning to learn, explore, or change in the coming year. Sound off below in the comments section.