Week 16

My viewpoint of social media has changed in that I can now see that there may be an opportunity to create a business from it. I have always used social media for fun and to interact with friends but I now see it as more of an opportunity to have a second job as a photographer and to potentially sell prints of my work. I have learned how many tools are out there that I had no idea about and the amount of help there is to increase your social media audience if you want to take the time and effort to do so. There is so much more that goes into a post than most people realize. It comes down to what times of day are the best, what days of the week are the best; there is a science to it in order to receive the best interaction possible. 

I feel the tools that were given to us during this class has opened my eyes to an entire new world of how to use social media properly. I have always had my doubts, seeing that social media is such an integral part of everyone's lives now I never really felt I could be someone who would get noticed. After really reviewing the tools and other social media platforms to look into I can see that I can be noticed if I work hard at it and know it will take some time. These businesses created on social media take a lot of research and a lot of effort, it is extremely rare for someone to blow up over night. 

It is so important to be as active as possible with your social media accounts or you end up getting lost in the algorithm. This is the one thing I cannot stand about how social media, especially Instagram has changed. Your post can be completely lost and many people miss out on the opportunity to see it, I have learned you have to be super active to keep your posts on the timeline. It is important to be prepared with a variety of photos so I can continue to post daily or twice a day to stay interactive. 

I have found a lot of products, people, and inspiration by using social media over the years. I have found that I absolutely love interior design since following quite a few pages that I initially followed for their photography. I feel that photographing for real estate could be a cool opportunity to explore and tie in two of my favorite concepts and create beautiful advertising. I love following other photographers and people who share similar interests to me to see how they shoot their photos and what angles they use etc. It has helped me grow and shown me how to take better pictures which I love. 

I have learned that social media is a huge part of business, not just for a photographer, but for any brand out there. It has become the most innovative way to reach out to people on such a broad spectrum. I feel that social media is going to continue to be what we use for business, products, and networking overall. In order to stay relevant and to keep your business in the loop you have to have social media and you have to be able to put a lot of effort to get the best results. 

Week 15

For the type of business I have created, I feel that Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn are the best social media platforms overall for my photography business. Instagram is great because it is posting photos and it is a great way to reach out to so many people. I am able to use hash tags as well to get a wider audience and hopefully more followers in the process. I can also look up hash tags similar to mine and connect with other people who are in the industry. There are a lot of ways to ask to be featured on someone else's Instagram page that may have a huge following already. Facebook is great to interact with my local community, and those who are interested in landscape photography in the area. I feel Facebook is pretty word to mouth, so someone in the city I live in could tell others about me and to check out my page and see what they think of my work. It is also a great way to advertise an art/photography show in the community and to be able to reach out to small businesses to feature my photos and create an event of some sort. LinkedIn is a great tool for networking, it can allow me to interact with other people around me to possibly scout models for a shoot, talk to others about photography equipment, or meet with other prospecting photographers and learn from each other. I feel it is a great way to possibly get hired work if someone is looking for a photographer. I am able to showcase what I have done and give out a portfolio to potential people looking for someone.

Instagram is definitely my favorite social media platform to work with. I love being able to edit my photos and watch the interaction I receive after I post something. I typically get positive feedback about my work and it motivates me to go out and take more photos. I also love seeing what other people are doing on the app and I love to get inspired through people I follow as well. I think Instagram is the best for a photographer trying to showcase their work and it really is so fun to work with especially being able to create a visual mood board and watch your photos flow together.

My business should be spending a lot of time on social media because it is a photography page. I should be posting more often than I am to really get serious about it. I feel that you have to be active on your pages in order to stay relevant and to stay on people's algorithms. 

Week 14

There are many features a business can use to keep track of how their social media is running. It is important to choose the features that are going to work best for your company, because every company is going to be run differently. I believe in trying out a few different methods to see which ones will stick and which ones may not work out as well. After looking into Google Analytics I found four features that I would try to experiment with for my photography business to see if they will attribute to my success.

Real Time Reporting: I chose real time reporting because I feel this would be a great tool to have to see the interaction on my social media pages at any time in real time. I am someone who likes to figure out what times of the day/days of the week my audience is engaging with my content. This way, I am able to really experiment and see if the times I am choosing to post are correct, or if I am finding out there are other times that are better to engage with my audience. I like that this feature is able to be checked at any time and you can come up with your own predictions on how to proceed further. 

Audience Reports: This feature is great for finding out how active your audience actually is with your content, and it can be done based on individuals and not just a wide audience. It is important to keep in contact/network with those who are following your business and are showing interest. This is a great tool to really see what people are the most interactive and who I can possibly reach out to that is not so interactive but can reach out to them in other ways. It is a great way to grow your business further, and appreciate your audience for the ones that are involved the most.

Audience Demographics: I love this feature, I believe it is important to know who your audience is and what their interests are. This could help my business by showing me what my audience has more interest in photography wise and what I can bring to the table if they are interested in a certain landscape, travel destination, etc. I believe my target market would be a wide range of ages and also all genders so this would be an interesting tactic to see who is showing interest in my work!