Archive for Business – Page 20

"How’s Business?"

By John Pyle
Thursday, March 31st, 2011

“How’s business?” is a frequent question we get asked. You probably get asked this too. But are you ever the one asking the question. I encourage other photographers to look outside of their industry to examine other businesses. This is a valuable resource that should be utilized.

senior Model winners from 2009,2010, and 2011

There is a restaurant here in our city that my wife and I frequently attend. And when I say frequently I mean 2-3 times a week…for the last 8 years. If you follow my twitter feed (@johndpyle) you can probably guess the place I am talking about. In fact my parents went Friday night and we went Saturday night to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. Now I do love their food. It is superb and prepared perfectly. But that is not the main reason we go. There are a few other places to eat that have decent food in town. They are also the one of the most, if not THE most expensive place to eat in town. So we don’t go there to save money. We go there because of the experience. The staff always recognizes us and greets us by name upon arriving. The bartenders know my wife’s favorite glass of wine and have it poured before we even sit down. The staff is always pleasant, excited to see us, and appear to go out of their way no matter what. In fact the owner comes over to personally greet us every time we visit. The food is always perfect and they always go above and beyond. Now I am not narcissistic enough to think that we are the only ones they treat like this. And I know this because there is a 30-90 minute wait on weekends to eat so other people must feel this way too. But we are made to feel like we are special and that we are the most important costumers they have. They know, understand, and implement flawless customer service and an unmatched experience. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business
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Starting a Photography Business: Part 27 – I’m here are you?

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, March 28th, 2011

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your support and kind comments that you made as you took a look at my site this last week. I was touched and humbled by your emails, tweets and FB messages. I have passed on all of your comments on the ease of the site navigation, and the design, to my web designer at SmartDeCat, as apart from my sign up box, and inclusion of four photos on the homepage, the design is one of their templates.

It’s been really exciting launching the site, there were a couple of butterflies on Monday as it went live, and then it took a while for it to sink in that you are now able to see it, which is fantastic! I’ve kind of had to keep pinching myself this week to realise that it’s really happened, but the fact I don’t have to go to the site via the admin page tells me it’s real. A few months ago my web designer said it’s been ages since he’s been to the front of the site to see what his customers see, and I have to say I thought this was a little odd. Hmm, well actually my ego thought this was a little odd, wouldn’t I be on my site every day to look at my beautiful photos? Why of course I would!

Well actually I’ve not! I’ve found a far more addictive thing to do; watch the footfall of visitors across the site, it was, and well still is, really addictive. The software lets me see how many people are on the site and how many visits each page has; it was a bit like when I first got a Twitter and Facebook account, where I felt the need to check it every two minutes. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Starting a Business
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Starting a Photography Business: Part 26 – Cut the Ribbon!

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, March 21st, 2011

I’ve just cut the red ribbon, popped the champagne corks and flung open the doors for the first time, to welcome you to, Ruth Bayley Photography. If you’d like to come in and have a look, please mind you don’t trip on the ribbon at your feet.

If you’d like to open a separate browser with the link and gather round, I will proudly give you the guided tour. http://www.ruthbayleyphotography.co.uk/

Well here we are then! Welcome to the much changed and right up until a few hours ago, still fiddled with homepage! I just couldn’t resist tweaking the text. If you refresh the homepage, the large photo on the right of the page will randomly change to keep the site looking fresh. It also helps to promote different styles of photos, and clicking on them will take you straight through to the photo and the collection it resides in.

This page is laid out as clearly as possible, and here, I have to confess, I break the quota of words that Google likes a site to have per page. It’s really not practical or at all pretty, to squash in 250 words. I can confidently tell you this as during my meltdown stage a few weeks ago, the page did contain that many words and it looked pretty messy.

My beloved, and much wanted sign up box, is to your lower left, clicking here will take you through to sign up for regular email updates and also give you a free gift of photography tips. My original design for this box was well, I have to say, a little boring, so the designer at SmartDeCat did a little bit of magic and came up with this lovely image, which by coincidence, virtually replicates a photo I have in the ‘Waterscapes collection’ of birds flying in a diagonal line over mountains. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Starting a Business
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What Story Are You Telling? by Chris Horner

By Guest
Friday, March 18th, 2011

True story – I was in Trader Joe’s the other night picking out a bottle of red wine. I’m notoriously bad at this. I don’t really know what makes one wine ‘better’ than another, and I barely understand the lingo. Someone can tell me the technical crap until they’re blue in the face – I still won’t get it or know what to expect. Worse, if it’s not the tastiest bottle, then I have to explain to my wife why I picked a bad one. Not good.

This particular night, though, I felt like rolling the dice and trying something new. Trader Joe’s is at least nice enough to add some description to the wines. They’ll tell a bit about the taste, what you can expect, and suggested foods to go with it. That’s all well and good, but have you ever been to Trader Joe’s? There are probably 100 different red wines to pick from. The descriptions all had words in them like oaky, full, light, or listed a zillion types of berries.

About halfway through working my way down the section and getting more confused than ever, one bottle in particular caught my eye. It was the design that was interesting; it was more than just a label with words that I can’t pronounce. So I read the little tag that Trader Joe’s put in front of it. Instead of the usual adjectives listed above, it told about the symbol on the bottle and its meaning, adding some background detail as to what that wine can be used to celebrate. Guess what? That was the deal clincher for me. INSTANTLY. It hit me on an emotional level (the wine was for a special occasion between me and my wife). More importantly the story behind the bottle was interesting. It gave me something to talk about surrounding my (ir)rational decision process in choosing that bottle. For once, I could actually sound intelligent in discussing a wine and feel proud of the decision that I made. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Guest Bloggers
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Marketing for the Seasons

By Michael Shilling
Friday, March 18th, 2011

Over the past couple of months we’ve shared a few different marketing campaigns but this week we’re going to take a break and look at planning your own.

It seems that just as one holiday finishes the next one begins. Every year there’s someone who notices a Christmas decoration for sale in August and exclaims ‘It’s getting earlier every year!’

Of course there’s some truth to this, the January sales have been starting before Christmas and visit any greeting card shop you’ll know immediately the coming holidays for the next 6 months!

But that’s their business I hear you say……..but doesn’t a portrait photography occasionally fall into the realms of seasonal gifts?

I know that many of you have been using various seasonal promotions but how have you planned your year?

Here’s a few good habits you might want to think about. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business
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Building Your Photography Business With Multi-Source Marketing: by Larry Lourcey

By Guest
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Larry Lourcey - TrappedA photography studio, like any business, can’t survive without clients. You can be the best photographer in the world, but if nobody knows about you, the studio will fail. There is a reason why the term “starving artist” has been around for so long!

In the past, it was just a matter of putting an ad in the Yellow Pages, then sitting back and waiting for the phone to ring. Unfortunately, those days are gone. People are flooded with information every day. The last thing they are going to do is try and seek you out in the phone book. Think about it… if your plumbing breaks, what are you going to do? Its unlikely that you will run for the phone book or sift through last week’s mail looking for a promo postcard from a plumbing company. You will either call a friend or hit Google and search for a local plumber.

To stay competitive today, you’ve got to change your thinking. Stop looking for the Home Run and concentrate on getting Base Hits. What I mean by that is to focus on finding several places that will send you a few new clients – vs looking for one source that will send you tons of clients. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Guest Bloggers
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