Too Time Consuming for Internet Presence?

Facebook, Blogging, websites, POTN, Flickr....

Do you find it pulling too much time from you when you should be spending it behind the camera or editing images on the 'puter?

I am curious to know what others think about their time being used to promote the business and what you have found to be most effective.

I think a lot of it depends on what product/market your in.

80 percent marketing, 20 percent shooting.

Unless you shoot for a stock agency of course. Being active on twitter, facebook, websites and the like may be WAY more important than being out shooting all day.

Yeah, shooting all day puts food on the table that night, but online marketing keeps it there for the months ahead. I must confess I suck at it

S-Man wrote in post #10413886
Yeah, shooting all day puts food on the table that night, but online marketing keeps it there for the months ahead. I must confess I suck at it

Me too.

I understand your frustration. If you find someone willing to do if for us let me know.

I don't think that "time" being spent online is the issue, whereas the venue you spend it in is. Time spent at promoting in the correct venue can be a beneficial component in a comprehensive marketing plan. Time spent in the wrong venue can be, well.... a waste of "time."

it's a necessary evil, grouped in with networking time and marketing, and advertising time.

if you don't advertise properly you will fail.

Naturalist wrote in post #10413590
Facebook, Blogging, websites, POTN, Flickr....

Do you find it pulling too much time from you when you should be spending it behind the camera or editing images on the 'puter?

I am curious to know what others think about their time being used to promote the business and what you have found to be most effective.

As someone else has already said, it depends on what your intended market is. You have to determine who you must sell to (that is, who signs the checks) and what venues they use to shop for photography.

In my case, wall portraits, my primary market is made up of women age 30-60. I have no blog, have a website, have a Facebook presence...but I have a number of displays in local shops, hobnob at local events that these women frequent, do charities, et cetera.

You're on a forum...shouldn't you be editing instead? It's no different.

It's really only time consuming if you're slow. I have blog/facebook pics up from a session within a couple hours unless I'm dicking around, and I use my phone to communicate through it ie multitask. I hop on here whenever. It's not a required part of my business day. Flickr isn't a stop at all.

I'm still having trouble keeping my blog up to date and consistent. Maybe I'm horrible at using Wordpress and the blogging template, but I just can't figure out an easy workflow that makes it super quick to add a gallery of 50-150 images.

Facebook is awesome for me though! There's easily over 200 people on there in the local scene using my photos as their profile pictures. $$$$$ and bookings all because of facebook, who would have thought!

I believe for the amount of exposure/presence you can get for a relatively small investment in time/money I believe Twitter/Facebook/Blogs are good marketing tools, albeit not the most effective avenue but they're mostly free and require little time. So if you get something from them, there's typically a huge return on investment.

You can spend a WHOLE CRAP LOAD of time on those things if you really try. I usually just get in, announce/post what I came to and then leave.

They can take a while to set up and get started. But once it is running it should not take long each day to maintain.

Keep in mind you only get out of things what you put into them.

spikeystitch wrote in post #10422499
I'm still having trouble keeping my blog up to date and consistent. Maybe I'm horrible at using Wordpress and the blogging template, but I just can't figure out an easy workflow that makes it super quick to add a gallery of 50-150 images.

Facebook is awesome for me though! There's easily over 200 people on there in the local scene using my photos as their profile pictures. $$$$$ and bookings all because of facebook, who would have thought!

50-150 images on a blog? Holy moly! I only put 5!

spikeystitch wrote in post #10422499
I'm still having trouble keeping my blog up to date and consistent. Maybe I'm horrible at using Wordpress and the blogging template, but I just can't figure out an easy workflow that makes it super quick to add a gallery of 50-150 images.

That would cut deeply into your sales. Good thing you can't figure out how to do it.