I’m not a big believer of new year new you, but it is a good point to draw a line in the sand and explore some new habits, ditch some bad ones.
One of the things I’m really keen to get better at in this new year is social media marketing. That is to use the platforms I have to better effect.
I currently use the following
Facebook my two pages have 215 and 752 likes
Instagram each account 368 and 597
Twitter 226 and 933 for each account
LinkedIn 820 connections where I don’t subdivide my Event and Boudoir businesses
So Facebook First
The First thing I’m tackling is Facebook … why ?
A number of reasons for event and portrait work it’s where a lot of the people I need hang out. More specifically I want to utilise Facebook Groups better.
Over time I’ve become a member of literally hundreds of groups, the vast majority of these are for people to ask for business recommendations or to advertise their business. Some are a bit niche, barmitzvah parents only for example, others location based.
It’s clear to me I need to rationalise this list if I ever want to use this effectively, be able to plan my posts and see results.
How Do I Make It Work For Me ?
The first sweep was simple … a quick look if it wasn’t relevant it went
Second criteria … number of subscribers. It’s a bit arbitrary but I drew a line at roughly 2500. Now some groups are small by nature, a few a lot larger. Some will I know have a turnover of subscribers, once your function is over, it’s time to leave and so forth so the subscriber list would be quite steady and static. However my thinking is as follows a small number of subscribers is going to be mainly the businesses themselves and not necessarily people looking for a photographer, arbitrary I know but I have to cut the list down. So, the fact that businesses use eachother not withstanding, a wedding group with only 257 members isn’t going to do it for me.
Third Criteria … activity. Is it an active group, how frequent are the posts and are they of the correct quality ?
Fourth … are other photographers in there, how active are they, are they in the same or similar market as me. I have to after all be seen where they are seen and need to make sure my voice is heard. Are the posts they are placing creating any waves ? If they are posting about new born photography and nobody is responding then it seems at least for now that the group isn’t interested in new born photography.
With it being new year, it’s quite a good time to be checking out 3 and 4
And …
So all of that done, I’ve whittled the list down to a far more manageable 24 groups I think are worth posting into and once they are subdivided onto categories it’s even better. I can’t post about weddings in a new born group, or barmitzvahs in a wedding group.
So now I have a form of focus I’m going to walk away and think a little about strategy … what to post, when and why.
I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be a series of blog posts so once I’ve started posting to the groups and got some results from that I’ll let you know how it’s going …
Don’t let this be one way leave me a comment …
Until then I’d really like you to let me know how you use Facebook to the best of what it can do for you, your successes and failures, and so on.
Blog originally published here.
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