Social Media for the photographer where to start and why? Facebook

Social Media for the photographer … where to start and why

Submitted by Michael Shilling on November 13, 2010 – 10:00 amNo Comment

This is the first in a new weekly series which is more of a back to basics in social media. That said, some of our posts from just a couple of months ago are already outdated so it doesn’t hurt to have a little refresher.

Part 1 Facebook

500 million people can’t be wrong….

Interesting facts about Facebook (correct at time of publishing)

50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month
Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

All very impressive and I’m sure the question you’re asking yourself is ‘Why wouldn’t my business be on Facebook?’

The social verses the private life

Since day one it seems that every bit of buzz we hear from traditional media about social media is the degradation of our privacy when it comes to social media…….. especially Facebook. Could it be traditional media running scared or is there really no other news?

As a photographer…. and I’m talking to you business owners….. it is important to separate your private and business life on Facebook. You might not want to have both business and private life on Facebook but I’d suggest that if you only wanted one then don’t focus on the former as the latter will inevitably emerge.

What’s on your mind?

When it comes to sharing you’re probably going to want to separate those groups of friends and followers into …..er……. Groups.

What are the main changes with the new Groups design?

The new Groups product enables members to selectively share information with a small group. Old Groups were built around the same goal of helping people share with a group, but users told us it was harder to use that as a means of sharing personal information with a small group of their friends. The new design offers you a shared space where you can share personal information with a smaller subset of people with whom you interact on a more regular basis, like family, classmates or co-workers.

New Groups are optimized for small groups of people; broader movements around public affiliations and causes are better suited for Facebook Pages.

There are also a number of new features being rolled out as part of the new Groups design, including:

Group Chat: You can chat with multiple other members of a group in real-time on Facebook Chat.

Docs: The new design has a shared notepad, which allows you to collectively write and edit notes with a group.

Mailing list-style notifications: Keep up-to-date with other group members through a variety of notification options, like subscribing to notifications or emails about any posts in the group, or any posts made by their friends.