Most social media marketing is about engaging with your existing clients so it's best to pick just one or two services and concentrate on those. I'd suggest a Blog for longer planned posts and a micro-blogging platform like Facebook for short updates on a makeshift basis.
Whatever platforms you settle on, give yourself a schedule and allocate a certain quantity of time to post updates... And stick fast to it. For most photographys selling photography online, a once-a-week update is lots so permit 15-30 minutes once a week to post to your blog, and 5 minutes a day to check your Wall, make a response to any comments and post your own update.
Keep a list beside your personal computer for post-ideas, long and short, and add to it continually. Never go to your Blog or your Facebook page without a clear idea of what you're going to write about! Turn off e-mail alerts when visitors post to your Wall and don't fall into the trap of checking it consistently like email! Instead allocate time each day to respond to all visitor comments fro mthe last 24 hours. You'll soon work out when the busy period is and time your visit after that.
Some platforms do have potential for 'prospecting ' for leads so you can work smart and use tools like Posterous to republish your blog and social content across multiple platforms hands-free, as long as you only spend time on your selected platforms.
Facebook seems to be the platform of choice for most individuals but there appears to be a growing interest in Google Plus among photographers. The big difference so far is that Google states that the copyright of any images you submit remains with you, while Facebook reserves a right to use anything you publish as they wish!
At this stage Google Plus does not have anything like Facebook's business pages, but they are reportedly on the way... So that is sure change things a bit for photographers.
If you're just starting out with Social Media Marketing the main thing is to decide which platform you're going to use and stick it. Then work out who your audience will be & what type of conversation they would like to have with you? After that it's just a matter of telling all your business contacts and posting frequently till your Clients turn up and join in! Keep it business-like but inject a little bit of 'you ' as well. Talk of the work your doing, but also why you're doing it and what it implies to you. Don't try and sell here!
Always remember the goal is to make your social page a heart where your photo-buyer Clients can hook up with you and with each other, so you've got to keep telling them to go there and keep pushing them to join the conversation!
Matt Brading is a photographer & write4 who sells digital stock photography on the GlobalEye stock library and does self publishing in Kindle.
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