Landscape, Nature And Travel Photography

Last week in my post Social CRM: Opportunity Knocking I discussed the flip-side of common online privacy concerns highlighting opportunities for individuals and small businesses. With the rise of Social CRM solutions aggregating personal information to paint a picture of who you are to others I noted the importance of  actively managing your online profiles and accounts. To extend this point further I wanted to share with you another area of opportunity for those who are managing their online presence in the Social Search space. Enjoy Part 3 of 3 on the topic of privacy and social media.

It’s been roughly 14 months since I wrote Why Social Media Matters to Photographers and in this time it’s very likely that the exploration of this new communication medium has resulted in your creation of multiple accounts either to experiment with or align into a larger communication strategy. In the past year Social Media use has exploded and the large search engines have taken note. So as to not become obsolete search engines have begun spidering entries in many social media communities to display alongside their traditional search results. Google quickly realized the best way to make sense of all this information in relation to individual identity was not to necessarily rely on algorithms to map things together, but to rely on individuals to piece their online presence together into a single profile… enter Google Profiles in mid-2009. In creating your Google Profile you can actively list sites that pertain to your online persona and footprint in a similar fashion noted in Social CRM: Opportunity Knocking. As an example here’s my Google profile page… feel free to follow me.

In late 2009 Google launched Social Search, 6 months after the launch of Google Profiles, enabling a new means to find information with in your social network. Google maps your relationship to the contacts in your social network and spiders content found with in the listed sites of each of your friends Google Profiles. The end result… for each of your searches Google will present the traditional results reflective of all content across the web and a special sub-set of results reflective of content amongst your contacts. To get a better idea of what this means see the video and screenshots below. (more after the jump)

Read more…

Last week in my post Privacy: You’ve Just Given It Away What Next? I discussed recent news surrounding Facebook to challenge your thinking on what you’re getting in return for revealing your personal or business information online. If you’re curious to learning more on my thoughts I highly recommend  you read a response I made to a comment by Don Giannatti (@Wizwow). While my original post highlights some concerning areas of social media in regard to privacy I wanted to discuss the flip-side to the discussion: how are current trends presenting opportunities? It turns out there are two areas I wanted to explore on this front and as a result I’m going to expand this series to 3 posts. I hope you enjoy  Part 2 of 3 on the topic of privacy and social media.

Much has been said about becoming part of the conversation and for that Social Media helps us become human in the seemingly sterile environment of the Internet. Emoticons have only taken us so far since the mid-1990’s. Social Media gives our online personas dimension, allows us to self-publish and allows us to network.

This is the Social Media we know as of today, but it is only the beginning. Social Media on the surface may look like fun and games, but when you look beneath the surface you’ll see it’s about capturing personal data. Personal data that can be leveraged to generate revenue. Two articles published since my last post highlight current trends & demand in this area:

• IPs Linked To Major Corporations Downloaded Leaked Facebook Profile Pages Torrent
• The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

The most frequently discussed revenue model for Social Media sites is targeted advertising, but a new revenue model may soon be upon us in the form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions.

Social CRMs enables a single point search across all public social media profiles to give you a glimpse of who you’re communicating with. In the past before meeting clients or running workshops I’ve employed this tactic manually through Google, searching client names to research who I’m going to be interacting with. It has kept me from insulting my clients, provided conversation points to put my clients at ease and allowed me to learn more about my clients preferences and tastes.

Click to Enlarge

One of the first resources I’ve found that takes the work out of this research and is on the cutting edge of Social CRM is Rapportive. Rapportive’s Firefox or Chrome plugin provides a simple solution to see public Social Media profiles of every person who contacts me through my Google GMail account. The ability to see profiles in a consolidated fashion for sites such as LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is an increasingly valuable tool.

Social CRM is in its very early stages, but well worth paying attention to. Rapportive is but 4 months old as of July so the service has its bugs and room to grow. Rapportive also has competition in the form of etacts whose service also tracks conversations and sets conversation reminders.

This news should also be a warning to you, if you have public profiles available on the Social Media sites you frequent be sure they won’t alienate your clients or hurt your business. Proactively managing your Social Media profiles is a business critical activity as Social CRM emerges. Know what accounts of yours are public and private and what they contain. Social CRM solutions generate best guess profiles based on publicly available information so you may need to be proactive in defining the information found within your profile.

Martin Kleppmann, co-founder of Rapportive, was kind enough to share the following in my correspondences with him:

Rapportive doesn’t show things that aren’t already public, but just makes them more easily accessible (compared to using Google and the various sites directly). That information can be really valuable for both sides of a conversation to understand each other better, but of course that only works if the information is accurate and up-to-date.

Rapportive pulls information from various sources, as described on our FAQ. However, those sources aren’t always perfect, so the best way for people to make sure their information in Rapportive is accurate is to edit it directly in Rapportive (or to email us, as you have done). Any change you make to your own profile is immediately reflected to all other Rapportive users.

Given developments in Social CRM it would seem that we are on the verge of seeing more robust solutions that allow us to mine the personal data of others who we communicate with. This should be refreshing news when privacy concerns are often focused primarily on how larger players such as Facebook and Google utilize our information with out our full understanding. Social CRM developments are also a reminder that we need to be both diligent in managing how our personal information is being used by large players and small. I often hear comments that baffle me “If it’s on the Internet you should assume its public!”, strangely not too different than “If its on the Internet it’s free!“, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Social Media sites provide guidelines about the use of information you share with them and many provide a framework to support private information. Bottom line is know what sites you share information publicly, which allow you to make information  private and proactively manage how these sites piece together a larger aggregate image of who you are and/or what your business is about.

Next on the topic of Privacy & Social Media Opportunities:
I’ll share with you one of the notable developments of 2010 that exemplifies managing your aggregate Social Media persona. Stay tuned for Social Search: Competition = Opportunity

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You’ve found my blog, but you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg… follow me on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.I also invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast “EXIF and Beyond” featuring photographer interviews and the chronicles of creating some of my photography

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Technorati Tags: Social Media, Social CRM, Rapportive, etacts,  Facebook, technology, privacy

Before the tidal wave of change that swept through my life the past couple months I had intended to write about the privacy controversy surrounding Facebook. Back then Facebook not so elegantly made their “closed garden” an “open garden” and in the process made a lot of people angry. Facebook’s privacy settings were and still are confusing. Facebook heard the uproar though and attempted to make some changes.  This post is Part 1 of 2 3 on the topic of privacy and social media. Facebook for better or worse has grabbed our attention on the topic of privacy but there is much more to discuss and much of it provides great opportunity.

Facebook’s Permanent Impact on Privacy
At one time the title of this post was going to be “Privacy: Facebook Wins, You Lose”. On some level I still feel this way, but in short Facebook provides a service that to many is worth giving up some if not all of their privacy for. The problem with Facebook is they’re not very ethical about this… they force their privacy changes on people. Jason Calcanis put it best in his assessment of why Facebook is not trustworthy. I should state that I whole heartedly agree with Jason on principle.  But why did Quit Facebook Day flop with only 1 in 15,000 accounts being deleted?

I personally was a bit caught up in the arrival of my son when this was all happening, but that was fortuitous as it gave me time to better understand this question. My wife and sister are on Facebook quite a bit. Why? It’s the one place you can go to see an instant update of everyone you know. No digging though email or haphazardly taking instant message chats. Convenience trumps privacy… for now. Of Facebook’s 500,000,000 members you’re likely going to have a good number of friends and acquaintances that are on the site making it easy to track news and updates with in your social circle.

Let’s be clear from the start Facebook operates in a constant state of conflict. They make it easy for you to share information about yourself to your friends, but they make money from sharing your information with other companies. The two goals are diametrically opposed in regard to privacy. Complicating this is that Facebook started out as a “closed garden”. What I mean by this is that Facebook was originally developed so your information was private, to be shared only with people you knew. Now they’re being influenced by Twitter and seeing more income opportunity exists in the free flow (public display) of your information. For the past several years they’ve been slowly realigning their system to maximize how they share your information… making it an “open garden” by removing their walls / barriers of entry. Problem is they got millions of members to join under the guise of privacy. It’s important to note here that the public display of your information has helped Facebook.com become the #1 visited site surpassing Google.com.

Once Facebook hit a certain size in audience, let alone traffic, Facebook won and you lost. You have forever lost. Enough people have said its OK to reveal their information publicly, even if its not for you. The ability to have Facebook revert if not significantly modify their system is lost and they’re betting that you’ll never leave because it’ll be too difficult for you to reestablish your network elsewhere. A new open source solution with greater respect for user privacy such as Diaspora could arise… but it will be a while. (Ironically even Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook has provided money for Diaspora to get off the ground in a PR move to show good faith.)

So seriously at this point how likely are you to quit Facebook over privacy? Slim to none I bet even with news yesterday that 100 million Facebook users had their public data stripped from Facebook and made available via a download.

Next on the topic of Privacy:
Facebook’s flip-floping business model has thrust you and I into a position to rethink what privacy means to us, but as you’ll see in my next post as a business owner this shift in privacy has its upside. Stay tuned for “Social CRM: Opportunity Knocking”

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You’ve found my blog, but you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg… follow me on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.I also invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast “EXIF and Beyond” featuring photographer interviews and the chronicles of creating some of my photography

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Technorati Tags: Social Media, Facebook, technology, privacy

Over the past couple of months I’ve read a few blog posts and Facebook entries from acquaintances expressing concern about Social Media activity in relation to time burned and eventual payoff. I’ve been meaning to write something up on this topic for a while, but had to wait for the right time to squeeze it into my schedule (see tip #3).  I am certainly pro-social media, but at the same time I’m quite the pragmatist in knowing that different folks will manage their social media activity differently based on their comfort level and business needs. Rather than reply here and there online as this concern is aired here is my consolidated list of 10 Tips to Manage Social Media Productivity:

1. Scanning versus Searching for Activity
If you’re not up for scanning for activity through out the day search for updates/topics/people at one set time through Twitter search or set up a listening post for terms relevant to you. A listening post will allow you to scan for activity on your schedule.

2. Activity on Your Terms
While it can certainly help to be active everyday for certain social media strategies, don’t feel you have to manage social media every day. Many social media web sites are a constant flow of data/messages/interactivity that can overwhelm even seasoned social media pros. If you miss something it’s not the end of the world. If you want to catch up see tip #1. You can’t take a sip of water from the bottom of Niagara Falls.

3. Prioritize
Prioritize online activity choices and match it to the time you can allocate to social media work. This tip is particularly true if you have a presence on multiple sites.

4. Fun versus Work
Keep in mind the difference between social media activity with a business purpose and social media activity with a personal/for fun activity. If you’re lucky you’ll have both blur together more times than not. Per tip #2 if you’re working focus on addressing work updates versus personal updates. Being disciplined in this area can save quite a bit of time.

5. Don’t Stretch Yourself Thin
Do what you can when you can. Set a schedule if it helps to have 30 min a day you’re active online or set a day/week that you check online regularly and another day/week you’re offline. Activity on social media sites should be done when convenient for you. You shouldn’t become a slave to it.

6. Don’t Be A Slave to Engagement
Adjust your marketing mindset and don’t get turned upside down.  Social Media while about interaction/engagement is also about publishing. It’s ok to have a bit of old school one sided publishing in the mix. Not every online activity has to be interactive, but to be social you should have a decent of amount of it. Perhaps a 60/40 mix will work for your audience versus a gung-ho 90/10 social to publishing mix. To know what works best for you and your audience may require a bit of experimentation.

7. Responding to Followers & Fans
While its great form to respond to everyone that reaches out to you, as you increase your fan base/followers it becomes unrealistic to do so. Don’t feel beholden to respond to everyone. If you can you’re a rock star, if not its because you’re a working professional and there’s nothing wrong with that.

8. Know When to Scale Back If Necessary
If you’re not having fun being active in your social media marketing or its not adding to your productivity/opportunity… consider scaling back or even cutting out activity on less productive web sites. Social Media marketing is in its early stages and not all services are mature nor are all online marketing techniques optimized. A lot of this is still experimental so consider yourself an early adopter. This being said I would investigate methods of optimizing your activity before you completely pull the plug on taking part on certain web sites or with social media all together.

9. Consolidation & Connectivity
Look for opportunities to consolidate online activity to a central forum (your blog, Facebook, or Twitter) and set expectation with your audience. You don’t have to interact with people on the same post in 3 different locations. If you have yet to read my blog post The Birds and the Bees of Social Media Connectivity be sure to do so.

10. Know Who & What You Are
Remind yourself who you are and act accordingly. Are you a photographer, a blogger or social networking butterfly? (If you’re not a photographer replace it with whatever profession you are a member.) If you’re getting sucked into Social Media and finding your time is disappearing asking yourself this question is a quick way to get yourself back on track. This is one tip that has helped me stay on track over several years of social media activity.

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You’ve found my blog, but you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg… follow me on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. I also invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast “EXIF and Beyond” featuring photographer interviews and the chronicles of creating some of my photography

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Technorati Tags: Social Media, Productivity, Tips, Best Practices

2009 has been an interesting year for photographers who have taken the plunge with Social Media. I’m guessing back in January of 2009 many of you would have scoffed at the notion of being active in Social Media by years end. It’s been great to see so many photographers experiment with it this year. While I knew use of Social Media would not stick for some, I have been pleasantly surprised more people have stuck with it than I’d have anticipated.

If you consider yourself a Social Media friendly photographer here are 10 predictions for the New Year to keep you thinking through 2009 and beyond.

1. Real-Time Search becomes a game changer
   Twitter’s search deal with Google & Bing is the beginning of the end for traditional search. Google will work to stay ahead of the pack in developing algorithms to query and rank results from Twitter. Google’s battle with Facebook on the Real-Time search will also pick up steam as the race begins to dominate this new and fast growing set of data. We may not see the full effect in 2010, but we’ll definitely start to see an impact from real-time search in day to day management of our sites. Sentiment, brand management, and shifting rankings will impact all who manage business web sites.
2. Reverse Image Search applications go mainstream
   TinEye, PicScout Image IRC and Google Goggles will increasingly become part of daily search for many people. The main drivers to this development will hit opposite ends of the use spectrum. Mobile phone applications will free up tired thumbs that need a break from tiny keyboard typing. Larger companies will more widely adopt reverse image search applications to manage their intellectual property in an increasingly chaotic environment online.
3. Engagement & Sentiment analytics will become the latest obsession
   Standard web metrics will look like child’s play compared to emerging engagement & sentiment analytics. With ever growing demand from larger corporations a software development race will heat up to provide meaningful analytics to tackle Return on Investment (ROI) & Return on Engagement (ROE) questions. Engagement analytics will fill a growing vacuum to measure & manage community development, brand management and personnel management
4. Facebook’s 2009 identity crisis will last through 2010
   Circa 1990’s Microsoft fashion Facebook will continue to steal feature ideas from innovators to secure and expand its foothold in the Social Media space… all while developing very little innovation of its own. Continue to see Facebook change course in 2010 and beyond, as it attempts to morph into the latest buzz.
5. iPhone apps will lose momentum
   iPhone applications have reached a saturation point and as a result developer interest will continue a sharper fade in 2010. The one exception will be the maturation of augmented reality applications and demand for games. Lack of a larger interest by developers will impact demand downstream with app users. In addition the lack of market expansion resulting from diminishing developer support will drive consolidation of game development to companies who have profited most from iPhone app development. The gold rush for individual developers is coming to an end.
6. The U.S. government will officially turn to Social Media to fight terrorism & address national emergencies
   The growing threat of non-traditional communication channel use by enemies abroad & at home and the success of the DARPA Balloon Hunt has put Social Media squarely in the sights of government security and emergency relief agencies. Larger safety concerns, terrorism and natural disaster, will spur programs to use Social Media communication in polar opposite fashions: monitor & hinder information seen as a threat vs. leverage & spread information to avert threats. And you thought you had a love hate relationship with Social Media!
7. Facebook will yet again fail to learn from past mistakes regarding Privacy
   With an eye toward company goals (IPO,  expanding ad revenue, etc.) Facebook will turn a blind eye to privacy concerns incorrectly thinking members will endure most anything rather than re-establish network relationships through another service.
8. Flickr will undergo a long over due redesign
   My Hail Mary prediction of the year is that Yahoo it will undergo a layout redesign. Personally I think this is a long shot, but I’m hopeful that Flickr will surprise me. Improvements will include an update to the image detail page layout to more clearly highlight use rights, tags, image sets and embed social media hooks to improve the sharing capability of their service. Higher level changes to display Explored images will take effect to broaden community interaction.
9. Data Portability will make little head way
   Full Data Portability will live on as an idealistic dream. Implementation of a widely adopted independent & open format for single sign-on will remain rough and barely hold on as Facebook makes a full frontal assault to dominate this space as Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect taints the larger community effort . With few incentives for private companies to adopt true data portability it is likely to languish until the next PR nightmare to haunt Facebook, Google or Twitter.
10. Google Wave will start to live up to the hype in late 2010
    GoogleWave beta has had a tough time living up to the hype it has received.  It’s biggest strength and biggest weakness is its dependence on developers to create reliable functionality that can be appended to its use. Incredibly strong for communicating collaboratively it has a while to go before hitting a tipping point with a larger audience. GoogleWave strikes me as having its strongest use by large enterprises, but less the proper developer support will find itself stuck in niche uses. As more reliable and functional add-ons are created for GoogleWave, use will increase and a larger tipping point among individual users is likely to happen in late 2010.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, predictions, 2010

Earlier in the year I wrote a series of blog articles on Social Media including Why Social Media Matters to Photographers. Shortly after the publication of these articles I began to receive questions from  photographers concerned about the time commitment and return on investment (ROI) in relation to Social Media activity. After numerous e-mail correspondences & phone conversations explaining the non-traditional value of social media participation, I decided to run a survey on the subject as I was preparing to present on a Twitter Revolution panel at Photo Plus Expo.  The (2) two goals of this survey was to:

1. Answer many of the basic questions I was receiving not just with my professional opinion, but the cold hard reality of what other photographers were reporting in relation to their marketing & business efforts.
2. Capture a historical snapshot of early business adoption of social media in the photography industry.

In less than a month I was blown away to have nearly 550 photographers take part in the survey. With the skillful help of friend, photographer and business designer Taylor Davidson the survey data was combed through to provide meaningful patterns and trends. After several weeks of review the results are summarized in the slide deck below along with some high level analysis to provide greater clarity on the subject. I hope this proves to be of great value to you and I invite you to share these survey results with your peers, trade organizations and others who have questions about Social Media.

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You’ve found my blog, but you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg… Sign up to get email updates & news on future web marketing / business development programs.  Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. I also invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast “EXIF and Beyond”.

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Technorati Tags: social media, photography, survey

Below are the audio recordings and presentation slides from the Twitter Revolution discussion panel at Photo Plus Expo held on October 22nd, 2009 in New York. The following recordings are listed in order of presentation. All credit for this great session goes to Jack Hollingsworth (who just launched his new blog).

Jack Hollingsworth – How to Modernize

Rosh Sillars – How to Magnetize

Seshu – How to Mesmerize

Taylor Davidson – How to Monetize

Jim M. Goldstein – How to Mobilize

Slides for each Presentation:
(via Slideshare.net or PDF)

• Jack Hollingsworth – How to Modernize
• Rosh Sillars – How to Magnetize (PDF)
• Seshu – How to Mesmerize (PDF)
• Taylor Davidson – How to Monetize
• Jim M. Goldstein – How to Mobilize

Speaker Twitter Pages
@PicSeshu
@tdavidson
@jimgoldstein
@photojack
@newmediaphoto

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Twitter, Photo Plus Expo, TwitterRev, Jack Hollingsworth, Rosh Sillars, Seshu Badrinath, Taylor Davidson, Jim M. Goldstein

On October 22nd, 2009 I will be taking part in a panel discussion, Twitter Revolution: Changing the Photographic World, 140 Characters at a Time, at Photo Plus Expo with Seshu Badrinath, Taylor Davidson, Jack Hollingsworth and Rosh Sillars.

As part of this discussion I’m looking to compile data on how photographers are currently using and receiving benefit from social media web sites such as Twitter, Facebook and others. To accomplish this I’ve put together the following survey:

2009 Photographer Social Media Survey
Estimated time of completion – 5-10 minutes

I invite you to take part in this survey and to spread word of it to other photo communities and photography trade organizations. Data compiled from this survey will be shared upon its completion to all who are interested.

Thanks for your interest, participation and word of mouth efforts.

Technorati Tags: photography, photographer, survey, social media