The Founding of a Facebook Page

While I am all for all types of marketing, the advent of social media has brought about many an issue, not the least of which are privacy concerns and copyright infringement issues.  Facebook, while becoming ubiquitous over the last 6 years is also referenced daily in news stories regarding these issues and more.  For those that haven’t read my post,  ”The Evil Ones Who Lurk in the Dark Destroying the Bytes“, I recommend taking a glance at it to better understand my background with digital theft and privacy.  This experience has led me to carefully study each new technology and fad as it emerges and to formulate the best strategy in navigating the rocky paths that lead to success while avoiding falling into the plethora of digital issues.  Today I officially launch my Facebook presence.  I know I’m a little behind the mass populous of this, but below are some of the issues that kept me from creating my page sooner and how I structured my information accordingly:

Facebook’s Terms Implied an Ownership of All Uploaded Material

Obviously, for a photographer, why would I give all my material to Facebook?  Not my cup of tea.  They have since “clarified” this piece.  To handle this issue, I keep all my photos posted small in file size and with a copyright, similar to my website.

Facebook Doesn’t Care About Photographic Privacy (Specifically Minors)

It has been reported that Facebook has been caught utilizing uploaded photographs of minors for advertising purposes.  In the state of California it’s a big no-no to use an image of a minor without parental permission.  As a parent, I can understand why.  Facebook implies that when you upload a photograph you are by it’s EULA giving consent and it’s up to the parent to control the content.  No so easy when it could be a relative or friend uploading a photograph which they took, not the parent.  Regardless, it continues to show the issues with privacy in regards to photography that plague the online service.

So why are photographers jumping onto the Facebook train by the droves?  Exposure, exposure, exposure (pun intended).  It’s easy and it’s fast.  It’s full effectiveness, however, varies from person to person and for several remains to be seen.  Guy Tal, photographer of the American Southwest, mentions in his post, “Social Networking Checkpoint: So Far- No Better Mousetrap” that traditional marketing seems to work the most effectively for him.  Indeed, while social networking has definitely produced some results, I find good old traditional snail mail, phone, and direct email works the best for finding new business.

In the world of maintainingrelationships, however, I think is social networking’s greatest ability.  In the past, relationships were maintained through occasional phone, mailers, or newsletter contact.  If a past client is busy, phone calls maybe too intrusive.  Mailers may go right into the trash - money wasted.  Newsletters (especially email), probably the best form of recurring marketing prior to social networking (and may still be, mind you) could reach someone on a consistent basis with somewhat valuable information.

Social networking is like an ongoing newsletter, however, with greater occurrences.  It’s the “I’m still here!” that isn’t annoying and if it gets annoying, the client can pick and choose what to read.   In social networking many experts tell us that a good blog is the cornerstone.  All the best information, ideas, and text needs to be blogged in order to gain readers.  It’s the “newsletter” of the early 21st century.  With every article, search engines gain a little better understanding of the purpose of your site (hopefully, if your blogging the right stuff), maintaining the older relationships and maybe bringing in some new.  All the other networking items need build off this implementation. 

Based upon that assumption, my blog being my information desk, I levied Twitterto simply retweet my blog posts automatically.  While I am not fully immersing myself into Twitter, those who choose that method of delivery are more than welcome to receive the information in that manner and for those who wish to share the information with that vehicle, I have now made it easier. 

My Facebook implementation is fairly similar.  Within the past month I setup a personal profile on Facebook (I didn’t have one before) in order to have the ability to create my page.  I went into my security settings and eliminated as much public presence from my personal profile as possible.  From there, I created my fully public page.  I added a gallery of fall photos - not too many, but enough to give visitors an idea of what I do (with a copyright attached and at a smaller size).  After that, I setup links driving traffic back to my main website and sent my page to some friends I had on Facebook to “fan” me.  From there I chose to setup the same strategy as Twitter, I looked for a program to automatically place my blog postings on my “wall”.  I didn’t want the full post, just an excerpt and a small (really small) photo to accompany.  After some research, I settled on RSS Graffiti and implemented it.  Now my posts are sent to Facebook automatically an hour after they reach my blog (Hey, my main blog readers are my main audience and should get first read!).

That’s it.  I’m automatically adding content to Facebook so that those who wish to follow me there can!  In the future I may offer some Facebook-only offers, but I wanted to primarily give my Facebook fans the information they want without leaving their cozy profiles.  So “Fan me” if that’s your thing, otherwise, continue to get my information through my blog/Twitter/email! The list only keeps growing!

Marketing Photography, Part IV: Bringing it Back to Basics

Autumn Prairie Dream - Photograph

In another role, I’ve had the opportunity to attend some good traditional marketing seminars.  I think the biggest thing I took away from all the plans, ideas, strategies, etc. is one simple tenant:

Spend at least 10 minutes a day on marketing

 

Did they qualify what to spend that time on?  No.  Did they say if it was traditional vs. social vs. online?  No.  10 minutes.  The rest is up to you.

It’s simple and surprisingly effective.  When I made the decision to really begin marketing my photography, I decided to follow this advice.  At the time, I had a webpage.  Not a lot of content changing there, but it was a start.  I started my blog.  As I forced myself into 10 minutes, my blog posts increased and so did my traffic. 

Good, but it could be better. 

I traded links with other photographers.  I emailed people that I thought might benefit from my photography.  I sent letters (yes, snail mail!) to publishers.  I got a twitter account.  I guest blogged.  All these things increased my page views.

On days that I follow this simple rule I notice a steady increase in interest/hits/sales/etc.  The hardest part for me is deciding how to use my 10 minutes.  There is so many different avenues one can take to market and the landscape is only growing.  I’m careful about how and with whom my name and brand is attached.

So what is next for me?  Facebook.  Before now, I resisted setting a page mainly due to time.  My 10 minutes on some days added up to hours of work and I wanted to maintain a level of quality on what I was doing.  Additionally, I didn’t want the time I spent on marketing to overtake my photography goals, but sometimes the marketing goals must come first to finance one’s photography goals. 

Tomorrow I plan on discussing my Facebook implementation.

Technical Details:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, f/5 @ 300 mm, 1/500
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, Nebraska Side

Up In the Air

Up In the Air - Photograph

Today is the last day of August, and I welcome September.  By this time every year, I am tired of the heat and humidity that Nebraska summers can bring.  As I mentioned last week, I am busy finishing up several projects, but I wanted to take a small moment for a little relaxation….

Do you remember when you were a kid and would lie on your back on a summer day looking at the clouds?  I wish I had more time to do that.  Instead, I take photos of clouds and post them and imagine myself relaxing in some nice soft grass with a cool breeze. 

Technical Details:
Canon G10, 6.1mm, f/2.8, 1/640 sec.
Douglas County, Nebraska

Some Mild Autofocus Humor for a Monday Morning

This was the explanation that Canon gave me when I sent my 17-40 f/4l in for repair:

What was improperly not functioning properly again?

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Journey of Light 2010! (otherwise known as version 3.14159)

Many may have noticed for the past few weeks my blog articles have been sparser. Unfortunately, I wasn’t trialing the new Canon 60D or 8-15 Fisheye lens (Canon, you can always send new equipment to me to try!), I have been hard at work on several projects. Over the next few months I am going to share some of those projects with you, but today I announce that I am finished with one of the more major ones - a website overhaul. As part of this announcement I am going to provide a little insight into my design requirements and the history of my website.

First, a fun (and a little disturbing) look at the last 10 years of the Journey of Light Photography website. I hopped on the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) as far as it would go to get some of these images.

Journey of Light - 2000

Egads! What was I thinking? This was my website design in 2000. Well, I guess navigation was easy, but all those frilly images probably took a long time to load on the dial-up connections of the day. I can understand why this was my look for only about 1 year. I bet it was well-optimized for Netscape though!  (The centered - black background - top menu look is oddly cyclical)

Ahh, the days of tabs. From 2001 until about 2003, my website sported tabs and my first little flash animation (that Journey of Light in the corner moved!). I will say that my website looked slightly better than this, the Internet Archive didn’t have all the data. It didn’t look much better, though!

From 2003 until 2005 my website design switched to the left-hand menu look at the time. Additionally, I put in a back-end XML framework which still exists, even on the new website (though modified). I also did fancy stuff like add-ins that automatically re-sized photographs and sorted things. Slow and ineffective.

Ahh, my 2006-2010 website. I did away with the fancy add-ons and went back to basics.  During the past four years it’s been viewed by roughly 110,000 unique visitors (give or take 10,000). Not bad, but it can be better. Out of a little sentimentality, but mainly because search engines still reference it and occasional returning visitors ask me to find something on the old site, I always leave the old structure up for 1-2 years. This site will remain, somewhat hidden, during that time.

Now, my requirements for my new and improved website.

As I mentioned, my previous design had the same format for roughly 4 years. In a world where people get a new cell phone every 3 months, my design was stale, but effective. During those years I will say that I continued to update the site, placing new photography out weekly and sometimes daily, adding e-commerce links, new pages, and search functionality. But, just like a house that gets addition after addition, after a while stuff tends to look tacked on and not part of the normal flow. As such my first design requirement was simplification.

In addition to adding pages, I spent a lot of time on optimizing the site for search engines. Since I am not Art Wolfe or Thomas Mangelsen, I can’t just sit back and let people search me by name. I wanted to retain the work I did on SEO, although there is always risk with any major change to a website. My second requirement was continued Search Engine likability.

Over time Internet speeds have generally increased, but not everyone has the fastest line and I want everyone to have a good experience. My third requirement was to maintain a fast loading time or to make it even faster.

About 3 years ago, I spent a lot of time making sure that my site was cross-browser compatible. It took some time, but I managed to get it looking the same between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. My forth requirement was good cross-browser compatibility.

Lastly, I wanted it easy to use. I’ve always tried to provide an intuitive site that could be accessible and easy to navigate. As my last website evolved, it became obvious from my web statistics that the advanced features such as search and keyword look up were not be utilized. My last requirement was to streamline this and to implement a search function that working like most of the search functions out there.

For the last few months I have been gathering ideas, looking at effective navigation, preparing code, and bugging my wife to put it through its paces (Thanks, Holly!).  I launch my new website, Journey of Light 2010
 

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Photo Friday: Under Pinpoints of Light

Photograph: Under Pinpoints of Light

Today’s Photo Friday was captured last fall when I went out to Toadstool Geologic Park in western Nebraska.  Being as isolated as it is, it is a prime location for stargazing.  Of course, a night without a moon helps!

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40 f/4l @ 17mm, f/4, 2 exposure blend (1 taken just after sunset, 1 taken about 45 minutes after)
Toadstool Geologic Park, Nebraska

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