Start your photography business out on the right foot. Add every client you have to your mailing list.

Here are some ideas of things you can put in your newslettert.

1. Offer a free family portrait session to the first ten people who contact you.
2. Show examples of an executive portrait you just completed.
3. Make a special on wedding album sales for people who did not purchase a wedding album.  Do you think you can sell a wedding album with a single email?  If you have a large mailing list, you may be able to sell more than one if you use the right language in your newsletter.
4. Create three annual family portrait specials, each in a different quarter.  Portraits in the park, beach, Mother’s Day.
5. Announce efforts you have done with a local charity.
6. Post an image from your last bridal, engagement, or family portrait session.  Talk about them in detail and educate people as to why it is a good image.
7. Create a photographic tour of your studio.
8. Have you acquired any new photographic equipment?

A newsletter reminds past clients that you are still out there.  While you may be extremely passionate about your photography and craft, the truth is they have already forgotten about you.  Your past clients are just as passionate about their own craft and have little time for anything else.  More than likely, they are not thinking about you.

Start a newsletter today.  Right now! I use Mail Chimp, and it’s FREE.

By the end of the day today, create a newsletter and contact your old clients and let them know you are thriving.  Provide links for them to refer you to their friends.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised what you can accomplish with a well constructed news letter.

You might even want to start a separate newsletter just to communicate with the other wedding vendors in your area.  Tell them about the continuing education you are doing.  Share vendor shots that you have recently taken.  Share links to entries in your blog that feature a certain vendor.

A newsletter can be a powerful tool, or, you can just go about your business trying to generate all new clients each and every month and forget about your past happy clients.

Your call.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Daily Photography Tip – The Power of Newsletters is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum

Are you folks familiar with Garry Winogrand?  If so, then great – this will make perfect sense.  If not, click on the link at the end to a short story written by a gentleman who took a workshop with Garry.   So, how does vague and seemingly unconnected start have anything to do with Wedding Photography?   Good question…

While I was sitting in a workshop with a mentor of mine, Don Giannatti from Phoenix, AZ, he was telling us a story about a photographer named Garry Winogrand. What set Garry apart (among other things once you read some biographies) was that he never looked at images right away.  Most of the time, he waited a year, sometimes two, before processing the film.  His thought was that he should have no recollection of taking the image because it would cloud his vision on whether or not it was a “good” photograph.

Of course, there were always exceptions.  So, it was noted that if Garry felt particularly excited about a photograph – or just wanted to see it right away – he would develop it immediately.  However, as I understand it, the norm was that the film sat in their canisters for quite some time before ever being developed.

So, as a Wedding Photographer – you certainly cannot allow your images to sit there for a year before you look at them.  You wouldn’t have any clients.  But, what you can do is go back after that year and look through the wedding to see if anything jumps out at you.  I discovered this by accident.

We are working on creating a few new sample albums for our studio – and one in particular was from a Wedding in June 2009.  We had, for some reason, never made a sample album from it.  We had a few favorites from that wedding that we had used in marketing and such, but I realized that I was looking at the images in an entirely different way because it had been a year since I had seen them.

What I realized was that as my tastes changed, and I had another year of education, photography, and experience behind me – I was able to see things in the photos that I hadn’t seen before.  So, I encourage you to go back through your weddings – with a more experienced eye than you had before.  Find some new photos – you can potentially enhance your portfolio without having to do too much work.

Stay tuned to the Pro Photo Business Forum – next week I’ll be posting a workflow article on keeping track of your favorite images that way they’re easily at hand for promotional purposes.

Thanks everyone for reading – below are some links referenced in the article.

A story about Garry Winogrand
Lighting Essentials by Don Giannatti

Take a look back is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum

Let’s face it. Just about everyone out there is on Facebook. According to Facebook, roughly 45 million users log on every day in the United States. Everyone uses Google too though. So what makes Facebook so much more powerful? Connectedness. In a Big Brother-ish way, Facebook knows virtually everything about you. While Google can make good guesses about you based on your searches, you’ve actively told Facebook all kinds of things advertisers want. You’ve revealed your age, education, marital status, interests, and all kinds of other things that can help advertisers find you. Not only that, you’re linked to all your friends through updates, news feeds, tagging, and more. Facebook connects people in a way no other website ever has. While it’s a great tool for finding old friends, it’s an even better tool for helping photographers find new clients.

Facebook Ads for Photographers

One of the most powerful ways Facebook can aid photographers in connecting to potential clients is through ads. Unlike Google AdSense which requires you to pay for certain keywords, you pay for placement or clicks for a set of parameters in the user’s profile on Facebook. This allows you to target people who aren’t looking for wedding photographers. You can get your foot in the door before they even begin researching photographers.

Wedding photographers can easily target soon-to-be-brides who will likely be the type of client they’re looking for. On Google AdSense, when someone searches for “New Jersey Wedding Photographer” Google has no idea whether it’s a client or whether it’s just another photographer researching the competition and spending your ad budget. Neither does it know whether the person is looking for a $500 wedding photographer or a $5000 wedding photographer. But with Facebook, you can target women in 20 surrounding towns from 25-40 who have graduated from college. This type of person is likely to have a larger budget.

Senior portrait photographers can seek out married women from 40-55, the group most likely to have children graduating from high school. You can have ads appear for people on their birthdays offering them a birthday discount. The possibilities are truly endless. With Facebook ads, you can target the clients you want to find at the price you think they’re worth.

Facebook Fan Pages for Photographers

You don’t necessarily have to spend money to be a successful Facebook marketer. Facebook allows businesses to create a fan page for free. There you’ll have your own dedicated space to post photos, updates, and more. You can offer your fans exclusive discounts, keep them up to date on studio promotions, and much more. But where your fan page can really become powerful is when you start adding photos.

Facebook Photos for Photographers

Photos are arguably the most powerful way for photographers to use Facebook. Tagging allows us to get our photos from an event or portrait session seen by all the attendees and friends of the client. It’s basically free advertising. As easy as this is, many photographers are missing out on the opportunity by making a few fundamental mistakes.

The dos and don’ts of posting photos on Facebook:

Do:

• Watermark your photos with your studio name and website. In the event people choose to steal your photos, at least you’ll have your name and site on them. Don’t make the watermark too obtrusive, or people won’t want to look at the photos. Don’t make it too discrete either, or it might as well not be there.
• Upload the photos to your studio’s fan page. It should be easy for the viewer to navigate back to a page with your branded with your logo along with your phone number and website. A fan page has all of this.
• Shrink your photos to 604 pixels on the longest side. Facebook currently displays photos at a resolution of 604px on the longest side. If you resize your shots on your computer, although Facebook will still re-compress them, in my experience they will look better.
• Send the link to your client
• Ask that the client tag all people in the photos. This is key. This will ensure that everyone who attended an event will see the photos.

If you do all those things, you’ll be able to sit back and watch the comments, like, fans, and eventually clients stream in. But be careful not to make a couple of simple mistakes that could lessen your chances at winning new clients.

Don’t:

• Post your photos without watermarks. You’re just asking for them to be copied. When they are, they’ll be of no value to you without your branding.
• Upload your photos to your personal Facebook profile. This makes it difficult to find your business information.
• Send small JPEGs to the client and allow them to upload the photos to Facebook. Now no one can find your fan page. You will also not have control of the photos your client posts, whereas you can delete inappropriate comments and resolve other issues on your own photos.

That’s really all there is to it. With a small investment of money for ads and time to create a fan page and begin uploading your shoots, you can begin taking advantage of the tremendous opportunity Facebook provides photographers to reach out to potential clients.

How to Bring in New Clients Using Facebook is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum