Chamira Young: Hi everybody! This is Chamira Young from Zenjoyable.com. And thank you, thank you for joining us for our Pro Photographer Interview Series, Episode no. 4. In our last episode we had a talk of Damien Franco, past owner of a Successful Photography Studio and current Content Creator and Social Media Management Specialist. Well today, we’re going to feature that second half of an interview as he discuss his tips in using social media marketing to help you improve your photography business. So you’re ready? Let’s do it!

Damien Franco: People don’t, people don’t follow small brands for the sake of being marketed too. Now, they’ll all do it with big brands, right?

Chamira Young: Ahuh. Interesting. Yeah.

Damien Franco: Yeah. Because there’s this association thing.

Chamira Young: That’s a good point.

Damien Franco: We use big brands sort of badges, if you will, to let the world know what kind of people we are. I like Ford but I don’t like Chevy. I like Pepsi but I don’t like Coke, you know. I’d like Disney or I don’t like Disney, you know. We, I mean, we associate ourselves with brands because everybody understands what those big brands are. So we will like a Coca Cola page and they never came out to us except when you like their page. Who would go like Coca Cola? Or we will like, you know, I don’t know, a Budweiser or Sky Vodka or whatever it is because these things are sort of likeness idea of who we are – these little badges. I like expensive bargain, I like cheap beer, I’m a hard work guy, blue collar, I like my big trunk. They are ways to us that try to get pieces of our personality out of the world, that’s big brands. When you’re in small business on earth, obviously this includes photographers, people don’t just sign up to your likeness and that’s the same with advertisement too.

Chamira Young: Especially when… with a lot of photographers, I mean, we’re kind of a diamond dozen, I hate to say it. But we’re everywhere.

Damien Franco: No. It’s true, it’s true, you know. There’s good and there’s bad with that and that’s perfectly fine. I think the thing is you have to differentiate yourself from everybody else in one way or another and it’s virtually impossible to give general advice about that as far as you know, style and all those kinds of thing. But when it comes to social media and ensuring that, you know, social media is successful for your photography business, there’s a really great sort of rule of thumb for frequency of posting. And by that I mean, how many times should you post for a day? How many times should you post for yourself? And so, it’s 70-20-10. So, 70% of the time you should be posting things that are not about you or your business. And it can be towards… they’ve got to be interesting, they’ve got to be in sort of the inside the scope of what you do, right? So, for Photographers, you’re not really necessarily going to promote other photographers, right? ‘Coz that’s so silly… you wouldn’t do that. But what you can do is you can promote really interesting things about our get the help that would get people up… get them interested in what you have to offer. So maybe, you find an article about how to decorate or you know, How to Choose the Right Size Print for Your Wall. You couldn’t’ write that but you should definitely post that in your wall. Basically, it’s not about you and it’s not about your business. But it’s related to a part of being so. And what you really wanna do is you wanna promote you know, I keep saying the word promote but because really what you’re doing is really promoting other things. And when you talk about other things, talk about things that are not your business 70% of the time. Talk about other art, great and interesting art, articles or things… all of this has to be prior for determining demographic. If you’re doing a family portraits and you have an idea of, let’s take a family photographer. I’m in Houston, so a family photographer in the Montero’s area is going to have clients they’re going to likely be, maybe dual working mixed families and they’re highly educated. So they’re gonna like things that a little bit more eclectic. And so maybe you can put things on your blog post that talk about How to Engage Your Children through Art, right? Coz in that way, they’ll gonna be more a little interested.

Chamira Young: : So you really need to… So then, you really need to know your target audience then?

Damien Franco: You always have to know your target audience; otherwise, you’re doing Shock Gun Marketing. And when you do shock gun marketing, you’re wasting one of two things most likely though… and that’s time and money.

Chamira Young: Ahuh, ahuh.

Damien Franco: And because we only have so much time, as photographers, we’ve got other things to do.

Chamira Young: Tell me about it here.

Damien Franco: Yeah, if you’re not taking pictures here, you’re doing your accounting, you’re editing, you’re… you know managing or if you’re not doing your printing, then you’ve been managing your printing from you know, from a far. There’s a million things that going on like that kind of stuff, right?

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: So time, there are tools that can help with time. Tools like Buffer that can post to your Twitter account and Facebook account and what it’ll do is maybe you’re drinking coffee for an hour in the morning and you’re waiting through blogs and articles and all that kind of stuff and you can buffer all these articles and they’ll send them out at specific time instead of sending them all at in morning. That way you don’t have to check in for about the entire day to post an article. This will… you know, you can front load that or you can even do this at night too as opposed to in the morning. I prefer to do it in the morning because then you’re getting articles that are a little bit more fresh.

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: You can certainly do it at night, sometimes you know, I kinda go back and forth with that. But Buffer is a great tool for that. Also, you can do that with Hootsuite by just using their other schedule tool.

Chamira Young: That’s a nice feature.

Damien Franco: Yeah, there are ways to do that, right? With Buffer, you get a little bit more of a control because you can set specific times and Facebook you know, it lets you gather on what time fans are most likely on there. And I think you know anything that can be measured can be improved upon. And so it takes a lot of time and effort and to see where that results gonna come true but once you do that work, you can back off a little bit, you know. As far as like how much goes into it. Yeah we were talking about the 70-20-10 splits. So, at 70% are things that are not about you or your business…

Chamira Young: So just to, just to clarify then, when you say, we were discussing frequency of posting, I’m assuming that can be, correct me if I’m wrong, posting on our blogs if we have a blog or on posting on Facebook or posting on Twitter those all contribute to the 70? Any of those avenues?

Damien Franco: The 70-20-10 thing is for the social media not for, not for the blog.

Chamira Young: Okay.

Damien Franco: The blog can be totally, can be totally promotional but it doesn’t need to be self-promotional but really it’s more for Twitter and Facebook. And really mostly for Twitter, like you can be a little bit more self-promotional on Facebook and you gotta play with this numbers right. But specifically for Twitter, if you go over 70-20-10 thing, it’s 70% not stuff that you do, and then, 20% can be stuff that’s like really really close to your industry, to your business or maybe it is about you. Maybe you’re just listed in an article. Or maybe you’ve got some pictures from a recent client, that, you can do that in the 20% part, right?

Chamira Young: Okay.

Damien Franco: So, you’ve got a blog post, like maybe your frequency is like what’s week as a photographer you blog about a client and you post some pictures on there. And so, you can pull your 20% like this is my business from that.

Chamira Young: Okay.

Damien Franco: And then, the 10% can be promotional. This can be “Book your session now”. This can be the “Get 10% off the next… Use this coupon to get 10% off for the next time you book your session with us.” You know. And that’s when you can do the advertising part. And now, these numbers is not set as thumb. These are really good numbers to start with.

Chamira Young: Right. These are the guidelines.

Damien Franco: This is a really great place to start. And then, you still tweak it based on what kind of success is using.

Chamira Young: Very good. Yeah, that’s actually, you know, honestly, I have never really thought of it in terms of ratio. But it’s a great starting point, a very good guideline.

Damien Franco: Right.

Chamira Young: But I’ve seen some people go very heavy the promotional.

Damien Franco: How do you feel when you see that?

Chamira Young: You know personally, I’m sure many people feel the same way… I really don’t like to be marketed to 24/7, instantly turned me off.

Damien Franco: Exactly.

Chamira Young: And even if it’s great work or great products someone is offering me. All they’re trying to do is: sell to me, I instinctively back off.

Damien Franco: Right. And that’s pretty much how everybody else feels.

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: And that is the most common thing. And that’s you know, why you have to do so much work that’s not about yourself. Because social media is about engagements, it’s about… When we log in to Twitter, or we log in to Facebook, we’re not logging in to get marketed to. We understand that it’s going to happen and we accept that subconsciously as the prize for free, except, we get it…

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: Google has trained us enough for that. Yeah and so when we think about what kind of things we were gonna post, follow… if you follow, especially in the 70 and 20% part, the 10% can be again pure promotional but the other 90%, if you follow this sort of, it should be one (1) of three (3) things. It should be entertaining, informational, or inspirational.

Chamira Young: Hmmm… Okay.

Damien Franco: And if it’s one of these three (3) things then you helped somebody out. You either helped them get more information, you helped them be entertained. And sometimes that’s why we go for social media is to be entertained, to escape a work for five (5) minutes, to you know, zone out doing TV commercials without doing it all again…

Chamira Young: Haha…

Damien Franco: We wanna be entertained. So if you’ve entertained them, you’ve helped them out. You’ve done, you’ve delivered the service, you’ve given them exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Chamira Young: And you know, I would even say, hearing that 90% should not purely be promotional, that would take, that takes the pressure off of me. Because often, when I’m posting and when I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna post on my Facebook page or Twitter, I put so much pressure on myself because I feel like I have to be talking about myself and my business but I don’t always want to be talking about the business I’m trying to market to people. So, to find out that we can provide, like you’ve mentioned, articles that are related to what we offer but not necessarily about us but things that are entertaining, inspiring, you know informational that takes a great deal of pressure off myself.

Damien Franco: Yeah, yeah. You know and it’s really easy. It’s like, it can be as simple as studying a couple of hours, looking at a bunch of photography clothes, putting them in a spreadsheet and thinking, everyday I’m just gonna pull two of these clothes from these photography, maybe that photography… And sometimes it does have to be a photography clothes, art clothes, inspirational clothes, mixed them all up… throw them in a spreadsheet and pull two (2) a day to add next things you’ll gonna post. You’ve just added two (2) posts and maybe it’s spread sheet, you could spend like an hour a week adding to that spread sheet, but I mean, that frees up so much time.

Chamira Young: Oh dude, okay. That’s awesome.

Damien Franco: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s close to simple. But again, it goes to that most of the time quotes are inspirational, that’s definitely something that helps people out. You’re giving them a little boost and they’ll paying, make them a little warm and fuzzy.

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: It has that positive energies, certain feelings and it has your name and your brand, huge for marketing… huge for marketing.

Chamira Young: Ride on. Definitely. So, what would you say then, is the most common mistake that you see photographers make in regard to utilizing social media?

Damien Franco: I think, honestly that it’s a combination of two (2) mistakes.

Chamira Young: Okay.

Damien Franco: And it is sort of what we first we talked about, it’s the idea of you jumped in because everybody’s doing that… And they feel they have to do it. And then, they go in and they start promoting themselves before they really brought up a big audience.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: And if they see that it doesn’t work, and then they give it up and say “This doesn’t work!” And they stopped.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: And part of that is true, it didn’t work. But two (2) things happened. One (1), they did it wrong. But that’s not their fault. There’s not a whole lot of information out there. And it’s not they actually go out there and look for it or say. But you know, they didn’t have the information and they didn’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do or get though. And then, they gave up to it, they didn’t ask for some other things. And it is tough because it takes time to build up. But, if you’re a photographer you also know that it takes time to build clients up, it takes time for that kind of stuff. So, it’s always interesting to me coz I think, photographers and really any other service industry, professionals, knows that you’re practically a freelancer.

Chamira Young: Oh yeah.

Damien Franco: You have to build up a large list of clients, potential clients, past clients, future clients. Huge list and certain percentage on them based on how well that list has been put together. Certain percent will gonna come through and they’ll gonna give you money for your services. Well that’s the same thing with social media is you’ve to get this big list, right? And so maybe you’ll get a following on your Facebook fan page for like you know, 500 people and maybe out of that 500 people, only you know 2 or 3% of them actually ever give you money all year. And then, with photography Facebook, it’s a little bit different because most of the people are gonna follow you in Facebook are actually going recurrent or past clients. That’s usually the trend that we see and so, it’s a good opportunity for what we called re-marketing, if you will. And that’s a chance to bring them back in and say, you know constantly remind them like “Hey, here’s what we’re doing. You finish booked your session before Thanksgiving or a Ball.” You know, for whatever it is. Facebook will really going to be your spot to market to people that are your past clients and keep them around. It’s like have a live interactive Email list apps for your clients. And of course, you get future clients from there too because they’re sharing it around.

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: You know what, get your fans involved, your clients involved, tell them. Say “Hey, when you post this picture and give them permission…” Oh my gosh! Give them permission to post the pictures that you’ve give them on facebook. And when you do asked them to link to your.. to tag you… to tag your business.

Chamira Young: Yeah.

Damien Franco: Say “Can you tag us?” And ask them. And in fact, one of the things that you can do is if you’re able to… if emailing them a digital file of the images, put it in your email as an action item, it’s called the Action Item and say “Here’s your images.” And maybe you create like two (2) different polished forms, maybe because you don’t believe in watermarking or maybe you do believe in water marking. Maybe you can go poorest images better that are obviously not watermarked and you can use for printing or whatever. But then, maybe you can get for small ones that are watermarked… If you get watermark…

Chamira Young: Oh, that’s a great idea.

Damien Franco: I mean I’m not gonna get into anything whether watermarking is good or not, you know. Haha… That’s a debate that somebody else could have at a different date.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: But you know, you create smaller images in a folder and you can call that folder as Social Media or Facebook or whatever you wanna call it. Say “Hey, we also wanna edit and resize images for you that are smaller so you can upload it easier to your Facebook. And when you do, don’t forget to tag us and tell them why.” Like one of the biggest marketing things that you can do when you’re asking people to do something for you is give them the reason that you want to do what you want them to do.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: So there was people who did a really, now this study has been replicated over and over again. But basically, what they did was they’ve got to call kids to go out there and ask for something like I can’t recall if it’s a fundraiser or something like that. So the first group of kids went out there and they’ve asked them and they’ve got some percentage of what they actually looked. Then, he asked the second group out there and said “Go ahead and ask for the exact same thing. Use this exact same thing BUT add BECAUSE.” And then, this other side, right, so like “I’m raising money to do this. Can you give me some money because I need to you know, accomplish this goal?”What they’ve found was that, the respond rate tripled.

Chamira Young: Really?!

Damien Franco: Just by adding that BECAUSE. So they’ve tested it, yeah, they’ve said “Well, did they do this to people who gained money because they’re compelled to because of the wording? Was that after the word BECAUSE? Or did they do this because simply of the word BECAUSE? You can test this thing, that’s what marketers do, they test. And they test, and they analyze and they test. And it’s ridiculous how much we do this.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: What they’ve found was that it almost doesn’t matter what you put after the “because”. But you could put, “Hey, can you give me some money because I need some money?” And people will more likely to give you money.

Chamira Young: No way! Wow! Huh. It’s okay.

Damien Franco: So, when you’re asking people, when you’re asking your fans, your clients to do something for you like “Hey, can you tag our studio name in this photograph when you upload them in Facebook because we rely on referrals and it will drive our business forward?”

Chamira Young: You know, I’m just sitting here thinking of all the past mistakes I’ve made. One of them, being that specifically where I had instances where I finished to shoot up files. And usually, well, at the beginning, one or two things would happen, like “Go ahead and post it in Facebook.” And they would do so but not tagged me.

Damien Franco: Yeah.

Chamira Young: So, I wouldn’t know if they were there or…

Damien Franco: Give them the link, or get them email…

Chamira Young: Right…

Damien Franco: Just in case they have a friend that you get… You’re not even asking him to friend you. I’m saying “You tagged our studio” and if the end they friended you, then, that’s fine.

Chamira Young: That makes so much sense. Because the other cases, even before I’ve given them permission, they go ahead and they’d post it anyway. And again, they don’t tag me and I have no idea until I stumbled on it or I’ve seen it on my feed. And you know, they’ve got 50 Likes or Comments and all this interactions that I want on my Facebook page.

Damien Franco: Right. Exactly.

Chamira Young: It’s such a lost.

Damien Franco: Yes. Yeah, you know. And if you’re hearing people physical products like maybe you do this for CDs or DVDs or on CDs or DVDs because that’s where clients ask you to do it or because that’s how you do it. Make a freakin’ business card that has that information on there, put it on there… like business cards are cheap, especially just plain text ones.

Chamira Young: Ahuh.

Damien Franco: Make a business card that says “Hey, in folder, you know… there’s two folder or whatever… when you upload this… just assume… just assume that’s gonna happen coz it’s gonna happen. You’re not saying “If you want to upload this to Facebook”… but “When you upload this to Facebook, please tag our studio located at… because we rely on referrals. We appreciate it.”

Chamira Young: Hmmm…

Damien Franco: You know. Oh my gosh, so powerful.

Chamira Young: That makes sense.

Damien Franco: There’s a lot of little things that photographers can do to give their business out there. Unfortunately, there’s not really a lot of information. I wish there was more…

Chamira Young: Yeah. Even getting it in a condense version in this discussion with you. One thing I’ve found is that oftentimes there’s not enough or people don’t know where to begin looking.

Damien Franco: Right.

Chamira Young: Or they start looking at everywhere and then they might become overwhelmed of what is out there and then, they would not take any actions at all because they don’t know where to start.

Damien Franco: That’s true, actually. And you can, you can get overwhelmed by too much information. And it can sort of paralyze you of fear without even doing enough or doing it right. But have fun with social media too. Do it with personality in there and that’s a big thing too is that what small businesses, personality can be such a great driver of engagement. And so… because these people don’t know the real you, they don’t know your photography studio, they don’t know what you’re about, they don’t know how to publicly say “I do, in fact, like you.” So it there’s got to be the reasons.

Chamira Young: So, would you say that’s why some people are more successful with social media than others, the injection of their personality or is there something else? Coz some people have masses of success you love as social media whereas others they kinda start and kinda fizzle up?

Damien Franco: I think so. I think so, yeah personality is gonna have something to do with it though.

Chamira Young: Okay.

Damien Franco: You know, put your personality in there but only a positive personality. I mean, I’m not saying you can’t ever be negative. But you really only want like, pure good things between your potential clients and your brand.

Chamira Young: Right.

Damien Franco: Because we don’t, I can’t remember who said it… But somebody said, something along the line… People are not going to remember who you are or what you said, but they would remember how you made them feel… And somebody who said that and can’t really remember but it’s really really good…

Chamira Young: I know that… yeah… yeah.

Damien Franco: Yeah. So make the people feel good. You can do that. You can only do that with personality. Things can’t all be like business and stuff like that and make people feel good. Coupons don’t make people feel good but you can make people feel good about saving money by adding in something “Hey, we’re giving 10% off with your bookings today and you’ll save money for turkey dressing.” Or “you can buy more cranberry sauce.”

Chamira Young: Haha. Show you care, yeah.

Damien Franco: Right. And so, you can do those kinds of things. It doesn’t have to be funny but it can be a little bit like corky or different or whatever and experiment with it. Don’t be so draft.

Chamira Young: You know, I would even submit that one people do stick to trying to just be when they try to be so professional without any character in it, I think that can be a turn off as well even for myself. You know, everyone or when you’re looking for services at one point for something, so let say I’m in a rack with a carpet guy, I wanna put some carpet on my stairs which I actually need to do. Then, you went on rack with them, they’re all business, just straight to the point. You know, no signs that they care about you and your well-being. Then, you kinda walk away from them and like “huh” like a bad taste on your mouth, you know. And then, you interact with another person who offers the same service and for me it can be a little more expensive but if they show that they actually care with what they do and that they care about making my stairs look great with awesome carpet then I’m gonna go with that person.

Damien Franco: Oh absolutely, absolutely. And that’s pretty much how almost everyone feels. And we do have our own personal interactions as well, right. But you would drive 5 miles, 7 miles, 15 miles across town to hang out with somebody who makes you feel better rather than walk next door to your crappy neighbor.

Chamira Young: Without a doubt.

Damien Franco: Right. And we do that. We do that, all day, every day.

Chamira Young: So true.

Damien Franco: And so we do that when we interact when we’re with social media.

Chamira Young: So true. So true. Well, we’re getting towards the end of our interview and this has been awesome. I see we’re coming up near our hour mark. All kinds of good facts and tid-bits for people to take away and I’ve learned quite a bit myself. But before we go, is there a particular resource, be it on social media resource or tool, I know you’ve mentioned a couple tools, a book, a service, a software that you would recommend to our listeners?

Damien Franco: Okay, so that’s a great question. I am a big fan of books. I really really am. I think that it gives you a chance to really absorb a big concept at your own phase, you don’t get overwhelmed, you know like you might go on blog or something like that. And so one of my most favorite marketing books at the moment, it’s not geared necessarily towards photographers but it’s a marketing book I think that a lot of photographers because they use their creativity will get a lot out of is called The Power of Un-Marketing by Erica Napolitano.

Chamira Young: Huh. Okay.

Damien Franco: She’s great and she writes un-apologetically. And it’s very creative and she basically will just give you a sort of sheen eyes or borrow at the same ideas about marketing like you’re not marketing to everybody. Everybody is not your target market, you got to know who you’re target market is, and you gotta know who you are and you can pick your own target bad way. You only have to work with who you wanna work with, like if you don’t wanna take pictures of family anymore, stop putting pictures of family in your website.

Chamira Young: Hahaha… Such a good point.

Damien Franco: Yeah. And if you only wanna do dark portraits, then only put dark portraits on your website and stop taking other clients. And you can become the dark portraits expert in your town in your own niche, you know. So yeah, The Power of Un-Popular by Erica Napolitano, it’s so fantastic book, so good. I would recommend that as a good starting place for a book. I would also recommend, Google Plus in general for photographers, you know. Your clients are not necessarily going to be in Google Plus but there are huge resources of photographers in Google Plus.

Chamira Young: Hmmm… okay.

Damien Franco: They’re everywhere. They’ve really saturated the Google Plus and there are so honest and open and forthcoming with all the information. There’s a… in fact, we have a digital marketing for photographers group on Google Plus and I’ll send you the url so you could put it on your show notes.

Chamira Young: Oh, that would be great. That would be great. Thank you.

Damien Franco: And I would be a great place for questions. I manage that group along with Scott [Kloweschesky], I mumbled that on purpose… I got a headache last time…

Chamira Young: Hahaha

Damien Franco: Anyway, he’s got also really a great website for photographers where he talks about like SEO and all that kind of stuff as well. So I’ll send you a link to that. And then, I’m actually going to a little bit re-vamping my personal website where I talk about Modern Marketing for Creative Professionals. It’s not specific to photographers but it’s for creative professionals so I talk about things like photographers, graphics designers and artist and all other things that definitely will end up being a great resource. It is getting re-vamp right now but so that’s it damienfranco.com, I’ll send you that as well.

Chamira Young: That would be perfect. Great. You actually beat me to the punch of asking where to find you so I’m so glad you mentioned those resources and those links. And I will definitely put hose in the show notes. Definitely will. Thank you so much for just taking time this Saturday morning or whenever listeners are listening to this, probably another time. But I appreciate you talking to me on a Saturday morning where you could be sleeping or relaxing… haha. You gave so many facts and so many tid bids and just such great information in this interview. I’ve really really appreciate it and we thank you for that.

Damien Franco: Oh yeah of course. Thank you, Chamira for having me on. I really enjoy giving back that’s why I feel like I’m enjoying either write a book or just doing interview.