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Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

Lesson 13 from: Master the Business of Photography

Sal Cincotta

Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

Lesson 13 from: Master the Business of Photography

Sal Cincotta

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Lesson Info

13. Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Class Introduction

19:49
2

The Agenda

24:35
3

Why You Will Fail

39:49
4

The Changing World We Live In

18:57
5

Biggest Competitors For Weddings and Portraits

42:41

Day 2

6

Defining, Understanding, and Connecting to Your Clients

56:15

Day 3

7

Legal Issues

1:09:43

Day 4

8

Shoot and Share vs Shoot and Sell

56:18

Day 5

9

Pricing Your Work Part 1

57:12

Day 6

10

Pricing Your Work Part 2

1:10:02

Day 7

11

The New World of SEO

40:58

Day 8

12

Social Media - Facebook

48:42

Day 9

13

Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

36:23

Day 10

14

Building a Better Portfolio & Attracting the Right Clients

1:04:59

Day 11

15

Proactively Developing Vendor Relationships

35:41

Day 12

16

Get More Publicity

47:28

Day 13

17

Booking More Portrait Sessions

37:23

Day 14

18

Booking More Weddings

52:39

Day 15

19

Understanding the Initial Sales Consultation (In-person vs Skype)

46:25

Day 16

20

The Engagement Shoot - Shoot To Make Money.

48:46

Day 17

21

Engagement Pricing and Sales

47:13

Day 18

22

Destination Shoots

47:46

Day 19

23

Working With & Training Second Shooters

1:04:10

Day 20

24

Growing An Alternate Brand

58:07

Day 21

25

The Wedding Day Timeline

42:00

Day 22

26

Managing The Wedding Day

54:03

Day 23

27

Post Wedding Sales and Pricing

36:07

Day 24

28

Post Production - A Real World Workflow

54:21

Day 25

29

Wedding Albums - Their Importance, New trends & Selling Them

31:22

Day 26

30

Ways Not To Suck At Customer Service

58:34

Day 27

31

Video - The Future of Story Telling for the Photographer

47:15

Day 28

32

Packaging & Final Delivery To Your Clients

47:20

Day 29

33

Lessons Learned - Where I Have Failed Over The Last 8 Years

35:10

Day 30

34

The Journey Of You

16:24
35

The Journey Of You: 30 Day Plan

25:00
36

The Journey Of You: 60 Day Plan

27:11
37

The Journey Of You: 90 Day Plan

24:49
38

Student Examples

14:31
39

Interview with Warren McCormack

26:16
40

Interview with Lenny and Melissa Volturo

19:24
41

General Q&A

26:26

Lesson Info

Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

So let's start digging into instagram, pinterest and again I don't want to dig into this and start talking about how to use pinterest how to use instagram the tools are very easy to use I don't find them complicated at all I'll give you some insight into how we're using it because pinterest for me is something fairly new we're just starting teo incorporate pinchers you know my wife tailors all in tow her own boards and pinning things and tagging me and pains and all the things she's doing I have no interest in it whatsoever I like going there looking up stuff looking at pictures but the whole concept of penny and not exciting to meet all s o I showed you earlier how we're using it part of how we're using it so well kind of elaborate on that a little bit more but these are the things again where our clients are here there's no way around it there's no avoiding it so we have to figure out howto intelligently incorporate this into our business and isn't it overwhelming because as individu...

al business owners it's so overwhelming all the different areas we're getting pulled into right twitter all the social media right facebook, instagram posting images, editing images, ordering pictures for clients, right cropping images doing the sales presentation, editing all these things we have to now do and consider and so how do you grow you know, the challenges for your business are just incredible as your as you're growing it and I don't know the answer for you right? Because I'm facing those same challenges just because my business is in a different place doesn't mean I'm facing my challenges or any different I faced challenges every day on getting the right people around me how do I find those people who are going to help me be a better person? Ah that's what you have to be looking for his business owners as well right? This has nothing do with social media it's just about how do we grow as people you've got to figure out who you're going to surround yourselves with to make you better a better business person a better photographer we only mentors we only coaching to grow and we all grow in different ways so keep that in the back your head is we're going through this in understanding I've got it if you're not overwhelmed at this point with this just this seemingly giant to do list that you have to walk out of here on accomplished I don't know what's gonna overwhelm you write so you're you've got to be overwhelmed at a certain point and that's fine that's a good thing my concern for you is as you walk out of here and your mind, your spending and you have a chance to debrief and just kind of absorb everything that's happening what's your plan what's the plan of attack and I want to make sure we're kind of talking about that at home you guys have that workbook that you're working on that you're keeping notes in what's your plan what's your execution plan where do you go from here when you walk out of here what what's the first thing you're going to do you know probably not because we got a lot more segments we're gonna change all that for you but you got to start thinking that way like what? My tackling first what's my thirty day sixty day and for you here in the audience the ten of you what I'd really like to see you do is put a thirty sixty ninety together just rough right? Because there's so many things we're talking about here and there's only so many things you can do in a given day what do you do in thirty sixty ninety what do you do? You know that flores trick I taught you that search that trick I showed you where you do that in thirty days or is that a ninety day plan? Just write it down the uh you know have somebody holding you accountable what can you outsource or delegate? Maybe delegates a better word right there's certain things you can delegate unnecessarily outsource but you can delegate to someone else whether it's a spouse whether it's an intern things like that so start thinking that way change the way you're thinking because we cannot do it all so you as individuals can't do it all I can't do it all you need to surround yourself with people who can help so let's keep going on that note so instagram right is just one of those things where I would say we're probably a year and a half into a two years into it we've got about five thousand followers on instagram now and it's I think it's cool, I like it because it's it's not about like, you know, I had, you know, corn beef for breakfast kind of deal it's like it's just pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures and we're photographer so this is an interesting way for us to kind of showcase what we're doing, and I find myself using instagram mohr and mohr there's so many tools out there that are helpful in getting the messaging out, by the way, instagram worst web interface ever on the face of the planet, right it's pretty interesting. I read an article I forgetting what magazine it was in. It was a business magazine. They were talking about this this interface, right? So if you go from your browser instagram dot com to completely did for an interface and if you go on your phone it's never going to change instagram was meant and created to be for the mobile platform to be for the mobile device there's no intent of this ever being able to support you working in operating from inside this interface so I guess we just have tio accept it from that perspective, but there are tools out there that will help you kind of work with it in a different way. And so, uh, right, we can't ignore it's becoming more and more popular with out a doubt seniors, incredible seniors air using instagram mohr and more more than facebook. They don't want to be on facebook anymore because their parents or their eso seniors are more and more on instagram, and like I said, eventually they're going to be someplace else wherever that place is, we've got to be there, but it's really interesting to see a senior's perspective, you know? You asked him, hey, you want to post it to facebook, but no post it to instagram and so that's where we're starting to connect with more and more the kids, and so I don't know how many of you know this, but instagram was purchased by facebook one billion dollars billion dollar acquisition just incredible and so clearly facebook saw something inside of instagram. That it was going after especially spending a billion dollars and so this is a platform that we can't we can't ignore it's there it's not going away, they have a huge user base and it's just growing it's interesting I just came back from brazil brazil is the number two country for instagram not really interesting so that's there in brazil is this huge market coming online with photographers? And so if you think that's not going to impact us here right, you're crazy because they're that market is going to start impacting and influencing what's going on it's a massive, massive market and I had no idea called me an ignorant american I had no idea that brazil is this pretty much the size of the united states it's enormous now they don't have to say the same population centers that we do but it's absolutely enormous in sao paulo, their main city, I think he's about twenty two million people to give you perspective new york city's about fourteen million people and so this is a new enormous market coming online, so it was just really interesting to see and read. I like to do research business guy when I head into a country and when I looked at brazil coming online saying it's the number two country for instagram, I thought, man, this isn't going away any time soon and so very visual we already talked about that kids are more like a likely to be found on instagram verse facebook this is where they want to be and you know we have to incorporate that into our business and so you've got to figure out ways too incorporated right? Be creative with it we can't just we can't just post pictures all day, right? I mean well, you can but ultimately we want to do something you want to drive traffic we want to create awareness things like that and how do you drive numbers? How do you get them clicking more and more to be part of that? And so that that's part of something we have to think about investing for it they have video on time lapse I don't know how many of you know they have a new app called hyper lapse pretty cool after you to create time lives, videos, rights you cannot record video hold, it'll stabilize it and then you can create played three times eight times just things like that so I don't I don't know how what the business value is for something like that, but this is new stuff that the tool offers and so high prolapse is a completely different app but it's by instagram so if that's something you're interested in, you gotta download it's not built into the instagram up, but instagram now obviously supports video right, so you can you can post video to instagram, do things like that, but different format everything square so change is kind of the way you think it's kind of a pain in the ass if you ask me, tio, you know, we shoot, we see wide, but now we gotta post everything in a square format and there's ways around that too. But this is that this is the future when it comes to that social media or medium uh, today it's pictures, pictures, pictures, you've got a post pictures all the time, and the crazy stuff is on instagram. You could take a picture everything from your food toe where yare to selfies write to me, we use instagram to showcase the personal side of what we do, so if you're going to see personal pictures it's more likely going to be on instagram, then it would be facebook because that is just how I'm building my instagram brand. So I'm hoping this makes sense I'm not telling you what's right or wrong here instagram can be whatever you want it to be. You've got to think, though, what do you want that channel, that delivery channel to be for you? What are you looking for it to be so think through how you want to use it, we're gonna talk about how how we're using it but you've got to give people reason to follow right? Weddings are perfect and seniors air perfect, so I'm gonna talk about some real world examples about how we're using this, but we use it for posting behind the scenes what we're working on. So from a professional photography community, the way we're building are following on instagram is by posting behind the scenes. Hey, we're on! We're on this photo shoot in brazil! Check out behind the scenes pictures so we'll post a teaser to facebook driving traffic back to instagram so think about it on behind the shutter we have an audience of sixty five, sixty seven thousand if I could get some of that audience coming and follow us on instagram that grows may instagram channel on my salad or some kind of a tired paige, we got about fourteen thousand if I could drive some of that traffic that's going to build my instagram audience, so ultimately I ve got an audience, I've just got to get them to kind of drip over and come into the world of instagram, right? And we do that for behind the scenes, what we're working on get people excited for seniors, we'll do it live on a shoot, okay, so for a senior, I'm not kidding you, I'll take my reflector. Come in, get a nice shot. I'm not talking about just getting a grab shot from your from your phone like here we are we're standing in front of a brick wall like try and take an actual nice portrait with your with your phone and post that take a picture of the backyard camera post that so it's all sorts of things that you can do to get people excited and then that teen right is going you khun tagger in it she's going she's going to like it she's going to tell our friends about it it's going to show up in her feed and then that starts building your mo mentum so you could do this with seniors, families, babies and then from a wedding perspective. Okay, you can post to the hashtag right hashtag slash uh volterra wedding so we're going to show what we did with them. Okay, so this is on their wedding day. We're posting pictures of them were posting behind the scenes of them on everything was hashtag volterra wedding right? So you could see right? I'm hamming it up, I'm having fun with melissa, we're doing some cool things we found this boat we then went out to ah, you know, cliff top that's where they did their first dance was on the edge of this cliff we have awesome what do you call a quadcopter footage right so we got a phantom that flew up over the class for and we were doing all these cool things the whole time were instagramming the whole wedding guess who's watching the instagram feed their parents so their parents didn't come with us on this part of the journey their parents are all home their guests are all home watching all day what were doing on that instagram feed that's really, really cool this is becoming more and more popular in fact there's op companies out there that are building wedding day aps and they're encouraging guests to post pictures from the wedding day we need to understand right at the end of the day we have to compete with the guests at the wedding this isn't going away any time soon and so if we don't understand that we're competing with the guests of the weddings first wins right? So what what are they going to remember when they think about their first dance or something else going on and there's all these pictures being posted to instagram or facebook or wherever it is and now three, four five eight weeks later you come along with your pictures nobody cares anymore it's dead it's old news and so we've got to get better and better at delivering an instagram is that medium and so what's happening is my client's air creating hashtag for their day everybody's different write for these guys it was hashtag volterra wedding but if your last name is smith you're not getting away with smith wedding right so it might be smith wedding december fourteen whatever their hashtag is they're actually putting it out in invitations they're actually sending to their guests right in telling them encouraging them to post those pictures online I absolutely love this idea I love this concept so I'm not a photographer who's complaining about it I want to get on the bandwagon I want to do this and so I'll tell you how I'm doing it during a wedding dates it's almost comical toe watch you know I got my my cannon one d x or I got my medium format camera and I got like an eighty thousand dollar camera taking pictures of people getting dressed and getting ready I put that down and take out my iphone it's almost laughable like people are laughing at me as I'm doing this they're like oh wow you're a professional they're making fun of me they're teasing me but that's what we're doing and I'm trying to take creative shot so if I've got a ring and stuff like that right they've got lens adopters for your iphone right? They've got something I like I pro lens and stuff like that where it's got a macro adaptor on it and now you can see I'm taking like a macro shot of their rings with my iphone and everybody's just kind of amused by it, but at the end of the day I'm getting pictures up online instantaneously and so I'm pulling this double duty and so I'm in the days of just showing up to a wedding and actually just taking pictures they're gone for me, right? I'm taking I'm taking pictures with my camera, I'm taking pictures with my iphone, I'm getting back to the reception I'm editing a same day slide show to poster that I'm trying to compete with the world I live in today that's all I can do, we've got to compete with the world we're living in today because that is what it is the days of just showing up to a wedding and taking a picture those air over for the days of just being a photographer I believe those are over that is, I believe that in my heart and soul moving forward, we are the creative director I don't believe in five years being a photographer will mean the same thing that it does today, okay? You will be a creative director and what that means to be a creative director is you have to document the day with any tool necessary that could be your iphone that could be instagram that could be the back, your camera taking pictures in the back, your camera that could be your actual camera right? It could be video these are the things we have to start considering and who knows what it's going to be a future we have a quadcopter for crying out loud so think about it do you think quad copters going just for video crazy if that's what you believe that's going to be part of the photography package so now those quad copters gopro just came out with a fork a gopro so I don't want to screw up what the mega pixels are but you're going to be able to produce twelve twelve megapixel images off the cameras bigger I don't I don't know the exact dimensions that fork a camera is going to be producing call it a ten fifteen meg file still image so how does that add to the wrinkle can you imagine when I start going to bridal shows and I'm showing twenty by thirties of aerial footage off that cliff? How did you get that? You know what doesn't have that my competitors I've never seen anything like that before I know right? This is the way we got to start thinking it's not just standing there with your camera I think those days are long gone you've got to continue to innovate and so adding that level of aerial footage to the day I think is a big part of where the industry's going stupid little gopro and and phantom you know set up is you're talking about three grand as much as maybe a five d or something like that, so maybe instead of buying a secondary camera, you're buying a quadcopter you know, anybody here, haven't you haven't you loving it? Absolutely so this is this is the reality right? And so fake him out and so this is the reality that we're living in we can't ignore this this stuff anymore and so I love this this concept and I'll tell you an interesting story about these guys talk about somebody trying to hijack things we, uh don't have their pictures here because they're not my pictures but on their hashtag another wedding photographer hijacked their hashtag because they saw me posting to it and they wanted to bring attention to their work and portfolio. And so another photographer like just random guy started posting to the vulture a wedding and it wasn't really terrible wedding he just started posting his eyes portfolio and my groom lenny got super pissed off and he called them out on it, right? So but again, this is the world we're living in now and so this is fun this makes the day so much more exciting in real time to see all these things happening so it's a great way to build business to build brand awareness I'm competing not with other photographers by the time we get to the wedding day, I've already won the business okay, I'm gonna produce my images. We're gonna create wall art for them that's not what it's all about that someone photography is all about, right? It's about the other aspects, those little little intricacies that make you different than your competitors. And so now I'm competing with every other person at the event, right? Because when that bride leans in for that first kids, everybody else has gotten that picture up online already. Now, she's not going to see the first kiss for me for another two, three, four, eight weeks that's too long, right that's why I do that same day sideshow even that's too long now so her waiting just four hours to see those pictures can you believe this four hours is too long, it's too late she's getting instant gratification from all our guests. We've got to compete with that. I really believe in, uh, have to be the first. Not always the best. This is something I mean, from the bottom of my heart photographers are a little bit nutjob, okay, because we obsess over the most random things. Okay, when we're sitting there editing all of you are guilty of this baby, I'm guilty of it a little bit too, but I try to be aware of it. You start focusing on things like how much magenta isn't an image how much green is in an image I just gotta ask dumb questions because it evolved we do unlimited color correction right? So we have this program where you could be part of you can outsource all your stuff one ninety nine month unlimited color correct you'd be surprised of the madness I got to deal with on a daily basis like literally having conversations with tarver's about I had one lady tell me she's a phd in color correction okay, well, first of all why'd you to school for your phd in color correction I will never understand that but let's say someday I'm smart enough to understand why you went to school for something like that at the end of the day your client doesn't know the frickin difference between two points of magenta one way or the other. So why are you worried about this stuff? You know what? You need to be worried about this marketing advertising shooting not something that has no return on investment none whatsoever and so this is where I want to see you spending your time and energy being first what do you need to do to be first to move faster to move quicker to teo improve your workflow how long you're taking to turn images so many of you want to tell me you're doing in two weeks yet so many of you are not doing it in two weeks and so we do everything in our power to be ready for that client in two weeks now that doesn't mean they come into our studio in two weeks. Some clients cannot get there for three or four weeks great but the minute they walk out on that sunday okay we're gonna talk about work flown another segment on that sunday my images are already sitting on my editor's desk okay that's sunday I'm ready to go okay so now I know if if the wedding's on the first they are already scheduled on the fourteenth to come in you understand when sam I'm giving you an example we know by the fourteenth it's going to be ready for them to come in come hell or high water even if I have to sit up the night of the thirteenth toe have those images ready they're coming in on the fourteen this allows taylor to start scheduling that immediately after the wedding. So come that monday, sunday or monday taylor's already got taylor's already got an email city into that client now some of our clients may say no we're still out of town when we do the twenty first can we do the twentieth that's ok if it slips two three weeks because of them I'm totally fine but if it's slipping two, three and four weeks because of you that's problematic right? We've got a fix that we gotta pull out online in when it comes to instagram shoot the back of the camera I do that all the time so if we go look at the screen shot here you can see this main picture this one I took when I was in brazil that's just the back of the camera down here on the lower right hand corner it's just the back of the camera it's just something to get people excited shone behind the scenes they know clients are pretty savvy when it comes to this stuff today they understand they're not looking at this and going oh man can you see how much magenta is in that image like nobody's paying attention to that stuff they just like seeing they're like oh my god that's gonna look so good when you edit it okay that's the kind of stuff I want to get out into the public and show and get get people get momentum and that's the same for you is a photographer from dealing with you is photographers for I'm dealing with my client base my actual client base I want everybody just to build momentum and get excited about is this making sense let's go into the acts we use I think this will help you a lot there's nothing magical out there there's a crap ton of aps out on the market place I want to show you what we actually use and so, you know, they range in it from a dollar to a dollar ninety nine, not super expensive, but the's air what's on my actual iphone right now. So last night I went through and I'm looking at ok, what I actually use. I have a ton of aps, but what am I actually using? Write a pretty frequent basis hips, thematic one of my favorite if you don't have hips somatic, check it out. They've got a ton of like filters and things that are really fun. What I did for one wedding, probably about four or five months ago, is we shot the two or three images from each part of the day. Okay? So bridal prep groom, prep ceremony, reception, creative what I tried to do was all day used my phone on the same hipster matic filter to take three, three, four shots from each part of the day. It was fun at a good time doing it. The groom was digging it. He thought it was really cool for us to be doing it. We didn't charge our clients for it. Now in the future, as we move to the future, I'm gonna put that in my packages call it social media posting. Live during the wedding day, I think that'd be really cool to be doing stuff like that and offer that is an add on service, right? Not maybe no hard value to it. I'm not saying I'm in charge two, ninety nine for it might even just be built free into a package, but it gets people excited to see stuff like that happening. And then, of course, what? I become the trusted adviser, because when my client asked me, well, um, I don't get it what's this social media thing. Oh, great, well, you can create a hashtag for your wedding and have all your guests posting pictures all day. Wow, I never even thought about that. Great! So now we're having a completely different conversation, and by the way, when she goes and meets with another photographer increase now she thinks this is a really cool idea, and she asked that other photographer hey, so do you post live to instagram during the wedding day? That's what I was going to be like, what no, we don't we don't do that right? So immediately I'm standing out front from the crowd again. Snap seed is another one, this is actually from google, so I don't know if you know the story there this was by kind of created by nick anybody using nick software you guys out here just kind of read your india big fan and nick software for postproduction and snap seat is one of those tools that was created by nick and part of the reason google acquired nick software so google owns nick today but this is the reason they bought it was for this this app and so this is a more expensive app I think it's like nineteen dollars or twenty five dollars unless they've changed the price recently but a really really cool photo editing app just for straight up editing like color correction in contrast sharpening things like that so really, really cool tool this one is really good this is called krop iq and what this allows you to do this is actually a free app and what this allows you to do is actually take that wide screen image and it converted to a square meaning it shrinks it down and it puts a white border around it so it fits in the square. So if you take this image that's a little wider and you don't want to crop it into to be a square, we use crop iq to convert it to fit into that square so it shrinks the image puts a white border around it so it fits in that square so this is about one app I use aa lot when I'm posting on instagram and I want to show a true picture that's not that's not square ah, this is one of my favorites is actually I don't know why they don't update it maybe there's just no, no money and I have no idea this thing is called pocket scout I've been using this for years. It is a really poorly designed up but the functionality is incredible and anybody using it? Yeah. It's horribly designed isn't it anymore? Oh, is that right? Yeah, I was just, uh I was actually just telling a friend about a couple days ago we went out scouting and I was showing her how how great it was and she went to download it. It's not available. It's gone off. Yeah. Yeah, well, look, I was looking at this and it shows the little android guy and he's got like, an exclamation mark there like that. They don't support an android anymore. This is like one of the most brilliant apse for photographers. I think that's out there. And so justin, in a nutshell, what this is gonna allow you to do if you can find it think that that scares me not like I don't ever want to lead it yeah, what this allows you to do is it'll geo tagged where you're located so let's say you find this cool brick wall you can now take a picture of that wall and it will store the location in your phone with the gps coordinates and the pictures there and you can add notes you could be like this is a cool red brick wall I took this picture to about three p m blah blah you can add notes to it and now it keeps track of all those locations so now let's say you're like I'm in you remember the last time we were here there was a red brick wall you can search for brick wall now it'll pop up in the search results and then you hit it and it'll show you your ten miles away from that wall and then you could say to map and we'll give you driving directions two they're so really, really cool app but you I mean you could see by the interface I went to the website last night that dude this is like that's an iphone three I think uh on there s o you know, just they have not updated this thing in forever but it's a really slick app so maybe that means that we need to do is like some crowd sourcing and start our own app company toa do this I'm sure my wife will appreciate that um this is another really cool one um what's funny is we do we do something just uh keep ourselves entertained. A team we have what's called the shoot off. Okay, so you might want to try this when you reach your photographer friend's it's. I think it's really fun within our own team. We do something called a shoot office just for bragging rights, right? So let's, just say we were here and there's this cool metal wall. Some like this let's say, right, I'll just be a shoot off. Everybody on the team will pull out their phones, okay? And so we're all going to take pictures off this, but you're gonna put your slant on it, right? Because his artist there could be ten of us and I could take a picture of this and they will literally be ten different pictures that show up right? That's the beauty of being artist. So we'll all do it. He's got about five minutes and they'll start editing their picture with whatever out they want on. Elissa started winning these competitions and she had this app and that's how she was winning. So s so I had to make sure I got I got this. I'm sorry. So she, uh what we do then is we all take our picture, we finish and we put the phone, everybody puts their phone down okay with their picture being displayed and then everybody gets one vote and so you get to pick who the best who you think the best picture is and so it's kind of a fun dorky way tio pass sometime when you're traveling a lot but mixtures is a really, really cool app on this is I was just up in new york and you could see kind of the editing that comes off it's that was just one of their presets from it so it's just kind of a neat way to pass time. It adds like a real need vintage look to some of the images that you're using and so I really, really like mixtures it's a real new modern op so fairly new up this one if you're into a landscape photography at all, this is a must have app uh, this is, uh this is actually by guy's name is mike wang it's funny because he used to work for on one software and then he left on one software and now he's doing his own linda dot com now, but he's doing his own thing on he created this app to ninety nine cent happened, so if you've ever done long exposures, right, I mean, I'm talking about like a thirty minute exposures ten minute exposures we ever see those pictures with the milk the water's just all milky and the clouds are just kind of bright just kind of really skewed and moving those air done via long exposures right? So if you kind of travel the target you're into that maybe you're using nd filters for what? For what you're doing right you've got to be nothing short of a mathematician to figure out I was in london doing some long exposures of one of the bridges and they give you ah card that comes with it right? And I'm reading this card and I'm like okay, I'm not okay I got to divide by front I mean I was like taking out my calculator to figure out how long the exposure had to be and it was this crazy trial and error to come up with the right time for the for the exposure based on what your isa was set out and all and how many stops the nd filter words that's the key have you got an indie filter that's what's helping you here right? Because I had a ten stop filter on meaning it was going to drop it by ten stops make it darker to get this long exposure and you know I started looking and then I found this happened so this is a really, really cool app for anything you're doing with that with nd filters and long exposures on ninety nine cents so it's a really cool out that we use instagram, instagram anything like that and feeling good, we're going to go do selfies after this and start posting it online, all right? Let's jump into ah, pinterest and so pinterest is really interesting for me. We just started using it, you know, I had alluded to it earlier, taylor uses it more on a personal level, really for inspiration like it's really cool place frosties for tarver's to go out there and look up inspiration on things like that, but I've never really been a big fan of that. It seems like it just it really seems like a waste of time, so that idea I pitched to you when we're talking about the floor, they came for me reading a book about pinterest and trying to really understand how do I take something like this and really work it into my business in a way that can help me grow my business? I never wanna do things just to do them for the sake of doing so, wasting time, I don't want to be on facebook just to be on facebook it's got to be tied to my business somehow, and so what we started doing now is we're building boards for our vendors all of you can walk out of here today or took more as you're sitting here watching this course and start doing this immediately if your wedding photographer or any kind of photographer that matter and you've been shooting venues or florist or whatever the case may be dresses you can start building pinterest four's right? You could build pinchers boards off wedding dresses you can build pinchers boards of flowers you could be building pinterest board of cool groom shots there's so many things you could be doing immediately to dr value for for your business that's what we're starting to do and so you've got a post pics to your site first this is the one thing I learned and so if we look at this you can see on this pinchers board it's got dub dub dub dot south and kata dot com that is actually hot linked okay? The reason that is hot linked okay is because that picture was pushed a pinterest from my sight and so you've got to post the pictures to your site first I learned that the hard way if you don't when people are on pinterest and they start sharing your pins there's no link back to your site and that's the entire point of doing it. And so I again I learned that the hard way I really didn't understand how this whole thing worked and so you've got posted to your website first then from your website build the pinterest board and there's all sorts of plug ins for wordpress, for pinterest right, so you can have that little pinterest icon there so you can start building boards and so that's that was really important for me to figure out logo on absolutely everything. The last thing you want to do is start getting pictures out there on pinterest boards with no logo on it. We have this happened with a wedding planner in st louis, and she wasn't trying to do anything wrong. She'd asked for some pictures for an ad, and of course, we're gonna give those pictures for an ad, but we're not going to put our logo on it because it's for an ad, and then she started pushing those pictures out to pinterest, and she was saying, you know, from south and kata, but the minute they started getting shared and repent, there was no link back to our site because of the way she did it. And so you've got to figure that out you've got a posting the pictures from your actual paige put your logo on it search is very similar to google on that you have to be active. So when I first created some of my pinterest boards for artistry, florist, it was a good week, week and a half before it would even show up in the search, so I created an artistry florist board, and then I would google artistry, flores and they weren't are up in them that I'm sorry, not google in pinchers search for artistry, floors and it wasn't coming back. It took a good five seven days call it before it was showing up in search results and that's just the way that pinterest engine works. So this minute you posted it will not show up in no search results. It takes time, even if you search for pins or boards. And so again, that was something else I had to learn and figure out as I was going through the process. The goal for me again off pinterest, is to get people following my boards and repainting things uh, right, that's ultimately, what I want is I want to build that brand awareness on pinterest but it's not going to be from random things it's gonna be from things I'm shooting, I want brides I want to start influencing brides and what they're looking for when it comes to actual wedding, wedding day stuff, whether it's, tuxedoes posing options, gowns, headpieces, right? So there's, all these categories that you already have this catalog of pictures that you're not doing anything with, spend your time, put some sweat equity into it and build that cult that brand okay, build that that that platform, if you will, for your brand it's free you can go out there, you can do it tomorrow and it's going to start building that equity it's gonna start building that following it's going to start building that brand awareness and so here's the first board, right? So here's, what it is we created this board artistry florist fifty eight pictures in it for fifty pictures and it not shows how many pains here's what it looks like on my side. So from an admin perspective, okay, here's, all the pictures we posted our logo's on all of them it says right? The description is also very important. The description is where you want to put whatever key words you will that you're looking for it to be found by so artistry florist images by salvador, some kind of tar v and then are you are out okay? This is very, very important, or else when people reap in this, we're going to lose that history of where it was repainted from, and so if you ever go on pinterest and you'll see it pinned from it will have that original part in the description. You don't want to lose that that's very, very important. So here's the two pieces to understand, right, when you do it that way, they can select visit site. From that post, and when they select visit site that's going to take him back to south and carter dot com slash artistry flores it's going take him right to that landing page. If you're on my actual landing page, you're going to see all those artistry florist, um, pins, and you're going to see on top pin it. That is a pinterest plug in for my wordpress blogged, right, so that when you hover over the image, it's going to show that pinterest icon. So if you've ever seen that on sites where you can just select a pin in it, that's exactly how it's done, and so I had to go in on every image and select pin it to drive it to my own pinterest board. How we doing good long day. Any questions about pinterest, instagram? Because we are, we're going to wrap this section and, uh, questions something you can walk around and do today. Everybody feels good, confident, tired, exhausted. Our brains are fried, that's, good that's, how it should be.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Master the Business of Photography - Workbook
Master the Business of Photography Slides
5 Tips to Finding and Booking Your Client

Ratings and Reviews

Brandon D
 

Sal isn't disgruntled and angry like someone below said, and he doesn't have time for people constantly whining about why their business isn't going good. He's from Brooklyn, so he can come across as harsh at first, but after watching several of his classes and even getting to meet him in person and talk a bit I can tell you he is a really nice guy who truly does want you to succeed. He was very encouraging to me after I thanked him for helping me and my business get to where it is now. Growing up, I can remember photographers grabbing us and posing how they wished. They are often in a hurry to get things right, such as at a wedding, so I am not sure why one reviewer stated he would dismiss them. Sounds like he is just looking for a reason to feel powerful. Anyway, this is a great class to get you on track with your business. Yes, its a bit wedding heavy, but the concepts are the same no matter what. Just apply them to your niche and you are good to go.

Sean
 

Amazing course. Sal is such a great photography educator. Terrific course. I'm not usually big on watching business courses, but this course as taught by Sal was terrific. Down to earth, entertaining, packed with real life experiences do's, don'ts and lessons learned. This courses business A to Z and Sal is very entertaining to watch/listen to. Thanks CreativeLive for getting Sal.

fbuser 0af5cf47
 

I have been a long time fan of Creative Live and have sat on the fence with all of Sal's classes because I already attend Shutterfest every year and get loaded with valuable information there, so it was hard to pull the trigger on a $300 course that was filmed 5 years ago. Also, in my earlier days of hearing about Sal, I'd heard a lot of negative opinions about how he comes across. Still, I'd heard he's a marketing guru, and my background is in marketing as well, so I really wanted to see what this class was all about. Now that I've finally gotten it, I'm completely blown away. There is just SO MUCH MATERIAL in this class that its actually difficult trying to decide what to implement first! It is good stuff too. It is all about marketing, sales, and workflow. If you're looking for a class teaching you how to take better photos, this one is not it. This is the class that teaches you how to get your work where everyone is seeing it and convincing people to book you and tell their friends about you! Now as far as others have already said... this class is definitely geared toward wedding photographers. Yes there are bits of information that work for other types of photography, but it is so heavily wedding oriented that there might be a better fit out there for another type of photographer. If you do weddings though, this is an amazing class! As far as Sal's personality goes.... he's a New Yorker transplanted to St. Louis. So expect that NYC no BS type of attitude. Susan Stripling is another one of my favorites and she is similar in attitude (and also extremely talented), so if you like her, you should like this. If you have a hard time with her, you might have a hard time with this. Regardless, its stuff y'all need to hear and implement to be successful. Obviously because the class is a bit older, you may have to make small tweaks to a few things (even though he says don't jack with the recipe), but the marketing principles are solid and timeless. Shoot this course is worth it for the SEO advice alone. Just buy it already!

Student Work

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