Personal Branding for Photographers Explained

This post has been contributed by Andrew Graham.(ref:http://goo.gl/qjP1hV)

Since photographers usually work as solo artists, they often don’t think of themselves, or market themselves, in terms of corporate branding. However, building a strong brand in the mind of your audience/potential clients is probably the most important thing you can do to take your career as a photographer to the next level.

And your lack of a strong personal brand could be the only thing standing between you and that next big client. Here are some basics on personal branding for photographers.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is all about creating a unified image/feeling/experience of yourself in the mind of the consumer. It’s about taking your already unique and interesting personality and style, and distilling it into an easily recognizable identity.

Find Your Niche

Specializing can be a particularly quick way of developing a style and brand for your photography. It’s easier to gain quick recognition as a specialist, so whether it is landscapes, portraits, food, or fashion, find a niche that you enjoy and really go for it.

Creating/Designing a Photography Logo

Using a logo is a matter of personal preference. Some photographers have logos, others use a certain typeface, or a self-portrait etc. But, if you do opt to use a logo, make sure you know the basics of good logo design. You want something simple, legible and memorable.

Here’s an example of good photography logo:

This logo is clean, simple and instantly legible. It also does a good job of incorporating the camera into the logo. Too many photography logos use heavy handed references to lenses, apertures or whole cameras. Here, the subtle suggestion of the wide focus frame communicates photography without beating you over the head with it.

And now a bad one:

Yikes. It’s pretty easy to see what makes this a bad logo. It’s too busy, the font is difficult to read, the blue green colors in what I think is an iris are (ironically) hard on the eye. It’s just a mess.

When it comes to designing a logo, less is more. If a logo is clean and classic, you likely won’t want to change it later on, which is good because once people get your logo stuck in their minds, changing it on them can be risky.

Craft a Unified Social Media Presence

Because it’s free, immediate and simple to use, your social media presence is perhaps both the easiest and most critical arena for developing and promoting your personal brand. A good social media presence involves the following:

CONSISTENCY

Decide on an image, either a logo or a photo that you think best represents you as an artist and make that your profile pic on every account you have. Same goes for your user name.

SIMPLICITY

You want to be easy to find and easy to remember, so your user name should be simple. If you want to be @johnDoe, but all that’s available is @JohnDoe37786 try something else, like @johnDoePhoto or, include your location (e.g. @johnDoeNYC).

OUTPUT

The worst thing you can do is let your account stagnate. Your social media outlets allow you to get your name in front of thousands of eyes on a daily basis, so engage frequently. Try to post something at least once a day from all of your accounts.

VARIETY

If you post the same sort of thing over and over, people will quickly get bored and start skipping your posts. Mix up your feed with samples of your work, interesting photo exhibitions, interesting art/photography news etc. As long as everything you post fits your voice and speaks to your point of view as an artist, it will help solidify your brand and keep it fresh in people’s minds.

Reach Out to Likeminded Photographers

Using social media to connect with other artists can help build your personal brand as well as your network in the field. Find other photographers whose work you like and admire, and post links and shutouts to their photos/exhibitions. Chances are they’ll respond in kind with a repost or a link to your work, which means you’ve just gained access to their entire audience.

Once you have fine-tuned your personal brand and put yourself out there on social media, you’ll be surprised how much it will transform your business. Slick marketing and clean branding project authority and professionalism. But there is one thing that should never get lost in the shuffle: Quality. Once you’re attracting higher quality clients, you’re going to have to deliver at the highest level.

If we can learn one thing from Google+, or Crystal Pepsi, it’s that no amount of brand recognition can make up for a poor product. So whatever you do, put photography first, and don’t let marketing and branding get in the way of producing the very best work you can.

How to Optimize Your Social Profiles for Search

Have you thought about optimizing your social accounts for search?

Do you know where to use keywords in your social profiles?

In social media, there are two search engines you have to optimize for: the search function within each social network and Google search.

In this article you’ll discover where to use keywords in your social profiles and pages so you are found when people search.

Discover how optimize your social profiles for search.

Anatomy of Google Search Results

First, take a look at the anatomy of a result in Google Search.

Example of a search result in Google.

There are three things you can usually (but not always) control in Google search results for your website and social profiles and pages: the title, page URL and description.

The title is shown first in a search result. This is made up of 50 to 60 characters generally found in the SEO title of a page. The SEO title for Social Media Examiner (as shown in the Google search result above) is:

Social Media Examiner: Social media marketing how to, research, case studies, news and more! | Social Media Examiner

The URL of the page is shown below the title. On social networks, your URL is usually the social network’s domain name followed by your chosen username.

The description of the page is shown below the URL. This is the 155 characters generally found in the meta description of the page. The meta description for this website is:

Social Media Examiner helps businesses master social media marketing to find leads, increase sales and improve branding using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube

For Google search results, also note that Google can only pull information that is available on your public profile. This means you need to log out of each social network completely to see what your profile or page looks like. Anything that isn’t publicly viewable won’t be indexed by Google.

Here’s how to use keywords in your social profiles and pages to improve your visibility in search results.

#1: Optimize Your Facebook Page

When it comes to Facebook pages, you’ll see that most pages appear in Google search results like this.

Toyota’s Facebook page in Google search results.

Google’s search results use the Facebook page name, short description, number of likes and number of people talking about the page.

Specific elements of a Facebook page appear in Google search results.

In terms of keyword optimization, Facebook pages with keywords in the page name generally rank higher in Google search, as you can see below in a search for “cars on Facebook.” Although Toyota is a top brand for cars, their Facebook page doesn’t appear in the first page of search results.

Facebook pages optimized for the keyword “cars.”

Facebook search, on the other hand, uses more than just your page name. When you start a search for “cars,” you’ll see an option to click on Cars Pages.

A search for cars on Facebook.

When you click on Cars Pages, you’ll get pages in the Cars subcategory, found under the main brand or product category for pages.

Brand pages in Facebook search results.

If you switch your search term to just the keyword “cars” (without selecting Cars Pages), you have the option to find search results for that keyword under People, Photos, Pages, Places, Groups, Apps and Events.

If you’re a local business owner, note that your page will appear in Facebook search under Places based on your proximity to the searcher and the category of your page. In this case “car” or “cars” must be in the subcategory.

Local business pages in search results.

Key takeaway: If you want your page to come up in Google search for a keyword, that keyword needs to be in your page’s name. To come up in Facebook search, that keyword needs to be in your page’s subcategory.

#2: Optimize Your Twitter Profile

When it comes to Twitter profiles, you’ll see that most profiles appear in Google search results like this:

Twitter profile in Google search.

Instead of using the Twitter bio as the meta description for your profile in search results, Google pulls one of your latest tweets along with your profile name, username, number of followers, number of photos and videos and number of tweets.

Specific elements of Twitter profiles appear in Google search results.

In terms of keyword optimization, Twitter profiles with keywords in the name or username generally rank higher in Google search, as you can see below in a search for “cars on Twitter.” Again, although Toyota is a top brand for cars, their Twitter profile does not appear in the first page of search results.

Twitter profiles optimized for the keyword “cars.”

In search results on Twitter, profiles that are related to the keyword or phrase searched will appear, even if they don’t have the keyword in the name, username or bio.

Twitter search results for a specific keyword.

For example, Top Gear isn’t optimized for cars, but is a well-known show about them. Further down in the results, you also see unrelated queries with a keyword match, like a profile for a musician named Carly.

Key takeaway: If you want your Twitter profile to come up in Google search for a keyword, that keyword needs to be in your profile name or username. To come up inTwitter search, that keyword must be textually relevant to your account. Including it in the name, username or bio can also help.

#3: Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page

For LinkedIn company pages, you’ll see that most pages appear in Google search results like this:

A LinkedIn company page in Google search results.

Google pulls your company page name and description for their search results.

Specific elements of the LinkedIn company page that appear in Google search results.

In terms of keyword optimization, LinkedIn company pages with keywords in the page name generally rank higher in Google search, as you can see below in a search for “cars on LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn company pages optimized for the keyword “cars.”

In search results on LinkedIn, company pages that have the keyword or phrase searched in their name will appear first.

LinkedIn search results for a specific keyword.

Key takeaway: If you want your company page to come up in Google or LinkedIn search for a keyword, that keyword needs to be in your company page name.

#4: Optimize Your Other Social Accounts

Now that you understand how profiles and pages from the top social networks appear in search and how keyword placement can help your rankings, let’s take a quick look at how to optimize your profiles and pages for other networks.

For Google+ pages, Google uses the profile name and a snippet from the introduction in search results. Pages with a specific keyword in the name rank best in search on Google and in Google+ search.

For YouTube channels, Google uses the channel name and description in search results. Videos with a specific keyword in the video name are more likely to appear in Google search over channels. Channels with a specific keyword in the channel name rank best in YouTube search under the Channels filter.

You can use SEO tactics to improve visibility for all your social profiles. Image: Shutterstock.

For Instagram profiles, Google uses the profile name, username and bio in search results. Profiles with a specific keyword in the name rank best in search on Google and in the Instagram app.

For Pinterest profiles, Google uses the profile name and description in search results. Pinterest boards with a specific keyword in the board name are more likely to appear in Google search results over profiles. Profiles with a specific keyword in the name will rank best in Pinterest search under the Pinners filter.

Instagram Ad Rollout Will Make It the Top Media Buy: New Research

Are you using Instagram for your business?

Have you thought about advertising on the platform?

Instagram just began offering paid advertising opportunities through select developer partners. In the coming months the platform is expected to create a Facebook-like self-serve option for any budget.

In this article you’ll discover findings from studies about Instagram’s current reach, and the potential to reach targeted audiences with ads.

Evolution of Instagram Ads

In December 2014, Instagram reported its user base hit 300 million, 64.2 million from the U.S. alone. More exciting to brands and marketers than strict user numbers, however, was the engagement rate. Instagram users like, comment and re-gram at a rate of between 3.1% (Socialbakers research) to 4.2% (Forrester research). Comparably, Twitter and Facebook posts have engagement rates of .07% and below.

Discover what research shows about Instagram’s ad rollout.

With population and engagement numbers like these, of course brands wanted to get access to Instagram audiences. For three years now, Facebook has been working on the correct advertising mix for Instagram. Until June 2015, businesses could only reach Instagram audiences by posting content, commenting, sharing and liking consumer posts. Instagram’s few brand partners could place sponsored posts, much like Facebook’s boosted posts. Strict ads, however, were not available.

In June 2015, Instagram rolled out the call-to-action buttons Shop Now, Learn More and Install Now, which take users to mini-apps within Instagram, rather than brand websites. That way, users stay on Instagram once they’ve shopped, learned and installed.

Now Instagram has provided advertising opportunities for all brands… provided you enter via one of their developer partners. These partners include Ampush, Brand Networks, 4C, Kenshoo, Nanigans, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SocialCode and Unified. They require a minimum spend, so if you’re a small business, you won’t be able to take advantage of Instagram’s new advertising opportunities until later in the year.

Explore Instagram’s ad platform. Image: Placeit.

Facebook’s advertising followed the same path: It offered advertising to certain brands and then eventually made ads user-friendly enough that a developer intermediary was not needed.

If you don’t have the budget to utilize developer intermediaries, now is a good time to familiarize yourself with Instagram so that when the ads roll out to everyone, including small businesses, creating and posting an ad will be a simple task. On its blog,Instagram explains:

Instagram ads will be available to advertisers of all types later this year. We are currently testing self-serve buying interfaces and APIs with a small group of partners, and we expect to make them more widely available over the coming months.

With the context understood, small- and medium-sized businesses must evaluate whether Instagram is the right place for them. The following research will help with these decisions.

#1: Instagram’s Access to Facebook Data Offers a Significant Opportunity

Lighting a fire under many marketers, Instagram currently doesn’t have the pay-to-play platform that Facebook instituted in spring 2013. Before that point, companies that had built Facebook audiences had the luxury of getting each post to nearly every earned follower. Facebook then dropped organic reach to 6% and lower, forcing companies to pay to boost posts for as little as $1 per day if they wanted to reach more of their earned audience.

Instagram benefits from Facebook data. Image: Shutterstock.

Conversely, on Instagram, for the foreseeable future, each post will reach close to 100% of its earned audience… free! Well, free except for the time costs and any costs involved with Instagram’s partners or other outside consulting. When Instagram will go to the Facebook-style pay-to-play platform is unclear. Until that time, you’ll save significant marketing dollars experimenting with which content wins the most attention, engagement and likes.

This said, at this time Instagram is only allowing ads through the developer partners mentioned above. Because most small businesses spend less than $500 per month on ALL marketing (and because we expect developer partners to require more than that just for Instagram), smaller shops remain locked out of the platform until the self-serve option becomes available.

If you have a larger budget, on the other hand, you have an amazing opportunity to reach and engage a large, young audience quickly, through the partners listed above. Not only do you get the channel without a charge, but you also get access to parent company Facebook’s unprecedented consumer data and narrow targeting tools. In their Intelligence Report: Instagram, L2 explains that:

…management has ensured the mother ship remains relevant by handcuffing Instagram’s targeting and direct-response capabilities to the parent platform. Ad packages across both Facebook and Instagram, leveraging previously eschewed data-sharing practices, are the marketing world’s nuclear fusion.

“Nuclear fusion?” Let’s take a look.

Instagram has outpaced competitors, and market analysts expect this momentum to continue. Recent research from eMarketer indicates that over the next three years, Instagram will increase its lead on Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. By 2019, 33.6% or 111.6 million of U.S. Internet users will be active Instagram users. By that point, Facebook will have leveled off for several years with 52.8% of U.S. Internet users consistently patronizing the platform.

Despite coming onto the scene years later than Tumblr and Twitter, Instagram will become the highest-traffic platform of all except Facebook.

Increased advertisement on Instagram will mean more competition for eyeballs, however, and engagement has to fall from today’s levels, taking some of the air from Instagram fans’ balloons.

What Happened To The Google Panda 4.2 Update? Did It Make A U-Turn?

Google has no comment on why many webmasters have seen their Panda 4.2 gains reversed on August 14.

Barry Schwartz on September 4, 2015 at 9:40 am

Google Panda 4.2 was released by Google as a really slow update that started on July 18, 2015. But around August 14, some are speculating (including myself) that the Panda 4.2 update was reversed or changed significantly.

We knew that Panda 4.2 would roll out over several months and that over time, more and more pages on your site would be updated with the revised Panda score. So if you recovered from the Panda penalty, you should have seen a small and gradual improvement in your Google rankings as the weeks passed. But after August 14, many of those who saw the small and gradual improvement noticed that those gains were wiped out overnight.

Here is a graph I shared from my own personal recovery on the Search Engine Roundtable:

The vertical red line is the Panda release date, and the horizontal line shows my pre-Panda 4.2 Google organic traffic and how it returned to the same level after August 14.

I am not the only one noticing this; there are tons of webmasters who are seeing the same thing. I covered much of that in mypost earlier this week on the Search Engine Roundtable.

We’ve asked Google about this, but they decided not to comment about this specific change.

For more on Panda 4.2, see our interview with Google.

Google To Double The Number Of Health Conditions In Search Results

Google expands their medical conditions database and enables you to print out these conditions to give to your doctor.

Google announced they are more than doubling their health conditions database, so that when you search for health or medical topics in Google, you are more likely to find factual medical data on that condition.

Google launched medical content in search back in February with about 400 conditions. Over the next few weeks, you should see more than 900 conditions listed. Google also is adding downloadable PDFs and updating the overall design on both Web and mobile.

Here are the three large changes happening with Google’s medical search results:

• Hundreds more health conditions (soon more than 900 total, more than double the number Google started with) with quick at-a-glance info on symptoms, treatments, prevalence and more
• Visual design improvements and some more specific triggering so it’s quicker and easier to get the info you need (for example, you can now search for “pink eye symptoms,” and you’ll get straight to the symptoms tab)
• A “Download PDF” link so you can easily print this information for a doctor’s visit — this has been a top request from doctors