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Why isn’t your business where you want it to be yet?

While there may be some very good reasons, I bet there are several excuses that you tell yourself that are holding you back from reaching your true potential.

To get the business you really want, you can’t allow them to get in your way.

Sometimes we don’t even realize how many excuses we’re actually believing. So today I’m going to list them out, and over the next several months I’m going to take them down, one by one, and give you the tools you need to overcome each and every excuse in the list.

Excuses are for your competitors, not you. YOU are aiming for success!

Don’t let some lie keep you from getting there.

What to expect

I’ll be releasing several videos in this excuses series along with the audio-only version of the videos so you can listen while you edit or drive if you prefer. Some will be shorter, and others will be longer and may include other people as well. Links will be added as posts are created for each excuse, so bookmark this and check back often and subscribe to my YouTube channel. These posts will be in addition to my regular content.

Photography business excuses that hold you back:

Excuse #1: My photography isn’t good enough

Excuse #2: My camera/gear isn’t good enough

Excuse #3: I am not cute enough or have trendy enough clothes for people to book me

Excuse #4: The market is over-saturated

Excuse #5: If I could just get one ideal “high end” client that I could showcase, then I could get more clients

Excuse #6: X Photographer gets all the business

Excuse #7: I don’t know anything about business

Excuse #8: I won’t get any business if I do ________

Excuse #9: I don’t know what is best to do next

Excuse #10: I don’t have enough money to grow my business

Excuse #11: I’ll never be able to retire

Excuse #12: My full-time job doesn’t allow me enough flexibility

Excuse #13: I can’t raise prices or I’ll offend and/or lose my current clients!

Excuse #14: How do you compete with crazy-cheap shoot’n'burn photographers or Groupon photographers?

Excuse #15: I don’t know where to start

Excuse #16: I want to raise rates but $XXXX is a dead zone.

Excuse #17: That won’t work in my culture. People here won’t get it.

Excuse #18: I’m not strong enough

Excuse #19: I’m depressed

Excuse #20: My accent/disability/race makes it difficult

Excuse #21: I’m scared of success

Excuse #22: I’m scare it won’t last and I’ll fail and won’t have anything to do?!

Excuse #23: I’m moving soon.

Excuse #24: An accountant/lawyer/insurance is too expensive

Excuse #25: I prefer stability to the feeling that I always have to hustle

Excuse #26: I don’t have a studio

Excuse #27: I’m too busy to learn something new

Excuse #28: You have nothing to fall back on

Excuse #29: I need a job with benefits!

Excuse #30: I can’t take money for something I love

Excuse #31: I can’t charge more because I’m not full-time.

Excuse #32: I don’t like turning people down because they can’t afford my fee

Excuse #33: I’m scared I’ll do something wrong when filing as a business and have the gov’t tell me I owe them TONS of money

Excuse #34: You may not follow through

Excuse #35: I hate selling and can’t do it.

Excuse #36: I’m too slow

Excuse #37: I won’t have enough clients if I “specialize”

Excuse #38: I live in a small town and there isn’t the market for it

Excuse #39: If my photos were better, clients would flock to me

Excuse #40: I’m a photographer, not a social media blogger who also loves accounting

Excuse #41: I don’t know how to price competitively for my area

Excuse #42: I can never get where I want to be with the clients I have now.

Excuse #43: People just don’t understand my vision

Excuse #44: I’m not as good as ________

Excuse #45: I can’t write

Excuse #46: I am not experienced enough

Excuse #47: Kids/Family/Parents/Spouse/Etc make it too difficult

Excuse #48: Everything (including market) keeps changing

Excuse #49: The economy is bad

Excuse #50: Everyone just goes to their friends

Excuse #51: I’m not creative enough

Excuse #52: I’m too pessimistic

Excuse #53: I’m afraid to charge more because I don’ thave confidence that people will be willing to pay it

Excuse #54: I’m too short/tall to take good photos

Excuse #55: I’m too soft-spoken and shy

Excuse #56: What if I get too much business and am overwhelmed?

Excuse #57: I’ve been doing things this way for X years; no need to change now

Excuse #58: I don’t want to announce anything yet, because what if someone calls me!

Excuse #59: I couldn’t afford myself at those prices

Excuse #60: I can’t afford to have a professionally designed website

Excuse #61: I don’t want to shoot things I’m not interested in shooting because I “need” the money

Excuse #62: I can’t afford backup equipment

Excuse #63: I need financial security

Excuse #64: Advertising is too expensive

Excuse #65: People look down on those who do ____________ photography

Excuse #66: I don’t want my colleagues to know I do phtoography

Excuse #67: I’ll turn people away

Excuse #68: I just don’t know the right people to get ahead in this business

Excuse #69: I don’t stand out from the crowd

Excuse #70: My market won’t pay those prices

Excuse #71: I’d get more bookings if I had more Facebook fans / Twitter followers

Excuse #72: I’m not “techy” enough

Excuse #73: I didn’t study photography in college

Excuse #74: My first client was a bad experience, so I’m afraid to get more clients like that

Excuse #75: It’s too hard to become a legitimate business

Excuse #76: People don’t value photography anymore since cameras are so cheap and good now

Excuse #77: Everyone asks me to work for free since I did when I was portfolio building

Excuse #78: I’m ashamed to be “just” a photographer

Excuse #79: I’m too old/young

Excuse #80: I’m not good with people.

Excuse #81: I have no support from friends or family

Excuse #82: I don’t want to raise prices because I might have to drop them later if no one would pay it and that’d look bad.

Excuse #83: Finding childcare is hard and expensive and keeps me from booking sessions

Excuse #84: I don’t want my photography to interfere with my full-time job

Excuse #85: I don’t have time to do more

Excuse #86: I don’t like talking about myself and don’t like attention

Excuse #87: I’m waiting for the right time to start

Excuse #88: Afraid of losing money if it doesn’t work out

Excuse #89: I say I’m going to raise my prices soon (but never do)

Excuse #90: I can’t afford what everyone else seems to have!

Excuse #91: People say I’m “too expensive”

Excuse #92: When I try to network, no one responds to my emails

Excuse #93: I’m scared to fail

Excuse #94: I don’t feel like it

Excuse #95: Client management is more work than I thought and I just can’t keep up

Excuse #96: I only shoot natural light and that limits my business

Excuse #97: I don’t believe my work is worth that much

Excuse #98: I’d hate it if I did it full-time

Excuse #99: But ____ is already doing something similar….

What excuses resonated with you?

What are the excuses from the list that hit you the hardest? Are there other excuses not on the list that you deal with? Leave a comment below and let me know! I’d love to hear them!

Photography Business Excuses That Hold You Back

This post is part of a video series on Photography Business Excuses That Hold Us Back. To see what other excuses I’ll be helping you overcome, head on over to the main excuses page or subscribe to my YouTube channel to get all the videos as soon as they are ready to go (even if they haven’t been posted here yet!). Enjoy!

Today I’m going to tackle the excuse “My Photography Isn’t Good Enough”.

In this video, you’re going to learn when your work is good enough to charge for it as well as several places that you can go to improve your photography.

Excuse #1: My Photography Isn’t Good Enough

Links from video:

1. Extremely Essential Camera Skills by Photography Concentrate (affiliate link) – This is what I’d suggest you use to learn your camera inside-out. It’s amazing.

2. Creative Live – Free workshops when you view them live; or pay to watch them later. Much cheaper than attending a workshop in person.

Did you find this helpful?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts, then share this on Facebook, pin it on Pinterest, or tweet about it by using the buttons below. Thanks!

Excuse #1: My Photography Isn’t Good Enough

This week’s post is a guest post from Matt & Katie, Queensland, Australia wedding photographers. I asked them to share this story with you after hearing it as I thought it was an amazing post that you might enjoy and learn from!

Over the last few months Katie and I have been putting in a new kitchen and new bathroom into our house. All up it’s costing us about $50K for materials, appliances and labor.

It’s been an exciting and frustrating experience. And a huge learning experience for us, not just as first time renovators but also as owners of a customer service based business.

The whole experience reinforced some valuable business and customer service lessons.

Take Home Lesson #1 – Always remember that this will most likely be your client’s first experience dealing with a professional photographer.

Our builder didn’t do a very good job of setting our expectations and guiding us through the process.

The builder has done hundreds of building projects. This is our first.

And yet he has treated us as if we are as experienced as he is. We had to push and pull to get information and deadlines and details out of him. He wasn’t very good at putting himself in our shoes to hold our hand through the process.

Put yourself in your client’s shoes. Don’t assume anything. Think of every aspect of your business from your client’s perspective.

Hold their hand through the process and set very clear boundaries and expectations along the way. By doing this you’ll let them know exactly what to expect. The potential for misunderstandings or miscommunication will be significantly reduced, or even eliminated.

Anticipation

To continue the story, we returned home to Australia after spending 3 weeks in America doing some teaching and going to WPPI. Before we left Australia, our bathroom was really close to completion. Naturally, we were super excited to see our finished bathroom upon arriving home.

During the 14 hour flight from LA to Australia, and then the 2 hour drive from the airport to our home, I dreamed of turning on the shower for the first time and of washing away 30 hours of travel grossness in our gorgeous new bathroom. Katie dreamed of filling the bathtub, dropping in a bath bomb, and then soaking for hours of bathroom bliss.

Maybe we were wrong to expect our bathroom to be finished when we arrived home. Maybe not. We’ve never done a renovation before or worked with a builder before so we didn’t don’t know what to expect. Is it our responsibility as the client to clarify expectations? Or does it fall to the person who is providing the service?

Either way, because we weren’t told otherwise we created out own expectations. We expected the bathroom to be finished. After all, it was sooooo close to be finished when we left.

Take Home Lesson #2 - Set your client’s expectations. Otherwise they will set their own. Leave the door open for them set their own expectations and you may not like what they come up with.

Your client’s satisfaction with the service you offer (photography) is directly connected to the expectations you set before you even take a photo. Almost every problem or drama you could have with a client comes back to lack of clear expectations.

Don’t blame your client for whatever craziness they come up with if you haven’t clearly set their expectations in the first place.

Your clients have never done this before. You have.

Disappointment

We get home and rush inside to say hi to our cats. Then we went right for the bathroom to check it out.

It looks like a construction zone. There’s tape on the mirror. A ladder in the shower. Grit and grime and dirt all over the tiles we so painstakingly spent hours choosing. There are scary looking tools scattered around on the floor.

Is anything working? Is it finished? We have no idea. We’re too scared to touch anything.

I asked Katie to call the builder because I’m too cranky to make the call. Jet lag plus an unfinished bathroom had stretched my diplomacy skills. First world problems right?

Katie makes the call. The builder says yes, everything is working. Toilet is working. Shower is working. Bathtub is good to go.

Cue my internal rant because I’m too nice to grab the phone from Katie and give the builder a piece of my mind. “Well, you knew we were coming home today so why didn’t you put away all your tools? Why is there a ladder in the shower? We’ve paid you $30K and you don’t even care enough about us to clean up after yourself? To sweep the floor or even leave us a note? You care so little that you can’t even think to yourself that Matt and Katie are getting home and wouldn’t it be awesome if their bathroom looked amazing?”

Take Home Lesson #3 – Care about your clients. Care about them as if your life depends on it. Care about your clients enough to put yourself in their shoes and ask, “How would I want to feel if I was the customer?”

“What can I do to make them feel special and amazing and important?”

“How can I confirm that their decision to choose me is one of the best decisions they’ll ever make?”

So, instead of us being amazed at how awesome the bathroom looks and the great work the builder has done, all we see is the mess, the ladder and the tools.

And then the flaws start leaping out at us. The slightly crooked tile, the imperfect grouting in places, the tap that’s not screwed on properly. Minor things really, but in the light of our disappointment they become huge!

All the great work the builder has done is lost because of the bad impression we’re left with because of poorly set expectations.

These minor flaws that would have been barely noticed are now huge glaring mistakes that we can’t help but focus on. All we see is the bad instead of the good.

Missed Opportunity

Now imagine this scenario instead: we arrive home and excitedly greet our cats. Then we rush to the bathroom to check it out.

And instead of it looking like a construction zone, the bathroom is spotless and sparkling and amazing. Maybe there’s a few candles scattered around and a bottle of wine with a hand-written note from the builder.

“Hey Matt and Katie. Welcome home. I hope you love your new bathroom as much as I’ve enjoyed building it for you.”

How different would we have felt? How different would our first impression have been?

Instead of being delighted, we were disappointed. We began to see every flaw, mistake and crooked tile. We even started to actively look for mistakes and flaws.

Instead of grudgingly and angrily picking up the builder’s tools and cleaning up the mess, maybe we’d be soaking in the bathtub, sipping a glass of wine. Maybe one thing leads to another …

Take Home Lesson #4 – We cannot ever, EVER take our clients for granted. We owe them everything. Never forget that they pay us thousands of dollars of their hard earned money for a non-essential luxury product.

Apart from a car, a house, big screen TV or a renovation project, there aren’t many non-essential luxury products that carry the same price-tag that photography does.

Think about it, what else could your clients do with that $5,000 that you want them to spend with you? I can think of a dozen things.

We should never forget that this is a big freaking deal to our clients, even though we’ve done it hundreds of times before.

We need to do everything in our power to make our clients feel special and important and significant and valuable. Every single time.

Strive to be delightful

A few people have said to me, “Matt, you know your talking about builders right? Builders aren’t known for their sensitivity and caring nature.”

Sure, that’s a fair observation. But what if a builder did go over and above for their clients? Wouldn’t it be memorable? Wouldn’t it make people talk, “You will not believe what our builder did for us!!!”

Shouldn’t it be a no-brainer for us as photographers to find creative ways to surprise and delight our clients? In an increasingly competitive and saturated market I don’t think we can afford not to be doing this.

Which experience would you rather be giving to your clients? Do you have dramas with clients and then bitch about them as if it’s their fault? When, in reality, it’s actually your fault for not setting the right expectations in the first place?

What are some ways you can surprise and delight your clients? How can you demonstrate to your clients that they are more than just a pay-check to you?

Matt and Katie are a husband and wife team from Queensland, Australia. They’ve run successful photography businesses together for over 6 years now. In July and August they’re doing a workshop tour of the US and Canada which you can find out more about on their blog.

4 Lessons Learned From Our Builder

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Building a successful photography business takes tons of time and hard work. As much as I’d like to be able to tell you it’s fast and easy, it’s not.

However, there are a few things that can help you get there more quickly.

These tips won’t get you there overnight, and it will still require hard work on your part, but you’ll reach your goals faster than you would have otherwise. You’ll waste less time, money, and energy on things that don’t really help your business grow and you’ll end up getting where you want to be faster because of it.

My ultimate goal with this site is to help you get the business you’ve always wanted, and so here’s a few tips to help you get there faster.

Price adequately from the beginning

If you are consistently under-charging for your photography services, you’re basically leaving money on the table that could reduce financial stress that you have in your life or provide extra income for things like family vacations or the gear you’ve been wanting.

Not only that, but the longer you keep your prices too low, the more likely you are to burn out as business becomes busy. It’s easy to run a business that undervalues its services because people see that it’s “a good deal” and book more easily. However, you attract people who book you based upon price and not because they love your work, and that’s certainly not most peoples’ ideal client. It also makes it more difficult to retain your client base as your prices finally increase.

Take some time to walk through the Free Photographer’s Pricing Guide and make sure that your prices are adequate. It starts with how much you want to make in a year (since that may vary widely based on if you’re full time or part time, or if you don’t really need much money) and then it adds in expenses, how many sessions/weddings you hope to shoot, and how to price photography products and create packages, and finally discusses how your market affects your pricing.

Invest in learning

This is where you can get a huge advantage over most other photographers who are in their first few years of business because most people say they can’t afford it when really they are simply short-sighted and don’t realize how much more they’ll make from buying the right types of resources.

A good workshop or ebook will help you make your money back several times over, and the photographers I know who have risen to success more quickly than others have done so through investing in learning early on. While I think it’s important to take workshops that help you grow as an artist, I think it’s even more important to invest in learning about the business side of things. It helps you focus on what is important so you don’t waste time doing things that don’t actually grow your business much, and they can help you get more clients and more money through solid business practices.

While you may call me biased since I sell stuff on my site (which I obviously want people to buy), I had a very tangible increase in profit and bookings when I finally bought my first ebook about business instead of just reading blogs (even though there are some amazing blogs out there to read!). When you pay for something, you make more of an effort to actually put what you’re learning into practice instead of just saying you’ll get to it “one day” so it tends to be more effective than just reading free stuff.

My first real ebook purchase that related to the photography business was “Creating Pricing & Packging” from Lawrence at Tofurious, and it’s still one of my favorite ebooks to date. I have literally made my money back from that purchase hundreds of times over.

Other books & resources I highly recommend:

Anything from Photography Concentrate: Their tutorials are incredible and very clear. They will teach you how to work your camera, edit photos, create albums fast (this made me LOVE album design instead of dread it) and learn what you need to know if you’re thinking about shooting weddings.






The 3-Book Bundle from Zach Prez: Helps you build your business, optimize your blog, and market yourself like crazy. Pretty sweet and super helpful, especially if you’ve been in business for less than 3-4 years.

“Get Connected: How to Build Relationships to Drive Your Business” – Want more wedding clients? This book teaches you how to build quality relationships with vendors so that they send their client referrals to you. I wish I had this when I was just starting out because I think it would have saved me tons of time and money I wasted marketing my business in other ways, and I’d have more client inquiries coming in because of it.

“The Go-To Guide For Client E-mails: 100+ E-mail Templates For Photographers” – This will help you get client management under control, and you’ll have a ready-resource of e-mails at your fingertips that you can use immediately.

You’ve heard me talking about this a lot lately as I just launched it, and if you decide to pick it up before midnight MST this Thursday (May 3, 2012) you will get it for $50 off and get my client questionnaires for free as well (which are normally $49). Yes this is mine, yes I make money off it, but I seriously think you’ll benefit from checking it out. Get it now before the price increases. At the very least, download the free sample and see what you think of it for yourself.

For that matter, I make a small referral commission if you use the links above as well to buy the other resources, but I’m committed to only sharing amazing resources that are worth more than they cost and are truly useful to you. Using the links above helps me offset the money I could be making by shooting instead of writing this site, so I appreciate it immensely.

What resources have been the most helpful to you?

I’d love to hear some of the other resources you’ve used to help you grow your business as well as what results you’ve seen because of it. Leave a comment below and share. I’m always looking for great resources to buy and learn from for myself as well (and promote to you if I love it!) so your recommendations are always appreciated!

2 Tips To Grow Your Photography Business Faster

So excited to share this with you! Not only is the full e-book now available, you can also download a sample of 10 e-mail templates for free for use right away.

Launch Special: Get it Now!

Right now, during the launch, you can get the ebook for $50 off PLUS get a free copy of my Photography Client Questionnaires (valued at $49). Click here to check it out now! UPDATE: The launch is now finished, but I still encourage you to check it out. Thanks!

New eBook! The Go-To Guide For Client E-mails: 100+ E-mail Templates For Photographers

Think back to when you first started your business. Why did you do it?

Personally, I started my photography business because I loved making people happy with photography. I loved how they got all emotional when they saw the photos I was taking of their children and thanked me profusely for capturing that time in their lives.

It feels SO GOOD when people are praising you, and when you know you did something they could not have done themselves, especially when that something is as meaningful as preserving memories of their most cherished people and moments for a lifetime.

Then to make money on top of that? Sounds like a dream business.

Dreaming of a better life

I didn’t start my photography business for the money at first (I had a great job that I had no intentions of leaving) but there’s nothing wrong with that if you did.

In fact, I wish more people in this world really pursued making a living doing something they loved and not just taking a job to pay the bills because we’d all be a lot happier.

No matter what the reason was for starting your business, it was rooted in hope and optimism.

I mean, no one starts their business because they think it is going to make life difficult, right?

Maybe people were raving about your photos and you began to realize you had a talent for it and dreamed that you could make it professionally.

Maybe you or your spouse lost your job and couldn’t find anything else, and you were hoping to make some extra money to help pay the bills.

Maybe you wanted the freedom to be your own boss and choose how to spend your time.

Whatever the reason, you started it filled with hope and excitement of having a better life.

Running a photography business can certainly give you this better life, but let’s get real for a moment.

Running a business is stinking hard.

My secret confession

I went to an amazing workshop by Fer Juaristi earlier this week and I heard someone calling me a “heavy hitter” in the industry and I sort of laughed to myself.

I’m just a normal person. I’m just a “Mom with a camera” who struggles with balance and time management and with worries and everything just like you do.

Yes, I know business. I have a lot of tools at my disposal, but that doesn’t make me immune to the struggle.

I burned out working a full time job as well as doing photography in the evenings and weekends.

I worry about booking enough clients. I worry about cash flow and savings. I work far too many hours into the day and night, and struggle with finding balance.

I worry that I’m spending too much time growing this site and that I should be doing more marketing with my actual photography business.

I worry that people will hate me and think I’ve “sold-out”for trying to make money on this site by selling e-books and other helpful resources for photographers, even though I’m taking hours away from my photography business to provide tons of great free advice at the cost of not having as many actual clients.

I work in my pajamas most days, and my house is a mess. In fact, I’m in need of a shower right now too.

But you know what?

It’s worth it.

The path to success

Every stressful client issue I’ve dealt with, every late night I’ve spent working like crazy, and all the risk that came with leaving my lucrative office job to be my own boss and pursue the dream, it’s worth it completely.

I’ve had months of crazy hours and tons of things to do. It’s worth it.

I continue to struggle with finding balance, but it’s worth it.

Even though I stress about money and cash flow and wondering if things are going to be okay, it’s worth it.

I get to see my kids every single day, and not just for a bit at the end of the day before they go to bed.

I have the freedom to do what I really love, which is to empower people to achieve their goals, and that makes me truly come alive!

We’re not limited by a set salary. Our income, while not guaranteed, has the opportunity to grow in leaps and bounds.

We’ve achieved the “success” many people dream of by fully supporting our family as full-time photographers. And it’s stinking amazing.

You can do it, too.

I’m not some rockstar photographer that shot to the top overnight. I’m awkward and quirky (as my videos can prove!) and I’m okay with that. I’m not a photography prodigy and had to work to learn how to create the art that I do. I’m not connected to all the right people who made it easy for me to get where I am.

Chances are, you aren’t either. But you know what? That’s okay.

I’ve worked like crazy to get where I am. I’ve refused to make excuses about my market, my clients, my work, or anything else to keep me from achieving the success I am after.

You can do the same. But don’t expect it to be easy or you’ll get discouraged and give up along the way.

Get help with difficult client situations

One of the most discouraging and stressful parts of starting a photography business was learning how to deal with dissatisfied clients.

In fact, it made me reconsider if I really wanted to do photography as a business or if I just wanted to stick to doing it for myself and my family.

But be encouraged: not only can you learn how to deal with each and every one of the sticky situations you may find yourself in, you can also learn how to prevent them almost entirely through solid business practices.

In a few days, I’ll be launching a new e-book that is going to teach you how to do exactly that (plus learn how to deal with any current situations you may find yourself in). It’s called “The Go-To Guide for Client E-mails: 100+ E-mail Templates for Photographers.” (Note: It’s now live! Go get a copy!)

It’s not going to be cheap, nor do I promise that it won’t require any work from you.

But it’s going to be worth every penny.

From giving you the words you need to respond in tricky situations, to teaching you what you can do to help avoid these situations almost completely, it’s going to rock your business world.

Business is stressful enough the way it is. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

Check it out now. At the very least, download the free sample.

What do you struggle with?

Leave a comment below and let me know what you are struggling with but also what you love about being in business.

True Confessions of a Photographer

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Consultations are the main thing people use to decide what photographer to hire, so it’s absolutely vital to do things right!

Trust me. I had no idea what I was doing when I was just starting out and made lots of mistakes.

After trying all sorts of things to see what worked well and what didn’t (as well as learning a lot about sales and marketing in the process), I came up with 5 main things that I believe are key to effective consultations.

While I write this mostly from a wedding perspective, every single point can be applied to a portrait pre-sales consultation as well.

Here’s my 5 consultation secrets that every photographer should know:

1. Don’t be selfish

When I first approached consultations, the goal was to tell them about me, my services, and get them to book. It was mostly about me and what I offer and do.

While there’s nothing wrong with sharing those things, you have to find a way to make it valuable to your clients as well.

Educate and empower them and they’ll leave feeling like their time was well-spent, which is a very good thing for you.

Talk about how long things take on the day of the wedding. Give them tips for making the wedding day go smoothly. Tell them what they should be thinking about as they consider what photographer would be best for them (making sure to highlight places where you are particularly strong). There’s a number of different things you can do here, so figure out what works best for you and run with it.

If you do portrait consultations, talk about outfits, locations, why your favorite products are the best way to display their images, etc.

There’s tons of value you can give to your client. Share this with them!

They’ll understand that you care about them, that you want them to make a good decision, and that you care about them as a couple and not just about their money.

2. Connect with purpose

If you can make a personal connection with your clients, they’re more apt to book with you. While we like to think we make rational decisions, research shows that we actually use our emotions to make decisions and then create rational arguments to back them up.

Establishing an emotional connection with prospective clients is key to getting bookings, but it’s not the ONLY factor.

After my initial selfish way of approaching consultations by only talking about me and my services, I swung too hard in the other direction. I didn’t talk about my contract or prices hardly at all and just tried to make it a casual conversation about them and their wedding over coffee to build rapport. I only brought up the details if they directly asked about it and just kept them talking about themselves and their wedding. I assumed they looked through all the details I sent them via email before the meeting.

While I think it worked better than the first approach, people didn’t learn enough about our services and had lots of questions afterwards, and I’m sure I lost people from a lack of information being presented. At worst, I’m afraid people felt like it was a waste of time.

The best way to approach this is to start the consultation by asking about them and their wedding. Make mental notes of what they talk about – these are the things that are important to them. If you ask them to tell you about the wedding and they gush about their amazing flowers, you know they value this and you can talk about how you spend time photographing the details, such as the flowers, that they are putting so much time and money into planning. Connect and discover their passions so that you can create an emotional connection to your services.

At a wedding, you always take photos of things like the flower arrangements, so it’s not like you’re just saying what they want to hear (that’s a VERY bad idea, so don’t say it unless you actually do it!) You’re simply confirming that they will be getting the things that they really want if they hire you.

3. Tell them every step of the process

This relates to education, but I wanted to separate it out because it’s easy to forget that our clients don’t know what they need to do to book us.

Make it clear. Tell them every. single. step. of the process. For example, explain that once they decide on a package, they will email you with their decision, then you’ll write up the contract and send it to them. Then they’ll sign it and send it back with a check. Once you get it, you’ll sign it, copy it, and send them a copy for their records and they’ll be booked. The more you can make things crystal clear, the better. It’s NOT obvious to them, and making it clear makes it easier for them to book you.

4. Address their true hesitations

Think about the hesitations your clients may have before you even get to the shoot, and make sure to address them before they even mention it. This is a GREAT way to encourage them to hire you and help prevent them from going elsewhere.

For example, talk about how you do everything you can during the day to make sure the bride looks awesome in her photos (because ever woman worries about how they look in photos).

Providing answers to these hesitations before they even mention them makes it that much easier for them to book you. There’s less holding them back, and by attacking these hesitations head-on you’re actually helping them feel like you relate to them better and would be a good fit for them.

CAUTION:

Make sure you know exactly what your clients are worried about and that you’re not simply showing your own insecurities here instead. For example, if you’re insecure about your pricing, you may go on and on about how your prices are reasonable or why they should hire you and it could come across as insecure and actually hurt you (especially if they don’t think your pricing is too high). Instead, throughout the consultation, talk about how much value you’re providing (without mentioning cost) and they’ll get it implicitly. If you’re not confident about what you are offering, it will be clear and your clients will doubt if you’re worth it as well.

5. Include a call to action

What do you want them to do next? Tell them.

If you just end with something along the lines of “Any questions? No, well thanks for your time, bye!” then they won’t know what you’re expecting them to do next and you’re more likely to be disappointed that they haven’t gotten back to you or done what you were hoping they’d do.

So if you want them to book at the consult, ask them if they are ready to book. (This is most effective when you’ve told them before hand that they can book during the consultation if they are ready).

If you want them to think about it and get back to you later, ask them to do that.

Whatever you want them to do, TELL THEM. It doesn’t have to be pushy. Sometimes we all just need a little nudge in the right direction to finally make a decision.

How exactly do you do all this and sound natural?

I’m going to tell you exactly how I put all of these things into practice, including the specific words that I use, so that you can use this in your own consultations to get more clients.

I’ve decided to send this exclusively to my loyal and amazing email subscribers as a “Thank You” for following The Modern Tog via email and to encourage a few more of you to sign up for my weekly email newsletter. I’m thankful for each one of you, and you can expect to see a link to this in your update next week.

In addition to getting my weekly update, you’ll get more exclusive content every 1-2 months as well.

I’ll also make sure to set it up so that any future subscribers get a copy of it as well, so even if you’re reading this well after it’s been written, you can still get it by signing up below.

All you need to do is enter your email below and click “Join Us”. You’ll then get an email asking you to click a link to confirm your subscription to make sure you signed up for this and someone isn’t giving out your email without your permission. Next comes a welcome email with my amazing free ebook and you will receive our weekly updates and exclusive content going forward. Super easy.

I promise never to sell your email address, and if you ever decide it’s not for you, you can unsubscribe with a click of a button.

So sign up now:

P.S. See what I did there? Provided value, talked about every step of the process I wanted you to take, addressed hesitations and called you to act. These secrets are good for more than just consultations.

5 Consultation Secrets Every Photographer Should Know

Your emails directly affect how many clients you book.

Really amazing response times and well-written emails can help you book clients by making people talk about how great you were to work with.

However, you can lose clients and garner a lot of negative word-of-mouth advertising if you’re making these 10 common email mistakes with clients.

Let’s jump right in.

1. Sending walls of text

People won’t read really big paragraphs. They simply do not have time. Do your best to make your emails as succinct as possible, or break things up into much smaller chunks.

Confession: I’m guilty of this one all the time, particularly when I’m caffeinated and short on time, and I always kick myself later for it.

2. Being overly emotional or defensive

Sometimes when replying to difficult emails, you come across as far more emotional or defensive than you would if you let yourself cool down for a bit first. Couple this with the fact that people will put whatever tone they want into your emails, often worse than you intend, and it ends up being a very bad combination.

3. Writing like you text

Even though photography is very personal in nature, you are still running a business and need to reflect that in your e-mails. It doesn’t need to be cold and impersonal, but avoid things like “ROFL” and other common texting acronyms.

4. Over-explaining things

While there’s nothing wrong with giving the necessary details, there’s no reason to explain your reasons behind your decisions in many situations.

For example, when a client is asking you if they can schedule a session on Sundays but you reserve this as a day off, simply tell them you’re unavailable that day. There’s no reason to explain that it’s your day off, or that you reserve that for family, or whatever your reasons are. Simply tell them that you are unavailable. When you go into more details, they may try to work around you or convince you otherwise, and there’s no reason to open yourself to this when it isn’t necessary. Other businesses have days and hours of operation, and there’s no reason you can’t either.

5. Showing your insecurities & lack of confidence

There are certain situations, such as right after you raise your prices or add new policies where you may project your own insecurities about it onto your clients.

Writing something like “I know this may feel high to you, but I am willing to work with you” when they never said anything about your pricing being high or having a budget tells them straight up that you don’t believe in your products and pricing and that they can haggle with you. It invites them to take advantage of your lack of confidence and suddenly you’ve got a “difficult client” on your hands that may not have been otherwise.

Be confident. You’ll get more respect from it, even when you are dealing with someone who wants to haggle.

6. Getting too personal

There are times in life where things are just plain hard and you may be later than usual in replying to an email. For example, if you had a miscarriage or some type of illness like the stomach flu that kept you from responding in a timely manner.

While you have a very valid excuse for being late, don’t send them all the details. In fact, I’d keep the response fairly generic and say that you had an unexpected hospital emergency or that you were severely ill instead of getting into all the details. You never know how that person will respond to the details, and unless they ask it is best to keep more generic. You don’t want to trigger depression for someone else who has also miscarried and had a hard time of it by unintentionally bringing up the memory of it again.

7. Sending mail at non-business hours

While this isn’t the end of the world and will show clients that you respond quickly (so there’s some merit to it), you’re now setting a precedence that you are willing to work at any time of the day or night and sets an expectation that you’re always “open” for business.

While there’s nothing wrong with doing work at night (let’s face it – if you have a full-time job you may do ALL your photography work during the evenings and weekends), there’s a simple solution that can help with this.

I highly suggest scheduling your emails to send during regular office hours. I’ve done this in Outlook when working in an office, and I use Boomerang to do this in Gmail and it has transformed how I handle my email.

This way you can write your response at 3am if you want, but schedule it to send at 8am the next morning. Pretty swell.

8. You don’t respond promptly (or at all)

As your business grows, your email inbox will become more difficult to manage. It’s vital to your business to respond as promptly as possible and to not just leave things hanging. Respond within 1 business day whenever possible.

Is your email out of control? You can find relief with my free 7-part series that helps you take control of your email inbox once and for all. It starts off with the very basics, but it moves into truly transformational tips (like letting your inbox sort itself using multiple inboxes) that will save you time and show you how to never forget to follow up with a client again.

9. No direct call to action

We send emails for a reason, and we’re usually looking for a response of some sort.

Make this expectation clear. Tell them what to do next, or give them a call to action.

For example, when I am emailing with a prospective client and they ask me a question, I send them the response and then ask them if they’d like to set up a consultation or if they’d like me to write up the contract for them (the call to action depends on the context we’re in). I could simply answer their question, but by inviting them to take the next step it makes it easy for them to do it right then and there. Simple but effective.

10. Send an email that should have been a phone conversation instead

Some things, particularly very bad news, should be delivered in person or over the phone instead of via email. While it’s good practice to send an email after the fact summing up what you talked about so that you’re both on the same page, use discretion and know when to pick up the phone vs. when to simply send an email.

People don’t always read their emails, so if it’s absolutely essential that they read what you’re sending, call them or meet with them in person.

Need help writing emails?

In a few weeks we’ll be launching our newest guide with over 100 email templates for photographers, ensuring you’ll have a great professional response at your fingertips and keeping you from making critical email mistakes that could lose you clients. If you’d like to be one of the first to hear about this, sign up for our email newsletter now:

Don’t Make These 10 Email Mistakes With Clients

If you’re not using testimonials in your marketing, you’re missing out on some powerful free marketing that can get you more clients.

Testimonials show prospective clients that you have lots of people supporting your photography business and it helps them feel more comfortable investing in you as their photographer.

Things like Facebook are fantastic for this, because people know you’re not just making these things up. (Yes, there are some shady people who make up their own reviews. Don’t be one of those people.) They can see the comments about how much people loved the photos you took for them and how much they loved working with you.

Lots of photographers have a little section on their blog or website with “Raves” that has lots of these little testimonials. The thing is, this page may never get looked at.

You’re taking one of your most powerful (and FREE!) marketing tools and hiding it on a single web page where no one may ever find it.

I’m going to tell you how to leverage testimonials and reviews and use them to get more clients, and I’m even going to share my very best secret for getting the exact type of testimonials you need to turn prospective clients into paying clients.

First things first, are you worthy of good reviews?

The best reviews come from people who are thrilled beyond belief with both your products and your service.

(Or they come from you Mom, but don’t put her reviews on the site. Seriously. I know you’ll take anything you can get when you’re starting out, but this is a bad way to go about getting them.)

While it’s great to get testimonials about how beautiful your images are, it’s even better to have reviews about how amazing it was to work with you and how your customer service was outstanding.

People flock to businesses with amazing customer service. So make sure yours is top notch and that you’re always surpassing your clients’ expectations when interacting with them.

The most effective places to put testimonials on your website

The most effective places to put testimonials are places where people may have hesitations or asking themselves if they should book you. Testimonials speak to your client’s hesitations, even before they realize they have them, making your business a more compelling choice in their minds.

A well-placed testimonial is one of the best ways to turn a prospective client into a paying client. Let’s look at these places.

On the front page of your site

When people first come to your site, they’re trying to decide if you’d be a good photographer for them, and you NEED to have a good first impression or they’ll just click away. I want them to see a good testimonial right away because I want their first impression of us to be a positive one. So when you visit our wedding photography website, you’ll see a slideshow on the homepage that has 3 images with a testimonial on each image. Here is one of the photos (click to visit our Madison Wedding Photography site and see the entire slideshow).

Onn info pages and FAQ pages

Another place that I put a testimonial is after the page I created called Your Roadmap to Fabulous Wedding Photography. It walks them through the booking process and then at the end shows them a Facebook status with all sorts of gushing comments. This implies that if they book us they’ll get awesome results and their friends will write all sorts of great comments about their photos too (and we all love comments on Facebook). Here’s what they see:

On your pricing page

Finally, the last vital place that I suggest using testimonials is on your pricing page. I’ll talk about that in the next section.

What kinds of testimonials are the most powerful?

As photographers, most of the testimonials we get are going to be about how beautiful our work is. This is great, but the most influential testimonials are the ones that speak directly to someone’s hesitation and convinces them that it isn’t a problem when working with you.

For example, when people are looking at your pricing page, they wonder if they can afford you. This is a great place to use a testimony about how you were worth the price. For example:

“Lemon Tree Photographers were by far the best investment we made in our wedding day, giving us amazing images that bring us back to our wedding day each time we look at them!”

Just as they’re wondering if you’re worth the price, BAM! They’re hit with a testimonial that tells them that it’s worth it and they won’t have any regrets.

See how strategic you can be with these? So much more powerful than hiding them away on their own little page where no one may ever look at them.

The secret to getting the very best testimonials

So how do you get these perfect testimonials?

Ask for them. But be strategic about what you ask.

If you come right out and ask “hey, could you write about how we were worth the money?” it’s going to sound fake, even if they are glad to write it and mean exactly what they are saying in their testimonial.

Instead, ask them leading questions that will give you the testimonials you want.

Create a survey for every client to fill out after working with you. Not only will this give you great testimonials, but it will help you improve your service and learn exactly what your clients think about working with you. Some of the answers you get back may be difficult to hear, but it’s the only way to improve and move forward so take both the good and the bad and do your best to keep improving all the time.

If you want a quote for your pricing page like the one above, you might ask the following leading question:

“Do you feel like the images and service you received from Lemon Tree Photographers was worth what you paid for it? How so?”

A natural answer would be:

“Lemon Tree Photographers were by far the best investment we made in our wedding day, giving us amazing images that bring us back to our wedding day each time we look at them!”

There’s a perfect testimonial for your pricing page.

Or maybe you have clients who feel self-conscious about how they look in photos and you want to use a testimonial to assure them that they’ll look fantastic. Ask them, “How do you look in your portraits compared to how you normally look in photos?”

They may answer:

“I never like the way I look in most photos, but you made me look absolutely stunning!!!”

See how easy it is?

Sit down and think about all the hesitations people may have while considering your work, and come up with 3-5 questions that you can ask them using a client survey that will speak to these hesitations and help people overcome them.

Don’t ask clients to answer more than 3-5 questions or they will be annoyed and possibly not finish filling it out. Make it quick and easy. If you have more than 3-5 questions you want to ask, simply create more than one survey and just give different surveys to different clients so that you can get the testimonies you need.

How to create a survey

There’s lots of things you can use to make a survey. I LOVE Gravity Forms for this, because it’s easy to use right on my website, it’s super-customizable, and I can do conditional logic with it. I highly recommend it.

Bonus resource: Check out this link for free speech and thought bubbles (that include free commercial usage!) to make your testimonials stand out even more!

Testimonials are incredibly powerful, so don’t waste them. Put them to work for you, and see how it helps you to get more clients.

If you like this post, check out our free e-Book called “5 Common Mistakes That Lose You Business (And How to Attract Your Ideal Clients Like Crazy)” I know you’ll love it.

What kinds of questions will you be asking in your surveys? Leave a comment below listing them out and share with everyone. It’s a great way to contribute and be part of the community, which is what this site is all about!

How To Leverage Testimonials & Reviews To Get More Clients

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full year since creating my first list of Top 10 Must-Read Blogs for Photographers, and I had no idea how popular it would be (right now it’s the 3rd most read post on my entire blog!)

I’ve decided to make this an annual list. There’s more and more blogs for photographers starting up every day, and so I want to help you cut through the fluff and find the blogs that will really help you grow your business.

It was incredibly hard to narrow it down to just 10 blogs, but I’ve painstakingly done so to bring you only the best.

Top 10 Must-Read Blogs for Photographers (2012)

1. Psychology for Photographers

Psychology for Photographers is a brand new blog that rocks my socks off. Amazing content that will help you get more clients and sell more to your clients, and Jenika, the author of the site, has a heart of gold for helping people. I can’t get enough of her posts.

2. Photography Web Marketing Guide

Zach Prez does a really great job talking about how to use the internet to market and grow your photography business. He’s got some fabulous products such as the Photography Web Marketing Guide, 55 Smart Web Ideas for Photographers, and Photography Blog Success.

3. Photography Concentrate

Rob & Lauren are amazing at putting up concentrated posts full of useful information for photographers. They are incredibly talented at teaching, and their tutorial products are both thorough and yet broken down into easy steps making learning a breeze. I highly recommend checking out Awesome Album Design Skills, Extremely Essential Camera Skills, and their new e-book Simple Wedding Photography.

4. PhotoMint

Lara White has a plethora of helpful posts on her blog, especially if you are a wedding photographer (although other professional photographers will still get much value out of her posts as well.) Her free “Get Published” guide is amazing for helping you gain exposure and publicity for free, and her new e-book “Get Connected: Build Relationships to Drive Your Business” tells you all her secrets for getting valuable referrals for your business.

5. Elizabeth Halford

Elizabeth Halford is a portrait photographer in the UK who writes very helpful tips for photographers. She’s great at taking technical concepts like focal length and bit depth and making them easy to understand for us non-techy types.

6. Brand Camp Blog

Kristen Kalp makes me swoon with jealousy when I read her writing. Seriously, she knows writing, branding, business and how to bring it all together to make your photography business thrive like crazy. She also uses her super powers to hug orphans in India and make the world a better place.

7. Tiffinbox

Seshu’s Tiffinbox is an incredible site that is full of resources and has input from photographers around the world on it. He’s not afraid to shake things up, such as with this post called “On Chasing Rainbows and Unicorns” (which was written by a local colleague of mine). Definitely a site worth following.

8. Digital Photography School

While dPS is not primarily geared towards photography businesses, they have several posts that will help you grow your business as well as a comprehensive e-book called the “Going Pro Kit” that will walk you through what you need to do to finally start your business step by step (and it covers more than just portraits and wedding photography). There’s also tons of information to learn to be a better photographer and a thriving community to get involved in.

9. Tofurious

Lawrence is downright brilliant for the amazing posts he publishes. He’s great at making you think (and making you hungry!) and I have made tons of extra money from what I learned in his Creative Pricing & Packaging ebook that I bought and implemented into my wedding packages. He also published a physical book called “Social Media Marketing for Digital Photographers” that is available through Amazon.

10. A Man to Fish

Todd never ceases to make you think about why you are doing what you are doing, where the value is, and when to step outside of the box. He’s a great person to read to really think about why you do what you do in your business. While I don’t always agree with his opinions or thoughts, they get me thinking about my business in a new light and makes me really consider why i do things the way I do them.

What are your favorite blogs?

I know there are TONS of blogs for photographers out there that aren’t on this list. List your favorites below in the comments (and link to them!)

Full disclosure, many of the links above are affiliate links, however this was not a factor in determining rankings (obviously, as my #1 pick has no affiliate links attached at all).

Top 10 Must-Read Blogs for Photographers in 2012

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As of March 30, 2012 your Facebook business page will be converted to a Timeline and the old structure of pages will be gone.

While at first this seemed like it was going to be another negative change made by Facebook, after doing a bunch of research I actually think this is going to benefit photographers fairly significantly.

Regardless, whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to change over on March 30th, so I thought I’d share with you everything you need to know about the Timeline for Facebook Pages (including some secrets at the end for really stepping things up!).

Introduction Timeline for Facebook Pages

(Click photo for a larger version of the image.)

1. Large cover image

This is now the first thing people see when they go to your Facebook page. You can no longer set a different page to be the default landing tab of your page (although these tabs still exist, more on them in #5 below). This is probably the only big downfall of the switch to Timeline, but it’s better for those of us who don’t have the time or resources to create something cool and custom for that tab because our images can speak for us more.

WARNING! Read these rules about cover images!

Facebook has created very strict rules as to what you can and cannot put on your cover image.

The basic guideline is that you can’t put anything on it that you’d put in your about page. The specifics can be read about in their guidelines.

No website url or any contact information at all, no calls to action (so no arrows asking people to like your page, no text telling them to visit your website, etc), and no blatant advertising.

Don’t be tempted to break this rule. It’s not worth risking your page being shut down (and yes, Facebook does that every so often to people.)

You CAN show your logo, however. I think Coca Cola does a great job with being creative, showing their brand, and creating a feeling of community.

Free Facebook Timeline Cover Template

You can download a free Facebook Timeline Cover template for photoshop by clicking right here: Facebook-Timeline-Cover-Image.psd (You may need to right-click and “save as” or “save target as”).

Make sure to delete the overlay layer showing you where the small profile image sits on it and all the info is written before saving. No idea if this works with elements or not, so if it doesn’t, sorry!

2. Profile Image

The profile image sits on top of the cover image on the bottom left. It actually covers up more of the cover photo when viewed on small mobile devices like the iPhone, so don’t make your design dependent on it not moving at all.

The profile image is 126 x 126 pixels as a thumbnail, but I suggest using a photo that is 720 x 720 pixels as then people can see the big image if they click on it. As long as you keep your image square, it will completely fill the square as a thumbnail.

This is what will show when people link to your page or like your page, so you’ll want it to be something that catches the eye. I chose to put my logo in there for our wedding photography business. I also show a few different examples of how people have used this creatively at the end of the post.

Free Facebook Timeline Profile Image Template

You can download a free Facebook Timeline Profile Image template for photoshop by clicking right here: Facebook-Timeline-Profile-Image.psd (You may need to right-click and “save as” or “save target as”).

Again, make sure to delete the overlay layer showing you where image overlaps the cover image and all the info is written before saving. No idea if this works with elements or not, so if it doesn’t, sorry!

3. About your business

There’s a range of different things that go here depending on your page. I wanted to type out a description and link to my site here, and I keep getting questions about how to do it, so here’s the step-by-step answer!

Go to “Manage” on your admin panel and select “Edit Page.”

Then on the left, select the following options:

You can also select “Photographer” from the Sub-Categories right below there, and then instead of seeing “Small Business” on the first line of the front page, it’ll say “Photographer”. You can visit my page if you want to see it in action.

Make sure to save your changes at the bottom of the screen after doing this! Changes may take a few minutes to show up.

Now, anything you put in the “About” line of your information will show up on the front, including links. Pretty sweet.

4. Messages for Pages – A Mixed Blessing

People can use this to send messages to your page directly instead of to you as a person.

While this is awesome, and I love it, you aren’t currently notified when you get messages unless you check your page, so be VERY careful not to miss a message!

If you’re afraid you won’t remember to check it, you can turn it off. Just go to Manage then Edit Page and then deselect the Show Message button.

5. Your Former Tabs

This is where your former custom tabs show up if you had any. Photos will always go first, but otherwise if you have more than 3 or 4 you can arrange the order in which they show up.

The biggest loss here is that you can’t set one of these to be the default landing page anymore, so it’s not going to be as powerful as it once was. Boo.

6. Pinned Posts

While you can’t have a default landing page or advertise on your cover image, you CAN pin a post to the top of your page for people to see. This will have a little orange ribbon on the top right side of the post. When you hover over your post, you’ll see the star & pencil icons show up in the upper right-hand corner of the post. Click on the pencil and you’ll see the following options:

Select “Pin to Top” and the post will pin to the top of your Timeline in the left-hand column.

This can stay pinned for up to 7 days, so it’s not a permanent pin like I originally thought it would be, but it’s something that you can continue to use throughout time.

Reposition Photo

The other handy thing to note in this menu is that you can change how the picture is positioned (or cropped from view) if you do not like the default position. Kind of a handy little feature for those of us who are visually creative. Just click the button, drag the photo around, and save. No zooming in and out, but at least it is something!

Hide from Page

If there’s something you want to broadcast to your followers that you don’t want cluttering up your timeline for everyone to see, you can select to “Hide” it as well. I honestly see no reason to do this at all, but I want as much engagement as I can get so I want it all out there.

7. Friend Activity

This is by far one of the things I’m most excited about as far as all the changes go.

This section will look different for everyone who visits, although it will all be formatted the same.

First it tells you how many of your friends like this page (and how many have checked in, if you have that enabled).

Really cool.

Then down below, it shows a status update from a friend of yours about your page. What I find interesting is that your page might not even be tagged in it, and it may still show up. For example, I see this on the Coca Cola Facebook page from one of my Facebook Friends, even though Coca Cola isn’t tagged and isn’t even spelled the same:

When people see that their friends like a page and have written comments on it right there in front of them, they’re more likely to engage and like it as well. Super powerful.

8. Highlight Stories & Milestones

Want to have a post stretch all the way across both columns of your Timeline? Click the little star in the top right side of your post. Voila! Big image, same size as the cover. While I wouldn’t do that for every post, it is nice to do something like that for occasional posts that have more importance. I plan to do it each time I post a wedding, and then gift that cover image to my couples along with their digital images.

Remember, you can re-adjust the crop by clicking the pencil icon, which is super helpful when it crops to such a narrow size.

Milestones

These are very similar to the highlight stories, but they seem to get even a bit more attention than highlights. You have to call it a milestone when you create it, which you can see right above the box where you create your status.

Interestingly enough, the size of the Milestone photo is different from the canvas image. It’s 843 x 403 pixels, so just slightly narrower and significantly taller.

Tiffany did a great job of using a Milestone, and using a white background made it look like it is larger than it is. Really beautiful. In fact, visit their page and feast your eyes on their big beautiful photos in their timeline. Go ahead, this post will be here when you’re ready for it again.

9. Admin Panel & Messages

This is where you see your notifications & messages. It’s pretty self-explanatory. You’ll get notifications to the left of your Facebook newsfeed for anything that shows up in the notifications column, but NOT for the messages. This actually shows you the first few lines of each of the messages, but you don’t have any way of knowing when you get one unless someone sends it. I’m hoping Facebook changes this soon.

10. Insights & Statistics

This shows you your most current likes and a generic graph of talking about this, reach, and posts. So you’ll see a dot each time you post (which changes in size based on how often you post daily), you’ll see reach which is how many people see it (so friends of friends or things like that) and then talking about this is when people engage with your content or talk about it in a way that can be tied back to your page (like in the Coke vs Coca Cola example above).

You can click through to see more Insights, but I’m not going to go into them now as that’s a whole different post in and of itself.

BONUS! The extra little stuff you can do to rock your Facebook page!

Here’s a few extra little tips to help make your page amazing and get more people engaged & hiring you.

Highlight awesome client comments using the Activity Log

Right now when other people post on your Timeline, it shows up as a small post right under where you see your friend activity.

It’s not given much fanfare, so if someone writes something really amazing, it gets a bit lost there. This is unfortunate.

Thankfully, by going into your Activity Log (click Manage, then Use Activity Log) you can see every action that’s happened by you or others in regards to your page, and you can hide certain posts, leave them as they are, or highlight them to give them more importance. You can do this to both your posts and to the posts others have made on your timeline.

You can even filter them to only show posts by others, so you can easily look through which ones you’d like to highlight.

So now those fabulous comments made by others can look like this on your timeline:

Don’t just link to blog posts

Instead of just adding a link to your blog posts, upload one of the photos from the post and then link to the post in the description. Not only will it be more eye-catching, but photos are given more weight in the newsfeed than links, so more people are likely to see it.

Make your cover image & profile picture look awesome

Here’s a few cover images that I absolutely love. To get the transparent look, use the templates I provide and make sure that the profile image (which is not actually transparent) has the appropriate part of the image insterted into it where it should go.

Sam Gibson

Matt Shumate

Ryan Brenizer

What do you think of timeline for pages?

Leave a comment below or on our Facebook Page!

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Everything You Need to Know About Timeline for Facebook Pages

Photo Credit

Today’s post is written by Lara White of PhotoMint.

Most photographers have no idea how to get clients. Sound familiar? There’s a manual for using your gear, classes on lighting, and books about composition. But what about getting business in the door? Oh, you’ll find the usual suspects. You might sign up for monthly online advertising packages that cost an arm and a leg and offers a vague promise to “help you achieve your business objective” whatever that means. Perhaps you put in a few weeks of earnest effort on Facebook only to have 17 fans (and half of them are related to you).

So what’s the secret-the magic formula? The secret is, there is no magic formula. But there is one thing behind the success of many well-known photographers, and that’s networking.

Networking is all about expanding your contacts and meeting people who might want to do business with you or send you referrals. However, it requires some finesse in order to get the results you are looking for.

It’s a very effective technique for photographers when done right. As a wedding photographer, networking is the foundation of my business. I network with planners, florists, designers and anyone and everyone connected to the event industry. More than 70% of my business comes from networking and follow up, and I’ve put together some tips for you so you can experience the same kind of results. It doesn’t matter what type of photography you do; all photographers need good contacts in order to thrive.

Many people take the wrong approach and give up after attending one or two events. Learn how to make it work like a charm for you.

Advance Planning

Advance planning is one of the little known secrets to successful networking. Just a few minutes makes a huge difference. Do you know how many people go to networking events without a single business card? Restock your business cards and brochures (don’t you hate it when you meet someone awesome and you  reach for a business card and it’s one of those dirty, dog-eared cards that’s been in your wallet forever?)

If you can review the rsvp list, see who’s attending that you want to meet or connect with so you can prepare how to approach them. For example, if you’ve wanted to get into pet photography, see if anyone in the pet industry (groomer, vet, pet store owner) is attending.

Finally, have a few interesting stories picked out that you can share. Remember, most people think of photography as a glamorous career and would like to hear a few highlights or funny stories.

Goals

Why are you going and what do you want to accomplish? If you are a wedding photographer, you might set a goal of meeting two new event planners. Or you set a goal of walking up to three strangers and starting a conversation. The goal should be reasonable; you are not trying to sign new clients, just meeting people. Talking to strangers and making friends.

Walk Up to Strangers

Let’s talk a bit more about that. Because this is crucial. Networking is about making contacts and creating business relationships. To make this happen, you do have to walk up to strangers and introduce yourself. This is hard; but luckily, that’s the point of the event, so you are not doing anything unexpected. One trick I use is to pick someone who looks nervous and go talk to them. You know the type-a lone soul hugging a wall and nervously looking around. If I can get out of my own fear for a moment and think about helping someone else, it’s a lot easier to walk over to them and introduce myself. Typically they are grateful to be rescued and eager to talk to someone. Once I’ve done that, I’m usually a bit more warmed up and ready to meet more people.

Tip: Have a few openers in mind. You might ask someone if this is their first event with the organization, comment (positively) on the venue, food or view, or ask how they are enjoying the event so far. From there, the idea is to keep the conversation going to get to know the other person and allow them to get to know you.

Be a Good Listener

Networking is an interesting mix of business and social. You don’t want to come off as all business because that’s kind of boring and no one wants to be sold to. Yet you don’t want to overshare about personal details. Think of it as making business friends. To make a great connection with someone, be a good listener. People love to talk about themselves. Ask questions and genuinely try to get to know people. Smile and make eye contact when talking with them.

Follow Up

Photo Credit

At the beginning you want to get to know them better, so don’t send over a business proposal or suggest how they can help you. Instead, try a Facebook friend request, follow them on Twitter, or just send them a note letting them know you enjoyed meeting them. If you talked about a product or service, you could send a link to more info, but keep it casual. If the connection is strong, invite them out for drinks to continue the conversation.

Tip:Think of images as a type of currency you can use to build relationships. Most businesses are desperate for good marketing images. If they have the capacity to send business and refer clients to you, is there a collaborative project you can come up with to get them marketing images and new clients for you? For wedding photographers, this is easy. Provide venues and planners with a disc of images from their events and you’ll start to see referrals.

One portrait photographer created 20×30 wall portraits of hair stylists in a salon and was able to pick up new clients from the salon’s customers. It was an easy sell-when salon customers asked about the gorgeous image of their stylist up on the wall, the stylists couldn’t help but gush about the photographer. Kind of brilliant, actually.

Just remember, networking events can open the door. It’s up to you to walk through it and turn that opening into a relationship.

Note from Jamie: Want to learn all of Lara’s secrets for getting referrals through networking with vendors? Check out her new ebook Get Connected: Build Relationships to Drive Your Business (affiliate link). She sent me a copy to review and it’s absolutely fantastic. While I knew many of the concepts she talks about, there were an incredible amount of concrete examples of things to do that I hadn’t thought about that I will be implementing. Definitely a must-have resource if you’re looking for more clients (and who isn’t?).

Lara White is a professional photographer and author. For more tips and techniques on networking check out Lara’s new ebook: Get Connected: Build Relationships to Drive Your Business. To read more of her marketing and business tips for photographers, head over to her blog: PhotoMint.

One of the Best Kept Secrets of Successful Photographers for Getting More Clients

This post is Part 7 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

If you’ve been following along this last week, you now have your email set up to really work for you and reduce the amount of time you spend on email.

Here’s a few tips for maintaining your inbox and keeping it a stress-free place in the future.

Play the Email Game to get things back under control

Well all let things go from time to time.

Don’t let it bring you down.

If you have Boomerang installed, uset the Email Game for clearing things out again and getting back to where you need to be. This is also a fun thing to use if you haven’t finished cleaning out your inbox from the task in day 4.

3 Tips for Maintaining Peace in your Inbox

1. Only check your email when you have time to respond. Deal with everything that hits your inbox first – respond to them, boomerang it, label and archive, delete, or create a new filter for it so it doesn’t show up in the inbox again if it isn’t supposed to be there. Aim for a clear main inbox every single time, even if you don’t respond to everything immediately.

2. Have a set time each day when you respond to emails in the “Respond Inbox” (or twice a day if that makes you feel better.) Respond to everything. If you need to wait to respond to something, boomerang it instead so it isn’t cluttering up your inboxes.

3 Set aside some time to browse and delete/archive the “Vendor & To Read” emails when you’re finished reading them. These won’t take up nearly as much time and since you’re setting aside time to do it, it’s no longer a distraction to everything else you’re working on.

Task for Day #7: Share this Email Series with a friend

If you found this series helpful, please share it with your friends! Link to it on a group or forum that you are a part of, share it on Facebook or Twitter, or pin it on Pinterest. Here’s the direct link to the first part of the series for you to use: http://www.themoderntog.com/take-control-of-your-email-inbox-once-and-for-all

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

This post is Part 6 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

So far this email series has harnessed the power of Gmail to automatically organize emails and save time responding to emails by creating canned responses, but this still doesn’t address the times when you need to send a response in a few days but you don’t want to forget about it so it sits in your inbox and sometimes gets buried.

Today’s tool is the last big piece in the puzzle. We’ll be looking at Boomerang, which has changed the way I use email.

Never forget to “follow up later” ever again

Boomerang is how you keep your inbox clear while still remembering to respond to people in the future when you need to.

I’m going to admit something to you. I’m never used to be very good at following up in a timely manner to inquiries after I’d sent them my information to see if they had a chance to look it over and ask them if they’d like to meet with us. I was great at sending the initial information, just not so great at sending a follow up if I don’t hear back. I have a better booking ratio with people I follow up with than with those I don’t, so I know it’s an important thing to be doing. I just forgot to go back and do it regularly enough, and before I know it 2 weeks have passed and they already booked someone else.

This is where Boomerang came in and changed everything.

Boomerang allows you to archive a message for a certain amount of time, and if the person you sent it to doesn’t respond within that time frame then it will reappear at the top of your inbox as an unread message whenever you want. This is brilliant.

Now as soon as I see the message reappear in my inbox, I open it up, insert a follow-up response using Canned Responses that I personalize with their name and maybe one other thing, and I send it off. I only do one follow up so as not to annoy people, so I use the “Send and Archive” button and that’s the last I have to think about it.

I no longer have to remember to go and follow up with people – Boomerang makes it easy to do it when I want to do it. So wonderful.

Not only that, but Boomerang allows you to schedule messages and send them later. This is handy if someone sends you a message in the middle of the night, but you don’t want to show them that you’re awake at 3 am working on your business, so you can schedule it to send at 8am or 9am the next morning. It’s also useful to schedule payment reminder emails as soon as a client books with you so that you don’t have to worry about it later.

It’s utterly fabulous.

The only downside to Boomerang is that they limit the number of emails you can send for free after the first month (which is unlimited). After that, it’s $4.95 a month if you want to boomerang or schedule more than 10 emails that month.

But honestly if I book one extra wedding per year, or even get one extra portrait client per year because I followed up in a timely manner, it’s more than paid for itself again and again.

FYI, If you sign up for the paid plan using one of the links in this post, we both get an extra month free which is pretty cool.

But even if you never use the paid version, being able to use it 10 times a month is still really helpful and I highly suggest it.

Download and Install Boomerang now.

Task for Day #6: Install Boomerang and give it a try

What has been the most helpful email tip so far in this series? Leave a comment below and let me know. Then check out Part 7 of the series by clicking the link below!

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang

This post is Part 5 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

Today we’re going to be looking at 2 quick tips that will help you to spend less time on email.

The first tip is most useful when combined with filters for auto-organizing things that you sign up for in the future.

The second tip is amazing for saving time in responding to clients.

The secret power of the “+”

This is a really cool and hardly-used feature that can be super useful for keeping everything organized.

Let’s say you set up your Gmail with the email address: contact@myphotobiz.com

Gmail will still deliver any emails that you send to contact+XXXXXXXXX@myphotobiz.com to your account, where XXXXXXXXX can be anything you want it to be.

So you could create a filter for all email sent to contact+read@myphotobiz.com that skips the inbox and adds the label “read” so that it shows up in the “Vendors & To Read” Inbox. You’d then use that email address when signing up for newsletters or other stuff you’d like to have but don’t need to see immediately.

You could also use it on your contact form and create a filter that puts a star next to every new inquiry that comes from the contact form on your website.

Note: This only works for the primary email address you use to sign in to Gmail. It doesn’t work with the other emails that you manage within the same Gmail account, which is kind of a bummer when you manage multiple emails in one place. Send yourself an email to try it out – it’s really swell.

Save time by using Canned Responses

Do you find yourself writing the same email over and over again?

This is where Canned Responses come into play.

Canned Responses allows you to save an email that you send often and paste it into your current email so it can be customized, personalized, and used again and again with your clients.

For example, I have emails saved that I send to all my new inquiries, to all inquiries that I am following up to, and for sending out payment reminders.

To create a canned response, start composing a new message. Once you have the email written, go to canned responses and select “New Canned Response….” under Save and it will save your response. To use it in the future, start a new email (or reply to an email), place your cursor where you want to add the canned response, click “Canned Response” and select “Insert” and the name of the response you want to add.

You can then edit it as needed. I highly suggest using at least one or two personalized notes at the start or end of an email and customizing them as needed so that they don’t sound generic, because being generic will only hurt your business.

Task for Day #5: Create Canned Responses for emails that you find yourself writing over and over again

If you aren’t already following us via email, sign up for our weekly newsletter using the “+” tip above and see how it works. It’s a great way to make sure you get all the posts from our website and hear about what’s happening behind-the-scenes with The Modern Tog.

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the last big tool that you need for really getting your email under control. This tool is amazing for keeping track of emails that need to be followed up on at a later date, and is invaluable to me in client management.

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

2 Big Time Saving Tips For Gmail

This post is Part 4 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

By now, you should have Google Apps (or Gmail) set up, understand the essentials of Gmail and have a few key labels set up, and labs you need should be enabled. If not, go back and make sure to do these things first.

This step is where the magic begins to happen.

In this part of the series, we’re going to be using the power of Gmail to do the main sorting for you. This should take care of most of the clutter in your inbox already, and then you’ll only have to manually sort a small part of what’s already there. So let’s jump in.

Eliminate clutter & watch your email organize itself by using Multiple Inboxes

We’re going to set up multiple inboxes so that your important emails do not get lost amongst the other emails. This is the first vital step in finding email relief. It’s quick and easy to set up and will instantly help make your email experience better.

We will be setting up 4 separate email inboxes that are all displayed on the same page.

Here’s what goes into the inboxes:

Main Inbox: All the important emails you need to see right away (see the different types of emails in this post).

Respond Inbox: Any emails that require a response that I can’t respond to immediately go here. You’ll manually add a “respond” label to emails you want in this box.

Vendors & To Read Inbox: All the emails that you want to read but aren’t vitally important go here. They arrive here directly when received and skip the main inbox without any work from you.

Eventual To-Do Inbox: Sometimes I come across an idea or something I want to do in the future, so I email the idea to myself and label it “Eventual To-Do” so that it goes into this inbox. These are not things you HAVE to do, but rather things you would like to do if you have time but aren’t a big deal if you never get to them. This is also where I put good resources that I want to keep for the future but I don’t want hidden in my archives. You could also use a pinterest board or something else to track this instead, but I choose to do it using email because then I’m not limited to just pinning an image and can write out various ideas I have that may not be associated with a website and sometimes these things come via email.

Set up a filter for the Vendors & To Read Inbox

The first thing we are going to do is set up a filter that tells Gmail to label the corresponding “Vendor & To Read” emails correctly and skip the inbox when they are received.

Go into your settings again and select “Filters” and then “Create a new filter”.

You’ll see the following panel pop up:

In the “Has the words” box, copy and paste the following:

TrueRemove OR unsubscribe OR safeunsubscribe OR SafeUnsubscribe

Because the US requires all email lists to have the option to unsubscribe, almost all email providers add one of these phrases to the emails automatically somewhere in the email. This tells Gmail to search for all these phrases and do something special if they find one of them anywhere in the email body.

Now click “Create filter with this Search >>”. You’ll be brought to the action panel.

Select “Skip the Inbox” and “apply the label” and select “read“. Then click on “Also apply filter to XXX matching conversations” so that it looks at all your current emails plus all new incoming emails, and click “Create Filter“.

This may not catch all of your vendor emails, so if some of them slip through and land in your main inbox, you can always come back and add on any additional phrases like this by editing your filter. Just put “OR” in all capital letters between the words you want it to search for.

So now that these emails no longer are in your main inbox and are automatically archived with the “read” label attached, we need to put them into their own special inbox using Multiple Inboxes. We’ll do this in the next step.

Configure Multiple Inboxes so they know what to put in each inbox

If you haven’t already created labels called “respond” and “to-do”, do this before going onto the next step.

Go back into your settings panel, and click “Multiple Inboxes” which is an option in your settings list across the top of the page.

The first thing you’ll want to do is to name the inboxes on the right-hand side.

Then, in the corresponding boxes to the left of the inbox titles, we’re going to copy and paste the following text in bold:

Pane 0: label:respond

Pane 1: label:read

Pane 2: label:to-do

This tells Gmail to put any messages that you label with the “respond” label into the first inbox. Ideally this box would always be empty as you’d respond as soon as you get the email, but that’s not always possible. Set some time aside every single day to respond to these.

Then emails that are newsletters or vendor emails go into the second box. You can also create filters for other emails (like reminders or tracking updates) to also be labeled “read” so that they show up in this box as well.

The third inbox is for things you eventually want to do if you find the time. This is an optional box, but I find it really useful and like to set aside every so often to at least look through these and maybe implement a few of them. You would label individual messages (or send messages to yourself as notes) to put in this box.

Task for Day #4: Set up Multiple Inboxes & empty your main inbox!

A lot of the work has already been done for you by setting up multiple inboxes, but you may still have lots of emails left in your main inbox to sort. Use the search function to help do bulk sorting when you want to do something like delete all your facebook or twitter notifications.

If there are newsletters that you no longer read, unsubscribe from them. Turn off all the social media notifications you don’t really need.

Respond to any emails that can be responded to in 2 minutes or less, otherwise tag them as respond and set aside a time later to start working your way through them.

Use the to-do label to store things you want to remember or look at later when there’s time (or when you make time, because let’s face it, there’s rarely extra time when you run a business!)

Create filters to automatically send any mail that you want to land in the “Vendor & To Read” box right away instead of your inbox like we did above.

Then once you’ve got a good chunk of sorting done, do something nice to reward yourself. Then head to part 5 where I’ll be sharing 2 tips that make things easier, including faster responses. Things only get better from here!

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes (this post)
Two Big Time-Saving Tips“>5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes

This post is Part 3 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

Now that you’ve got the basics of Gmail down, we’re going to get into some of the extra features available, called “Labs”, that make Google even more helpful.

But before we jump into that, I think it’s important to talk about the different kinds of email you get in your inbox so that you can determine what you want to do with it when it arrives.

The 4 Main Types of Email

There are 4 main types of email that you receive every day.

1. Important emails that you need to read and respond to immediately. This includes things like new client inquiries, current client correspondence, new online orders placed by your clients, some reminders and some personal emails.

2. Less important emails that you need to read and respond to. This includes things like questions from colleagues, requests from other vendors, some reminders and some personal emails.

3. Emails that you want to read but do not have to be read immediately and may or may not require a response. For example, my email newsletter (sign up at the top right of this page) is a great way to make sure you see every post here that helps you grow your business, but you don’t need to read it right away or respond to it immediately.

Other examples of this include:

• Newsletters
• Vendor Promotions
• Groupon-like emails such as Photo Dough
• Receipts
• Tracking notifications for items being shipped to you
• Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest notifications
• Some Reminders
• Some Personal Emails

4. Emails you don’t want at all. This would include things you’ve signed up for in the past that you no longer read, unsolicited emails, and spam. Thankfully, Gmail does an absolutely wonderful job at eliminating spam so that you rarely if ever see it. I think I end up with only 4-5 emails all year that land in my inbox that are actually spam. It’s incredible.

Start thinking about where you’d categorize the various emails you receive each day. We’ll use this information in tomorrow’s post to start filtering out everything in groups 3 and 4 so that you can focus on the things that really need to be done without distraction.

Extra Awesomeness from Google Labs

There’s several extra super-useful tools available for use with Gmail that need to be enabled to really rock your inbox, so we’re going to get that set up right now.

Here’s what you do.

Click on the Settings button at the top of the page, and select “Settings” (which is also called “Mail Settings” in other places).

You’ll see a number of options across the top to select from. Choose “Labs.”

Now, click “Enable” for all of the following labs:

Multiple Inboxes – Lets you use more than one inbox, which we’ll discuss in part 4 of this series.

Canned Responses – Saves emails for you to use again and again. We’ll discuss this more in part 5 of the series.

Undo Send – This one lets you undo your send for a few moments after hitting the send button. Useful if you forget to attach a document and realize it right away, etc.

Send & Archive – Automatically archive the email when you send a response to someone. Super useful for keeping your inbox clean. I need to use this button more.

Insert Images – Puts the image into your email body instead of just attaching it. Nice feature to have, but not necessary.

There’s lots of other useful things here, so take a peek at them and enable any others that you think would be helpful.

Once you’ve enabled them, MAKE SURE TO CLICK SAVE at the bottom or none of them will be saved.

I’ve found that sometimes the save button won’t let you click it, but if you move to a different settings tab at the top of the page and click “save” at the bottom of that page, it still saves your settings. Annoying, but not a big deal.

Task for Day #3: Enable the labs you need to enable and prepare yourself for some serious awesomeness tomorrow

Once you’ve done this, head to part 4 where we watch our email organize itself.

Today is part 3 of a 7 part series. You can see the other parts of the series by clicking the links below.

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers (this post)
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

What’s one of your favorite tools for helping you manage your inbox? Leave a comment below and share!

Google Labs For Photographers

This post is Part 2 of “Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All” series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the series in case you missed it.

Before you can really dig into the best parts of Gmail, you have to have a handle on some of the basics.

If you’ve been using Gmail for awhile, you’ll probably be familiar with most of this already, but you’ll need to at least set up a few key labels that we’ll be using in future posts to make your inbox work for you.

Search

The search bar at the top of the page searches through all your email to help you find stuff. It is incredibly powerful and does a fantastic job of pulling up relevant results, so I use it often.

Archives

This was confusing to me when I first started using Gmail, but it’s quite lovely once you understand it. Once you’ve responded to an email or want to keep an email but don’t need to see it in front of you in your inbox, then archive it. It doesn’t delete it, but it doesn’t clutter up your inbox any longer. You can easily find the email in the future by searching for it using the search bar at the top.

Labels

Labels are much like folders in other email clients, but they are a bit more useful. The nice thing about labels is that a single email can have multiple labels, so you don’t have to copy your message into various folders if it needs more than one category.

I started out using lots of labels (one for each client, for example) and found later that this was an unnecessary step because the search was so good that if I wanted to see all the emails from a client I simply had to search for their name and it brought up a list of emails.

So before you go and make 50+ labels like I did, think about if it would be easy to find in a search (by searching for someone’s name, a topic, a keyword, etc). Some things, such as receipts for online purchases that you need at tax time, come from lots of different vendors and would be hard to search for without doing multiple searches. So it’s very useful to have a “receipts” label, but not nearly as useful to have a label for a single client. Simplicity is key, and you don’t need lots of labels (trust me).

I do like to label all my wedding inquiries, which ones I was already booked for, and then which ones set up a consult. It’s an easy way for me to track them and get all nerdy an analyze my statistics and bookings ratios and all that stuff that only dorks like me get excited about.

I suggest using the following labels: “respond”, “to-do”, “read”, and “receipts”. You may also consider creating labels called “clients” (for all clients, not each client individually), “orders”, “contracts”, and “login information” (when someone emails you login information for a site you joined) but I feel like the first four are the main ones I’d get started with.

To create a label, click the label button, select “Manage Labels” and create any labels you want to use.

Once you’ve labeled an email, you can simply archive it and no longer shows up in the inbox. To see it again, click on the label on the left or search for the label using the search function and it will show up in that list.

Threaded Emails

This was the most amazing thing about switching email providers from me.

Basically, when you reply back and forth with someone several times, instead of getting a new email in your inbox each time, it simply adds on to the old email without creating a new one in your inbox. Saves a TON of clutter, and it keeps everything inside the conversation even if you forward part of it to someone else. It’s really awesome for client interactions.

Filters

We’re going to talk about the strategy behind using filters more in part 4 of this series, but basically a filter is a rule that you create in Gmail that tells it to always do the same thing to your email based upon what the email contains or where it comes from..

So for example, I created a filter for any messages that contain the word “receipt” and come from Amazon, Adorama, B&H, ProDPI, or other vendors I use often to automatically be labeled “receipt”. You could also choose to have something skip the inbox, be marked as read, or a number of other options.

Task for Day #2: Create labels for your emails, including the suggested labels above.

Tomorrow we’ll be exploring some of the Google Labs that are useful for photographers, and after that is where things really start to get good. Go to part 3 now.

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

How do you currently organize your inbox? Leave a comment below with the answer.

The Essentials of Gmail

Is your email inbox out of control?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

We’re going to go all “Super Nanny” on your inbox and teach it how to behave.

Once you’ve implemented the strategies in this series, your inbox will be working FOR you, not against you.

You will have relief.

Over the next 7 days we’re going to set up a system that does the work for you so that you can spend less time deleting and sorting emails and more time doing the things you love.

This system will prevent your inbox from becoming a disaster in the future as well.

It’s going to take a little bit of work to get there, but I promise you the time investment will save you hundreds of hours in the future.

We’re going to start with the basics and then move to the golden nuggets, but I promise that the golden nuggets of usefulness at the end will be worth it. So follow along on this 7 part daily series and by next week this time, you’ll be in a really great place with your email.

So let’s jump in and get take control of your email inbox once and for all.

You NEED Gmail

Google’s Gmail email client is the most incredible tool for managing your inbox. You need this.

Yes, NEED.

If you’re not fully convinced by the end of this series that Gmail is the email tool for you, leave me a comment and let me know why. Trust me when I say it’s the absolute best way to manage your emails.

Things to note:

• You can (and should) use your own custom email address and don’t have to use a generic xxxxxxx@gmail.com email address by signing up for Google Apps.
• You can import old emails from your old email client into Gmail so you won’t lose anything or have to work in two different places.
• You can manage multiple email addresses (sending and receiving) from different domains all in one place.

Sign up for a free Google Apps account & transfer your existing emails to Gmail

Note: If you’re already using Gmail, no need to transfer to Google Apps. You’ll be able to do everything I’ll be talking about in this series with Gmail.

Google Apps gives you access to all sorts of Google tools that are useful, but today we’re simply going to focus on emails.

Use Google Apps to set up your custom email address using your domain name. For example, contact@themoderntog.com. Even if you don’t have your own hosting yet, it’s only $10 a year to get your own domain and set up an email address, and it looks SO much more professional, so do it.

Google Apps is free unless you have more than 10 employees using it at your business. Please note that the “free” version is different than the “Google Apps for Business” version that they talk about on their website. The business version is a paid product that is geared towards companies with multiple employees.

Google does a good job of walking you through all the steps of getting your Google Apps account setup, so I’m not going to rehash it here. If you have any problems and simply want to hire someone else to do it, I highly suggest contacting William Bay and he will take care of it for you.

Import your current emails

The first thing you’ll want to do is import all your email from your current email client so that you have a copy of all of it in Gmail. They do a great job of walking you through this, but if you need additional help you can find it about half way down the page here, under “Individual Users / Client Side”.

If you are starting a new email address, you’ll want to set your old email address to forward to the new one. If you are moving an email address you already use with your custom domain, then don’t worry about this step.

Task for Day #1: Get set up with Gmail. I promise you won’t regret it.

Here’s a rundown of what to expect over the next week. Each post goes deeper into the usefulness of Gmail and many build upon the parts before it, so make sure to follow along so that you have everything set up the way you need it to be.

1. Getting Set Up With Gmail (that’s this post!)
2. The Essentials of Gmail
3. Google Labs For Photographers
4. Watch Your Email Organize Itself With Multiple Inboxes
5. Two Big Time-Saving Tips
6. Client Management Made Simple With Boomerang
7. How To Keep Your Email Inbox From Taking Over Ever Again

In the meantime, I’d love to hear what your biggest frustration with email is. Leave a comment below and let it out! Trust me, it feels good. Go ahead.

Click to go to Part 2 of the Series.

Take Control Of Your Email Inbox Once And For All

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Your voice has been heard.

I’ve been sifting through the answers to the super-quick survey I posted last week, and it’s been incredibly awesome and eye-opening. Thank you profusely if you took a minute to answer the 5 questions for me (and if you didn’t, it’s not too late to speak up. I value what you think more than you know).

The most common thing I’m seeing? You want more clients.

Getting pricing relief is great, but it doesn’t matter how much you’re charging if no one even asks or inquires.

Many of you are doing photography part-time or just thinking about it, and you simply don’t have the time or money to do the marketing that you need to be doing in order to get the clients you want.

So this week I’ve decided to post some of my favorite resources from around the web that talk about getting more clients. I want to help as many of you as possible right now, so I thought that a collection of resources would be a great way to start.

Resources For Getting More Clients

Grab a cup of coffee – there’s a lot of amazing stuff to learn here and you’ll want to digest it properly.

55 Smart Web Ideas for Photography

This is a newly released ebook by Zach Prez that I won on his Facebook fan page (woot woot!). It’s fan-stinking-tastic in that it has 55 relevant ideas, each with easy take-aways for each idea about how to implement them. Plus the introduction alone is filled with solid advice that should be followed – it’s like bonus material!

The ebook is separated into 5 main sections, and I think the 4th section is the most powerful client retainer & generator out there for portrait photographers that almost all photographers I know ignore or discredit. In my opinion, it’s the secret weapon to success when used correctly, and no it isn’t just in-person sales meetings.

Note: If you decide to buy the ebook, I’d appreciate it if you used the link above. I get a referral fee from it, which is a great way to say “thank you” to me for sharing it with you. If you’re uncomfortable with that, feel free to google it and buy it that way – either way I think you’d find this to be a helpful resource and I’d hate for you to pass it up because it’s an affiliate link.

What Pottery Barn Teaches Us About Subtle Sales & The Secret to Creating Profitable Promotions
(2 Separate Posts)

Psychology for Photographers is my new favorite photography business blog. While both of these articles have titles about sales, they’re really about attracting new clients and are most certainly worth a read. Really fabulous stuff here.

Here is a Method That is Helping Photographers Book More Clients

This simple addition to your website is an easy way to get more of your visitors to turn into clients.

I live in a tiny town. Is it possible to have a business where there are less than 2,000 people??

Alicia hits the nail on the head with this fabulous post about small towns and businesses.




3 Sweet Reasons to Connect Locally on Facebook

This post talks about how to get more client referrals from networking with other local businesses, even if they aren’t related to photography.

Celebration Time!

This past week we hit two major milestones for the blog: we got our first 1000 Facebook Fans and we also got our first 1000 people to follow us via email (in fact we blew past that milestone with email followers without looking back!) WOOT WOOT! You guys rock!

To celebrate these milestones, I’m offering you 35% off both the Photographer’s Pricing Guide Workbook and our Photography Client Questionnaire Library, which has been updated to include three different versions of the questionnaires (Word, PDF, and Gravity Forms for easy integration into your website). Questionnaires make doing businesses so much easier and give you happier clients, so I highly suggest snagging them now at their reduced price!

The sale lasts until Friday (2/10/12) at Midnight MST, so pick them up now!

Best of the Rest: How to Get More Photography Clients