Key Tips: Using Social Media To Market Your Creative Business

I was at a seminar last night, hosted by the Pittsburgh local chapter of ASMP, on how to utilize social media to market your photography or creative business and I just wanted to post a few helpful tips I learned from attending. The seminar was hosted by Buffalo photographer and social media guru, Clark Dever.

Below is a list of a few key tips I got outta it:

- One of the key goals of Social Media is ADDING VALUE TO YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK.

- frequently change the main profile photo on your facebook fanpage when posting new content, events or uploading photos: this can be a key element that can jump out to your fans resulting in attracting frequent page visits.


- adding a facebook "like button" icon to your blog or website: this can help in getting new facebook fans who are frequent visitors to your blog or website. which helps your follows to see all of the content you are creating and publishing across your blog, facebook etc...


- "send an update" feature: this is a feature on your facebook fan page that allows you to send a message out to a specific range of your fans that fit the certain demographic criteria that you specify. this can be helpful if you wanna target specific fans about a business promotion or event.


- add the "reviews" application to your facebook fan page. this allows fans to write reviews about your business or specific work/project. people are more willing to fan your page if they see that you have been regarded to being a trustworthy and quality professional.


- if you have a gmail account, maintain that account as your main file archive for your email contracts. every time you send or receive an email that contact is automatically added to your gmail contacts. with that being said you can visit the "find a friend" section of facebook and import your gmail contacts into facebook to add as new friends and then fans of your fan page. repeat this process as you gain new gmail contacts from time to time.


- tag your photos in facebook: for example if you photographed a corporate event and you posted those photos on your fan page, you can tag people in those photos that are already your friends on facebook. when doing that your tag updates appear on their walls which gives their friends the chance to visit or become a fan of your fan page.

- zack arias, clark dever and scott bourne are a few photographs with great "content posts" that you should follow on twitter.


- make use of hash tagging in your twitter posts: adding a "#" symbol before a main word in your post helps your subject or topic to show up easily in twitter searches, potentially leading to new twitter followers. learn more about hash tagging here.

I hope these tips help. please feel free to comment and share if you have any tips as well !


In Addition, here some info on Clark Dever who was the guest speaker at the event:

Clark Dever is best known for his Twelve Hours in a City project. Utilizing only Twitter, a Facebook Fan Page and an "All-You-Can-Jet Pass," Clark and his crew flew over 65,000 miles around the United State during September 2009. Effective use of Social Media led to the project being featured on CNN, Time.com, ABC World News Tonight and in an internationally published article by the Associated Press. If you have a chance I recommend following Clark on twitter and facebook.