I find the argument "Very few of the people you interact with are potential customers" to be true about Twitter users, but not about Facebook users, in my case. In avarage, people who visited my website last year through Twitter spent less than one minute on the site before leaving, while Facebook users stayed for over two minutes in avarage (for obvious reasons, perhaps). What I find from this is that Twitter users does seem to have a busier mood and more critical approach towards what they're checking out. And even more so if they haven't even heard of me before.

Conclusion. It takes time to build up a reputation in social media, just like anywhere else. Photographers shouldn't give up before giving it a real shot.

1. Online marketing is much cheaper than print. I purchased four domains and web hosting for the cost of a quarter page ONE-TIME ad in a local weekly.

2. Online media is on the rise, print is in decline.

3. Online is indeed word-of-mouth.

Falling into the time-suck aspects of social media and building a buzz is certainly the downside. But it's a front-end load proposition, IMO. I've spent about ten weeks solid doing almost no shooting and working on the web goodies, social media, etc. But I finally got my first call from a web search last week. So maybe it's starting to pay off?

Thom

In what way is my ability to write and draw attention to my blog a criteria for the quality of my work as a photographer?

Fact is, this bad habit has been created by Google's crawler (and of course it's programmers) - not being able to index the contents of pictures, they initially relied on captions but since they cannot tell the captions from the rest of the text they give it equal weight.

This leads to the absurd that if you have a highly grafic website with little to no text you just don't exist for Google.

My personal webpage features my work as a corporate portrait photographer in Germany and Italy and the research via google for (eg) "corporate portrait photographer Germany" put me on place one or two for some years.

I gave it little weight at that time but when they last changed their indexing algorythms my site visitor (and my clients) dropped to page 14 (!). Am I now a better writer than before, a worse photographer?

Instead of trying to comply with insane standards and a way to theoretical approach to photography we should ask Google to change it's "formula".

One way of doing this could be to have a google specific metatag that tell it's robot whether the contents of the page is about pictures or about text allowing for them to give higher value to captions and for us to do what we are best at: taking pictures.

As for someone like Sting, I'm pretty sure he hasn't even heard of MySpace but I would guess his management runs contests or in someway engages that large fan base without having to interact with every single person. I think the expectations are different for someone on that level whereas if it is a sole proprietorship type of business as most photographers are it is assumed that you should be more accessible if someone tries to contact you.

Business is about people. My business has been built through word of mouth. Social media is a powerful extension of the foundation for business growth.

Rosh

The best part is that it's cheap, which is great for someone just starting out.

The only problem I see, which you mentioned, is that it is difficult to be heard over the noise, so I try to post interesting things instead of just reposting jokes/games/etc. I get better feedback.

The process of creating some daily buzz is easy with sharing a tweet on-the-fly. I can write article post's from most anywhere, as ideas come to me, and post them when appropriate. Quick digital grabs can be uploaded almost immediately to express a thought, vision, or share a fun moment. Integrating all these different tools has become easier, so my audience has broadened even more with this utilization. What I really like is that I am 100% in charge and can do what I want, when I want.

But, for me, Social Media is more of creating my own Long Tail. Every photo I post to Flickr will stay there and increase my exposure to the world, the same for every post on my blog. Together with commenting on blogs like this, and forums, it will increase my chances of getting a good ranking on Google.

I think you have to either do it, or skip it. A simple online portfolio won't sell itself today, but if you have a lot of visitors, you can use that traffic to sell (almost) anything you like.

Finally, the turning point for me came when I took the advice of people who said "Get out there and be helpful. If you're actually doing stuff that helps people, your reputation will always proceed you."

@Matt - Jim says exactly what I had in mind. I don't mean the best photographer as the cream rising to the top, what it means is that those who make good content, have great ideas and understand their audience will rise to the top regardless of how much name recognition they have going into it.

As I shared privately with another photographer tonight in response to his blog post putting social media in a negative light... social media is as much discovering who takes an interest in your work as it is about interacting with those people. In addition its about leveraging the interest of others to extend your marketing reach to their networks.

I find those that look at Social Media in a negative light are often looking through a traditional marketing & web 1.0 lens... broadcasting while not listening is highly inefficient. Social Media marketing enhances broadcasting with the tools to listen and engage with those taking an interest in your work. Why would you not want a direct line to talk with those that are most interested in your work!?

Sure, cream CAN rise to the top; however, plenty of it also flops. Being good helps your chances, but I've seen tons of good photographers trying to market themselves online who just don't seem to get the eyeballs they deserve. I tend to chalk that up to the noise -- sometimes you just can't overcome the din of your niche.

What differentiates the rising cream from the flopping cream?

I do not see this as any different from the current social marketing scene. We can send out newsletters or write blogs until our fingers cramp up, but the work will come from referrals by people with whom we have some kind of relationship, in this case via the social networks. We need to take time to develop relationships with our fellow tweeters or facebookers or whomever we are interacting with. Answer questions, give helpful tips, or just being a regular person that people can get to know. That is the theory I am working under anyway.

Good article.