At the end of the day, people want to do business with companies they like. Of course, it’s important to have a great product or service and consistently deliver on your promises. But when someone is comparing your service to a competitor’s, how much they like your company is going to be a huge factor in determining if they choose to purchase your product. Whether it’s a conscious decision or not, emotions play a huge role in the buying process, so it’s important that your company has a personality that your audience wants to get to know and can connect with. Tim Sanders, in his book The Likeability Factor, says that in all areas of life, it’s proven over and over that people choose who they like. That’s
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What the latest Facebook Changes Mean for your Business
The sky is falling! Actually, it’s not that bad. Facebook is just making changes to the News Feed functionality and design. Although Facebook makes lots of updates, this time you should probably pay attention. Learn what the latest Facebook changes mean for your business. Otherwise, your brand may fall out of your clients’ news feed. And that means you’ll be out of sight AND out of mind. The two biggest changes Facebook unveiled are: Rich Stories – will display photos and videos more prominently, placing more emphasis on visual content. Choice of Feeds – will give users more control over stories they see. So, what do the latest Facebook changes mean for your business? Your audience can choose to tune out content from your business. Even if a client ‘Likes’ your page, they can still
The Fantasy vs. Reality of Becoming a Professional Photographer
When we fall in love with photography, we go on an amazing journey of self-discovery and creative expression. Some of us begin to imagine a career as a professional photographer, filled with days of capturing glorious sunsets in remote locations across the globe, or attending glamorous parties and living the high life, all the while getting paid to do what we love. What a dream! And it can be, absolutely. But for most of us, it takes many years of hard work, long hours, little pay and lots of business and marketing savvy in order to truly realize the dream. One of the main reasons I started Photomint and decided to write Photography Business Secrets: The Savvy Photographer’s Guide to Sales, Marketing, and More is
Five Ways to Engage Your Audience Using Marketing Emails
Some consider email an “old school” marketing tool, but it’s actually one of the most effective content marketing tools available because it delivers content easily. But once your emails are delivered, how do you get your audience to engage with your message further, viewing it and clicking on links? After all, inboxes are inundated. How do you make your emails stand out? Here are five ways to engage with your audience through marketing emails: 1. Start by letting your audience opt-in. An email list of hundreds of willing subscribers is more valuable than a list of thousands of unwilling recipients. Willing subscribers are more likely to take action than unwilling recipients who will probably report you for spam! To ensure that your email list consists
Write a Great Subject Line to Increase Your Open Rate
The goal of subject lines is to encourage readers to open your email and take action. Don’t let the pressure of writing the perfect subject line get to you. Finding the right words isn’t as difficult as it seems. Open rates depend on multiple factors like collection practices, list age and the industry. Average rate ranges from 10% to 25% (at the high end of the spectrum). The team at Mad Mimi analyzed thousands of subject lines to find those with the highest open rates and the most impact. Here’s what we learned: 1. Be Specific The subject line should tell readers what they’re going to find inside. Here’s an example that garnered an open rate of 37%: Only Three Days Left for this Great Offer for
6 Ways to Affect SEO: Part 1
Photo by Flickr User SuperBoreen For many of us, getting viewers to our site from a search engine is one of the best ways of finding new clients. Here are six ways that you can affect the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site in order to get a little bit closer to that coveted first page on a Google search. But before we start, let me make a note about keywords. There is much talk about keywording, but in simple terms, this is all you need to know: what searches do you want to be at the top of? In other words, what will people be looking for when your site shows up at the top? For example, Amber and I want to be
Simplicity is the Nature of Great Emails
The modern email inbox is a perpetual promotion machine of colors, styles, and sales pitches all fighting to be seen. In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more, more, more. This misguided pursuit of increased visibility merely leads to increased invisibility. Before joining the invisible ranks of the “clutter cult” of email marketers, consider that a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more. Unless you’re emailing something of personal relevance or urgency to your client, you have only three and a half seconds to be interesting. Fail, and you’re
The Danger of Abandoning Your Website for Facebook
Your website is a customer service and sales expert and a valuable asset for your business. It empowers you to build long-lasting relationships with potential clients and serve current clients. But in the past year, we’ve seen businesses big and small abandon websites and turn to Facebook as a replacement. The problem with treating your Facebook business page as your new website is that by doing so, you give up control. Sure, you’re can change your timeline cover photo, customize your about text and even create Static FBML versions of your page, BUT turning your website over to Facebook still hinders your ability to perform four extremely important content marketing practices. Four Reasons NOT to Replace Your Website with Facebook #1 Unable to Focus on
Harnessing The Power of Mobile Marketing With StickyAlbums
Ask yourself how many of your clients have smartphones, iPads or both? Our answer was – A LOT! We’ve seen a steady increase in website traffic from mobile devices over the last two years and when I checked again today, it’s staggering that almost 20% of all our visitors were from mobile devices. That’s A LOT of people visiting us from mobile devices! Over 70% of them were on iPhones and iPads. So, that got my brain thinking about how our clients see and share their images digitally via mobile devices. As you’ll see in a personal story coming up, mobile albums improve word-of-mouth marketing like nothing else! Both of these experiences led me to seek out a company that specializes in mobile client albums – StickyAlbums.
The Pro Photographer’s Retreat and Planning Guide
**Great news! We’re hard at work updating this guide and will be re-releasing it shortly. In the meantime, check out The Photo Life Social Media Guide!** Happy Holidays TPL friends! Can you believe 2012 is quickly coming to a close? How’d your business fare? Whether it’s been a fantastic year of growth or a frustrating year of decline, now is the time to reflect on 2012 and look ahead to identify ways that you can make 2013 your best year yet. Consider running away from it all? Actually, that’s one of the smartest things you can do to improve your business: schedule a retreat. Make plans to get away (even if you don’t go far) and take time for focused and productive business planning. Use this Field