• Featured Photographer of the Month: June 2013

    Jim Zuckerman left his medical studies in 1970 to pursue his love of photography and turn it into a career. Jim specializes in wildlife, nature, and travel photography, macro work, photomicroscopy, and digital effects. Currently, he is traveling to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia leading a photography tour to take pictures of Victoria Falls and large game. His diversity in technique and style is unique ... read more

     
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    How to Verify Your PhotoBiz Website on Pinterest

    Even though Pinterest is one of the newest social media platforms, it’s one of the fastest growing, with the latest number of Pinterest users being around 11 million. With that said, we wanted to share some easy ways to integrate some of Pinterest’s newest features with your PhotoBiz website!

    Recently, Pinterest rolled out website verification, which allows users to verify that they are the owner of the website that they have associated with their Pinterest profile.  Once your website is verified, a checkmark will display next to your domain in search results, and people will then see the full website URL and checkmark when they visit your Pinterest profile. Pinterest has stated that currently this feature is only offered for top-level domains, however they are looking to support additional options in the future.

    Here are some helpful instructions on how to verify your PhotoBiz website on Pinterest:

    Pinterest Screen Shot

    First, from the Settings section of your Pinterest account, scroll to the area where your web address is, then click the “Verify Website” button. This will allow you to either verify your site either by uploading an HTML file, or by adding a meta tag to your site. For a PhotoBiz site, you will be using the Meta Tag verification method.

    You will need to copy the meta tag provided to you, and then paste it into the appropriate Visit Counter or Custom Meta section of your PhotoBiz Website’s Control Panel, as shown in the examples below for PhotoBiz FLASH+ sites, HTML5 sites, and BizSites.

    Pinterest website verification step two photobiz FLASH+ site

     

     

    After you have pasted the Pinterest meta verification tag into your website, saved your changes and re-published your website if necessary, you will then go back to your Pinterest Account settings area, and click the link next to Step 2 to complete the process. Once your site has been verified, a red checkmark will begin to be displayed next to your website URL in search results and on your Pinterest Profile.

    Pinterest Verification Screen Shot

    Using Your Blog to Increase User Interaction and Interest

    Some photographers and artists use a blog to show their work and life with the world. Other companies may show their latest projects or let their customers in on the personal side of their business. However if you are looking for a smart way to increase your client’s interaction, invite more new clients to your website, or boost your SEO, a blog is the perfect tool. Look at each blank page as a marketing opportunity, or a way to clear up some common issues your clients may be experiencing. In this blog entry I’ll explore a few tips on how to increase visitor interest in your blog.

    Blog

    Step 1: What to Blog About

    The first step is to decide what your blog post should be about! It’s possibly the most time consuming step in this process. Luckily I have a few tips to help you make and keep a list of topics you want to blog about. 

    First, think about what your clients want to know. Google can be a great tool, simply look up forums on your industry, industry related blogs, or think about questions your clients ask you often and use those to generate topics. Above all find forums, or other areas where potential clients, and other experts are active and let the industry generate its questions. Each question is a potential blog entry for you to show off your knowledge and prove why you are in the industry, and how you will solve your client’s questions. Even comments from your own blog entries can inspire new blog posts.

    Lastly, be confident and share your biggest success and your biggest failures with your readers. You can share with people how you were successful, or your biggest challenges and what you learned from them. Clients and potential consumers enjoy hearing from someone who is willing to share details and aspects about their business. It lets them know what sort of business you are, and how you will treat new customers. 

    Step 2: Create a Headline

    The next step is to create a headline that works well, and entices a click to read more. You want to make sure with each post you are addressing your client’s questions, piquing their curiosity, or helping to direct your customers line of thinking about you or your brand. Some examples of this may be “What do I wear for a Fall portrait session?” or “What questions do you need to ask your next wedding photographer?” These types of headlines entice new users to click and read the blog article you’ve just wrote, as they can hear first hand your expertise and it answers questions they may have about hiring their next photographer. 

    Step 3: Keep Your Readers Engaged

    The third step involves writing the post and keeping your clients interested, engaged, and to make them take the next step toward interacting with your blog, website, or even better, contact you for a sale! This can include many factors that you will want to work into your posts for maximum effect.

    Utilize great keywords in your post that are naturally phrased. A good example of this is a wedding photographer from Miami, Florida may write an article about a great location they recently shot at for a wedding. He may address this as one of his top 5 picks for the South Beach area because the Miami Beaches are great around sunset for bridal portraits. This is instant fodder for SEO. Content that updates frequently containing information that your website is already about. 

    The next step is to get your clients interested in your website. Using the same example, the photographer may post one or two teaser photos of the wedding he shot, then link those photos to a gallery in his website of more wedding shots. This gets clients interested in the website, and possibly gets them a step closer to clicking “Contact Us” to request a consultation. Each post should try to link somewhere in your website that contains more information, or to your social media.  At the end of the post you can even ask a question. This photographer might say, “Leave a comment below and tell me about your experiences here, or if you have any questions about my services. I’d love to hear from you. Alternatively, you can contact me on my website.”  With a PhotoBiz Blog, you can easily link text to any page of your website. 

    Step 4: Share Your Post

    Then it is all about sharing your information. The more in depth posts you make, the more popular your blog will be. However starting fresh means you have to attract an audience and let your customer know you are there.

    With our PhotoBiz Blog, we make this very easy and efficient. You can use our share icons in the settings area for each blog post and let people share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even email. The more helpful and informative your articles are, the more likely they will be shared. 

    When it comes to sharing the post across your Facebook business page, or your Twitter account, a personal recommendation of mine is not to use services that automatically share your blog post, but to write a brief synopsis for each social media platform that fits the formula.  An example is that Twitter has a character limit and isn’t as interactive, meaning besides retweets, comments are harder to track as other people won’t see them. For Twitter, just share the link and headline or teaser tag. On Facebook, share your blog link, the headline and then ask your fans to leave a comment based on what the article is about. For example if your article is about that great location for a South Beach wedding, ask your Facebook fans where their favorite wedding location would be, and have they had a wedding there? This increases user interaction on your Facebook page, starts conversation, and may even lead to sales. 

    What’s Next?

    After this your blog should be a big hit! However there are a few things that you can do, especially through PhotoBiz to increase the ease of use for you and your clients. First, I recommend coming up with a brief list of tags for your posts. These can be tags like “Frequent Questions,” “Wedding Locations,” and “Expert Tips.” In each of these tags you will want to organize what you write about frequently to assist your clients with finding your blog entries. Remember that even for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a site that is easy to navigate is more likely to do well, and clients will enjoy the experience more. 

    A common frustration I hear with clients who write a blog, but don’t do it often is that it takes a lot of time. This is true, great content is a big part of your online marketing and should be considered a part of the job. Even if writing is not your forte, you are going to have a fresh outlook on your business. Who knows what better to tell your clients than a professional in the field? So once we understand that writing takes some time, schedule a chunk of time to write a few blog articles and then schedule them to release later through the week. With our PhotoBiz Blog you can simply type in the date you want the post to publish. Let’s say you spend Sunday evening writing three blog posts. Schedule one for Monday, the next one for Wednesday, and another for Friday. This way your blog is constantly churning out fresh information, while you are busy managing your business and doing what you do best!

    Last, But Not Least

    You’re done! You have a frequently updating blog, guests are interacting with your social media and with your website, you’ve even made a few friends in the industry by producing great articles. You are getting the hang of blogging. Why not take these skills elsewhere? Remember in step 1 where I said that a great source for blog articles was in industry forums and blogs? Well now you can offer to write articles for them, and link back to your website or your own blog in doing so. Please remember when doing guest writing for a forum or industry blog, that it should pertain to subject matter you deal with yourself. This provides relevant links to your website, attracts professionals and possible clients to your site, and your business can reap those benefits. Otherwise, search engines will tend to rank your website lower and clients who navigate to your site will leave quickly, which won’t boost your SEO or help you obtain new business. 

    In closing, a PhotoBiz Blog is a great marketing tool and a content producer for your website. With the right direction, your blog will attract new clients, keep return visitors, help people to share your links and boost your search engine power! It’s an opportunity for marketing that you can’t afford to pass up. 

    Rome! The Latest and Greatest FLASH+ Design

    Ah, Rome! The Eternal City joins our most popular series of FLASH+ designs. Rome wasn’t built in a day so it took a while for this fabulous full screen version reminiscent of Milan, Venice, and Florence to become a reality. Like the other “Italian” designs the Rome FLASH+ Portfolio Site design has most of its important elements built to one side of a giant display area to show your images in all of their glory.

    Rome - PhotoBiz FLASH+ Portfolio Site Design

    Because Rome is built with the latest FLASH+ technology the menu and logo grouping can be either on the left or right as opposed to being fixed only to left side as with previous “Italian” designs. If a background is used it will be shown above the menu.

    Personalize your design by using our unique color shifting technology. Choose any color from your image and apply it to selected menu items, drop-down menus, gallery arrows, and as a tint over non-selected thumbnail images.

    Speaking of gallery pages PhotoBiz shows off another piece of FLASH+ magic. As the gallery page opens the image thumbnails slides down from the top edge of the page in a tinted overlay where it hovers for five seconds before sliding back out of view. Mouse over the top of the page and the thumbnails will re-appear.

    Rome - PhotoBiz FLASH+ Portfolio Site Design

    Each and every PhotoBiz template offers a unique loading symbol. Below is our first 3D effect symbol that we are using for Rome.

    Rome - PhotoBiz FLASH+ Portfolio Site Design Loader

    Milan and the other “Italian” designs have been some of our most popular FLASH designs in use. We have been reserving the name “Rome” for when we could offer our latest and best FLASH+ full screen design built to reflect these familiar layouts.

    The Rome design is available now in your PhotoBiz Control Panel! If you are a current PhotoBiz FLASH or FLASH+ customer, you can switch to this new design for free with one click of your mouse! If you want to preview it first, no problem, there is also a one-click preview feature.

    Special thanks to Janine White of Mt Louisa, Townsville in Australia for sharing her images for the sample of the Rome design.

    View Rome FLASH+ Portfolio Site Sample

    The PhotoBiz ToGo App is Growing!

    The newest version of the PhotoBiz To Go App is now available in the iTunes App Store and the Android App Store! We’ve added more functions so that now all customers can take advantage of our app and stay connected on the go.

    PhotoBiz ToGo App

    With the release of the new version, you can now update your account information on the go including login email, password, and credit card information.

    PhotoBiz ToGo App - Update Email and Password

    Need to re-activate an account? Just login and pay your reactivation fee directly through the app to get back in action.

    You can also get Passionate Support® on the go by calling PhotoBiz directly through the app. With one tap of “Call Support” your phone will dial us! 

    PhotoBiz ToGo App - Get Passionate Support

    Prefer to email us for support? You can do that too, it works exactly like submitting a ticket through your PhotoBiz control panel. Your account ID is automatically attached to a support ticket and you will get confirmation that the support ticket has been received, complete with a ticket ID number.

    PhotoBiz ToGo App - Submit Support Ticket

    PhotoBiz To Go has been a big hit with our customers and so we are happy to add to its capabilities. Current users of the PhotoBiz To Go app should update right away. If you haven’t downloaded the app yet, be sure to check it out!

    PhotoBiz wishes you Happy Apping this Holiday Season!

     

    Just in Time for the Holidays – Grand Avenue BizSite, Store, and Blog Design

    It has been said that there is only one place in the world where you can shop, work out, and visit a clown museum, and that’s at the Shops of Grand Avenue, the only major indoor shopping facility in the city of Milwaukee proper. The versatility of the shops inspired the bold new direction of PhotoBiz’s latest BizSite, Store, and Blog design. 

    The “architecture” of the design blends strength with beauty, especially when vibrant colors are used. The menu bar is at the top of the design, with the page title (or in the Store design, page links) in a broad bar underneath it. If a navigation item has a drop down menu you will notice that each title has its own color-coordinated box. The social media icons are located in the lower left corner.

    Grand Avenue - PhotoBiz BizSite Design

    The prettiest part of Grand Avenue is the layered boxes surrounding the content boxes. We recommend using dark colors for these boxes with light colored backgrounds, and light colors in the boxes with dark backgrounds.

    To continue the beautiful layered look you can see that each of the item boxes have a drop shadow of its own. Grand Avenue, as do all of our BizSite, Store, and Blog designs has a powerful text editor that is shown off in the typography on the homepage.

    There are a couple of items that are specific to the Store design. First, all product prices are displayed in a box, which provides nice emphasis. Next the “View Cart” and “My Account” buttons are shown in a single box at the very top of the design as opposed to individual tabs as in other designs.

    Grand Avenue - PhotoBiz Store Design

    The design elements are carried over to the Blog design as well, with the layered blocks very nicely framing your posts.

    Grand Avenue - PhotoBiz Blog Design

    Special thanks to Heather Evans Smith for sharing her images for the BizSite sample, to Monica Burby of Photoumbra for her images used for the Store sample, and to Walter Van Dusen for his images used in the Blog sample.

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