Weekend Roundup – June 25, 2011
Coming off vacation is always rough and this past week has been no exception! It’s been pretty hectic with really no time to get out and shoot after work. As a result, I’ve spent some time catching up on some neglected projects.
500px
I chose what I consider to be my 10 best images and uploaded them to my 500px account. I’m as new to this site as anyone else and I’m still trying to figure out how to best interact with the community. I see it as more of a professional gathering than the image dumping sites that Flickr and DeviantArt have become so I’m not quite sure how to deal with the whole commenting/faving aspect.
Do you reply to everyone that comments? Do you thank people for following? Part of me thinks that you should but so far I’m not seeing this level of interaction.
Are you on 500px? How are you handling this and what are your thoughts?
On a side note, I created a 500px social media icon to use on my blog pages, feel free to download and use it if you like!
Social Media
I entered the Twitter community a little late and for the first 6 months I had my account I wasn’t really sure what to do with it or even how to use it! I’ve gotten over that and Friday night I got my 500th follower. For someone who’s really not very outgoing socailly this is a big deal!
Facebook is another story, other than being co-admin of the Creative Droidography group, I primarily use it to keep up with family and friends from the school days. I do post daily links to my blog posts but I receive very little conversion from it.
I did try to create a business page this week and was utterly amazed at how difficult the Facebook folks have made this. If you have a personal account, you cannot create a separate business account. You can’t create the page while logged in, you have to log out and go to the Sign Up page to get started. I spent over an hour simply trying to get it setup and working before just giving up and deleting it. I tweeted a comment about this and received a few reponses from others that had ended up deleting their biz page too. The reasons ranged from lack of traffic to the horrible interface and limited functions. I see photographers with active FB pages all the time and I don’t doubt that there is some benefit to them.
Do you have a Facebook business or fan page? What are your impressions or results? Is it something you consider worthwhile?
That’s all for this week, hopefully the upcoming week will be more productive!
Hi Curt
I’m new to this game, so learning all the time! That said, I find Twitter great for general social chit-chat… FB has helped me link up with many great photographers, trouble is Google+ has come on the scene so I’m tied which way to commit really… I use Flickr for getting a general opinion on my work however, I’m keen to switch to 500px as it appears to be more ‘Pro Photography’ based.
I recently rolled out with my daily PhotoBlog and use SmugMug for hosting the images… very pleased with that side of things!
Keep up the great work, yeah!
I agree with the FB page thing. While I do love FB, it’s not as user friendly as I would like. It makes for a wide learning curb, though. Did you get yours up and running? I didn’t see. Hopefully so!
Good luck in your endeavors and looking forward to more posts.
Celeste
P.S. Your pictures are beautiful!
Hi Curt,
I agree with your comments on the 500px thing the community aspect I think is still figuring itself out! I havent found myself using it as much as I thought I might, dont get me wrong I still love alot about it but its still another site to maintain haha! Also I’ve found the uploading to be a bit of a paint compared to flickr and its stand alone uploading app. Congrats on the 500th Follower, thats quite an achievement, I’m loving twitter at the moment its been great for discovering other photographers and a good source of inspiration! Cant Say I’ve had any experience with the facebook pages, Ive never really tried them so i cant make comment really but I tend to just stick with my blog and flickr for my photos then update twitter whenever I can. Have you tried tumblr? you might like that with the other sites you use.
Ben
Great read. Yep, I started a facebook fan page about 4 months ago, and I love it. I find that it is a great way to provide behind the scenes type interaction with those that follow my site. Plus it integrates with my YouTube channel and Newsletter. Basically, there it is a very easy way to provide exclusive content to your friends who are facebook users.
You can find it here:
http://www.facebook.com/LightAsMagic
I haven’t tried out 500px – actually I signed up but haven’t done anything yet. It seems cool but I’m trying to simplify things a little bit, between Phanfare, Smugmug, MobileMe (soon to become the cloud), Flicker, WordPress and Tumblr, it’s gettin out of control
I’ve never heard of 500px, so thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I do use facebook, but have never tried to start a business page.Like you, I mainly keep it for family and friends and post links to my blog there. Hope everything works out well for you!
I didn’t have such a hard time setting up a Facebook page. I didn’t have to log out of my account at all; all I had to do was go to http://www.facebook.com/?sk=pages and click the Create a page button.
Hi Curt,
I’m with you. FB is so user-unfriendly that I boycotted it for awhile, but missed my friends and went back. I post a daily link to my blog and that seems to work. I am not a social butterfly, but I have found that I truly enjoy the friends and contacts I have made on Twitter and it grows organically over time. I have created lists on tweetdeck that help me manage those I really want to interact with.
In general, my philosophy is “keep it simple”. Twitter, my blog, and an occasional FB perusal occupy as much of my time as I’m willing to devote to social networking. I’d rather be out shooting and processing. Your blog is really really nice. Your entries are interesting, your photos beautiful, and it’s very well laid out. Do you have smugmug or another account for sales? I use FineArtAmerica and have had some success with that.
Sorry for taking up alot of space on your comments but just wanted to say I really enjoy your blog and content. Keep up the great work!
Cathy
I think we fell from the same tree Curt. I like 500px but have some doubts that are preventing me from fully committing to it, FB Biz pages, I’ve been trying to set one up myself but just not liking it, Twitter seems to be going well and I’ve met a lot of talented photographers via this.
Strange times perhaps