Resources
I love to give presentations, so here’s a repository of links I mention that will help you gear up your social media presence
For SFBAPPA: Dec. 4, 2010
- Advanced Twitter search – Search all of Twitter by keyword, location, even emotion.
- Hootsuite -Â A great Twitter and Facebook manager. You can schedule your tweets and status updates, shorten long URLs and organize your feeds into columns and tabs. I can’t live without it.
- Flickr (example: California Watch)
- How to post to Twitter from Flickr
- If you don’t want to do that, Twitpic is an easier setup
- Flickr’s San Francisco Places search
- How to post to Twitter from Flickr
- Posterous – update multiple accounts
For a good guide to social media, download this PDF from Photoshelter. Scroll to the bottom of this page for an example success story from that PDF.
For Kim Komenich’s SJSU classes
- Advanced Twitter search – Search all of Twitter by keyword, location, even emotion.
- Hootsuite – A great Twitter and Facebook manager. You can schedule your tweets and status updates, shorten long URLs and organize your feeds into columns and tabs. I can’t live without it.
- StumbleUpon – This is one social bookmarking site that consistently brings in steady traffic. Others include Redditt, Digg and Delicious.
- Shareaholic – This lets me share content all over the web easily with a keyboard shortcut.
- Alltop – a great way to see what to write/tweet about as you start out.
- Facebook Media – list of best practices from Facebook
- YourOpenBook – search anyone’s public status update (even if they know it’s public or not)
- AddToAny – This helps your readers share with any social platform they want.
- Disqus comment system – I prefer this comment system to the default WordPress system, but if I install it, all my previous comments are hidden. But do check it out. (Here’s an example of how it looks.)
- Facebook Like Button – embedded Facebook recommends.
Photographer success story: How John Lander Uses Blogs & Social Media for SEO
John Lander is a freelance writer and photographer based in Japan, specializing in editorial and stock images of Asia. He integrates marketing across many social platforms to serve his goal — getting every image gallery on his website to reach the top of page 1 of Google results.
At the core of his efforts is his archive website http://www.asiaimages.net, where he frequently adds new galleries from every shoot. All of his photos can be licensed for commercial or personal use, and purchased as prints or products. When a new gallery goes live, he uses PhotoShelter’s embeddable slideshow, or links to the gallery in multiple locations:
• His main blog: http://asiaimages.blogspot.com
• One of his many other topic specific blogs (e.g. Japanese Garden Images, Kyoto Images, Tokyo Images, Vietnam Images, Cambodia Images)
• Twitter (@asiaimages)
• Facebook personal profile
• Facebook Fan Page
• LinkedIn
He will also use Flickr and YouTube to post content as well, as well as StumbleUpon. This strategy of creating multiple areas linking back to his work, coupled with highly relevant keyword text in every location, has helped propel John’s SEO for topics he cares most about. (Google Japanese Garden Images – John appears on page 1.)
John adds Google Analytics code to his posts on every platform so he can track their performance. He studies his analytics frequently, and pays attention to bounce rates – noticing that the quality of traffic from LinkedIn is stronger, with only 30% bounce rates compared to 50% from other platforms. He attributes this performance, plus assignments that came through LinkedIn, to the more professional nature of the network. (Note: although LinkedIn is a less visual oriented platform, John uses the LinkedIn SlideShare slideshow app to display photos on his profile.)
Because John is networked with his regular editor clients on both Facebook and LinkedIn, his status updates have replaced the mass emails he would send in prior years. They can now read his posts, visit his blog, or click links to John’s recent shoots without a fuss. He’s been booked for assignments on multiple occasions following his image updates on both Facebook and LinkedIn.
John checks Google Analytics occasionally to see who is linking to his sites and monitor traffic trends. He encourages photographers to blog frequently, demonstrate their own special viewpoint, and edit tightly. While tweeting frequently helps drive traffic to his galleries, he advises photographers to not forget about LinkedIn, as that’s where the editors are.
