Facebook - Got Work?

anonymouscuban

Has your Facebook page generated any leads or bookings?

I got my first family session booked through FB today. And its someone that just stumbled on my page. :clap

I created my page in August, really, just to showcase my photos in one spot rather than commingled on my personal page never thinking it would generate any real work. Who knew.

Anyone else get any FB love?

zoomer

I get a LOT of local networking from Facebook. In the long run that intruduces me to a LOT more local people, which leads to more work.
My internet main site gets more traffic from around the world than it does locally.
Boise is kind of an artsy community there A LOT of decent photographers and of course the number grows exponentially every year.

Zerodog

What zoomer says is the exact same for me. It is a huge networking thing for me. I get a large percentage of my work because of something related to FB in some way. Like it or not this is the way things are now. I post stuff from events as teasers to get people to go to my site and buy. It seems like giving some stuff away generates $$$ every time for me.

anonymouscuban

Interesting replies and validates the reason why I started my page. I figured it can't hurt to have my 250+ friends, and their friends, and their friends, friends, etc. looking at my photos. The other reason why I started the page is that I have more control over the resolution/quality of photos that get shared. I can watermark them and size them so they look best on FB. And because it's so easy to share on FB, people tend to that instead of taking a screen shot of a photo from my site and sharing it, like they used to. I do have sharing on my Smug page active but it doesn't work with protected galleries, which is most of my client stuff and for some reason people don't use it when it is active.

zoomer

For example: The bodybuilder I shot last week (Damir shot posted) has about 3000 friends.
As a result of those photos I have 10 new local fitness models as friends. Additionally my photos of him were showcased on 2 different blogs and I was contacted for a possible book cover using one of his shots. All from some photos on facebook.

Zerodog

Yep, it is like a virus. You just have to be willing to "Give" a few things away. Or just show off.

anonymouscuban

Zerodog wrote: »

Yep, it is like a virus. You just have to be willing to "Give" a few things away. Or just show off.

Yuppers. I think I may have a different opinion on this than many photographers since I don't pay my bills from my photography but I don't mind "giving" some stuff away. The fact is we live in a digital era now where you either embrace the net and reap the benefits of having an endless audience/potential customer base at the risk of some of your photos being "stolen" vs. not sharing any of your work on the net or watermarking your images so much that it completely detracts from your work and not getting your name/work out there as easily.

I check referring sites to my Smug page and my Fickr page all the time. I also run image searches on my photos that are getting a lot of hits and I have found many of them being used on Free Wallpaper sites, blogs, Facebook pages, etc. without my permission. The photos I take of my Pugs are especially popular on the net. . One of my photos - a self portrait of all things - actually circled back to me via email as an inspirational poster type email and the person that sent it to me had no idea that it was my photo.

I'm actually flattered by this stuff. As long as the person is not selling my images as their own or a company is not using my image commercially without reimbursing me, I don't really care. The way I look at it, my image is out there on the net and that does more good for me and my photography than bad.

Again, my opinion may be different if I relied on my photography to put food on the table.

anonymouscuban

BTW Zoomer... that's awesome news man. You do great work so it's nice to see success coming your way.

divamum

I've considered setting up a dedicated photopage, but so far have just been using my personal FB page (although I do create lists and my regular, every-day boring "playing with my dog and going to the supermarket" posts are limited to me friends rather than colleagues and clients . I've had more than a few requests - and bookings - coming via friends of friends. I do a "sneak peek" with every shoot - tagged with the subject. Each of those usually yields a ton of "likes" and comments from the subject's friends, who then know about me.
Since nobody really does prints for headshots any more, I get a lot more exposure in the market I want to target this way than any other method I can think of, and since I've always wanted the headshot stuff to grow via word of mouth, it's been ideal for me.


YMMV, but works for me.

jww

Hmmm... I have always hated facebook, but for purely personal reasons. Some great arguments to start up a business one. (rats!!) lol

zoomer

Alex you and I look approach this from about the same place looks like....and thanks .

leaforte

Absolutely, a great networking tool.

heatherfeather

Actually, funny you bring this up... I have used my personal FB page for for sneak peeks and the like for a couple of years, and just now set up a biz one in the last week. What I like: seeing the stats of views of different posts. What I don't like: It is really not as simple as it was before to tag someone in a post. It doesn't want to let me unless I go back to my personal FB page and then switch to the biz one... it is kinda a pain. But, everyone seems to be glad I made it. We'll see how it goes!

But I do get a ton of work from facebook. My inbox is used EXTENSIVELY for client emails and things. They really like the ease of finding a way to contact me through that. I just wish less of my clients were annoying scentsy dealers.

anonymouscuban

Heather... yeah, the friends thing is a pain. Took me a day to figure that out BTW. I do love the stats though. Interesting stuff. BTW, I just got to Likes from people in the UK.

Hackbone

One of the best ways to get your work out there fast.

jasonscottphoto

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Heather... yeah, the friends thing is a pain. Took me a day to figure that out BTW. I do love the stats though. Interesting stuff. BTW, I just got to Likes from people in the UK.

I've never been able to figure out how to tag a fan in a photo. Do they have to be on your personal friend list?

Zerodog

For some of the event promotions I do work for they have made me a FB admin. This way after an event I can post the pics I want to show off. This works great because LR can load directly to FB. And they even have my info on the pics. This way it is networking on a much larger scale. I still use my personal page for photography. So many times I have seen someone try to separate this and struggle with traffic. For me it is easier to keep my stuff on my page. And I guess use the other pages for some other promotion too. It has helped because so many people in my area know who I am. I can get event work when I want it and not have to beg. Or if it will not be paid by the promotion it is easy to get in.

lilmomma

I created my "official" page a couple months ago and I don't know if its necessarily better than putting my stuff on my personal page. but i am starting to get more work now and don't like to clutter my personal page with it. the only bummer about it is i have 300 + friends on my personal page and only 134 likes on my business page so not everyone sees my stuff. But I definitely book stuff because of facebook. people see their friends tagged in the photos and then contact me for themselves.

Grumpy_one

Tagging photos shared from smugmug?
Tried searching, the word tag shows up in any word with tag in it. Tried quotation marks, didn't help. So can someone tell this newbie how to tag people in photos shared from a smugmug account? Thanks.

edit: ok got it. once I shared from the owners side of things it works. but sharing from the share button on the bottom of the page not so much

Gretchen

When you select SHARE then PUBLISH TO FACEBOOK from a specific gallery, you select all the photos or just specific ones to upload to FB. You have to have the gallery set up in FB (prompts let you decide how), you get to select how you want it to appear, then once the photos are in your FB album you can tag from there. This is the only way I know of to be able to tag pictures. Maybe someone else knows of another way. You also have to authorize FB to access the SmugMug data, which you'll be prompted to do it you haven't already done so. Hope this helps.

jmphotocraft

anonymouscuban wrote: »

I can watermark them and size them so they look best on FB.

Please share what you do to get them to look good on FB. Seems FB compresses the heck out of photos and/or resizes them poorly. Thanks!!

adbsgicom

There was a suggestion in another forum to export as gif, which seems to confuse the compression system at FB and keep things looking good (or not as sucky). Only problem is that LR doesn't export gif so you'd have to go through PS or other conversion process.

Vagebond

adbsgicom wrote: »

There was a suggestion in another forum to export as gif, which seems to confuse the compression system at FB and keep things looking good (or not as sucky). Only problem is that LR doesn't export gif so you'd have to go through PS or other conversion process.

Another problem is that gif only supports 256 colours, which generally doesn't do an image much good.

adbsgicom

Vagebond, good catch. I meant PNG, not GIF.
Either way, LR doesn't export to that format.

anonymouscuban

I export them as JPEG. I limit the size to 960 px on the long edge and set the resolution to 90 px. That seems to work real well in rendering the images on FB.

jmphotocraft

interesting, thanks.

lilmomma

i'm kind of late to the party but I use Jeffrey friedel (sp?) lr export plug in. I leave it at full resolution and 300 resolution and they export beautifully. I have also resized to long edge 900 px and 72 resolution but I don't see much of a difference resizing.

michaelglenn

When it comes to exporting, I resize to 900x600 and make sure you set the color space to SRGB via PS, ACR, or LR! This is the most important step because facebook will dull out the colors otherwise.