TAPPA Tribune - October 2015

October, 2015

In this Issue: Krystal Radlinski Twitter for Photographers Print of the Month Winners Candidates for the Board of Directors

The TAPPA Tribune Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association

Contents President’s Message

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Candidates for the Board of Directors

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Krystal Radlinski

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This Month’s Program

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Michael Joseph

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Next Month’s Program

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Upcoming Events

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Print of the Month Rules

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Print of the Month Portrait 26 Print of the Month Social Function

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Print of the Month Unclassified 35 Twitter for Photographers

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Photos from the meeting

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Board of Directors

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On the cover: Photo by Terri Daunic

Visit TAPPA on FaceBook

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Photo: Constance Avellino

President’s Message

When we check the rear view mirror of 2015, summer has faded into the distance. Up ahead we sniff the slight shift of lowering temperatures and humidity that signal fall. Isolated trees here and there offer a hit of color change, but most leaves simply turn brown and drop, littering our yards with a fresh batch each day.

October also offers a crop of orange and black signs beckoning us to buy costumes and candy for the annual procession of parties, theme park festivities, and parade of children with bags for goodies.

“Trick or treat!” This year’s annual celebration lands on Saturday, guaranteeing a hefty turnout of kids.

As you prepare to fill their bags, consider what’s in your photography bag. Dump it out, just like youngsters do after a night in the neighborhood.

They discover many treasures and a few things to discard. To identify what you want to keep and what you need to dispose of, upend yours and find out what you’re carrying around.

Photographers’ sweets are the things we put our faith in for satisfaction and success. Skills.

Equipment. Clients. A network of professionals and friends. A positive outlook.

What have you done this year to fine tune your skills?

Is your equipment realistically up-to-date?

How strong is your base and your outreach to clients?

Who is actively in your network?

What motivates you?

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We try to stay abreast of equipment and techniques through conferences and classes, learning ways to perfect our art. Well-directed and disciplined practice pushes us to new heights of expertise.

Within reason we check out new products and invest appropriately. Daily and weekly we touch base with former and potential clients, keeping our business fresh in their minds. At times we offer specials. At other times we simply connect through informational posts.

The treasure of professional friends cannot be overestimated. We support each other in tangible ways with knowledge and intangible ways, through friendship.

Finally, we each have music, books, and people that lift us up, help us refashion goals and outlooks and keep us going. We need balance and input from all of these.

The tricks we discover weigh us down. We need to toss out the mistakes we’ve made. Dwelling on the past can bring us down. We also need to reduce contact with people and posts that stifle our creativity or sap our energy with dour perspectives. A well-equipped bag has an eject feature for these. Use it whenever needed.

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Face each day as a fresh opportunity to fill your bag with treats. Try these: Hope Apply what you know Punctuality Persistence “Yes, I can” approach to challenges Help someone else Ask for advice Love your work Laugh each day Open the door to new opportunities Wisk away your fears Encourage yourself and others Expect good outcomes Never give up!

Use October to fill your bag with treats that will sweeten your life.

We’ll be looking forward to seeing you at our next TAPPA meeting on Tuesday, October 13th. Have a delightful month!

Many Blessings, Susan

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Candidates for the Board of Directors At the October meeting, members of TAPPA will vote to fill board positions.

Here are some of the candidates: Karen Barnett has worked as a photographer for over 20 years and owns a full service studio in Port Richey, FL specializing in Wedding, Bridal, Portrait, Commercial, and Professional Sports.

Awarded the Florida Education Degree (FED) from Florida Professional Photographers Nearing achievement of the Florida Service Award (FSA) Serves on the advisory board for the Pinellas Technical College photography department Long term professional memberships include: Professional Photographers of America (PPA), Florida Professional Photographers (FPP), Southeast Professional Photographers (SEPPA), Tampa Area Professional Photographers (TAPPA), & National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) FPP Sign Committee Chairperson (Convention & Florida School) past 5 years. Also currently serves on the sunday devotions, welcome, props, flea market, & equipment committees (past 2 years), and has served on the photography committee.

Volunteer Work: Big Brothers/Big Sisters (recently named ‘Big Sister of the Year’ by Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Tampa Bay) Heart Gallery 6 TAPPA Tribune

Habitat for Humanity Volunteer rescue and rehabilitation of wild and domestic animals (currently 68 of them) Sponsors ‘anti bullying’ & self confidence program for teenage girls Christian outreach programs A major concern is rebuilding membership levels and promotion of TAPPA within the local community. A large membership allows for increased and more diverse training opportunities, and the ability to draw top level speakers to share their knowledge with the group. Seeing TAPPA return to the large and vibrant group that it was a decade ago is a primary goal. The tampa bay area has a wealth of talented and skilled photographers. By interacting on a professional level, photographers learn and grow, which is essential for continued success.

Terri Daunic, the founder and owner of Ballast Point Fine Art Portraiture Studio in Tampa, FL, brings several years of experience in the art and science of photography. She has completed numerous courses, workshops, and programs in the art of modern digital photography, including the use and application of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Her principal areas of work and study have been in Family Portraiture and Executive Portraits.

Terri has served for three years on the Scholarship Committee in TAPPA (Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association). She is also a member of FPP (Florida Professional Photographers), PPA (Professional Photographers of America), and SEPPA (South Eastern Professional Photographers of America

Gerardo Luna Born and raised in beautiful Central America Gerardo has always had the soul of an artist and a traveler’s passion.

Years spent at University studying Economics, Politics and Law could not keep his wanderlust at bay.

After many adventures in several different countries Gerardo finally decided to settle down and make Tampa Bay his home. Now, his adventures always have him combing Central Florida for the best restaurant, the most inviting neighborhoods and the most breathtaking sunsets.

Gerardo loves to share his passion of the Tampa Bay area with his clients. When his nose isn’t firmly set on the grindstone, Gerardo flexes his artistic muscles with his passion love of photography. He’s always searching for a good book and you might even find him climbing volcanoes in his native Guatemala.

Robert Sargent CPP, FDPE, FED Professional Photographer for over twenty years. I am considered by many, to be a master at my trade and regarded as a true “digital artist.”

I have mentored other professional photographers in the art of lighting and posing techniques.

I am a truly passionate photographer with an eye for beauty, capturing cherished moments in life.

Some of my achievements include: • Founding Member, Past Officer, Past Board Member of Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association (TAPPA) • Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) by Professional Photographers of America (PPA) Since 1998 • Florida Education Degree for Photography (FED) • Florida Degree of Professional Excellence (FDPE) • Internationally Published • (Goldwell Magazine, Focus Magazine, Inspire Quarterly, Luxury Home Magazine, Digital Capture Magazine) • Former Canon Freelancer for Canon Camera Corp.

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Candidates for the Board of Directors Continued from previous page

Benjamin Todd I am Benjamin Todd. I own BW Todd Photography studio . I was President of TAPPA in 2014 and my goal for that year was to raise enough money to award a record number of scholarships to FL School. I am an active participant in TAPPA, FPP, and PPA activities. I am running for reelection to the TAPPA Board of Directors.

Glenn Nielsen I grew up on a farm in southwestern Utah.

Every day I worked side by side with my father. From him I learned the value of hard work, resourcefulness, and most importantly, the value of a man’s word. Contracts were made on a handshake. There was always farm work to be done both before and after school. After high school, I graduated from the Air Force Academy and began to live my life long dream as a fighter pilot. I served 22 years during which I flew 200 combat missions in Vietnam. I have been in 30+ countries In 2008 after 16 days visiting some of the most ancient sites in China, for which I had purchased my first digital camera, I had over 4000 images, most of which were good, a few of which were stunning. This was so exciting. Not only could I take great pictures, but I could see the results immediately. The more I learned, the more I realized I needed to know. I worked on my technical skills. Achieving the CPP was for me validation that I was good enough to call myself

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a photographer. I also began to work on business skills with the same passion I had for photography. It would be necessary to develop a relationship with my clients. I realized I thrive on establishing a relationship with my clients so that I become a friend. I want them to be completely comfortable that my motivation is to give them the images that they want to proudly display on their living room wall for all of their friends to see. When they look at that image, I want them to remember how much fun it was, what a great experience they had when they took the image. In a perfect world, not only would the moment be etched into their memory forever, the experience would be something they would remember and talk about forever. It is the journey. The end product merely reminds one of how great the path to get there turned out to be.

Amanda Pratt I am a recent transplant to Florida from Michigan and just completed my first year in business in the area.

I mainly photograph children, seniors and families. I enjoy being a photographer because I am challenged to get lost in creative vision. I began taking photos as a way to use my creativity for the purpose of self care as a full time social worker working with at risk youth. In my creative work I tend to create images that portray great strength and power as well as images that feel calm and comforting. I have a background in black and white film photography which jump started my passion for creating and printing images. I am pursuing my CPP and have enjoyed every minute of my memberships with TAPPA, FPP, SEPPA and PPA,

This Month’s Program

Krystal Radlinski Master Photog., Cr. FSA, FDPE, FED

Krystal got her start with a degree from University of Florida in photojournalism and as a photojournalist for the United States Army. They sent her to Bosnia, Kosovo, Ecuador, and other armpits of the planet. She figured, “Hey, at least you’re less likely to encounter sniper fire during a wedding. Let’s do it!”

Along with her husband Matt, and now a house full of wild babies, she runs a Gainesville area home-studio specializing in weddings and portraiture since 2001. During those years, Krystal has been awarded Florida’s Top Ten Photographers three times, two Fuji Masterpiece Awards, a Kodak Gallery Award, and degreed a Master Photographer and Photographic Craftsman by the Professional Photographers of America, PPA Platinum Photographer of The Year twice and the Accolade of Photographic Mastery Medal by Wedding and Portrait Photographers International. Her mom also made her some yummy cookies.

Meeting Details Tuesday, October 13, 2015 Social 6:00 Dinner 6:30 Program 7:00 Register online at TAPPA.org Doubletree Hotel 4500 W. Cypress St., Tampa

You can see her image portfolio at www.vervestudio.com or for the most up-to-date imagery on their Verve Studio FaceBook page. http://www.facebook.com/VerveStudioPhotography

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski 10 TAPPA Tribune

Photo: Megan DiPiero

Photo: Krystal Radlinski

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Photo: Megan DiPiero

Photo: Krystal Radlinski 12 TAPPA Tribune

Photo: Megan DiPiero

Photo: Krystal Radlinski

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski TAPPA Tribune

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski 18 TAPPA Tribune

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski 20 TAPPA Tribune

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Photo: Krystal Radlinski 22 TAPPA Tribune

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Next Month’s Program

Michael Joseph It’s all about the lighting

It’s all about the lighting.... lighting is everything.

Michael Joseph has almost 30 years of experience of Photographing Pets with their People. He’ll be sharing with you several different lighting techniques that he uses in the studio from soft boxes, hair lighting, kicker lights & reflectors. Then he’ll talk about some of his favorite outdoor lighting equipment that he uses with lightweight strobes and modifiers. He’ll also share with you his 10 favorite gadgets and gizmos that he can’t shoot without. He will also be ready to answer technical questions on lighting, posing, studio set up & sales. Have your questions ready! And, he’ll unveil his Top-Ten Secrets to Pet Photography.

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Meeting Details Tuesday, November 10, 2015 Social 6:00 Dinner 6:30 Program 7:00 Register online at TAPPA.org Doubletree Hotel 4500 W. Cypress St., Tampa

Upcoming Events

Print of the Month Rules - Prints are to be mounted.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Basics of Studio Lighting and Posing Kevin Newsome

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Krystal Radinsky

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Pete Wright Film Noir

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Light Painting the Night Up Randy Van Duinen More information on all of these events can be found in this newsletter and at TAPPA.org

- Size: 8x10.

- Electronic Imaging size can be two 8x10 taped together on the back and spread open for viewing.

- Three entries per member each month.

- There must be at least three entries in a category for that category to be included in the monthly competition.

- All entries MUST have your name and the category you wish to enter on the back of the print.

- Prints must be turned in before 6:25 pm.

Prints received after 6:25 will not be accepted!

Winners: - Please send your winning files to POM@TAPPA.org for the newsletter as soon as Possible. Deadline for publication is one week after the meeting.

- Name your files by your last name-place-category. For example Smith-1st-Portrait.jpg - Any resolution 1000 pixels on the longest side or greater is acceptable. JPEG format is preferrable.

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Print of the Month - Portrait First place: Terri Duanic

Print of the Month - Portrait Second place: Amanda Pratt

Print of the Month - Portrait Third place: Michael Landes

Print of the Month - Commercial First place: Michael Landes

Print of the Month - Commercial Second place: Randy Van Duinen

Print of the Month - Commercial Third place: Randy Van Duinen

Print of the Month - Social Function First place: Constance Avellino

Print of the Month - Social Function Second place: Booray Perry

Print of the Month - Social Function Third place: Booray Perry

Print of the Month - Unclassified First place: Randy Van Duinen

Print of the Month - Unclassified Second place: Amanda Pratt

Print of the Month - Unclassified Third place: Lisa O’Geary

Twitter for Photographers So can professional photographers put those 140 characters to good use in their marketing and see a return on using Twitter for their business?

Until recently, I was on the fence about Twitter as a marketing tool, having experimented with it for several years with somewhat inconclusive results.

Sure, I managed to attract over 40,000 followers, but most of those turned out to be, shall we say, undesirable from my own marketing perspective.

In the end, I got fed up with talking to thin air so I set up a new account (@NigelMerrick) and am focusing a lot more on the quality of connections than on the quantity – so far, it’s working out much better.

But this is about you, not me, so how can you get the best from Twitter?

First, the Twitter of today is quite different to what it was a few short years ago.

In addition to the normal 140-character textbased tweet, we can also tweet content-rich images, as well as videos and other content. Yes, we’ve been able to do this for a long time, but the subtle difference we see today is in the way those tweets are presented in a much more visible and accessible way in people’s timelines.

Folks are also getting the hang of the conversational side of Twitter, and I believe the signal-to-noise ratio has finally improved enough to make this a more worthwhile place for

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photographers to be present and active.

But will you get clients directly by using Twitter for business?

No, probably not, since all social media networks are about making connections instead of direct sales. Getting clients directly from social media, including Facebook, has never been the main goal of social marketing.

It’s all about connecting with people who matter to you and your ideal photography clients, and then building long-term productive relationships so they do become clients at some point further down the road.

Social media marketing: Build relati­onship­s w/ people who matter to you & your ideal photo clients Now that’s something you can do with Twitter!

But how?

Optimizing Your Twitter Profile Be sure to put your best face forward in your Twitter profile - don’t be tempted to hide behind your camera!

It all starts with your Twitter profile, and there are some things you should do to make sure you’re

putting your best face forward.

Literally, starting with your actual face, of course!

Like all social media profiles, it’s important to have a professional-looking profile photograph – one where people can clearly see all of your face, not just the half poking out from behind your camera!

Where on Earth photographers got the idea from to ruin a perfectly good profile headshot by sticking a camera body and lens in front of their face is beyond me.

Your prospects are interested in YOU, not a face with the words Canon or Nikon in lieu of a forehead. They want to see your actual eyes, not the mechanical eye of your biggest lens.

Honestly, I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this to working photographers, but a professional headshot of yourself is way more effective than a selfie taken with your iPhone, or an obviouslycropped group photo from your vacation.

Sadly, I see too many so-called professional photographers with profile photos that look, well, unprofessional.

I know you can do better than that, right?

It should go without saying, too, that all your social media profiles should be consistent, with the same headshot and blurb wherever you can.

On Twitter, of course, there’s not a whole lot of space to write a lengthy bio, so make the best use of it by communicating your essential message,

which you can think of as the boiled down and concentrated version of who you are, how you help your photography clients, and why you do what you do.

You also have space for a link to your website, but most people default to using their home page.

Don’t do that!

Instead, create a landing page dedicated to your Twitter visitors where you can talk with them in a personalized way that makes them feel at home and in the right place.

And don’t forget your profile header image. Not only can you use your photography to great effect here, you can also superimpose text onto your image to convey a strong marketing message and expand on what you couldn’t fit into your bio.

The Twitter Marketing Bandwagon: Follow You, Follow Me Quality beats quantity in your Twitter marketing when it comes to your followers...

Quality beats quantity in your Twitter marketing when it comes to your followers…

At the risk of showing my age, the rock band Genesis, in their 1978 song “Follow You, Follow Me”, sounded an awful lot like a premonition of

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the world of Twitter long before the Internet ever came along!

Unfortunately, most Twitter users are under the mistaken impression that the number of followers is more important than the value of those followers, and they get all hung up over how many followers they have, or whether or not someone follows them back if they follow them to begin with.

It’s the old “clamoring for attention” problem all over again, combined with the crippling belief that numbers matter most.

But there’s a much better way.

First, seek out and follow your ideal clients.

There are various ways you can find them on Twitter: By using Twitter’s advanced search to find people in your service area.

By searching for specific words or hashtags that might indicate a need or interest in your chosen specialty.

By searching for the hashtags related to your service area.

You can also save your Twitter searches and use them again later.

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Having found your ideal clients on Twitter, take a look at who they follow to identify people or businesses who might be influential to your audience, who you can also follow.

Next, find and follow the Twitter accounts of other local businesses who also serve your ideal clients, along with the appropriate people who follow those businesses.

There’s also another useful, but often overlooked, group of people to connect with who are active on Twitter, and these are the media people from your local TV and radio stations, and newspapers.

It’s amazing how many of the anchors and reporters on your local news station, for example, are present and heavily-engaged on Twitter, so get to know them.

By now, you have a good start on the people to follow, and it might be a good idea to organize those into Twitter lists, which will make it a lot easier to see at a glance who’s tweeting content you might want to share on your stream.

How To Get More Twitter Followers The Twitter followers you want are the people who matter most to you and your ideal clients...

The Twitter followers you want are the people who matter most to you and your ideal clients…

Obviously, you also want people to follow you, otherwise no one will ever see any of your tweets, right?

You’re going to feel a bit lonely following 1000 people with no one following you back, so what can you do?

Fortunately, many of the people you followed will follow you back, and you’re also going to attract followers simply by being on Twitter to begin with.

Many of those people will be random folks outside your target audience, and some of them will undoubtedly be the uneducated marketing spammer-types, but you can safely block them, forget about them, and move on if they become too much of a problem.

The people you do want to follow you are your ideal photography clients, other businesses in your area, and local influencers – namely, the people you already purposely followed.

But how can you get these people to follow you back without making a nuisance of yourself?

It’s not easy, but it is simple, and certainly no big secret.

The key is to build a relationship with them where you become seen as a valuable and helpful resource, and therefore someone worth following.

After all, if you only ever tweet about what you had to eat for lunch, no one will care too much, unless you happen to be Gordon Ramsey or Anthony Bourdain.

So here’s what I would suggest you do:

Be on the lookout for interesting and valuable content being tweeted by the people you want to have a mutual following relationship with. Then reply to those tweets, re-tweet and share their content, ask intelligent questions, and show a genuine interest in what they have to say.

If you do this consistently, some of those people will follow you back, and may even share your content in the future.

It’s important to understand this does take time, and involves patience and more than a bit of trial and error, but when it comes to building relationships on social media it’s very much a case of “give first, ask later”.

Building a Twitter following for your photography = time & patience: “Give first, ask later” Click to tweet You can (and obviously should) also tweet about things you know your target clients are interested in. Because your tweets are accessible to everyone on Twitter, not just your followers, you can add hashtags to your tweets based on your location and topic to catch the attention of people who are searching Twitter for those things.

What And When To Tweet In your Twitter marketing, be wise about what you

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tweet, and know when is the best time to reach your followers...

In your Twitter marketing, be wise about what you tweet, and know when is the best time to reach your followers…

Having started to build your Twitter network, you’re going to want to start sending out tweets, but what should you tweet about and when is the best time?

Here are some suggestions for the types of tweet you can send out: Links to your own content, such as blog posts and resource articles…

Individual photos or videos…

Inspirational and motivational quotes – these work well, especially if you create a graphic with the text of the quote on top of an image…

You can ask your audience questions to get them to reply and engage with you…

Tweets with your general observations of life, thoughts, and musings about photography…

You should also tweet and share other people’s content, which your audience might find interesting and valuable…

News items, especially those from your town or city, make interesting discussion topics…

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Also, be on the lookout for powerful humaninterest stories that tap into people’s emotions…

As you can see, there’s no shortage of ideas, and you should easily be able to come up with useful content for tweets to keep your audience happy and engaged.

But what about timing?

Despite the many articles you’ll see around the Internet, there’s no hard and fast rule about when the best time to tweet is, and all of those articles boil down to one simple principle, which is to tweet when your target clients are most active.

Pretty obvious, right?

To make this a lot easier, the Buffer social media tool has a handy scheduling system that can automatically create a posting schedule based on the most active times of day for your Twitter followers.

One thing worth mentioning here is the average life-span of a tweet is quite short – about 17 minutes at the last count.

Unlike Facebook, where the visibility of your updates is determined by a complex algorithm, Twitter streams are more like a gushing hosepipe, and people will see your tweets go by only if they happen to be logged in and viewing their home feed around the time you posted your tweet.

However, unlike Facebook, it’s totally acceptable

to post multiple tweets for the same piece of content, for example your latest blog post, over an extended period of time and at different times of day.

So, for example, you might post an initial tweet when you publish a blog post, and then a different tweet to the same post a few hours later, followed by more over the next few days. You’ll want to make each of your tweets unique by varying the text, but repeating your tweets makes it far more likely that more people will visit your blog posts.

Getting Your Own Content Shared

By Others

Fortunately, we have something called OpenGraph meta data to help make this go a little more smoothly.

Specifying the proper open-graph meta data for your blog posts is important, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.

The Yoast SEO plugin, for example, is great for this if you’re a WordPress user.

When you create a blog post or page, you’ll see a social tab in the Yoast SEO section where you can tell Twitter and the other social networks which image to use on social postings, and the text to go with it.

One of the biggest problems for photographers and other content creators is getting their visitors to share their posts and articles on social media.

The next step is to make it easy for people to share!

It’s apparently not enough to post a blog article and then expect every visitor to be so excited by it that they just have to share it with their friends and followers – on average, you might expect to see only around 1-5% of your readers to share your posts if left to their own devices.

This is as simple as making sure you place clear and obvious social sharing buttons at strategic locations in your content, usually at the top and bottom of the page, but don’t overwhelm people with too many choices! Stick to the top 3 or 4 networks your audience use most, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

So what can you do?

First, you have to make sure the content is easily shareable and optimized for the different social networks. Because there’s no standardization between Facebook, Twitter, and the other networks on things like image sizes and space allowed for text, this causes some logistical problems.

In some cases, you can also create incentives for people to share your blog posts.

For example, if you post about a recent portrait session you could encourage the people to help their friends share your post by offering them a bounty of some kind if they reach a certain number of tweets, Facebook shares, or comments.

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You can also embed what have come to be known as Tweetables in your actual content.

as to encourage a dialogue with you through mentions, comments, and re-tweets.

Check out the TweetDis plugin to easily add nicely-formatted tweetables to your contentTweetables are attractively-formatted blocks of text, conveniently built as pre-filled tweets, which your users can then tweet out at the click of a button.

Here’s what you do if you’re using WordPress.

They’ve have been shown to have a definite positive effect on increasing the spread of your content because they’re easy for people to use, and don’t get in the way of them consuming the content.

If you’re a WordPress user, there’s a handy plugin – TweetDis – which makes doing this a snap because the formatting and styling is all taken care of for you. It’s well worth the small investment in the convenience alone – highly recommended!

Increase Engagement With Twitter Feedback Loops One neat tactic you can use to increase the engagement of your blog posts, for example, is to create what I call a feedback loop.

As far as I know there’s no official name for this, so we’ll stick with “feedback loop” for now, because that’s exactly what this simple but little-used idea does.

Essentially, the goal is to give people a way they can easily spread your content on Twitter, as well

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Create and publish your blog post, photography article, or other piece of content on your website, just as you normally would.

When published, share the link to the post on Twitter, together with an interesting title or message.

Next, go to your Twitter account in your web browser, and find your tweet in your timeline (obviously, it will be at or near the top of your stream of tweets). In the tweet header, you’ll see your name and Twitter handle with a time or date at the end of the line, which is actually a link.

Click the link and you’ll see your tweet presented on its own.

Copy the URL for your tweet from the browser address bar, head back to your content piece, and edit the post or page you shared. You can then paste the link you copied into your content wherever you want it to appear.

WordPress will automatically convert the URL you inserted into an embedded tweet, which your readers can then use to follow you, re-tweet to their own followers, or reply to you.

As an example, here’s the feedback Tweet for this post:

This can be a useful alternative to allowing comments on your blog, which often don’t have any tangible benefit and create problems with spam, and you can do the same kind of thing with posts from your Facebook page as well.

Twitter Marketing Is All About Relationships The basic intent with these ideas for Twitter marketing is to create and nurture relationships with your target audience and the people who influence them.

With repeated exposure and interaction over time, they will get to know, like, and trust you. At some point they’re going to take up your lead-magnet, identifying themselves to you as potential leads you can then follow up with and ultimately turn into clients.

Here are the main takeaways for today: Remember to put social first and foremost in your Twitter marketing…

When it comes to Twitter followers, the quality is far more important than the quantity, and it’s unnecessary to go on a following rampage in the hopes of building a bigger audience. Just go after the people who matter to you and your business, and it will grow from there.

Don’t just tweet about your blog posts and articles from your photography website. Share thoughts, quotes, questions, other people’s content, and human-interest stories to fully engage the people who follow you.

Make sure your content is easily shareable by your readers, and get creative about ways to increase the sharing activity on your blog posts and other articles.

I hope this has given you a great introduction to Twitter marketing for your photography business and I look forward to seeing your tweets.

You can also connect up with me on Twitter at @ NigelMerrick, and (as promised) here’s a special hashtag for you. I’ll also happily retweet your best tweets if you include #zenologue in your tweets.

Twitter is a great tool for building relationships with other businesses, other photographers, and your ideal photography clients, but it’s not the place to get clients directly – it’s not a broadcasting or sales platform…

Your profile should be optimized for your audience and you should have a good-quality profile photo where people can properly see you…

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Photos from the meeting

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The TAPPA Tribune is published monthly for the membership of the Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association. Its purpose is to share knowledge and insight with the photographic industry.

The deadline for submission of articles and ad changes is the 15th of the month.

Permission is hereby granted to reprint the contents of this newsletter, provided the authors and The TAPPA Tribune are recognized as the source. The ideas and views expressed do not necessarily reflect the policies of the Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association; they are solely those of the author.

Editor: Chuck Vosburgh 300 62nd Street North St. Petersburg, FL 33710 Chuck@ChuckVosburgh.com 727.743.1740

Advertising: To advertise in the TAPPA Tribune, please contact the editor for rates and distribution information.

Meetings: TAPPA monthly meetings take place the second Tuesday of the month at: Doubletree Hotel 4500 W. Cypress Street Tampa, FL (one block east of Westshore Blvd).

Networking Dinner Meeting

6:00 pm 6:30 pm 7:30 pm

Register online at TAPPA.org

TAPPA Tribune

47

Board of Directors

2015 OďŹƒcers President

Susan Black

813 230-6472

Susan@Bespics.com

Vice President

Constance Avellino

813 600-8152

Me@ConstanceAvellinoPhotos.com

Secretary

Kevin Newsome

813 968-2810

Kevin@NewsomesStudio.com

Treasurer

Melissa Sewell

813 230-7092

Melissa@DontBlinkllc.com

Past President

Kevin Newsome

813 968-2810

Kevin@NewsomesStudio.com

Directors

Carol Hackman

727 867-9254

HackmanC@tampabay.rr.com

Booray Perry

813 728-7110

Booray@BoorayPerry.com

Christine Reynolds

813 760-0831

ChristineR@aol.com

Benjamin Todd

813 431-2873

Benjamin.Todd@verizon.net

Chuck Vosburgh

727 743-1740

Chuck@ChuckVosburgh.com

Committees Delegate

Julie Johnson

Membership

Kevin Newsome

813 968-2810

Kevin@NewsomesStudio.com

Program

Constance Avellino

813 600-8152

Me@ConstanceAvellinoPhotos.com

Salon

Becky Jordan

727 577-5626

becky@thomasbruce.com

Door Prize

Glenn Nielsen

Scholarship

Carol Hackman Terri Daunic

727 867-9254 813 839-2860

HackmanC@tampabay.rr.com terridaunic@yahoo.com

Audio Visual

CJ Moment

813 244-6716

cj@annointedproductions.com

Newsletter Editor

Chuck Vosburgh

727 743-1740

Chuck@ChuckVosburgh.com

Photographers

Booray Perry Christine Reynolds

813 728-7110 813 760-0831

Booray@BoorayPerry.com ChristineR@aol.com

Web Master

Booray Perry

813 728-7110

Booray@BoorayPerry.com

48

TAPPA Tribune

glennln@verizon.net