Good Photographer vs Good Networker
To my own admission, I have never been an amazing “networker”. As a photographer, I have never been able to participate in one of those contests where you had to deliver masses of followers to vote for you because I don’t have the masses of followers needed that hang on every post I make.
I know I have mentioned this already, but when I started toying with phlow, I did not have an idea, I had a problem. My problem was that I was one of the many photographer trying pretty much anything and everything to get my work seen and become known for what I was creating.
If you are a photographer, then you know what I am talking about. You throw every photo you can on the wall, trying to make them stick and the chances are you are still doing this.
The problem I had, was that my photographs were much better than my ability to network. Here it comes phlow.
The social media networker and the marketer
When I decided that I wanted to be a photographer, I knew that I would most likely not be shooting every single day. And if I’m honest, that was fine by me. I knew that I would have had to learn about business, pricing, marketing and so on, but there was something more I was not prepared for. I was so not prepared for the the amount of time needed to be a decent social media marketer.
Actually, I still don’t know how much time is needed, as it seems that it is a bottomless pit. From Facebook to Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, just to name a few. You have to develop your persona, use a specific tone and take risks. I’m just glad that for phlow we have Scott Watson who understands it far better than I do.
I have never loved it; it was fine to develop a strategy, but I have always been great in one to ones relationship, being the “social media whore” was just not for me. But I went on, and on, and on, writing blog posts and discussions with the hope they would have given my visitors something to think about, and I stuck to an editorial calendar like a good boy.
My photos don’t stick on that wall
We have all dream that sooner or later, we will be “discovered”. Our photo will be seen by the right person that will understand how good our work is. Don’t deny it, we have all been there. We have all lay awake praying for it.
If you are not one of the lucky ones, that one in a million chance, the overnight success — then you are like me, and you will have put in a lot of working nights to build a good solid business. Get over it.
If someone had spoken to me like that when I started, I would have considered my options earlier. I would have invested money in my marketing education much earlier than I did, and I would have focussed my efforts in a different way.
Yet, here we are today. My photos still do not stick on that wall in the way I like. I am not a world recognised photographer, but I am proud of who I become, as a photographer, as an artist and as a business owner.
Do your photos stick to the wall? Read on…
The social circle issue
The main issue I saw was that my photos were seen only by the people that already knew me. Excluding few leads whom were waiting for their own time to buy, and some clients, social media is somewhat limited. There is no way of showcasing your photos to a bigger audience, because the bigger audience does not know who you are.
The reality is that when you bounce your photographs in a closed circle, they only escape if one of your contacts let them out — you are relying on your friends doing your marketing for you. It is possible, but at the very least it is not an optimal solution. Your friends may follow twenty other photographers, and chances are they will not share hundreds of photographs each day.
The issue is the social circle, the fact that you have “friends” or “followers” while a great ego booster “hey, I have few thousands followers on Pinstagramer”, does not make good business sense for photographers.
With phlow, the first barrier I wanted to address was the one enclosing my photos inside a social circle. But here was the issue, if I’m not following my friends, then who should I be following.
Actually, the answer is was not “who”, but “what” should I be following!
My beloved RSS feed gave me an idea, the mind mapping tool another, “hot or not” yet another one
Being a photographer means that I am an avid image consumer, an image lover if you like. I love looking around and discovering amazing photographs. For this, through the years I have collected a list of Tumblr blogs, publications and other sources and redirected them all into my RSS feeds. The issue though is noise: a few amazing images in a sea of mediocrity without any order.
I was looking at portraits, followed by art nude, followed by landscapes. It was not unusual for me to be seeing thousands of images per day, but it was tedious.
In my head I have always kept an image of one of the first mind mapping applications, from possibly twenty or so years ago. When I was skimming through endless photographs in my RSS feeds, I was picturing this tool and imagining being able to have them grouped by context. Then once I have become bored by the image in a context, I would have jumped to a neighbouring one. Finally, as I am a very imaginative person, I also thought that it would have been amazing to be able to play the game “hot or not” with the photographs I saw in these context buckets.
Do you remember the presentation of the first iPhone, when Steve Jobs introduces it? He said “An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone … Are you getting it?”. It was something like that, when I thought “RSS, categorised, organised photographs. RSS, categorised…”
That was the idea, and that is how phlow was born!
phlow prioritises photographs over networking
phlow let you follow the contexts, the passions and themes you love.
You don’t follow me, you follow #makeup or #surfing as those are the things you like.
No more endless hours of “follow4follow” or “like4like” games, your photographs and you are not the same thing.
