Getting your name out there {Delaware Lifestyle Portrait & Fashion Photographer}

I will tell you, one of the most important aspects of business is having people know your name.  People love to talk, especially when they have had good experiences. People also talk when they have bad experiences. Either way, you want to make it your goal that people are talking about you in a good way.

When I was photographing weddings, I paid for a lot of advertising.  And for me, that advertising did not pay off at all. I did not get one single lead from paid advertising.  Which for me is somewhat hard to believe considering that I am centrally located to areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and can even travel to New York.  3 years of spending money on advertising gone down the drain that could have been put to amazing thank you gifts for advertising that worked.  Want to know what that was? Word of mouth!

I will readily say that almost all of my business has come from word of mouth. My clients are amazing, and I treat them like such. And I want them to tell their friends and family members about their time with me.

As of late, one of the best tools that photographers have used for advertising and connecting with our clients has not been as valuable as of late. And that is Facebook. Yes, it is free and that is a great thing.  But a lot of photographers are finding that we are reaching less than 5% of our fan base with free ads, and if we want more of our fan base to see that, we have to pay.  Being that Facebook is free in the first place I am not going to complain too much. I have no idea how their algorithms work either. Some days, new people and new pages show up on my newsfeed, other days they don't.  I have a couple of ways to keep my name and business out there and to keep my name fresh.

1) Have your fans interact with your page.  It's not all about posting your photos and your work.  Have conversations on your page.  When people comment or like on your page, it shows up on the ticker, and more often than not, people will want to see what they are up to.  Since I photograph families and babies, I have no problem with bringing up topics on childhood, activities, food, and fun things.  The more people that interact by commenting and liking, the more my post is seen, and more people can come see my work.

2) Don't rely completely on social media.  While that may seem like an odd thing to say, it is true.  We definitely cannot rely completely on social media. While tools like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are amazing tools for connecting and showing your work, ultimately, connecting with people on a real, personal, face to face matter is what is important.  So make sure that any encounter with your clients is one that they will remember.

3) Offer a reward program.  This is probably one of the biggest things that work for me, rewards!  Whenever a new client books that is referred from a previous client, the client that referred them gets a gift print credit that they can use towards ordering images from their own sessions. It has been a blast!

Hopefully these tips will help get and keep your name out there!

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