I am a big fan of Facebook and the myriad of marketing opportunities offered by this social media portal.  That said, Facebook’s executive Elliot Schrage didn’t provide me many “warm fuzzies”  in the recent The New York Times article.

Schrage answered privacy-related questions that stem from Facebook’s April 21st release with new privacy-related features.  The most important question asked is “Why Facebook didn’t make its features opt-in instead of opt-out?”  With the new feature Facebook automatically shares users’ names, pictures and other information with Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora.

I guess it isn’t a big leap of faith that the “sands” might shift as Facebook evolves and looks at various means to generate revenue — given, it is still FREE (kinda).  I just thought the revenue paradigm that they would emulate would be the advertising revenue path as opposed to selling customer data and defending their position — to their 400 million-plus members — using semantics.

This might be a good time to review your security settings in Facebook to ensure the level of sharing you find appropriate.

If you are like me, I will quickly click on the video button (on a website) because: 1) I enjoy taking in content through video, 2) I want to check out the technology, 3) I want to see the creativity around the content, and 4) I like to see how different types of businesses are using video to promote their business.

Online video doesn’t make sense for all businesses but I do believe it makes sense for a majority of the photography business.  Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself to determine if online video should be part of your marketing plan.

1. Do you sell a product online?

2. Do your customers see you as significantly different than your competition?

3. Does your business need to be explained for people to really get what you do (as an artist)?

4. Do you have customers who would be willing to say you’re the greatest?

The bottom line is simple — studies have shown that a video used to sell online out performs a still picture by over 100%.  Video can show aspects of your business that may be difficult to put into words and it may reduce the time it takes someone to understand your business/value.

We like MailChimp a lot at P1wired, Photography Studio Management Software, because they have a great product and are very creative.

A recent blog post titled “Using Facebook To Keep The Conversation Going” had some interesting ideas about using Facebook for marketing.

MailChimp sent out an email to a certain set of their customer base to let them know they were going to receive the same service for a better price.

They were going to attach SWYN icons but didn’t think it would get much traction.  They thought about using Twitter but didn’t think asking their customer base to tweet about the cost savings matched their culture.  They thought the twitter email template was overkill for the task at hand.

They ultimately decided to use Facebook.  They added a simple line of text linked to their Facebook fan (like) page and asked their customer base to leave a note about what they would do with the cost savings.  “It’s basically just an old-fashioned invitation to reply (but on Facebook instead of via email), and continue the conversation with us.”  There were many tangible benefits which Ben outlines in his post.  Take a quick look at his approach and the results.

Simple and Easy.  What an effective way to keep the dialogue going.

For the next release (scheduled for May 15th), the developers have been adding new functionality and focusing on the “flow” of the application, as defined by the current user base.  It is the number one goal of P1Wired to keep photography studio management “Simple and Easy.”

One suggestion that has come up several times is a simple and flexible workflow to easily email an invoice to a customer.

We have been tinkering with the current invoice feature and added some new options.  With a click of a button, an invoice (pdf) is created and attached to a customer email.  The customer email is a template that can be modified and tailored by the photographer or studio.  When the email is ready to send it can be further personalized to incorporate any additional information or it can be sent out, as is. These additional options should address much of the workflow for invoices.

If you have any additional suggestions, please let us know by submitting an idea or suggestion in the SUPPORT tab of the P1Wired website.

Here at PhotoOne Software we’ve just moved our email promotion tracking over to P1Wired Photography Studio Management.  We had been using PhotoOne’s internal email feature for our promotional campaigns.  We used PhotoOne’s internal email because it was tightly integrated with our prospect list.  The one shortcoming was that we didn’t get any feedback on our promotions.  We had no idea who opened it.

We then started using Constant Contact because it captured this valuable information.  The downside of using Constant Contact was that there was no easy way to get our prospect list out of PhotoOne and into Constant Contact.

So here’s the solution for campaign management.  First run a simple query in P1Wired Photography Studio Management.  The query will tag the prospect and then you can click on the button  “Send to MailChimp.”  P1Wired pops up a prospect list set up in MailChimp and you can then select the desired list and the prospects are transferred.  At this point you are ready to send out an email marketing campaign — it couldn’t be easier. P1Wired will be further enhanced with the “bounce” and “opt out” information sent back to P1Wired so that you can measure your email marketing effectiveness over time.

If you are a photographer that is new to the business, check out the FREE email marketing level in MailChimp. It is a great way to get started with email marketing!

MailChimp