Exposure Guide for Beginner Photographers

As a beginner photographer, you would have to face several challenges. Often, learning the basics of the game is a much simpler task than going ahead and opting for professional photography. What a lot of young or new photographers do is establish a studio, click a few pictures of their friends and family and then wait for some great projects to come their way. Let us tell you that this is not how your business would take off.

These days, there is a lot of competition in the field of photography and people constantly need to be reminded about you and the services that you provide. Failing this, you might end up with a bad business idea and an unused skill.
Therefore, you have to make sure that you get adequate exposure for your business. Apart from learning photography the right way and practicing it, you also need to make sure that people get to know who you are and what services you provide. In the beginning, you would have to do a lot more than simply photographing people.

What are these Photography Marketing Ideas that you need to take and how would you exactly find more exposure? Read on and you would learn more.

Build a brand

You need to build your brand right from the beginning. Make sure that you are branding yourself in the right way. For doing this, you would first need to create a website for your business. You have to buy a website domain for this. These days, the domains are available for a very small price. Therefore, you would not have to worry about monetary constraints as well. However, in the beginning, you can also opt for a good free hosting provider service. The domain name would be like yourname.hostingprovidername.com some good options would be Blogspot, Tumblr, 500px, Wix, Weebly, WordPress, etc. This shall help you in taking your first step towards creating an online identity. Now, you have to go for a good name for your business and also chose a logo for yourself.

This is quite an essential step in branding yourself. You need to distinguish yourself from others. There should be a good name and a great logo that people can identify you with. Your name or your face might not be registered in the memory of the people for long. However, an attractive logo would be able to do its work and make you a known and trusted brand.

We suggest that you go for paid sites instead of free web hosting. This is because your domain name is your very own and you don’t have to depend on anyone for your name. Additionally, you would be getting more chances of customizing your website. You can link it to other online identities that you own or even make a classy portfolio that would make sure that you are getting more business. Link it to Google Analytics as well and look for some good SEO techniques that can help you get found on the internet.

Go social

Social media is providing a lot of opportunities for people to advertise themselves and get connected with their audience without really appearing too nosy or irritating. The social media sites include giants like Twitter, Facebook, VK, and Google+ that would be turning your business around if used in the right way. You can make a Twitter handle for yourself and make a Facebook page as well. Ask people you know to join you two online identities and let others also follow them.

You then need to constantly update a few posts here so that the people can stay connected with your page and account and also engage more with you. If they engage more, they would retain your name more and if this thing happens, then you would definitely be remembered the time when these people need the services of a photographer. There are many tools that would help in making social media a much better platform to showcase your work and find a new audience. You can use Hootsuite to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts side by side so that they can appear in the newsfeed at dedicated times.

You can also use WeFollow and Followerwonk to check how people engage with you on Twitter. The Facebook page insights also provide you a lot of statistics about your page. Use Twitpic or Bitly for sharing links and web addresses. The point is to remain active all the while. Join Twitter lists, Facebook groups, and keep posting as much as you can. Sharing more would always translate to more engagement and so on.

Join photo-oriented sites

Flickr and 500px are two sites that have constantly been providing a very visual sharing website for their users. Joining these two photo-oriented sites can mean a lot of traffic for your website and consequently, more branding and business for you as well.

You can also join sites like Deviantart,1x, Behance where you can sell your prints as well. The opportunities are many. You just need to focus on the right platform for getting the right kind of exposure.

Use video sharing sites

Vimeo and YouTube top the list of video sharing sites. They would be providing you a lot of options to get more audience and use an even more appealing visual presentation method. So how exactly does this happen? Well, you simply have to make sure that you are creating some kind of quality content for your audience.

This shall help you a lot in ensuring that you are getting more customer engagement. You can shoot DIY videos, review videos or, even a few tips related to photography and then upload it on these sites to get the best for your business. These videos can even go viral and give you a lot of necessary exposure as well.

Run unique photography projects

Now, this is something that would need a good photo community to depend upon and probably a little money as well as lots of marketing expertise. However, doing this definitely helps you in getting more audience for your business. As a photographer, you have to think local. Therefore, making sure that these projects click to people is very important. You can even go for contests and events if you find photography projects too cumbersome to handle. One good way will be is to create a unique Pinboard(Pinterest) and share your work accordingly to attract specific audiences.

This would help you in making sure that you are being noticed by the people in your city and they might remember you when they need their next photo session to be done. If all this seems out of your ability, you can opt for people who can create such projects for you. If nothing else, you can define your target audience and sponsor a few events where you would be able to showcase your prints and your skills and get some handy publicity as well.

Some great places to see some projects and gather ideas:

• Dancers Among Us
• I’m Not A Look-Alike
• Not Just A Girl
• Touching Strangers
• Humans of New York
• Flickr No Pant Community
• kick Starter

Write guest posts

Being a new photographer does not mean that you are short of ideas. You can either create your own blog and integrate it with your website or look for contributing to an already existing blog as a guest author. This would help you in getting more exposure amongst the established target audience and would also make you a part of the photo community.

Remember, the more you are able to get in touch with your target audience, the better chances of exposure you would get. Therefore, look only for the blogs that have an established presence and are frequently visited by the target audience. This way, you would become a better brand. You can even opt for some DIY and tutorials as they are very popular on the web these days.

Get featured in magazines

Never stop doing this. The more you try to send them pictures for different features, the more chances of your pictures getting published would be. Click some great pictures that match with the mood of the magazine and you might end up with a real publication. A good media publication and photo credits can go a long way in making sure that you are ‘wanted’ as a photographer.

Few magazines to consider for submitting your work:

• http://www.popphoto.com/
• http://www.digitalslrphoto.com/
• http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/
• http://www.bandwmag.com/

and many more on

http://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/30-photography-magazines-worth-subscribing-to–photo-2618

Meetups

Get in touch with the photo community around you. These might include some fellow photographers as well as the photography admirers. There are many people out there who consider photography their passion. Always look for opportunities to meet these people locally. If this is not possible, you can become a part of webinars and even visit meetup.com to find likeminded people and share your experiences and thoughts with others.

Compete for a little more

Taking part in some good photo contests can mean a lot for you as a young or new photographer. There are many internationally reputed photo contests like the National Geographic Photo Contest where you can go and participate in order to get found. There are many cash prizes to be won here.

However, what is more, important is that you get a lot of exposure to winning them. Even if there are some locally organized photo contests, don’t shy away and send your entries. If you win, you would be able to get a lot of exposure in your local community and that might help in taking your business forward.

Join forums

Forums are a great way to popularize yourself and your business. These forums are very tightly knit communities where you would be getting answers to your questions and would also be getting a chance to interact with other photo enthusiasts. A common thread binds all. You can discuss new equipment, new techniques and a lot more. Simply join these sites and you would get a wealth of information here.

Some good forums and Q&A sites:

• http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum
• http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum
• http://www.photography-forum.org/
• http://Ask.fm
• http://www.reddit.com/r/photography
• http://answers.yahoo.com/

Offer free services

You can also advertise on your local free classified sites and then offer free services to the people. You can simply offer a free portrait or some kind of gift coupon for people. This would help you in coming in touch with many potential customers. Once they use your services and like them, they would likely come back for more. This shall help you in developing a strong and faithful user base.

Use email marketing

You would have to focus one getting a little more aggressive with your marketing. Simply look for the ways in which you could be getting the best out of your email marketing efforts. This includes services like Aweber and Mailchimp that would optimize your email marketing efforts and make sure that you get a lot of leads than can later convert into customers.

Run affiliates

You might be using software like Lightroom, Aperture, and Photoshop. You can go ahead and create some unique settings, customized presets, and more that can be used by the people to optimize their pictures. Create more than a service and look out for some products as well. Then create an affiliate program for these services and check how you would be able to market yourself.

These affiliates would be selling or popularizing your products and they would be getting some commission in return. As a result, they would be trying to bring in as much traffic as possible and would also help you in getting more business.

Some good sites that are doing a great job:

• http://www.fashionactions.com/
• http://www.digitalfilmactions.com/
• http://www.mcpactions.com/
• http://nightfateactions.com/

Get listed

Look for some local yellow page listing and also use Google Places and Yahoo local listing and list yourself there. This would help you in getting seen by the users. If you are creating a website, it might become difficult for you to do a comprehensive SEO and get ranked on the top in the search engine page results.

However, if you get listed on these local websites, you would be able to get a lot more. You might end up getting a lot of exposure and this would help you in making sure that you are constantly keeping yourself updated about the way that people connect with you. Remember, you always have to market yourself and get seen as much as possible.

We hope that all these points would help you in becoming a more trusted brand and also create more sales for you. Let us not forget to tell you that in the end, it is simply the quality of services that would be able to retain clients for you. So get ready to shine.