The New York-based photographer Web site specialist PhotoShelter has released yet another free resource: the photographer guide to social media. The 7-megabyte 55-page PDF is available upon request and delivered via email.
Social Media for Photographers explains online networking from the standpoint of value, endeavoring to answer questions such as, “How will I benefit from the time and resources I invest?” The guide’s introduction addresses expectations, explaining the reasons to use social media—from brand building and relationship management to sales generation and search-engine optimization.
The guide also lays out the rules, which is particularly useful for those unfamiliar with the medium. For instance, did you know that you should keep your self-promotional messages under 10% of total communications you put out to social networks?
There is a ton of real-world research here. Particularly useful are examples of other photographers’ experiences, which range from tidbits (Jack Hollingsworth has, apparently, amassed a 12,000-strong Twitter posse) to in-depth profiles, such as “How John Lander Uses Blogs and Social Media for SEO.”
From a how-to perspective, PhotoShelter recommends an organized and systematic approach, which can be oversimplified into “set your goals and measure results” but is greatly expounded on within the chunky PDF that makes easy work of, say, getting started with Twitter—even for the absolute novice. Social Media for Photographers includes detailed descriptions of the purpose, functionality and usefulness of the most popular social networking sites. The guide also tackles the perpetual question of “Why blog?” with answers such as “thought leadership.”
Notably, PhotoShelter takes its own advice: there is very little self-promotion here. Practically all of the content is geared at helping photographers succeed. And you can get a few dollars off a PhotoShelter archive, if you don’t already have one.