What are your opinions… as proven there needs to be a point where youo balance updating with shooting and helpfulness with wasted effort…
How do you decide? What decisions have you made over the past few years to moderate your seat time in updating sites etc?
Are your clients and followers lost with the amount of junk you maintain?
Do you get complaints?
Do you care?
YES!
You raise some good points. When I got started I put myself everywhere I could, but now a days I focus on personal site first, g+ and then facebook in that order. All the others little to no time gets spent there. It's just not fruitfull.
I don't think my followers care where I post my stuff, I just try to post my stuff where most of the people are.
I have probably between 50-100 sites. Do I manage them all?? no. The key is to be everywhere, and keep your ear to the proverbial streets, and streamline all notifications to one set receiver (be it email, phone, etc) This way no matter when people go, they can see you, and remember you when/if they move or change to different sites. When one site takes off, use that more, but always keep your others up and running, even if you never actually use them as intended.
hehe, thats quite a lot man!:-O, heheh,,, I think i could not ever keep them up to date together
I think a key element is knowing how people talk on each site and to be part of the conversation. A Facebook post is not a Twitter post and the audience is different. Social media is a conversation, not a landing page for your press releases. I rarely follow/circle/like folks that auto-forward content to all of their sites or publish, but never discuss.
For the sites I manage professionally we look at the audiences and determine if we can justify the effort needed to really interact. If we can't fully commit to supporting a site it is more of a disservice than not being there at all.
Personally I am only really using G+ and FB, though I'm more active on G+ now.
I think the number of social networking sites available to photographers is getting to the point of being absurd and counter productive if you attempt to be active on more than one or two of them.
I'm finding that you really need to reach out and converse with other photographers to get noticed. If you're on multiple sites then relationship building can become a very time consuming task. I've found myself spending countless hours trying to boost my presence on social network sites only to get lost in the massive sea of photographers. This is time I could have spent shooting photos instead.
As of now I don't do Twitter and I rarely do Facebook. I'm starting to concentrate mostly on G+ because this seams to be the easiest platform for reaching out to other photographers. I also plan on blogging more with my blog but that's about it.
I've come to the realization that I do photography for myself first and foremost, so that's what I need to concentrate a majority of my time doing. I'll continue to share my work and boost my presence in the online photography communities but not to the point where my photography hobby comes second.
+Corey Thompson +Jason Ryan +Matt Hart +Daniel Horande +Jessi June +Eric Leslie
I agree with most of the points here and why i see myself pairing back what i update.. as +Jessi June says its good to be everywhere but I think in many cases for a model that is very true and might be a bit less for photographers.. thou i agree one shot might get me a job or work I need to know where those images are at least in some fashion.
I need to look at who and how I am marketing and to whom…. I love comments like everyone else.. I like interaction with other photographers.. but photographers do not buy anything….
My larger issue is does dedicating more time to any one site actually get me anything, does spending twice as much time on 500ps for instance get me anything other than a pat on the back…
Does changing your entire business model based on social really get you the results you might be looking for?
For me the Glamour market has been very tough – mainly becase its very hard to sell and make money for the non full timer… Its probably simply that I am not concentrating on the marketing as much as I should but also there is not much money in nude glamour images anymore.. there used to be but i was not working in it then… so maybe my business model needs to change compleatly…
I guess we will see.. or I will simply let specific places stagnate.. Flickr is one for sure i will not be updating but will maintain and might even just delete my older work from and leave a semi strong portfolio there…
Facebook i use for close friends
G+ I use for photographer interaction
Flickr – blah
500px – just a very pretty place to post images – not a ton of interaction other than voting
my own site i will keep updated..
I don't know a lot about marketing so take this with a grain of salt.
It would seem to me that if your target market is local, then having an online presence such as a Facebook fan page, website, and blog would be benefitial for prospective clients to sample your work and learn more about you. If your goal is to expand nationwide or internationally, or even do editorial or commercial work then you'll probably want your work on as many sites as possible because you never know who you'll come across that may want to hire you. Then again if you want to do editorial or commercial work, just doing social networking probably won't land you enough luck to break into that.
+Matt Hart see thats an aspect of flickr I do not know about – stock and how it interacts with Getty….
+Matt Hart stock interests me yet I am pretty sure I do not have the time to do it properly…
+Matt Hart I might need to look into it… very curious how rights work etc…..seems like everyone is different in some ways..
+Matt Hart will take a look – thanks…