If you’re using Facebook, you’ve seen the “Like” button with the thumb-up icon on the right side of your pages. While the “like” feature used to be for wall comments only, it has become the hottest new marketing trend of the summer.

Facebook can now show your business ads to users who are both in your target market AND are already friends of your business. Or, you can put the FB “Like” icon right on your studio website. When someone clicks it, a new comment appears on their News Feed with a link back to your website or FB page.

Think of it as word-of-mouth combined with social networking. Given the size and growth of Facebook, this one new feature alone could boost your entire marketing effort.

Learn how to implement the “like” button for Facebook. If you’re not using Facebook, this may be a good reason to get started.

Facebook lets you buy ads that show on the right side of a user’s main page in Facebook. They don’t cost much, and are easy to target to specific audiences. For example, you could create an ad that targets only 20-30 year old women in your zip code.

If you’ve considering buying ads on Facebook, you may be interested in a recent study by the Nielsen Group. They looked at ads by 70 different companies and discovered that ads that include social advocacy are 2-4 times more likely to be clicked on, recalled or to lead toward a purchase.

What does this mean to you?

(more…)

If you use LabPrints Album Builder, you can now select JD Photo as the album manufacturer, then select either a Diamond, Romanco or Timeless album when creating a new album order. This lets you:

• Select from a list of album sizes JD stocks / prints (saves mistakes).
• Makes your pano page layouts truly WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and puts them in proper page order
• Makes it easier to use the album builder and slide show as part of an in-studio sales presentation

To use this new feature, follow these simple steps:

1. Create your new album in LabPrints
2. Select JD Photo as album company and your favorite album design and size.
3. Complete your album order and send it to JD.

Diamond Album users - Instead of writing down your album details in the notes field, after you receive your order confirmation email from the lab, go to our new online album details page at http://www.jdlab.com/albums/ . Here, you can quickly check a few boxes to send us your album details like cover design, gilding, etc. (not only is this faster, but you won’t miss any of the available album cover options).

Romanco / Timeless Album users - For now, continue to add any extra album details in the notes field.

The challenge of social media (blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc.) is that at first glance it seems like a free and relatively easy way to connect to potential customers, but as Jim Smith at yChange.com explains:

If as a small business you are trying to use social media to get the word out to your customers and prospects about how great your product/service is then you are frankly wasting your time walking down a blind alley. If however, you are using social media to listen to your customer and learn what his/her problem or pain is and what value your business can bring to the table then you are on the right path.

Social media today is for listening. It is not a mike or a megaphone to be used to drown the customer out.

(more…)

ImageQuix has announced its new version 7 software was released on April 7th.

If you are a MAC user, you should upgrade. PC users should wait a few months. Note that version 7 requires MAC OS 10.5 or greater.

According to ImageQuix, this new version addresses the number one request they have received from photographers: the ability to make the ImageQuix Full Service Order Fulfillment option available on the MAC operating system.

New ImageQuix MAC customers that sign-up for ImageQuix today will automatically receive the new ImageQuix 7 software. If you are a current MAC customer ImageQuix will contact you to let you know about the upgrade as well as help you change over to ImageQuix 7.

(more…)

Even if you’re studio is already on Facebook, you’re always looking for more fans. The question is, how can you get them?

Kraft Foods did it by asking folks to become a fan, then fill out a form to get a coupon for a free box of Mac & Cheese. To date, they have about 200,000 fans.

The take-away message here is, if you want to get something, you’ve got to give something. It would be easy to duplicate this for your studio, collect email addresses, then send a coupon for an upcoming special.

• Holidays
• Senior Portraits
• Wedding Consultations

Don’t just launch this Facebook promotion alone. Instead, make it part of your next marketing campaign. Use the same coupon in your email newsletter, mail it to previous customers, and put it on the front page of your website. Multiple impressions are a proven way to boost your campaign’s success.

Give it a try!

When you run a photo lab, you get to talk with photographers. Lots of them. And after a while, you begin to see patterns that the most successful (i.e. profitable) ones have in common.

When it comes to wedding photographers, the most successful ones I’ve talked to use the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) principle. They have figured out that although a bride may seem to want a million options, what the photographer provides is what she really needs: stress-free and confusion-free photography on her wedding day - and when it comes time to select prints and purchase the album.

These are the 6 (simple) steps to a successful wedding photography sale:

1. Sell yourself on the phone. Offer a free consultation at her convenience. Avoid quoting prices. If asked, stick with “we work with your budget.” If she’s unwilling to come in, get her email and immediately send her a link to your website. Make sure it has lots of examples and testimonials from other brides.

2. Sell yourself at the consultation. Show 2-3 great sample albums, no more. Sell yourself again. Promise that you will reduce stress and confusion, and make the photography fun. Offer three prices points: a “budget”, the “most popular” (what you really want to sell), and a “deluxe” package. Get a deposit.

3. Shoot the wedding. Take charge by making suggestions, not demands. You’re the wedding expert. Look, dress and act the part. Leave cards on the tables for guests to go online and purchase prints. Images online should be the same ones you’ll show the bride for the album - don’t put all your images online.

4. Present the images. In-studio shows on a big screen are best, right after the honeymoon. At this point, you’re selling a dream, not a product. Show the couple only the best images that tell the story, about 25% more than they ordered. The average album has 120 images - never show more than 150. Let them cull out the unwanted images. If they cannot, offer an upgrade package. Reveal a “holy smokes” shot to end on a high note - and to offer as a wall portrait later.

5. Sell the album. Stick to the “Rule of 3″. Bring out 3 samples: good, better, best. Bring out 2 colors, black or brown. Bring out 3 sizes, 8×10, 10×10, 11×14. Don’t make a complicated grid of options that change the prices.

Complete steps #4 and #5 in 90 minutes or less.

6. Deliver the album. You should have the album built and returned to the bride within 4 weeks of their wedding while she is still excited. The sooner the better.

While you can be a successful wedding photographer without this list, I guarantee if you try it you’ll have even more success than before.

(image courtesy of Sam Sarkis)

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with other wedding photographers.

If you have ever had to fight with a list of image file names in a folder that wouldn’t stay sorted, you have to blame Bill Gates.

When Bill was writing the DOS operating system for the first PC, to save time he used the old “8.3″ file naming specification: eight characters (no punctuation or spaces), a period, and three characters on the end to tell you what kind of file it was. So for years, files could only have names like Lotus.exe (an executable program) or data.dbf (a database file). If you tried to name a file Aunt Millie’s 80th Birthday Picture #2, the computer would refuse to open the file.

But the worst part of 8.3 file names was that PCs sorted files according to a strange rule where numbers came before letters, and “11″ came before “2″. For example, say you had four files on your computer in the order you want them printed in LabPrints:

1. Page 1.jpg
2. 2.jpg
3. 11.jpg
4. Back page.jpg

LabPrints will store them alpha-numerically, so what you will get is this:

1. 11.jpg
2. 2.jpg
3. Back page.jpg
4. Page 1.jpg

Notice on the screen on the right. I made this as an experiment. You can see four files alphabetically sorted in Windows on top, and the exact same four files sorted alphabetically in DOS on the bottom - both on my PC! Although Mac people have never had this limitation, us PC folks have been fighting with it for years.

If you are a Mac user, you have a different set of problems that you don’t even know about. Mac files are stored in 2 parts: the file itself, and a hidden file that has the real file name, the extension, what program opens it, etc. That’s why when you copy just the image file from a Mac to a PC, the PC can’t open it. Newer Macs have solved this problem by including a check box that you should use that makes sure the files can be read by both Windows and Mac.

So what’s the solution? My suggestion is, when naming lots of images, put a number in front, and pad it with zeros so they line up. Then the rest of the file name can describe the image. For example:

1. 001 Front cover.jpg
2. 002 First page.jpg
3. 003 Mother Father.jpg
4. 004 Bride.jpg

Obviously, you only need the extra zero if you have more than 99 pages. However, these images will always sort correctly, no matter which computer (or CD or DVD) you save them on.

A couple of other “rules” for file naming that will make your life simpler:

• Keep file names short. “Katrina and Jeremy Dompulskis Wedding on December 12 2009-001.jpg” is so long it will always be abbreviated when it  is viewed.
• Don’t use punctuation. “Bill and Martha’s Wedding @ 1:00p.m.” will work on a Mac, but not a PC.

So what’s an easy way to rename files? Both ROES and LabPrints have automatic file renaming built into them. If you’re looking for something that can batch process images, try Bulk-rename. I was able to rename this sample group of four DSC files automatically less than 10 minutes after I installed the utility. Best of all, the basic version is free.

I read a great article this week entitled “Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy” by Catherine Taylor on bNet, and of all the ideas she writes about, I think this is the most important take-away point:

“It all begins with listening…Just as you wouldn’t walk into a cocktail party and start bragging about yourself, you shouldn’t just jump into the conversation.”

I see many small businesses like studios that treat their Facebook or Twitter accounts like little mini-billboards. “Call today for holiday photos” or “mention this ad for a free 8×10 print.”

Social media isn’t supposed to be about you. It is about your relationship with your customer.

Don’t believe me? Download this free report (PDF) at Rainmaker.com. They interviewed hundreds of people after sales presentations and the #1 reason people gave for not buying was…not listening.

Here’s the new rule: you need to make at least five comments or blogs or posts or tweets that are personal or thought-provoking for every one that is an ad.

For example, how about posting one of these your Facebook page tomorrow:

• What’s your worst experience with a professional photographer?
• Which of these two senior yearbook photos do you like better?
• Did you ever take a photo you thought was as good as a professional photographer?

The point is to start a conversation with your customers. That’s what social media is about. If you’re treating it like a cheap way to advertise, you’re not just wasting your time with social media - you may actually be hurting your business.

Need to share a great full-res digital photo, a PDF proof book or Adobe PSD layout? Attaching files larger than 1Mb to an email has a 50-50 chance of getting through. Either the receiving mail server mysteriously deletes the email, or it locks up the other person’s computer while they wait for the file attachment to download. Even if it finally gets through, it isn’t polite to lock up someone else’s computer.

Here are three FREE solutions:

Dropbox. Up to 2GB of file space for free, but you need to register and install the application. Works on Mac or PC. Betsy Flinn has started using this service, and she really likes it. Read her review.

Sendspace. Free version allows files up to 300Mb. You upload a file, copy and paste the link in an e-mail, and send. File stays up for 30 days, no registration required, no software to install. Here’s a test image I uploaded in less than 10 seconds for you to try. Note the ugly ads you have to look at, which is how they offer the service for free.

Drop.io is very popular with the online community. The free version only allows files up to 100Mb, but you don’t need to register or install any software. Click this link to see what your customer would see - again same image, much cleaner look.

After trying all three,

• I recommend the free version of Drop.io for sharing an image or two with customers.
• I recommend Dropbox for collaborating on images or sharing with family and friends.
• If you just need to send a large file to a non-client quickly, Sendspace is worth remembering.

Of course, when sending images to JD, always use ROES, LabPrints or our FTP service.