Remarketing is an option that can be found in the Audience tab in Adwords. Remarketting allows you to target the same cutomers multiple times across the google display network by placing a cookie on their computer. This is how some ads can seem to follow you all over the internet.
In order for it to work you must include some tracking code on the relevant pages of your website. Adwords will generate this code for you while you set-up remarketing in the audience tab.
While attracting the same customer multiple times may seem counter intuitive at first there are sound reasons to implement such a practice.
1) It is rare for customers to purchase something after a single presentation
2) Remarketing helps you get found again
3) Remarketing targets customers who are likely to be interested in your product or service
These were compiled by Joshua J Blake in video form. I have typed them out below to help people find them using google or to have an audio free giggle :)
You're a photographer, really?
Do you do photos?
Do you edit them too, like with airbrushing? Do you know what that is? Oh you do?
You know my cousin does photography, are you as good as she is?
I was checking out your photography portfolio online, you're really good. You should do this as your job, like professionally.
Wow you've got a really nice camera, is that yours?
That's a junky camera, where'd you get that? The thrift store?
Do you do headshots?
Do you Shoot Children? I mean like photos?
Do you shoot parties? Pets? Seniors? Weddings?
I would pay so much for you to do a photo shoot for me, how much do you charge? How much?
Oh, I thought because we were friends I wouldn't have to pay.
You're going to make me look good right?
Can you make me look younger?
I don't wanna look fat.
Do you do tfp?
Do you do time for friends?
Yeah time for friends, it's like when a model poses for a photographer to get free headshots, oh you've heard of it?
Hey can you do me a huge favour? You're like a photographer right? Cause I need headshots like, for free.
What's an f stop?
I saw this picture of this model once. She was like gorgeous, she had perfect hair, perfect teeth. her dress was all fitted and she was all skinny and thin... can you make me look like that?
Can you teach me like everything you know? I mean like everything. Oh don't worry I'm a really good listener... wait what?
I bet you could even make me look good.
Do you do graphic design as well or are you just a photographer?
I;'ve always wanted to model, can you make me a model? Do you have connections?
So what should I wear?
Do you use photoshop?
Is it too late to shoot that sunset photo we talked about? I know its set already but... you can't photoshop that in?
I'm sorry I'm late, I was still in bed.
I was stuck in traffic.
I was doing my hair.
I was tweeting.
I'm not very photogenic
Just so you know, I don't photograph well.
Am I going to get copies of all these?
I am relaxed.
My complexion is really bad do you fix acne?
Wait is there something in my teeth?
Cheeeeeese-Wait, hold on. Ok - Cheeeeese!
Oh can I look at that one? I don't want to look stupid.
I don't want to smile I don't even want to be here. My mothers making me do this.
Hold it right there or I'll shoot ya! Get it? Oh, you've heard that one before? I thought I made that up.
Ok I want a shot from this side, from this side, from this side, and maybe from the top and maybe from the bottom but only if its flattering.
I am smiling
Do you have any hairspray?
I wanna do this shot like, like one time I saw this model and she was kinda like...
I am posing naturally
Whether you spot a wedding photography deal on GrabOne, Treatme, Yazoom, or one of the other daily deal sites my advice is to avoid them.
Why?
Unless price is the only factor in your decision these sort of deals probably aren't a good thing to look at. The limited availability of the offer will throw undue pressure on your decision.
Look at it this way. If you hadn't heard about the deal would you book your photographer (or any other service) in less than 1 day without meeting with them?
If the answer is yes then go for it. If the answer is no think long and hard about whether the deal is right for you.
While price is a fairly common talking point when discussing wedding photography so are stories about people booking a photographer who offered a good deal before later switching to another photographer whose photographic style was more in line with what they actually wanted. In these cases the savings made in the initial deal instantly become losses when they lose their deposit with the first photographer.
Use Social Media to accomplish a specific Goal
- Enhance branding awareness
- Protect your reputation
- Rank well in search
- Extend Customer Service
- Build Community
- Facilitate R&D
- Drive Sale and Leads
Note that these goals aren't necessarily about making more money directly. Use socail media for what it can do, not what you want it to do
Key Strategies
Customer Service
- Search for people mentioning your brand name
- When you find people who have an issue with your service reach out to them an dtry to solve the problem
Drive Sales
- Join the conversation, be present and engage with customers
- Don't just sell your product, provide something of value that helps cutomers see you as a resource
- Use clear calls to action
Will you enjoy reading Outlier's by Malcolm Gladwell? The short answer is almost certainly yes. Gladwell is an excellent story teller and here he puts those skills to use in a way that is both entertaining and educational.
Outliers will challenge the world view of anyone who comes down hard on the Nature side of the Nature Nurture debate and should even force willpower preachers to re-examine their view that success comes down to individuals. Throughout the book the role of the environment is thrust forward and championed in areas ranging from professional baseball to rice paddy farmers. Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fail to emerge unscathed. In all cases it is suggested that, while the individual's interests, preferences, and tendencies helped them to succeed, the environment provided the necessary soil for the flowers of their talent to truly blossom. Interestingly in many cases Gladwell seems to suggest that the emergence of talent is a necessary consequence of the environment working on the individual rather than the other way around.
Click the image above to buy the book
Click the image above to buy the Audio Book
Watch a video of Malcolm Gladwell discussing a different topic below:
Can you turn an amateur into a pro photographer in just 1 week? Here Kai and the Digital Rev team try to do just that putting the fake it till you make it addage to the test.
While it was ultimately unsuccessful in this case there are ways that such an outcome could be achieved. Chief among these would be prior knowledge of the final challenges. If you know exactly waht you are going to be required to produce you could work on that outcome with your mentors.
Critically while the above solution would only fulfil the brief in that limited scope that is actually all that would be required. Here they are trying to FAKE a pro photographer, not create one.
The release of the D800 and D4 may, for the lucky few with plenty of cash in the bank, produce a bit of a dilemma. Which one should they buy and why? In the past the D700 D3 choice was simple - 90% of the time you should have chosen the D700. It was cheaper, lighter, had a built in flash for triggering Nikon's CLS (creative lighting system), and had the same sensor.
This time around Nikon have clearly differentiated the two models. The D4 is more robust than the D800, has a higher framerate, and has some very cool wireless tricks. The D800 has plenty of pixel power and a built in flash.
Below Matt from Art of the image gives his take.
Personally, if you're choosing between these two beasts I would recommend the D800 unless you will find the size of the RAW files unwieldy or you need high frame rates and/or wireless trickery.
I'm looking at purchasing Peter Hurley's Art Behind the headshot. It's a 4 hour course allegedly demonstrating everything that Peter Hurley has learnt over the past 8 years. If so it should be well worth the money. The above video is a sample from the 'DVD' (it's actually a download). What do you think? Worth spending a little bit to learn a lot or doesn't this look that useful?
The basic manual for the Nikon D800 and D800E is now freely available for download from Nikon USA.
The manual includes the usual basic samples and basic shooting suggestions for things such as portraits and static subjects. Interestingly it also includes advice such as don't stop the aperture down too far. While this piece of advice is accurate (as small apertures can lead to issues through diffraction) I haven't seen it included in manuals before (although the manuals I have read before are for lower level Nikon Cameras).
In the above video Peter Hurley demonstrates the importance of, and techniques for, defining the jawline in photography. These techniques predominantly allow you to eliminate the appearance of double chins by preventing the key factors that cause them to appear in photographs.
Question:
How is the wedding business Blueprint different?
- Maximising lead generation
- Partnering
- Developing your niche
- Chossing a profitable market
- Designing your price and packages
- Marketting
- Money Back Guarantee
Story about a NZ photographer Raefa/Rayfa
-School Portraits
Added scarcity by adding a limited offer, a timeframe where something ends. This appeals to loss aversion.
Tried a couple of variations
- 7 day limit with a free gift
- Archival fees (don't buy in this time and you will have to pay an archival fee)
7 day limit with free gift was most effective
From this Steph and Jeff Recommend a 3 day booking incentive
How can I start creating more VALUE in my business?
- Whatever the Bride and Groom find valuable
- What can't they find elsewhere? Ask around
- Can you become a resource that goes beyond your traditional role? Can you help them plan other elements of their wedding?
Use your web presence to make a personal connection with your clients
- Blogging
- E-mail
- Skype
- Aided by proper targetting of your niche
- Targets the correct leads
- They are setup to want to book you
Cheap and Free ways to generate interest/leads
DJ Story Raul
- Helped him target his market by using a message that makes him stand out from the competition
- Not about explaining why you cost what you do
- Self definition moves from Wedding DJ -> Latin Wedding DJ -> Latin-but-bot-too-Latin Wedding DJ (where clients want all the guests to dance, not just Latin guests)
- Ask why your clients booked you, they will help to find your uniqueness
Postcards
- Send out thank you postcards to clients and other wedding vendors
Common SEO misinformation:
- Doing negative things to your customers is a great way to get backlinks
Review sites often have nofollow links which means that the negative reviews provide negative information about your service and don't give you any link juice.
- Google slacks off from time to time
Google move their manpower around the most effective/mportant areas at any one time
- It's only about links
Many people only focus on building incoming links. Remember that on page SEO is also very important, especially the generation of unique, quality content.
- The Keywords Meta Tag is useful for Google
It isn't used at all
- The Webspam team is all person based OR all algorithmic
It is both.
Changed Information
- Social Media can effect rankings
In some cases it seems that google does take a person or organisations reputation into account when creating their google rankings.
- Safe Search Changes
In the past if google couldn't crawl something directly they wouldn't return the result in safe search. Since then safe search has improved as has the amount of information that can be used to guess what a page contains. Now sites that google cannot crawl directly may be returned in a safe search if there are enough external signals to suggest that it should be trustworthy.
In a nutshell the difference between SEO and spam is who the site is aimed at and whether the site shows the same information to users and search engines.
If your SEO strategy focuses on delivering a good user experience as well as helping the search engines find your page and the information it contains you should be safe.
If you only focus on the search engines at the expense of your users then you're venturing into spam territory.
One of the biggest challenges in optimising a photography website for google (or any other search engine) comes in creating quality on page content that search engines can read. Unlike you and I google's spiders don't see the internet with the human eye. They read it the same way that a computer reads it, as a set of instructions.
Unfortunately this means that google doesn't read your photo of a beautiful sunset as a photo of a beautiful sunset. Instead it reads the name of the file that contains the beautiful sunset, the written information on the rest of the page, and any other code that is built into your website. As such if you want your photography website to be found on google it isn't enough to load your page up with plenty of lovely photos, you must also load it up with plenty of words describing those lovely photos.
Filenames/Image Titles
At the simplest (and most overlooked level) you can rename your photo files (the .jpegs, .pngs or whatever you're using) to reflect their content. Instead of having a file called DSC00042.jpg use a file called Sunset.jpg. You can use underscores or dashes to break-up the words in your image file titles as well. For example you might like to call your file Auckland-Sunset.jpg if your photo shows a sunset in Auckland.
Alt Tags
The next level is the alt tag. the Alt tag is what is displayed to the user if the image cannot be displayed. Here you can include a description of what the photo is of. For example you might like to say something like "A golden sunset in Auckland New Zealand". As a side note this is also what will be read out to vision impaired people who visit your website.
Image Captions and On page text
With those out of the way we break into what people typically think of when you say on page content: image captions and on page text. Captions are spatially linked to images and this can be reflected in certain coding languages. It is likely that google will use image captions to identify what an image might be of for indexing in image search. As such image captions should describe the content of the image they are closest to. You may like to reword your alt tag and use it here.
On page text is less directly related to individual images. It is the written content on the page and often provides information related to some underlying theme between the photos on the page. For example if I post a gallery of property photography images like this one I include information about the property itself while mentioning that I am available for real estate photography in Auckland. In that body of text I signal to google and other search engines that the content on that page relates to property photography in Auckland increasing the odds of getting listed in google search for relevant search queries.
You may also notice that there are a few keywords on those pages. Those keywords are there because those are the words that I am interested in ranking for (property photography, real estate photography, and Auckland). You may also notice that those words are mentioned as naturally as possible. While they may be repeated from time to time I am not trying to ram them down google's throat. Why not? If google wants words and I know which ones I want to feed it surely more relevant food would be better right?
Wrong.
Remember that google is trying to simulate human search using computer algorithms. In order to do this they pay a lot of very clever people a lot of money to teach google to read like people do. If you stuff your page too full of keywords google will pick up on this now or in the future. Watch the Matt Cutts Google Webmaster Help video below for a clearer explanation.
Comments
The final option is comments. One of the key benefits of comments are that they can be generated by other people. As such you are essentially outsourcing your SEO work. One of the key downsides is that they are generated by other people and can actually do nothing for or damage your SEO if implemented and moderated incorrectly.
Recall that google can only read what is written on the page itself. This is important if you are using an external method of generating and collecting comments. The Facebook comment box being the clearest example. If google is unable to see the comments they might as well not exist for SEO purposes.
Now also recall that google does read what is on the page and uses it to decide what your page is about. If you end up collecting a lot of comments that don't add to your page's content or accurately reflect or describe what is on the page they might as well not be there. To make matters worse if you get a lot of irrelevant comments than can lead google to believe that your page is less about what it would have thought your site was about than if the comments weren't there. For this reason it is good to be able to moderate your comments. This allows you to control the quality of the content that users are supplying and also helps stop any spam getting through.
The Standard on Page SEO tips
Beyond this the standard on-page SEO tips still hold true. Use page titles and headings sensibly. Use them to highlight your keywords but avoid using them for spam. Use the meta description to suggest a relevant snippet to google. While google might not use it many other search engines will and google will check it out in the same way that it looks at your page content, page titles, headings etc. Meta Keywords on the other hand are less useful for google but may still be useful for other search engines.
Quality Content
Finally (but arguably most importantly) focus on producing quality content. If you produce content that people will find useful they are likely to share it. If they share it they are likely to do so by linking to it. If they link to it someone has just created a backlink for you and backlinks are what will really bring google's spiders to your site. In terms of quality content for photography you may like to consider the following options
How to articles
Reviews
Descriptive galleries of your personal work
Blog posts detailing some aspect of your business (blogging of images from individual weddings is a popular example)
Clear information for your clients (such as details around pricing - an often overlooked element)
If you aim for qaulity content the keywords should come fairly naturally meaning you won't need to worry about sending your content into spam land.
The Next Step
The next step is off page SEO. This revolves primarily around link building and can apply to different pages on your own website as well as pages built by other people. In most cases you will get the most bang for your buck by targetting inbound links from other people's pages. Off page SEO will be covered in more detail in a future post.
Digital Art is the art of creating photos that cannot be taken with a camera - the creation of impossible photos.
Erik Johannsen is interested in what you can do with a photograph after the shutter button is pressed. He felt that traditional photography was limited to essentially being in the right place at the right time. He felt that anyone could do that and he wanted to do more (arguably though anyone can do what he does as well, it will just involve more work in post than 'simply' taking a photograph).
So why not abandon photography completely and pick up a paintbrush instead? Photography portrays a level of realism that other mediums do not offer, or at least do not offer as readily. It is the subversion and manipulation of this realism that Johannsen enjoys and requires in his art.
Successful subversion primarily requires planning - knowing what you want the end product to look like before you begin so that you can collect the pieces necessary to complete the puzzle. Key considerations include perspective, lighting, colour, contrast, brightness, and how you will make the end product appear as a seamless solitary image despite the fact that it's made of many different images.
Nikon D800 In the Studio with Rob Van Petten from Rob Van Petten on Vimeo.
The Job of a fashion photographer is usually to sell apparel or personal care or jewellery or accessories BUT you're selling an item.
So, to sell an item, you have to engage an audience.
You usually flip a page in a magazine and you come upon a fashion photograph and that has to last a long time. You have to capture the audience's attention so to do that you create a scenario.
You have the suggestion of something going on. some action outside of the frame or some play of pressure on the model or the actor or the actress and you could create the sensation of other activities, and you just happen to catch one slice of it.
So there is motion involved and there is action and there is mood.
When a fashion photograph totally works it's because of the mood created by the lighting merges with the moment of the action and that creates a believable moment. The motion releases emotion that the audience can relate to. That makes a successful photograph.
The D800 really applies in beauty shooting and that is where there has been a challenge from medium format cameras. In a studio where people expect to have cosmetic details or close-ups on hair or faces in personal care shots. That's where sometimes there's a question of whether or not a dSLR is going to be a high enough quality camera. This camera (the Nikon D800) will definitely satisfy those expectations.
What's different about being a fashion photographer is that it's more about your own fantasies.
You shoot tests and you shoot your own concepts and you work up ideas on your own and then people begin to buy that style from you.
Your inspirations become part of their planning and vision for the future.
You are sort of a trend forecaster for a company.
You really lead your clients to a new vision of what their company can offer for the next season.
I think most photographers want to be identified as a brand.
You develop a look that's really from your own fantasy and your own heart.
It's your own personal style.
Mine just happened to be this light driven, high-tech, very saturated colour, near future style.
That became my identity.
I shoot that on my own and much of that gets bought as concepts for advertising work and fashion work
After a long wait the successor to the D700 (in name at least) has introduced itself. When it arrives in the hands of photographers in late March (or early April for the D800e) the camera will boast 36MP living up to its tagline "I am the big picture".
Interestingly the D800 is competing in a different area to that which the D700 targetted at its release. While the D700 shone in low light situations and was the first affordable full frame dSLR the D800 has added broadcast quality video to the equation while blowing the megapixel count of existing Nikon dSLRs out of the water.
The enhanced MP count has been a cause for concern for some people who have been paying attention to the rumour mill. The overall feeling is that the increase in MP will come at the cost of image quality through increased noise and the ability of the camera's sensor to out resolve lenses that are placed in front of it. There is also concern over the size of the RAW files that such a sensor would be likely to generate.
While we will need to await testing to determine whether or not these issues have materialised it is my belief that the concerns around noise have been blown out of proportion. While the D800 will have a higher pixel density leading to more opportunities for noise to break through if the same image were captured on the D800 and a D700 and both images were produced at 12MP it is likely that the D800 would produce the better file. Always remember that Noise Nazis are Pixel Peepers. Their concerns occur at the smallest visible level of the file. What we should care about with noise is the smallest visible level of the print.
Skip to 9:00 for the most practical/applicable part of the video.
If you know everything about a person's external environment you can only predict 10% of their happiness
The absence of disease is not health
Happiness doesn't come from success, success can come from happiness.
When you are happy all business outcomes improve.
NikonRumours is reporting that this Brazilian website has leaked some official images and information about the Nikon D800. The rumoured release date is the 7th of February which means we're less than 24 hours away from knowing if this information is correct. There is no news on when the camera will be released for sale to the public but there is some speculations that the pricetag will be around $3000-$3300 (US).
The translation from the Brazilian Website reads as follows - I have made some adjustments to smooth out google's translation:
Tomorrow (February 7th) Nikon announces tomorrow the D800; a new DSLR camera with 36.3 megapixels of resolution with full-frame sensor.The new model succeeds the Nikon D700 and is a younger sister to the high-end Nikon D3X.
The new Nikon D800, with magnesium alloy body, has a 36.3 megapixel CMOS sensor (7360 x 4912 resolution) in FX format (35.9 x 24 mm) - the largest developed by Japanese company to date. It records images in JPEG and RAW.The manufacturer claims that the D800 has ISO settings ranging from 100-6400, with optional use of ISO 50 (Lo-1) and up to 25,600 (Hi-2).
The D800 will have full HD 1080p at 30/24 frames per second and 720p HD at 60 frames per second (both H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format with compression up to 29:59 B-Frame).
The D800 also has a 3.2 inch LCD screen (921,000 pixels) with brightness control, HDMI, Auto HDR, USB 3.0, shooting up to 4 frames per second (6 frames per second with battery module required).Nikon says the shutter cycle life is 200,000 cycles.The camera has a double compartment for dual memory cards (Compact Flash and SD) and can record images in RAW and JPEG files on separate cards, as well as video and photos (that's pretty cool, huh?)
The manufacturer has not reported the price of the D800 yet.
Here Art Streiber shares his opinion on what it takes to succeed and reach his level in photography. Key to this is the idea that the building of your brand and the building of your brand is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Part of this is the way in which you will develop. You can expect to develop in a stepwise fashion, going up in sudden bursts, rather than at a smoother constant rate.
YOU MUST BE COMMITTED TO THE CLIMB
You must shoot, maintain your archive, market yourself, and pay your bills in order to survive and, ultimately, thrive.
You must know your market. You must know your clients. You must put yourself in front of these people through marketing yourself and your skills to them. If you can identify people who will be your clients in the future and market to them before they are able to buy from you.
One way to do this is through your personal work. Personal unpaid work can demonstrate your skills to future clients but, more importantly, unpaid work can become paid work if the subject of your images becomes worthy of wider interest/publication.
Dom Bower's photography videos are often worth a watch and this one is no exception. Here he outlines what many of us already know about Nikon's new flagship camera, the Nikon D4 - Essentially it will be a great camera but it is not for everyone. While there are plenty of people talking about most of them don't need it and can't afford it. While it can be fun to get caught up in the rumours and excitement surrounding a new camera's release it's also important to focus on keeping your feet on the ground.
From a practical standpoint the D4 looks to be a bit of a tank. It will be big and robust making it ideal for sports photographers (particularly those travelling to the 2012 Olympics) and event photographers but less convenient for wedding photographers (due to their large size).
Last night I did a Trash the Dress shoot, my first one ever. Towards the end of the night we set up shop near a beached boat and fired off some champagne. Here is my favourite resulting image:
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a wedding photography workshop run by Denis Reggie and organised by Queensbury. Denis Reggie is an American Wedding Photojournalist catering to the very upper end of the wedding market. His lesson was broken into 2 parts. The first focussed on business and the market while the second part focussed on how he achieves the look of his photos. Below is a video showing how he achieves his look for group photos. Be warned, it is part of an ad for pocket wizard.
Of the two parts of his talk the most enlightening part was the first part, the part that focussed on the market. Here he suggested that the market can be split into two main groups of couples (each with two subgroups) and two groups of photographers. To put it simply, adn to pull from the video above, couples either want to be themselves and have their photographer capture things as they actually happen or they want the photographer to tell them what to do. Similarly photographers either shoot things as they happen or try to control and orchestrate events.
Denis suggests that those who want the photographer to capture things as they happen are better clients as they are more likely to be high spend clients. While this is almost certainly true in his experience it is worth noting that his experience is skewed in two important ways: 1) He is a high end photographer with a high end price tag
As such he attracts high end, big spend clients. 2) He is a photojournalist
As such he attracts clients who want their day captured as it occurs without direction from the photographer.
Notice that I have separated these two things. What Denis Reggie seems to suggest is that these two things go hand in hand. While this is true for his clients we must remember that his clients come from a specific subset of the population. Essentially his viewpoint, with or without his knowledge of it, is effected by sampling error.
Don't believe me? In order for Denis Reggie's assertion to be true high end wedding photographers would ALL need to be photojournalists as photojournalists would be the only ones who could survive at this end of the scale. This is not true. There are plenty of high end wedding photographers who are not photojournalists and they are doing just fine.
What then is the take home message? The take home message is, perhaps, that there is a market for high-end wedding photojournalism.
Side notes, the students
The people attending the seminar seemed to struggle with Denis Reggie's ideas and approach in the first section of the course. The main difficulty seemed to stem from treating the ideas as a presentation of how Denis sees the world rather than a presentation detailing how the world is. Those who got stuck in this second version, thinking his words were describing how the world is, had difficulty reconciling their experience of the world with the description he was given. What they missed was that here we are describing two completely different world views, as such they are never going to align themselves with each other as they are fundamentally different.
Here's how they differ: Geographic Region
Denis' client base is world wide. For may of us our client base is restricted to the area that we live in. With a world wide client base you maximise the number of potential clients. Most importantly you maximise the number of potential big spend clients. As long as you're covering your travel costs you're away laughing. Target Market
Denis targets people who fit his way of photographing weddings. Consciously or not we also target clients who fit out way of shooting weddings as clients come to us because they like what we do. If we are shooting in fundamentally different ways to Denis then the clients we attract will also be fundamentally different. Many of the students felt that because they had never encountered the sorts of clients that Denis was talking about it was impossible for these clients to exist at all. Once again sampling bias is shaping opinions. As an illustration the fact that I have never met a US Senator does not mean that US Senators do not exist.
