Guide to G+ for photographers

http://www.itsjustligh​t.com …aphers-guide-google-plus/

A friend of mine and fellow photographer wrote this handy guide for photographers starting out on G+, it's worth a looksee if you're new to the network. I've only passively used it, as in...set up an account and then just post a bunch of random stuff, hoping people will find it...but I'm starting to read more into social media marketing and how it can help a photographer get their work out there.

That's a good and comprehensive post. Google+ has got a whole better, but sadly my personal account never gets touched, primarily because none of my friends use it.

Yeah, that is one hard part...since facebook blocked their transfer and got rid of their integration tools it can be difficult to transfer between accounts.

I think there are guides and ways around it now

Social media sucks. Twitter is childish, facebook is for people who have no real social life, and pinterest is a bastion for thieves.

However, personal opinions are irrelevant. Exploiting social media - all social media - to its fullest is mandatory for photographers, and even more important for those in the fine arts.

I was on G+ back in the invitation-only beta days, but never really explored it because back in those days it looked like a facebook wanna-be that was destined to fail.

Haven't read the guide yet, but it looks like a good one. Thanks for posting it and thank your friend for contributing the large amount of time it took to create it.

You know, I don't remember whether I signed up for Google+ or not, although I am a Google member/user, so I may have.

But, I find my hands full with my Web image host (PBase) and then photo-related activity here and on FaceBook (not to mention more "social" activity) so I just haven't delved into other sites, except once when I did get onto Google's Panoramio, where if you upload photos that the team decides are good "place" photos, they pin your image to Google Earth. I uploaded a number of photos that were "accepted", so they are in Google Earth (including acknowledging the photographer), cool.

Great guide, thanks! Google+ might be worth a go. I'm so fed up with the other netoworks all I do anymore is have the blog autopost. Time saved!

I have been using G+ extensively. As an amateur I found it a great place to see what everyone else was taking pictures and interact with them on a social network. I have met a ton of people through G+, people that I now hang out with on a regular basis. An example is this weekend where I will be meeting up with a number of G+'ers, around 10 right now, for a sunset shoot on a beach somewhere down the coast. In the past there have been people flying in from overseas (Europe and Asia), asking if anyone wanted to hang out and ended up going shooting with us. I still keep in contact with these people today.

For me G+ is very different than most other social networks in that it is more about meeting people that you don't know as opposed to speaking with existing friends.

I see some people who come to G+ with some different expectations.
1. People who start posting links to their pictures on other websites (Flickr, 500px etc) and then don't understand why they don't get a lot of followers automatically. For a social network G+ does a good job at showing pictures hosted within the network and the audience there expects it.
2. Interaction is key. I have seen people who join and just post pictures without commenting on other people's pictures or interacting in any way. These people tend to disappear quickly as well. It is important to participate whether it is commenting on other people's pictures, posting in Communities, doing Hangouts etc.

I've gotten to enjoy G+, I post a lot of photos there and its easy to look at lots of other peoples photos and comment on them. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with the people who "add" me, got a lot of them. Don't know if I'm expected to "add" them back.
I perfer it over FB for photo sharing.

Rick, I don't add people back that circle me. That's the nice thing about G+ that many people can follow you, but you can be picky about who you want to follow.

Back when it started I spent a lot of time first adding some major circles (recommended by another photographer) and then removing people who I felt were posting stuff I didn't like. If I could do it all over I would probably start by joining Communities instead and then add people from there where I like their style of photography.

Are people notified when they are removed?

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #16457841
Are people notified when they are removed?

Nope

Thanks, Brian.

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #16453259
Thanks for posting it and thank your friend for contributing the large amount of time it took to create it.

Hey Dan, I'm the friend who wrote it, so thank you. It ended up taking me a little longer to write than I anticipated, but most things I write have a way of going from a tiny project into the mother of all novels pretty quickly.

I agree with your positive and negative sentiments toward social media —*talking about myself and sharing my work endlessly does not come naturally for me. (I have to say though, that I have met a handful of pretty amazing people through social media that I wouldn't have otherwise known.) I would rather just take pictures and write about taking pictures, but in a photo saturated world, if you don't let people know who you are, there's not much incentive for anyone to go out of their way to find you.

Like you say, being active on social media is a necessity, and with Google's position as the biggest search engine, they're able to start necessitating that people use G+ if they want their content to show up in people's searches. AuthorRank seems to be playing a much larger role in how search results are calculated, factoring in social signals and the authority of the content creator rather than the old search algorithm of simply counting backlinks. I'm not sure that I think their approach to forcing people to use G+ is entirely in line with their "do no evil" policy (their current youtube fiasco is being pretty poorly handled), but after several months of using G+ pretty extensively I've got to say that I actually enjoy it. It's got a pretty vibrant community of photographers who are very active on there and unlike Facebook where pages are virtually impossible to attract new fans to these days, G+ is still easy to make connections on and develop a following.

G+ is nice because you don't have to make a two way connection — I can still let random people who post nothing but cat .gifs follow me without ever having my home stream fill with animated sparkle cats. The key to Google Plus and really any social network though is interaction — unless you're a celebrity with diehard fans you've got to give a little to get a little, so like Brian mentioned, you really need to comment on other people's work, join communities and share and interact with other photos, and basically make yourself visible.

I see the sentiment of "I'm already busy with the other social networks...no time for G+" a lot, but the thing to keep in mind is...Facebook and Twitter don't control the way nearly the entire internet gets its information. It's pretty clear that Google is factoring signals from G+ into its search algorithm now. It's not the be all and end all, but it is worth spending a bit of time on — the added bonus is that it's pretty fun and there seems to be a much more positive vibe among photographers there.

zantop wrote in post #16473638
and with Google's position as the biggest search engine, they're able to start necessitating that people use G+ if they want their content to show up in people's searches....

Facebook and Twitter don't control the way nearly the entire internet gets its information. It's pretty clear that Google is factoring signals from G+ into its search algorithm now.

And this is the key to it all.

In other forums, and in talking to artists and photographers, twitter, facebook, and pinterest are always touted as the main necessities for successful marketing and G+ gets periodically mentioned as an afterthought.

But I think this view is ill-advised because I think it disregards obvious logic: G+, blogger.com, youtube and more... are google products. Whether or not it has been publicly announced, or even denied, it would only make logical sense that google would give favoritism to those products because if they did not, they would not be properly promoting themselves.

I have often called google the borg. But that label is not necessarily only derisive. It can be complimentary in that google, like the borg, achieved king of the hill status by simply chewing up and spitting out anybody that came across their path.

Google has been, and can be, brutal. Although it would never be publicly acknowledged, I would not be surprised if somewhere in their search algorithm is a subroutine that somewhat demotes facebook, twitter, and other competitors. It's only logical. If google does not assimilate competitors they cannot achieve their goal of not only becoming the most important factor in social media, but the most important entity on the internet.

I made a huge mistake in letting my involvement with G+ die. If you were there, you have to admit that in the very early days google+ really did look like a facebook wannabe.

I am not a person who jumps into something while figuring it out. Instead, I educate myself first so that when I do begin a project, it is done correctly. That's why your well-written and informative article is so valuable. In fact, it's one of the best I've ever read. In previous roles, I authored and edited content for magazines and books, and as such, I am fully aware of the huge amount of time it took to prepare it. But it is a helpful piece, so again, thank you. I hope you derive a helpful seo boost or two from it yourself.

Is anyone here keen to set up a google+ circle of +1's? I'm thinking we simply all +1 each others website as this helps a lot with ranking well.