I have been noticing a trend lately on facebook at twitter that has me scratching my head. I think the line is getting blurred between using social media for business communication and using social media for personal communication. I have listened to many podcasts of successful photographers (Jasmin Star being one example) where they promote using social media, facebook, twitter, blogs etc. to allow your existing and potential customers the chance to get to know you more personally. “You are your own brand” is the mantra that I hear. Do I agree with this? Yes I actually do, but that answer comes with a big BUT attached to it. While I think that it is important to let your customers get to know you and your personality you do not want them to know so much that it could in fact damage your brand. If you look at the communications of some of the “big time” photographers you could easily say wow they are really letting me into their world, and they are, sort of. Look between the lines, notice that there is always a positive spin in every post. They might talk about their dogs, kids, trips that they have taken, and how great the whole experience is. What you don’t see are posts about the fight that they had with their husband last night, the customer that was totally unhappy and refused to pay, or the time they got the flu and puked all over the house.
Lets keep it real, they are their brand and they take that seriously. That is exactly what we should do as photographers and business owners. No matter what size business we run we need to take what we say seriously and recognize that the posts we put on Twitter do not just float out there into the universe to be forgotten. They are there for all to see and those posts are a reflection on you and on your business.
Another example of this forgotten separation is when a photographer asks for help. Recently on Twitter a photographer posted on three separate occasions that they needed help on a shoot that they had coming up. They asked if anyone was available to help on a specific date. Did you get what the post said? Anyone. I had never met this person but I was free on that date and I responded to the post all three times. Guess what happened all three times. Nothing, absolutely nothing. This got me thinking did they really mean anyone, or were they using their social media outlet to communicate with a group of their friends that all follow each other. If that is the case maybe an email would serve the purpose better. (Here is a side tip of business communication, if someone sends you a message, or offers their help, reply to them in one way or the other, don’t just leave them hanging. Even if it is a lie I personally would rather hear, “thanks for the offer but I have already found someone to help”.) Much of business communications is simply the Golden Rule, do unto others ya know.
So lets sum up. We are our own brand and we need to take that seriously. We want to look at the information that we post and use our internal filter to ask ourselves what will happen if a potential client reads this. If you blush you probably should not post it.
If you would like to see more of my work as a photographer you can check out my site and blog at m2photographyonline.com