Staying on Top of Your Online Presence

I just met with a photographer friend of mine yesterday about her website. We were going over some changes and things that we want to do for her future marketing and outreach.  With so many outlets in the world wide web for social enterprise, it’s hard to imagine it being difficult to promote oneself, get the good word out, move and shake – as it were. Well, there’s a lot more going on for creatives when it comes to this kind of issue, I believe, but for the general population, I think people simply believe there isn’t enough time in the day.

There are a couple of amazing tools out there for social outreach:  Hootsuite is one of my favorites – sort of an all in one for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + management.  There’s also Tweetdeck – which I haven’t used in a while, but caters to pretty much all the same networks and can download straight to your computer if you like.  You can sync up your accounts in such a way that when you tweet, it pings your facebook.  ArtistData for musicians is fantastic for syncing your blogs and all social media accounts your little heart desires.

With all this out there – the one thing that came to mind while I was with this photographer on the topic of  “why people don’t stay on top of their online presence”, or self-promote I believe is related to another issue altogether:  “What do I have to promote?”

I’m firstly going to say this, you all have something to promote. However, for some general ideas on things that are easy to promote…  A great photo will get you talking for days, or at least hours.  A cool logo, a design that’s trendy…  These are examples of things that make social media tick.  This photographer friend of mine was basically saying, “I have all this great stuff, but I never spend time to promote it”, and I think that’s the real issue…  We just aren’t spending the time!  Again, I think it’s a simple issue of not knowing what to promote.

Photos are an easy thing to promote.  “Hey!  Check out this cool photo!”

Instagram, Pinterest., The value on photos is as good (because of these social networks) for brands as anything else in the social network universe – so why not give people something that’s easy to share?  This kind of approach is easy to run campaigns on, and you almost always get that Facebook “like” or “share” or that “retweet” you’re looking for when it’s a goodie!

Long story short, if you’re having troubles finding ways to promote yourself, it’s always a good fallback to have a bank of photos to draw on, because they answer questions, generate questions, feedback, and they help create a backstory. Photos can even help establish brand integrity.  There’s a lot more that goes into the psychology of photo use, but that’s a blog for another day. For now, start taking pictures when there’s not much to say, it’s easy and fun, and I’m sure you’ll see a reward! If you are still having trouble beyond that,  Plan Left offers social media management services to help maintain your branding and presence online.