How do you keep up?

the supervillain

Hey everyone!
So in this glorious age of the internet, us photographers often have too much resources and advertising mediums, it seems one can get overwhelmed!

There is forums to post in, twitter, blogs, facebook pages, actually managing your site so people stay!

I am trying to keep up with it all, but am not doing too well. I have all these plans for things to write about in my blog, but never have the time! taking part in multiple forums is also hectic!

So I am just looking to see if anyone else is in the same boat, or has any tips to keep yourself on track and no get swamped!

Thanks everyone!

Cygnus Studios

the supervillain wrote:

So I am just looking to see if anyone else is in the same boat, or has any tips to keep yourself on track and no get swamped!

Find what works best for you and concentrate on that part. Don't try to do it all.

Save the forums, blogging, and other stuff between editing your pics.

colourbox

I am new to a lot of this, but I have made a decision to concentrate my time on one or two key sites, and if it is of value to have a presence on other specific networks, I will put up a token profile or a few token images and in them have links that direct visitors out to my main sites. Nobody has time to maintain all that stuff.

for example, if you build a "Fan Page" for your business on Facebook, you can make it continuously suck in the entries from your blog. So just write in your blog and let it make your Facebook page look busy with no extra effort. You can try to take advantage of these "update once, broadcast through many sites" consolidation features that many sites have.

Unless you are one of those companies that is big and rich enough that you have a staff that does nothing but maintain your social networking presence for you!

emeraldrose

I have similar issues lol but to further what colourbox said.. I have my facebook fan page linked to my twitter so I haven't even logged into twitter in God knows how long, I then have that same twitter linked to a badge type thing on my myspace biz page so it automatically updates that too and the same badge thing is on my blog on the side so when I update facebook it updates everything. The one thing I was told though it have a personal page and then a FAN page, you have to have both to do it correctly and people will randomly friend you when they see your fan page b/c people want to 'connect' with a business so if they can see the person behind the screen they're more likely to go with you.

the supervillain

thanks everyone, I am realizing that it is next to impossible to maintain all that stuff!
I am going to have to look into this post consolidating stuff, linking facebook with twitter and the like.

I guess I was trying to do everything at once!

ColoradoSkier

Where blogging is concerned, I pretty well burnt out from that for a while. I was writing a post a day (weekends off) for roughly 6 months. Came to be way too much to keep up. I stopped for about 6 months, and just recently started again. My topics are all over the place, from DIY setups to gear reviews to simply posting pics I have taken. I get a ton of search traffic to the DIY stuff. I think that visibility might also help when someone is looking for a photographer in my area, as I tend to do well in location based searches.

If you do go the blogging road, manage the expectation with your readers up front, and stick to the schedule. If you plan to just write a couple times a week, it is easy to schedule a bunch in advance (I am about 3 weeks out currently). It can be a useful tool, but when trying to keep up with everything else, yes, it gets overwhelming.