Lessons
I LOVE Photography and I Want to Make Money
11:34 2From Photographer to Business Owner
21:15 3Building Your Business To Fit The Life You Want
07:01 4Business Is Business
08:03 5Creating a Simple Business Plan - What To Know And What To Skip
14:29 6Branding And Identity
11:24 7Significance Of Constantly Marketing
11:37 8Social Media Marketing
08:05Internet Marketing
14:04 10Q&A
49:40 11Building Your Own Portrait Space
09:03 12Starting From Scratch - What Matters And What Doesn't
26:26 13Creating a Dedicated Shooting Space
18:00 14Studio Spaces Q&A
15:51 15Money Is A Good Thing
08:27 16Spending Your Money Strategically And Tactically
23:31 17Cash Flow
10:00 18Track Your Margins
07:50 19Understanding Loans
04:41 20Legal, Insurance, Tax
13:02 21Raising Your Prices
12:17 22Investing In This Business
05:22 23Money Q&A With Audience
34:02 24Intro To Websites
01:48 25Building And Launching A Website
11:20 26How To Use Your Website For Marketing
20:19 27Converting Viewers Into Customers
09:56 28How To Showcase Your Portfolio
10:21 29Website And Portfolio Critiques
35:01 30Getting Control Over Feeling Overwhelmed
09:35 31Developing A Workflow For Laser Sharp Focus
23:55 32Maximizing Productivity With Software And Applications
34:47 33The Benefits Of Mono Tasking
05:15 34Setting Expectations For The Shoot
08:09 35Live Shoot: Interacting with the Client During the Shoot
33:44 36A Sales Walkthrough
20:38 37Obstacles To Selling
16:15 38Common Challenges Q&A And Hot Seat
33:32 39The Most Common Challenges In Running A Portrait Business
09:41 40Handling Criticism
17:16 41Persistence and Grit in Running a Portrait Business
07:11Lesson Info
Social Media Marketing
Social media, now this is a monster. I could do a week-long course on social media. I don't have that time. In fact, I think we're on a schedule or something. But let's talk about a few things with social media. Because this is a juggernaut, there's so much to this and I think that it's very, very, very difficult to run an active business where you're generating word of mouth, getting referrals, putting your work out there consistently. It's difficult to do that without being active on social media. If you feel like you don't like social media, back to that original thing, find someone who does. That's an easy find. Get an intern to do it. Hire someone at x amount of hours a week to do it, but don't ignore it. So, on social media there's Facebook, which for me in my experience, is by and large the number one way I get clients. And it depends on your market and who you're reaching out to. I've heard a lot of people who say it's Instagram for them. Know your market and know where you're ...
pulling people in. For me, for family and children portrait photography, it's very much Facebook. There are two kinds, well there are a million, but there's two main ways to set up your Facebook page. One is as a personal one, and one is as a fan page or a business page. And then you can also do that as a single individual who runs a business, or is an entertainer, whatever the name of it is, public figure I think it is, but figure out the best way to do it for your business. I set up a personal page right in the beginning, hit that 5,000 number, and was closed. 5,000 friends, you're closed. You can't accept anybody else, you gotta delete a bunch of people if you want to add new people that you care about. If I had to do it over again, I would have started right away with just the business page. I started the business page. So if you go to Facebook, Tamara Lackey Photography, you'll see my business page. You'll see me posting about this. Again, so meta. (laughs) It's just nuts. But when I'm on the business page there, I'm able to do a lot more in terms of bringing people in and interacting. But I also have to link when I have a Facebook fan page or business page, whatever you want to call it. I need to be able to interact with the people who are interacting with me. A lot of the apps out there don't allow you to do that. So the regular Facebook app, when you go into your business page, you can interact with people who post on your page, but you can't go out and look at their business pages. You guys ever notice that? Depending on the app you're using. So one of the ones I really like is either Facebook mentions, is a good one for that. I think they have like an application process, but it's just you put your name in and they write back. But that's a good one where you can not only see what you're posting and how people are interacting with you, but you can go out and look at their stuff too, and also invite them in through your dialogues with them. From a marketing perspective, that's just a smart way to go. With Facebook, I would encourage you not to post more than once a day, maybe twice a day, max. It gets exhausting on Facebook to see multiple feeds from one person over and over again, and you can exhaust your market. So I would limit your posts, generally speaking, in my experience. Know that you have to do everything on Facebook from a mobile-friendly way. So if you're posting anything that's going to be very difficult seeing on a mobile device, know that. About 90% of people who are accessing Facebook, I think the number's like 92%, are accessing Facebook on a mobile device. So if you're posting some great image that's got a lot of small type in it, or a ton of small images in it, no one's gonna see it. They can't really see it. So realize you gotta check on a mobile device before you do a laptop. People still use the laptop, but not nearly as much as they do the mobile device. So when you're posting to Facebook, consider that as well. Other means of course are Instagram. Instagram's another huge way to... And everybody does Instagram differently. I know people that say the only way they operate their Instagram account is make it just professional photographs. Everything looks the same, it's consistent. If something's a low-performing post, they delete it. They're very strategic about how that goes. From my perspective, the clients of mine who are on Instagram are mostly on Facebook too. So my Instagram, it's just my name Tamara Lackey, it's a mix of it and I'm fine with that. There's other people who would be like, no no no, this has to be this, this has to be this, this has to be this. You have to figure out in your market with your clients that you're trying to reach, which makes the most sense for you. Twitter! Twitter doesn't do much for me for clients at all. I mean, I love Twitter because it's funny and you get a lot of different voices there. It markets me well as an educator. So as an educator and someone who works with sponsors, it's a really good platform for me, Twitter is, that way. But I'm hardly ever finding my portrait clients via Twitter. Like hardly ever to maybe 4% of the time. It's just not the platform for that for me. Google+, mentioned that earlier. Great to get set up there, optimize, extremely low interaction on Google+ for most people. You can get a good following, you can see a lot of people with followings, but really low interaction rate across the board comparatively. Snapchat. Snapchat is something that everybody keeps saying is about to be over but is never over. It keeps getting bigger. Does Snapchat work for your market? It depends on who you're marketing to. I am marketing, my target market from a portrait business, is parents who have children. They're not really crazy on Snapchat. Their kids are. If my client market were teenagers, I would be Snapchatting my butt off. Snapchat would be my number one way to go. That would be what I want. But if I'm going to parents of school aged children, for instance, it's just not really the market to reach them. So people say, well this is the best one, this is the best one, this is the best one. It depends on who you are and what you're shooting, and who you're trying to reach. That's the best one. Who you're trying to reach, and where they are, and how often they're using it. Did I cover most of them? I think I covered most of them, right? Other ways to make sure your content stands out on heavy, heavy activity sites. One, it's the most common thing in the world, but look for trending topics. Look for the main topics out there, and find a way to make your content fit that. Obviously make sure you're aligning to good trending topics. It's really easy to say hashtag da da da, and like, no, that means you just supported something evil. Making sure that you're attached to good things. But you can plan accordingly. So you can say, hey, the Golden Globe awards are coming up and I know 80 million eyes will be looking for anything about Golden Globes, so they'll be searching for stuff like that. They wanna find it. So I'm gonna be proactive about creating a post that ties into that in some way. So when they're searching, they're gonna find me. Now, I don't wanna be super cheesey and say, hey, Golden Globes, I shoot portraits. (audience laughs) That doesn't work. But what I can do is I can say something, and again time it out so it releases at the right time. I can say something like, gosh, while everyone else was watching the Golden Globes which I'm psyched to do eventually, I'm gonna have to watch it on blah blah blah, Hulu, I don't know, I'm going to be out photographing this amazing family. It'll be an evening shoot, it'll be really cool, then I'll circle back and watch them. Something like that. I don't know, I'm stretching. I'm literally thinking on the spot. But timing things like that, that fit your brand, that acknowledge things that are big, that people might see and think, that's got nothing to do with this and then putting it out there so it gets picked up a lot, can make a big difference. Ignoring it, again, you're losing a huge windfall. On Twitter, especially, I'll jump onto trending topics and have a whole conversation back and forth and I'll notice at the end of the day, that's 200 new followers. Wow. Because people were out there looking for it, they want good descriptive content. Sometimes it's about my portrait work, but other times it's about whatever the topic is, but it's tied to, people look at my bio. And then they go to my website, and they follow. Like oh oh oh, you're a photographer, got it. Might have nothing to do with photography, what I'm Twittering about. So just keep that in mind, jumping onto existing content that's already popular.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
This course was fantastic. I learned more on what I need to improve and change in my business. I especially liked learning how she balances all the things in her life. She is a fantastic teacher who keeps you engaged throughout the course. Thank you creativelive and Tamara for producing such a great course!
user-5731db
I thoroughly enjoyed this class, Tamara Lackey is an amazing individual and trainer! I loved what she said about not letting ourselves be diminished by someone else's narrow view... This class touches on many business related topics, I had many "aha" moments and feel excited and committed to tackle various aspects of my business in small steps!! Thanks for sharing so much of you!!!
Heidi Mikulecky
Tamara Lackey is engaging, energetic, knowledgeable and humorous. This two day class is perfect for artists who have creative skills but need development with business skills. I expected this class to be all business, but I was pleasantly surprised that she delved into the physical (studio space), mental and emotional barriers (confidence) that hinder photographers from reaching their goals. Some of my biggest takeaways from this course are not only the business tips but also life lessons. Such a great class!!