Facebook, A Great Portfolio Solution

By Joseph Cristina
Monday, April 5th, 2010

Photo Blogs, Flickr and portfolio specific web solutions are a great away for us professional photographers to display our work to the masses but how effective are they and are there alternatives? Many of us, myself included, started out posting portfolio images to a website or photo blog and found that the amount of comments or responses have greatly diminished. Flickr is still a great place to show off your work and receive feedback but how about the Social Network, Facebook?

I’ve found that not only is Facebook a great platform for displaying new portfolio images to current and potential clients, it also provides immediate feedback and an increased opportunity for additional referral business. Now that’s great, but recently it got even better…  

Facebook has just given us 20% more screen real estate to show our work. Instead of the old 604px maximum long edge image size we now have 720px which translates into more visually appealing images. You can see my comparison entitled “Facebook gives back 20% to the Photo Community” for a pictorial representation of how this change relates to a real world photograph.

If you already have some or even all of your work on Facebook, it’s time to optimize your images to take advantage of the new image format. If you don’t give it a shot, put up some of your best work and see how this awesome platform can help you promote your photography business.

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Categories : Grow Your Business, Social Media Marketing
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Comments

  2. Thanks for this post
    I promote my photography skills by taking profile pictures for my friends in facebook and making them write a caption that promotes my business … that worked amazingly for me ..
    I have a flickr page too that has all my photography work and i did not find enough interactivity in flickr
    I am sure that facebook is better for me but i do not want to have two accounts in facebook ..
    can you give me a good advice .. what should i do?!

    • Overall I feel Facebook is a much better choice for sharing your images with hopes of getting new business. Flickr is a great community, but the number of photogs getting business from it are few. Don’t get me wrong, if you work at it, it can pay off, but I feel you will see a better return on your Facebook efforts.

      It is against Facebook’s Terms of Service to have 2 accounts. You will want to keep your personal profile “personal” and create a business page for your business. Some only use Facebook for “business” and use their personal profile to interact with clients and prospects. As long as you consider them “friends” there is nothing wrong with that, but you can’t use your personal profile for the sole purposes of promoting your business. Doing so could cause your account to be shut down.

      Take advantage of the features Facebook pages can offer your business and you’ll do great!

  3. Hey guys,

    thanks for the great articles & resources you’re providing for the photog’ community.

    It would be a good addition to this article to point out the reasons why photog’s should
    consider a FB Fan Page rather than a personal profile. There may be distinct advantages
    to each depending on your market & desired interaction with fans or friends. The major advantage of a FB Biz Page would be that it is included in search indexes, while personal profiles never will be.

    There is currently a major disadvantage to FB Pages, however. FB in their infinite wisdom has recently removed (depreciated) a link for FB Page admins that allowed them to view all photo comments chronologically & then, be able to easily respond to the latest comments/interactions with fans. Some have used this comment form as a sort of on-line store by responding to questions about purchasing the image, sizes, prices, etc.

    If you have a FB Page for your photo biz, you may want to join this group to rally for restoration of this “View Comments” function. here’s the link: bit.ly/bmC2UV

    sWitt @ MeanPony Productions
    Park City, utaH, USA

  5. FB often unilaterally deletes profiles and gives no recourse or explanation, several friends have had this happen, no way to pre-emptively fix or mitigate, its just gone and they won’t explain why. Not too stable for spending countless hours building your biz thru it…

  8. @TrevorCurrent FB portfolio; I was under the impression that posting photos on FB basically meant you gave up any rights to them?

        • By uploading your images to Facebook you are granting them certain rights of usage. It’s not the ideal situation but if you want to take advantage of Facebook as a marketing and promotional tool you have to make the sacrifice.

          My suggestion is to only upload image you are willing to share publicly knowing there is a possibility they may be used without your permission. I also suggest watermarking your images, and make it obvious but not obnoxious. Include your name/company name and your website address. Doing this will deter most people from using you images publicly without your permission and if they do you’ll at least get credit for the image if not payment.