Using Facebook For Marketing

LarissaPhotography · Jan 7, 2010

How do you guys use Facebook for marketing? We've been adding customers as friends and tagging photos and videos with them in it. Is that what you guys do too?

jnm · Jan 7, 2010

im not a pro but i know 2 pro's who are on my facebook. one never uses it other than adding clients as friends. the other uses it quite a bit. both never ever upload pics to facebook because of their wacky ownership rights. the one that does use it posts the links instead, which show up as mini announcements.

i got the sense from one of them that it's irksome when clients post the pics, but if they have the rights i guess there's no stopping them. best you could do is ask to post links instead.

NateWagner · Jan 7, 2010

I follow a number of photographers on facebook. One of them uses it primarily to show images from the sessions. It is basically a mirror of his blog, except that the blog has slightly larger images, and he talks a bit more on it.

And obviously any image on FB is watermarked.

Big Mike · Jan 7, 2010

I know several photographers who use Facebook quite a lot. Part of it is putting up photos and tagging people in them. That way, all those people's friends might find see it and come to your facebook page.
Another way they use it, is to let people know about the sales & promotions they have.

LarissaPhotography · Jan 7, 2010

Anybody set up fan pages? Is that complicated?

Heck · Jan 7, 2010

LarissaPhotography said:
Anybody set up fan pages? Is that complicated?

A fan page is super easy to start. I did one for a online game I have.

some info here http://mashable.com/2009/09/22/facebook-pages-guide/

STOFFEL · Jan 8, 2010

The links from your profile and page have the nofollow tag, so they dont convey any link juice. However, we are on all of them, facebook, twitter and myspace. Over 230 fans on facebook and getting higher. I post new company news, pics, specials, newsletters and more. I have had a few jobs from there but I have a LOT of teenage fans on our facebook, so I think come prom season, I think we will definitely get some bites there is a workaround to get an SEO bump from Facebooks high PageRank. Add an RSS feed to your page using an app like SimplyRSS (or a less buggy alternative if you can find one).

gnohz · Jan 8, 2010

I know of a friend who uses it for images as well as for announcement of events such as exhibitions etc. But the images are sort of like "teasers" that lead people to the main website. I think facebook is quite effective for organising events and making announcements though.

Chris Stegner · Jan 8, 2010

I'm not in the "business" of selling my photography. I do it because I love it. My FB friends know I love it, and some of them have bought prints from me. What I do is after a shoot (I call them Photo Road Trips) I'll process... place the ones I like on my Zenfolio page, then do a quick little story with one photo included on my Blog. Then I have a plugin for Wordpress that allows me to "Share on FaceBook". I click on that and it posts a little snipet of the blog story on my FB page.

Damn, I never really wrote that all down. That's a bunch of steps! But as I said, it's fun for me... not business.

But, because of FB I have had people order prints from me. My thought is, a little xtra cash can't hurt, and FB is basically free advertising.

For my type of photography I love it.

rub · Jan 8, 2010

Facebook is my number one source of marketing. I have both a group and a fan page. I include watermarked digital images in my packages, which show up on Facebook (by me) in the form of "teaser pics." My clients are tagged in them. I would say over 90% of mybusiness comes through Facebook "friends" and their referrals.

One thing to be cautious of is adding clients as friends. Do you want them to see all of your pictures and personal information? You can either separate clients into a friend group, oradd an account that is "Larrissa Photography" as the user name. That way you can keep real friends with your real name, and business contacts with your business name.

NateWagner · Jan 8, 2010

Yep, I wish you could tag them with them just being fans, but it doesn't work. They have to be friends to be tagged.

LarissaPhotography · Jan 8, 2010

rub, thanks for the info. We're definitely going to start using Facebook more. We were so busy before that we didn't have time to do it. After raising our prices, we're hoping to be able to do some of the marketing like facebook and other stuff that were getting neglected.

rhondag · Jan 15, 2010

FB has brought me business.
I do a shoot...and then watermark a sneak peak on my fb page. The clients then tag themselves...and instant advertising for me to all their friends.

jubb · Jan 15, 2010

I use it, I post a link to my latest photoshoot on facebook. That way all of my friends from the community can see my work, and they see their friends when they have a shoot done. It just gets your name out there and lets people see your work. It also brings traffic to your blog that can be helpful for ranking I guess.

Moonb007 · Jan 18, 2010

I would suggest using a fanpage over a facebook page as its not as personal and easy to set up. I just launched my own fanpage that I plan to use for everything from photos to blog posts.