Ingrid Spangler is a freelance social media consultant living in New York. She’s been snapping pictures since she was a child and involved with social media since before it was called social media. Before going out on her own, she handled the social media for AdoramaPix, the photo lab division of Adorama Camera, for four years. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, flickr, 500px, Google+ and Pinterest.In the first edition of her “Being Social” column, she answers questions about using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
Social media is no longer the new black, it’s now a part of our everyday lives and more and more a part of our business and professional lives. But lots of people are still confused. While you might be quite the social butterfly on a personal level, you may not be too sure how to use all those friends and followers you have to further your business. Or maybe when you log in to Facebook you’re confronted with a big, hairy, awkward silence and are wondering if you can still use social media for your business successfully or are doomed to walk the perimeter of all that is hip and happening forever. Maybe you’ve got specific questions about using LinkedIn, or are confused about Google+. Here are a couple questions I get asked a LOT along with what I answer.
“I have a website and a blog, what do I need Facebook for?”
This is a good question and one that comes up frequently. The short answer is YES. It could be argued that if you are doing a booming business with new clients beating down your doors (or website) and regular repeat customers returning to you again and again that you don’t need Facebook. But if, like most of us, you could use more clients, more jobs, more money, then you probably want to use Facebook in addition to your website and blog. Facebook is great for interacting with your clients and potential clients in a way that may not be available on your website. You can respond to posts and have conversations with “fans.” There are cool programs and software to personalize your page, and if someone posts about you on their page, all their friends see it, increasing your reach. You can also drive more people to your website/blog with teaser posts on Facebook, or just share some images right on Facebook and let people comment on them. There’s lots of variables here, but it’s generally better to have a fan page for your business than to just start using your personal account for your business marketing (do potential clients need to read what you had for lunch? Probably not.) Worried you won’t have any “fans?” Start by inviting all your friends to “like” your page, then later consider a Facebook ad. They can be highly targeted so you’ll get not just more eyeballs on your stuff, but the RIGHT eyeballs.
“Ok so Facebook is a no-brainer. What about Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest?”
I tend to think that the more exposure you get for your brand, the better, but that doesn’t mean you should copy and paste the same updates everywhere. You can post on multiple sites about the same blog post or the same new set of images, but change it up slightly if you’re posting to more than just Facebook and Twitter (usually ok to link Facebook and Twitter so whatever you post on your Facebook page automatically gets sent to Twitter). Use a different image for Google+ or a different version of the one you used on Facebook. Using multiple channels of social media also means you need to be consistent with your brand identity across all of them. Use your logo or a good picture of yourself as your icon, preferably the same image across all sites so people recognize you.
Pinterest is a tricky one for photographers, some swearing by it, some swearing at it. If you want to avoid the whole copyright/fair use debate, don’t pin your own stuff, use it to pin things for clients, like ideas for what to wear for their photo shoot, etc. There’s also a snippet of code you can use to prevent people from pinning your images, if you choose to go that route.
Whatever you’re wondering about social media, I’d love to hear it: send your questions in via the comments section, through our Facebook page, @ us on Twitter, or email me. We’ll choose a couple questions (maybe on an ongoing basis!) to answer here so everyone can be a little wiser on social media and how you can use it to market yourself. Face it, there are a lot of convos going on out there via social media and it can be overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of it.
