Still image is still king in social networking

Hotel Avenida Palace, downtown Lisbon, Portugal [Fuji X-E2, 18-55mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/2.8, 1/90] 

I am now back after a week long Visual Storytelling Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal. While doing the workshop I started watching how the students were already engaging their audience and then it hit me—The Still Image is King in Social Networking.

Here you can see how Esther Havens successfully shares a photo and gets more than 86 "LIKES" on Facebook.  Note one thing different than most people who share photos—CAPTION!

A short caption with a strong image engages enough people to click on "LIKE" and this doesn't include all the people who saw the image and may enjoyed it even more, but just don't click "LIKE."

Here my friend John Spink, photographer for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution shares a personal photo and just adds a small caption.  Look at the number of LIKES—73 total.

Again the key to pushing those likes up is a strong photo and good caption that entertains those that follow him.

Another friend Chuck Burton, Associated Press Photographer, shares a photo of his dad. Again please notice the photo is interesting and the caption adds more information making the photo have even more impact.  68—LIKES.

After talking to the students about how they already have an audience, but just need to post strong images with a short caption that tells a small story Amanda Ross, one of the students, started doing this and experienced for the first time her posts taking off with "LIKES."

This is that post that she shared. WOW 82—LIKES.

Social Networking Tip

People enjoy Social Networking because they enjoy the small snippets to catchup and keep connected. The key to being what Seth Godin calls a sneezer is being entertaining. You need to keep it brief in the social networking circle. If you want to post longer posts then you need a blog.

If you want to understand the idea of a sneezer read Seth Godin's book Unleashing the Ideavirus.

In order to show how to make your idea infectious, the book examines what makes a powerful 'sneezer', how 'hives' work, and applies the concepts of critical velocity, vector, medium, smoothness, persistence, and amplifiers. As Godin shows, the now-familiar idea of viral marketing is one very specific form of ideavirus marketing. Most businesses will not be able to engage in true viral marketing, but all can use the ideavirus approach.

I recommend diving into understanding how social networking operates for those who are really successful. We are no longer living in the world where a marketer can effectively just push their agenda. You need to really be interesting and this alone will create a following.

Read The Power of Pull that does a great job of explaining the concept of how you must create something of interest for people to pay attention. Just telling people they need this is not as effective as creating content that draws them to you.

There is another book that I would also recommend to those who are trying to get their work viewed and making them relevant for clients to hire regularly.

Seth Godin wrote another top-seller Tribes:We Need You To Lead Us. 

“Real leaders don't care [about receiving credit]. If it's about your mission, about spreading the faith, about seeing something happen, not only do you not care about credit, you actually want other people to take credit...There's no record of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi whining about credit. Credit isn't the point. Change is.”
― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Most of the photographers I am meeting are wanting to change the world through their photographs. Many of them call their work humanitarian photography.

If you are wanting your images to change the world let the work speak for itself. Share those images and give people something they can digest in a quick glance on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or whatever social network you choose. The key is the photo, if strong, will stop them and then read your caption.

When people move from "LIKE" to "SHARE" you are now creating change.

What follows after you do this for a while? People will follow you on Twitter and request to friend you on Facebook. This is where creating a separate page just for your photography can be a good thing. This way you are able to post those images with captions and create a following separate from your close friends.

You can also just share with your friends or the world. Just choose when you post if you want the Public, everyone, or just your friends to see the post.

Why the Still Image is King?

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read short 140-character text messages, called "tweets". The reason for the success of Twitter is the short message. Instagram even in the name communicates that keeping it quick and short will be more successful than a larger post.

Instant Messaging also is successful due to the brevity of the message.

YouTube has grown as well as it's own social networking platform. My recommendation is to build a following on a project with still images and captions over a period of time that builds up to the release of the video.

Your audience will be more interested in taking the TIME to watch your video if they have an idea about what it is about. This is why trailers are done for movies. Think of the still image as quick trailers that will create the audience for the release of your video.

Your audience will more likely stay tuned into the video if they are willing to commit to the time to watch it. If you are successful as a person worth following they will commit to watching it.

SQUIRREL!!!

This really has nothing to do with this post, but I wanted to share some of the photos I made while in Lisbon. Here they are below. I hope you enjoy them.

Beyond Facebook for the photographer

Concept of free explodes

Chris Anderson wrote a very compelling book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, in 2009. The book was timely because it was addressing the disruptive behavior being experience primarily due to things like Google and Facebook.  However, Anderson traces the history of free back to Jello in 1896 giving away more than five million recipe books to introduce their product into the market.

Music industry and free

Between 1999 and 2001 there was a peer–to-peer file sharing network that people were sharing their MP3 files. The name of this network was Napster.

This was the turning point in the musical industry. Musicians were having their songs pirated and it was not until January 9, 2001 when Steve Jobs averted this catastrophe with iTunes. This was where the industry helped to stabilize the music industry and helped it turn around losses into profits.

Photography and free

In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg turned his school project facemash into Facebook. This was an invitation only social network until September 26, 2006 when it was opened up for anyone over the age of 13 to join. Two years later in 2008 more than 100 million people had joined.

The turning point for photography with Facebook was July 2007.  This is when users could put photos on their wall. Prior to that only text could go on the wall.

Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.

Before & Now

Before
•    Sharing photos was primarily done with prints and cost for each photo produced
•    Sharing electronically was done by email attachments
•    Photo identification was rare to in general non existent with photos and photo albums
•    If you wanted to pass photos to many people you made multiple prints
•    Their was a good amount of knowledge and effort made from the time the shutter was pushed to having prints or having it in the computer to share

Now
•    You can upload unlimited number of photos for free
•    You can tag a photo along with others being allowed to do so that now we are able to have photo identification which was missing before
•    Digital copies are in general free except for the space they take up on your computer
•    Today people are using their camera phones more than their cameras.
•    The immediacy of taking a photo and sharing it can be even automatic if you change your preferences on your phone and Facebook account.

More than Facebook

On September 6, 2012, Facebook closed the deal to buy Instagram. Unlike Facebook, which was created with computers in mind, Instagram exists only as a mobile application. As you can see the immediacy of creating and sharing images is at an all time high.

Most all photographers today are offering social media model for their clients. Most weddings are assumed that the client wants a digital version to share to their social media groups.

For most wedding photographers this is the baseline of their product. Most brides expect a low-resolution digital image to use.

Even for the commercial shooter many of their images are being tweeted or put on corporate Facebook pages.

With so much of social media being free to the client having to pay for any content is almost foreign to their world. 

However, I do not think a Steve Jobs type of entrepreneur is coming to save photography as was done with iTunes for the music industry.

Photographers need to be aware and helping the client see how they are aware of how photos are used in social media and their savvy understanding is what they are offering to help make the photos they take stand out amongst the millions of image being posted everyday.

Photographers also need to help clients understand while having photos on social media sites is important it is quickly there are other ways to break through to get their message out.

We need to help them rediscover prints, snail mailings, brochures, billboards, television and other outlets other than social media.

Photographers should lead the industry in showing clients what they can do rather than talking about what they can do, because “seeing is believing.”

You need to make some large prints so your clients can see how these can create impact. Too many corporations loose opportunities in their locations to show what they do by simply hanging large prints on the walls of their offices.

One of my clients has masterfully used the billboard. Chick-fil-A introduced their mascot in 1995 on a billboard near Turner field in Atlanta. Today these cows are helping brand Chick-fil-A coast to coast.

I recommend photographers start using these other mediums, which can turn into sales to market themselves.

If you know anything about privacy settings on things like Facebook, then you know how easy it is for people to block all your content if it is on the computer. However, snail mail has to touch their hands before it hits the trash and for a brief second you have a chance to get your message to them.

Want to grow your business—do more than provide a digital image for Facebook.