ImageSpan and Digimarc yesterday announced their partnership to integrate LicenseStream Content Tracker solution into Digimarc for Images – Professional Edition providing creative professionals a seamless solution to monetize, manage, and monitor their image assets.

Digimarc for Images – Professional Edition users that currently embed imperceptible digital watermarks in their images and receive reports of where their content is found online, will now have the ability to receive reports via a LicenseStream dashboard integrated within the Digimarc for Images solution. The dashboard empowers creative professionals to maximize the value of their image assets with efficiency and ease by providing automated remedies to license and collect payments for use of their image assets.  Targeted for a launch later this year, the solution will be bundled into Digimarc for Images – Professional and Small Business Editions.

This initiative builds on a partnership announced in November where ImageSpan and Digimarc are offering a joint enterprise solution for Stock Photography Agencies, Media Companies, Museums and Archives.

Click to see full press release

Looking to reignite your passion for photography? Seeking a little praise by professionals, recognition by your peers, and perhaps even a little free advanced instruction, camera equipment or travel perks?

Entering a photography competition offers a great way to get a little or all of the above while also providing a way to develop your skills and experience – whether you’re a seasoned pro or a weekend shutterbug. Bear in mind that winning a photo competition has more to do with how you photograph than what you photograph. Try not to prejudge your images – just enter contests with the idea that you’re likely to learn a lot and come away with fresh ideas. The key is to enjoy what you’re doing while shooting for more, so to speak.

One word of caution: Beware of contests that offer to provide exposure in exchange for rights to your work. It also doesn’t hurt to ensure your images have been uploaded to a LicenseStream Creator PRO user account which, in addition to providing automated licensing and royalty settlement services, provides proactive technology to track your images  as they get distributed. It also provides regular reporting on where a content owner’s images are found so the owner can take appropriate action.

Here are a few additional tips on how to approach photography contests and come away each time a winner – whether or not you actually win a contest:

• Do your homework: Research competitions online and look for one that matches your interests. Review the entries of past winners to see what worked – did they have people in them? Were they action shots? Were they abstract or manipulated digitally in some way?
• Practice, practice, practice: Once you’ve determined which contests to enter, grab your camera and click away. No matter what the focus, taking plenty of shots of a subject will give you the luxury to select from a wide variety of potential entries. 
• Review the contest’s categories: Many contests offer more than one category, enabling you to choose where your image stands the best chance of winning. If you want to enjoy the rush of winning, look for a category that may attract fewer entries.
• Follow the rules: This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many contestants fail to follow contest rules, resulting in their elimination. An easy way to stay ahead of the pack is to follow the rules to the letter --- and this means meeting deadlines!
• Read the fine print: Avoid contests that simply offer exposure in exchange for gaining rights to your photograph (except for the right to display your winning photo online or off). For a good list of criteria to consider as you research contests, check out The Bill of Rights for Photography Competitions located on the UK-based pro-imaging site. It warns competitions that try to claim copyright for your works, fail to give credit for all free usage, add, alter or remove metadata from digital images, or that require an entrant to sign a commercial agreement as a condition of winning.

Here are a few upcoming contests that we found interesting and that abide by The Bill of Rights for Photography Competitions:

• Shoot Nations 2010: Will launch Friday, May 21st with the theme “City Living.” This year, the contest is appealing to young people (under 25 years old) around the world to help build a global picture of what urban environments mean to them. Are the streets paved with gold, or fraught with risk and difficulty? How to the challenges of growing up in the city differ as a boy or a girl? Prizes aren’t yet posted for this year’s contest, but in the past have included the opportunity to be exhibited at the UN Secretariat building in New York, a new Olympus SLR camera, a National Geographic magazine subscription and a contemporary world wall map from The Future Mapping Company. For more information go to the ShootNations09 site  which includes information about this year’s contest. Competition closes Saturday, July 31st.
• Demotix: A user-generated newswire and photojournalism community with more than 14,000 users in 110 countries worldwide, Demotix holds a monthly competition called Viewfinder with a changing theme. For example, the Viewfinder competition in April focused on the art of portrait photography. Prizes lean toward the career-advancing tools, such as the opportunity to turn your images into a photojournalism book or to get your best images printed on glossy stock.   For more information, click into Viewfinder. 
• International Garden Photographer of the Year 2010: A prestigious competition open to everyone, anywhere, this competition imposes no restrictions on the type of camera you use or the techniques you use to produce an image. The competition accepts entries in six categories – ranging from People in the Garden to The Edible Garden, and also offers four seasonal competitions. Unlike many professional competitions, this one provides all entrants with professional feedback on their entries – upon request after the judging of the competition is completed. It also offers a “People’s Choice” award, that allows registered visitors to the site to vote for their favorite images in a different category each month. Prizes include cash awards and exhibitions of the winner’s work. The current contest, Spring into Life, closes May 31st, and the next contest, Insect Beauties, opens June 1. To learn more, check out International Garden Photographer of the Year 2010.  
• NSS Cave Arts and Music Salons: Organized by the U.S. National Speleological Society (NSS) to promote and recognize top-notch cave-related art, artists and musicians, NSS Salons are open to everyone so that those who enter need not be members of the NSS.  For photographers, there are two salons. Prizes consist of blue ribbons and winners can elect to have the NSS promote their work for use in periodicals or on Web sites to showcase winners, promote future NSS congresses, and competitions. The Photo Salon, to which contestants may submit slides and digital images has a closing date of May 15, 2010. The Print Salon, to which photographic prints can be submitted, has a closing date of July 31, 2010. Details about each competition can be found on the NSS Site: Photo Salon  and Print Salon.   

Plenty of other contests can be found online or through various photography organizations. If at first you don’t succeed, keep entering. Contests are a great way to make new contacts and friends. Eventually, you are sure to win your fair share of contests.

Most of all – be sure to enjoy yourself!  If you’re not having fun, you’re probably putting too much pressure on yourself and are not going to deliver your best work. 

Have questions or comments about this blog post? Please feel free to share them by clicking on the “Comments” link below.

Last week, we looked at five steps to enhancing and extending your photography business with existing clients. For photographers looking to move into new areas, or simply to plan for the New Year, here are five additional ideas for extending the reach of your business with LicenseStream.

• Send current and potential new clients, including local businesses, a beautiful oversized photograph that highlights your work. Remind them of all the events where your services could be helpful. Be sure to include a URL for your LicenseStream gallery. (For more information on Showcasing Your Galleries, click here.)
  • For business clients, remind them of the need for images of the company, its products and its executives for advertising, marketing, holiday cards and other critical communications, such as sales presentations or annual reports.
  • For individuals, suggest birthdays, weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, anniversaries, family reunions, property photos and holiday parties.
• Host a workshop to teach newcomers your craft or lead a walking photo holiday tour for amateur photographers of an historic district or other interesting neighborhood in your city.  Be sure to include URLs for your LicenseStream store on any materials promoting such events.
• Hold a holiday open studio or join forces with another local artist or merchant sponsoring a similar event to showcase work that is ready for sale and/or offer on-the-spot photo sessions that include immediate or quick turnaround of the finished product. Offer to build and send to clients and their families LicenseStream lightboxes with images from these sessions for final approvals as well as quick and easy online purchases.
• Set up a table or a booth at local malls and at local holiday arts and crafts fairs.  Before committing to any of these venues, check in with other local artists to gauge whether past sales generated at these venues justify the investment of time and money. If so, plan to exhibit some of your best work, framed and unframed, for immediate sales, and/or participate with on-the-spot portrait sessions that offer a quick turnaround on image processing and delivery. Be sure to include your LicenseStream store URL on any sales or ordering materials, as well as links to specific galleries where individual customers may find their own or their family’s portraits for quick review and ordering.
• Contact local businesses, including restaurants, salon or spa owners, insurance and property agents, and car dealerships or stop by to get to know the proprietors. Drop off a quality one-page sales sheet that showcases your photos and, if available, include a quote or two from previous customers that testify to the quality of your services. Again, be sure to include URLs for your LicenseStream store or specific gallery. Most merchants need professional photography services for a range of business needs – from executive portraits to property photos, marketing and advertising.

As you plan for the New Year, consider reaching out to other independent service providers or entrepreneurs who may be open to bartering – exchanging goods or services.  In these challenging economic times, such trades may be the best way to get the services you and your trading partners need at minimal cost.

Finally, foster good community relations. Get involved in a local food bank, education program or fundraiser. Being involved in your community can gain your business valuable exposure, not to mention good karma.

Need a little extra cash? The good news is that for most photographers, the holidays offer a cornucopia of opportunities to generate new revenues. Whether you're just starting out or you're a veteran photographer, now is a great time to build out your portfolio and extend your business reach.

This week, we'll look at the first five of 10 ways to engage your clients during the holidays and even into the New Year. While some of these ideas may seem obvious to some of you, they are all-too-easy to skip in the holiday rush and thus worth highlighting. To keep costs down, much of the outreach can occur via email instead of snail mail.

1. Create a "Year in Review" Gallery & Newsletter
   Create a "Year in Review" Gallery within LicenseStream and send to existing and prospective new clients. Include some of your best work from the past year (for more information on showcasing your work with Galleries, see below). In your email to clients be sure to highlight your plans for the coming year, and include a calendar of your upcoming events, including workshops, exhibitions, open studios, or any high-profile photo shoots that you can mention.
   
   
2. Send out a Photo Greeting Card or Photo Calendar
   Include some suggestions for gifts, including holiday family portraits, holiday pet portraits, photo greeting cards, photo calendars, even photo advent calendars. Use an image from your LicenseStream gallery and include an embedded link to drive traffic back where clients can view similar images or galleries in your LicenseStream store.
   
   
3. Offer Specials for Business Referrals
   Invite existing customers to visit your LicenseStream store for year-end specials. On the front page of your store, offer discounts to existing customers who refer business to you, and promotion codes for new customers who come to you via referral. Such specials during the holidays open the door for repeat customers.
   
   
4. Build and Send Special Lightboxes to Clients
   Build and send to appropriate targeted clients a year-end greeting with a lightbox of images for each of your specialties. Be sure to select images that differentiate you creatively from other photographers who work in those niche areas. When appropriate, invite clients to view work within a related specialty or sub-specialty. For example, if you're targeting clients who typically purchase images of landscapes, invite them to see images of wildlife, plants and flowers, or of specific types of scenery (for example, "deserts") or region (e.g. "Coastal California"). 
   
   
5. Promote Special Photography Packages
   Promote multi-generation family packages to include separate children, parent and grandparent portraits as well as pictures of the entire family. Provide a link to a LicenseStream gallery that shows samples of your work and backdrops. After the portraits are taken, suggest that customers provide links to additional friends and family who may want to purchase some of the images or arrange portrait sessions for themselves or other family.
   

Finally, be sure to include a personal year-end message of thanks to your client base on your home page. You might do this by adding to or editing your bio on your home LicenseStream page.  

Check back next week for five additional ways to engage with clients during the holiday season -- and beyond.

Showcase Your Work with Galleries in LicenseStream

LicenseStream galleries are a great way to Showcase a variety of work to your existing clients and generate interest in your work. As mentioned above you may choose to put together a "Year in Review" newsletter. A great addition to this is to create a LicenseStream gallery with a selection of images that show what you have been working on in 2009.

Create a New Gallery

Before you create a LicenseStream Gallery please make sure the images you are adding to your gallery are already added to your LicenseStream Store.

To create a new gallery you will need to follow these steps:

1. Go to "Manage Content"
2. Click on "Create new Gallery" on the right side of the page (1.)
3. Enter Gallery name (suggestion: Best of 2009)

 Add Content to Your LicenseStream Gallery

1. Go to "Manage Content"
2. Mouse over the thumbnail to select the content you would like to add to the Gallery
3. On the right side under "Actions" choose "Add Selected to"(2.) and select "Gallery" from the drop down list.
4. Select your new Gallery from the list:

Manage Your LicenseStream Gallery

Once you have created your Gallery and added content, you can access the Gallery to customize it by clicking on the Gallery name on the right hand side of the page:

You can:

• View the content in the Gallery
• Sort the order of the images in the Gallery
• Edit the Gallery name
• Create a direct link to the Gallery
  (i.e., store.licensestream.com/[storename]/[Galleryname])

Your Gallery will automatically be added to your Store Front and you can include that URL or the direct link to the gallery in your end of year newsletter.

Please note: You must use the Gallery Grid template for your Store Front to display the Galleries as per the screenshot below. To change your Store Front view, please go to your Store Manager and from the 'Store Front' tab select 'Template 2: Gallery Promotion with Gallery Selection Grid'.

For more information on this process and other helpful tips you can visit our online help guide and browse topics in the "Manage Content" section. 

The sputtering economy has sparked a spike in the popularity of social networks, and particularly of one network – LinkedIn. This site provides the missing link between social and professional networking.  

Offering a huge base of users worldwide and an abundance of professional networks and workgroups, LinkedIn is a great place to establish and build your professional persona.  Its reach, range and depth are impressive. Just consider:

• LinkedIn has more than 48 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.
• LinkedIn offers access to more than 111,500 professional groups, including more than 270 professional groups focused on photography.

Getting started is easy. Just go to www.linkedin.com, sign up for an account (free) and complete your profile. Bear in mind that it takes time to develop your social network online. A lot depends on the connections you make, the chemistry you generate with those connections, and the market demand for the type of work you produce.

To help you get the most out of LinkedIn, here are seven best practices to strengthen and build your network of contacts and your business: 

• Grow your personal and professional circles. The best recommendations – and the most credible – come from people who know you and can recommend you to colleagues/friends and to friends of friends or colleagues. Just make sure you return the favor. It’s all about networking.
• Build your personal brand. What you say and how you say it conveys a lot about you. Choose carefully the topics you comment on, what you say, and how you say it so you send a consistent message about who you are. Remember that perceptions matter – especially when someone is considering engaging your services for the first time.
• Explore Groups. LinkedIn offers a wide range of Groups, including corporate and professional groups, alumni associations, conference and non-profit groups that help LinkedIn members enhance their trusted connections. Join the ones that best suit your interests and your business.
• Engage -- be active and helpful within industry groups. You'll find interesting people in the groups who are posting questions and providing answers to questions posted by other group members. Start a discussion thread that may be of interest to the group or groups you join.  If you engage with an industry group, jump in whenever possible to answer questions that your peers submit.  If you're ever thinking that you want to ask a question in a group, just look at the list of keywords you apply to most of your images and choose one associated with a concept, technique or practice to explore. Integrate keywords into your status updates.
• Participate regularly. If you’re part of a workgroup on LinkedIn, be sure to let people know you’re there by participating regularly. Providing a Status Update can be as simple as up loading a factoid about the subject matter that you're going to be working on for the day. Alert group members to upcoming exhibits or publication of your work. Or add information about something going on in the industry that may be of interest to other people in your LinkedIn network.  Once a project is completed, be sure you connect with the people that you worked for on LinkedIn to grow your network. Better yet, ask them to provide you with a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile.
• Go prospecting for new leads. By exploring the "Answers" tab at the top of the page on LinkedIn, you will find many people asking questions and looking for help. For example, you can easily plug in one of your keywords and see who might have recently asked a question about licensing images. Jump in where you can to answer such questions because people use the Answers section of LinkedIn as a resource for information. If you were to do a search in Answers for 'Photographers' you'll see lots of people asking questions that might relate to you or could drive business to you. Like Facebook, LinkedIn indexes profiles with the major search engines. So leverage this network and watch your search results rise. Like other social networks, LinkedIn needs to be monitored. It is good to check in on it at least once or twice a week.
• Seek out fellow LicenseStream members. Many LicenseStream subscribers are affiliated with groups that have a presence on  LinkedIn. As a LicenseStream member you’re likely to connect with fellow photographers and other content creators who are members of these groups. You can find, PMA – The Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations, National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and Wedding & Event Videographers Association International (WEVA) to name a few. Joining such groups accelerates the pace at which you connect with other professionals in your field.

We hope that you have found this initial series on social media outlets and how to use them to benefit your LicenseStream business useful.  Apply what you can and watch the results.  As additional social media tools emerge, we plan to report on them and how they can best be leveraged to serve your photography business. Stay tuned.

There are so many ways to participate in social media, that it's difficult to determine where to put your energy and resources.  You can easily lose your day working with various social media outlets and wind up generating minimal results.  For the third post in our series about social media tools and outlets, we're going to take a look at one of the fundamental building blocks of a social media strategy for promoting your LicenseStream business -- the Blog.

A blog is an easy and fun way to tell people what you do. It allows you to build relationships with your existing and prospective clients by regularly updating them on your activities, including upcoming exhibits, newly published works, and recent photography shoots or projects. It's also a great way to share your passion for your interests and the fun bits of information that you pick up as you experiment and gain experience through your creative work. There are several free platforms available today to help you get started, including:

• Blogger: Google's blog creation and publishing platform allows you to post text, photos and videos from the web or even a mobile phone.  It also allows you to personalize your blog with themes and gadgets. For more information, go to: www.blogger.com  

• Movable Type: A professional blog publishing platform that  makes it easy to launch a blog, manage entire websites and build a professional-grade social network with user profiles, ratings, community blogs, and forums. www.movabletype.com

• Tumblr: A versatile blogging platform that allows you to post text, links, photos, videos, music and to customize your blog with themes, colors and to post from your desktop, mobile phone, even AIM. You can also automatically post from other sites or profiles. Learn about it at www.tumblr.com 

• WordPress: Built on PHP and MySQL  and licensed under the GPL, WordPress prides itself on a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. To learn more go to www.wordpress.org

After you set up your Blog, give yourself a deadline for posting and stick to it by publishing your blog on a regular basis. The more often you post, the more of your content becomes available for the search engines to index. 

A blog offers the easiest place to implement and experiment with topics and ideas, ranging from tips on Creating New Opportunities in Tough Economic Times to information on new photographic gadgets and techniques.  In fact, a great way to gain readership for your blog is to write about the tips, tricks, gadgets and gizmos that you find useful in your work.  When you're trying out a new gadget on a shoot, be sure to report through your blog about how useful or useless it is, or what tricks make it a more valuable piece of gear. Providing your audience with useful content and links to valuable Web sites is a surefire way to foster a following and linkbacks that boost your search ranking.

It's a good idea to regularly link to articles of interest to your community, such as a recent article on the Shutterbug about how new technology and social media tools are bringing change to the business and marketing of photographic services.  (See our blog about SEO Dos where we talk about the value of creating links back to your site.

A blog also provides a great place to experiment with a keyword strategy, since it provides an ongoing opportunity to weave into your posts keywords associated with your content.  If you just uploaded great new images from this summer's Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada into your LicenseStream account, then you'd surely want to use the name of the event, some information about the art installation or event you captured, such as "Exploding Man" and a phrase or two capturing key images at the event, such as "Burning Man bicycles," or "Burning Man robots." While initially you may find it cumbersome and time consuming to provide such detail about your photo shoots, the payoff is great if you keep at it. Over time, your search results will improve.

If you have a personal website, another way to help boost your search index ranking is to choose carefully the URL you'll use for your blog. It is best if the blog's URL is tied closely to that of your website. For example "your blog.your website's URL.com" or "your website's URL/blog."  Attaching your blog to your URL makes it very easy to find in a Web search.  It also is likely to increase your search index ranking because each time the search engines crawl the Web and find a new post, it increases the relevance of that URL.

After you've published a few blog posts, take time to actively promote your blog by connecting your readers to other social media outlets where you have a presence, participate and post regular updates. If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, then include a link on your blog for those pages, or link directly from posts on those sites to your blog as you may with Tumblr.  Be sure to check your blog each week to see if anyone has posted comments that call for a reply. You wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to connect with a potential client.

Once you have your blog up and running, be sure to share it with us!  Here are a few examples of photographer blogs we've found useful and interesting:

• Chuck Eckert's blog: http://chuckeckert.blogspot.com/

• Rob Haggart's "A Photo Editor": http://www.aphotoeditor.com/

• Chase Jarvis' blog: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

• Joe Pobereskin's "Eat at Joe's" blog: http://cafejoetogo.blogspot.com/

• Marc Silber's blog: http://www.silberstudios.com/blog/ 

• Dave Walsh's blog: http://www.davewalshphoto.com/blog/

To continue with our series on social media, a very popular social media outlet is Twitter.  If you haven’t heard of Twitter, then this is a great place to learn a little about this wildly popular and easy-to-use service for growing your network and your business.

What is Twitter?  

A real-time, short messaging service, Twitter works over multiple networks and devices, enabling its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Twitter allows colleagues, business associates, friends and family to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to a simple question: What are you doing? As simple as it sounds, its reach is extensive and it can serve as an incredibly rich vehicle for disseminating information, given its ability to connect with people across a wide array of interests, geographies and time zones from your desktop, mobile phone or other PDA – as long as you can keep each communication to 140 characters (with spaces).

To find out how to set up an account and get started, take a look at our previous LicenseStream Insight blog posting. Once you're set up, be sure to populate your Twitter account with tweets on an ongoing basis - three a day is a good place to start if you have the time, including one at the start of business, a second during the lunch hour, and a third at the close of business.  

After you’ve added several tweets, start following people.  If they find what you are tweeting about helpful or interesting they'll follow you. A good way to find people to follow is to visit http://search.twitter.com/  and type in a few keywords that relate to your creative work. For example, if you specialize in images of Western shorebirds, then simply type in like ""professional photographer or “Bird photographers.” To find like-minded LicenseStream users, try following the LicenseStream or ImageSpan Twitter streams. After you start to follow interesting news and people related to your work, you'll build up a following in no time.

What do you Tweet about and how do you incorporate your keywords into your tweets?

Tweets can be anything that you think will add value to the people who follow you. Your blog would be a good thing to tweet about. It can be something as simple as, "I just published a new blog post about licensing dog photography” with a link back to your post. Since you’re limited to 140 characters, you’ll want to use a shortened URL (try one of the services for shortening URLs such as bit.ly (link= http://bit.ly/ or Tiny URL (link= http://www.tiny.cc/). Alternatively, you can tweet about one of your images, incorporating keywords that relate to your business, and simply add a link to your LicenseStream gallery to your tweet.

The best way to build relationships is to be helpful to your Twitter following. So share a helpful photographic tip or trick, or provide a link to an article of interest to your followers.  Share your passion for your work by alerting them to a new photography exhibit, a book about photographic techniques, or another photographer you admire. Again, think about including keywords that relate directly to your business or specialty. You may find your Twitter stream, if not your Web site, promoted in turn. With a built-in limit of 140 characters, no single tweet has to be overly complicated.

Twitter is more of a conversational medium than a blog, so you’ll be more successful if you monitor and add value on a regular basis.  You'll find responding to people and posting new tweets to be a relatively quick process and one that is very addictive.

Twitter’s conversational style also lends itself to some provocative dialogue. In some cases, you may directly or indirectly solicit honest feedback about your ideas or your work. When appropriate, take the initiative to respond in a positive, thoughtful way to Tweets that may be negative or potentially harmful to your business. Just remember that because of the speed with which tweets can be deployed and Twitter’s highly viral nature, Twitter should be used with caution. So you may want to think twice before blasting a rival or other offending entity with a blistering tweet.

Used prudently, Twitter provides a great service for fostering relationships with other photographers, customers and highly-qualified potential customers. As we’ve highlighted, your tweets can help build your search engine ranking by directing link backs to your site. Such linkbacks also increase page views for your online gallery.  All these benefits build your business and increase your capacity for making money from your images.

In our previous LicenseStream Insight Blog posts, we’ve talked a lot about keywording and SEO.  Now seems like a good time to talk about tying your keyword strategy into your social media activities.   Why? Because after you’ve selected keywords to generate search results and drive customer traffic to your website and/or LicenseStream gallery, those targeted keywords can serve as the critical threads that tie together all of your social media marketing activities. Over time, this concerted effort will help move your images or other content and your websites or galleries near the top of search results.

Our goal with this post, and with the series of posts on social media that follow, is to help you maximize the promotional work that you do elsewhere on the Web, including on your own website and third-party sites that host your work, to build your LicenseStream business.

Leveraging your Keyword Strategy to Understand Where Your Audience Lives Online

Your keyword strategy should focus on applying to your images or other content those words or phrases that are relevant and most likely to be used by potential buyers searching online for you, your work, your style or your type of work across a range of social media outlets. Put yourself in the mindset of the target market for your images or other content, and ask plenty of questions of current and prospective customers to find out what terms and techniques they use as well as what sites they frequent when they search online for the types of images, video clips or other content you offer. The better you understand your market and how buyers search for images or other content, the better for developing a keyword strategy and for understanding where your audience spends its time online. You may discover that the best prospects for your work may be spending their time on sites other than where you’ve been trying to reach them. To learn more, see our previous post on Keywording for Search Results

Using LicenseStream to Bolster Your Social Media Outreach

Once you’ve selected and applied keywords to your images or other content, LicenseStream provides you with a tremendous head start to bolstering your social media outreach. With LicenseStream, you can attach keywords to your images and other content and then publish them directly to your own or other Web sites, such as Flickr, and major search engines so that anyone, anywhere can find your content and license it with a mouse click. To learn more about linking your online images on other Web sites, including Flickr, to a LicenseStream licensing page, visit our previous post on Using HTML to Market Your Content.

Keep Keywords Consistent Across Social Media Channels

In addition to leveraging LicenseStream to publish to major search engines and other Web sites such as Flickr, there are plenty of other social media channels to leverage, including a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Whatever social media channels you choose, it helps to reiterate the most effective keywords you assign to your images or other content across all of your marketing and communication efforts – online and off. For example, if you specialize in images of Labrador puppies, it may help to include the words "Labrador photos" or “puppy pictures” in all of your print as well as your online advertising, client presentations, blog posts, Tweets or articles you might write to promote your animal photography business, as well as in your website copy, your page meta-titles, meta-descriptions and meta-keywords. Simply keeping your keywords in mind and using them where appropriate will do the trick. Learn more about keywording and search engine optimization strategies by checking out 10 Dos of SEO Practices, and 10 Don’ts of SEO Practices.

If you're going to spend time creating and building a LicenseStream business, it only makes sense to focus on promotional activities that will show a good return on your investment.  Social media channels provide excellent and inexpensive promotional tools. In upcoming LicenseStream Insights blogs, we’ll share information about some of our favorite social media tools and how to best leverage them to build your business. 

Let’s face it, all of us are feeling the crunch these days and many photographers who had a very steady stream of clients and projects have seen these dwindle over the past year or so. The decline is probably due to a number of factors, including the economic downturn, and several industry-specific trends including the availability of quality Prosumer cameras, the low pricing of royalty free microstock images, and the proliferation of super-low-cost photographers on sites such as CraigsList. All this makes for slim pickings. Many clients are shooting projects “in-house” and sourcing generic royalty free images because they, too, are feeling the crunch.

I spoke with a handful of professional photographers to find out what strategies they’ve employed over the past year to generate new business and found some interesting ideas.  Besides taking advantage of the ability to market and license their work using LicenseStream to generate passive income and expose their work to a greater audience,  many photographers are using the enforced downtime to get more creative about how they market their work.

This slow period has been welcome relief for some photographers who needed a break from tough daily schedules that don’t allow much time for personal growth in order to develop new artistic styles, create new bodies of work, or to learn about new photographic tools and acquire new techniques in a digital age. Some have decided to travel, exploring new views on the world that they can bring back and market. For example, one couple who had planned a trip to Africa took an extra step in their preparations: they contacted some private doctors and non-profit organizations to see how they might help support documenting success stories, and raise awareness for these doctors who were performing surgeries to fix facial abnormalities and other health related issues in underprivileged villages. This outreach resulted in work that helped support a trip they were going to take anyway and created a new area of business.

Other photographers have found it pays to participate in local farmers’ markets, in gallery exhibitions, or to develop fine art products.  One photographer talked about the success he had achieved in marketing his love of architecture, details, and natural patterns. He offered single-day rate for shooting photos of a particular location, say a winery or a beautiful hotel, and then offered to create for the location’s owners a coffee table book or a series of framed prints and the ability to use the images for promotional marketing materials as one complete package.

In addition to creating new niche markets and products, photographers need to look at reducing expenses. Consider sharing workspace costs, equipment, and combining different talents to collaborate on projects and expand networking circles. And let’s face it, not all of us are the best at running our business or going out and getting new clients. Hiring a business consultant and perhaps photo representative might be the best idea yet.

In addition, it may help to visit a few of our past LicenseStream blogs, including those on Using LicenseStream to Power Your Niche Photography Business, Using HTML to

Market Your Content,  Licensing Fundamentals: 20 Dos of SEO Practices, and Licensing Fundamentals: 10 Don'ts of SEO Practices.  

Oh, and don’t forget to say a few prayers, burn some incense, and avoid black cats. It can’t hurt.

As you already know the ‘Market Content’ section helps you create html code that you can paste into your own website or blog. With this code, you can create thumbnails of your images that link directly back to your LicenseStream account. That way, anyone, anywhere in the world who sees one of your thumbnails can click on the image or related link button to begin licensing on the spot.

But did you know that you can also:

•  Use the html code to link to your licensing page from your Flickr images?
•  Use larger, preview-sized images instead of thumbnails to link back to your licensing page?
•  Link directly to your licensing page from your own or another website?

In each of these cases, all you need to do is modify the html code we provide to make sure it links back to the correct content – usually a licensing page within your LicenseStream store. Here are a few quick examples and tips on leveraging HTML code to better market your content.

Link from Flickr

1.   Say an image buyer for a travel agency finds your amazing image of underwater diving off the coast of Hawaii on Flickr. To make it easy and seamless for them to license that image, simply provide a link that will take them from the Flickr image directly back to your LicenseStream account (add the html code to the description field for the image). Before adding the code that follows below, modify it by replacing the image ID after id= with your own image ID from the html code provided in the Market Content area:

<a href="http://www.licensestream.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=cfb140f7-f793-4a2e-bec9-830f7aa5d1c2" rel="nofollow">License this image</a>

Once it is modified, add it to the description field for the image.
Example from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uschi1306/3725097329/in/set-72157621406631921/

Showcase Your Photography

2.    If you have a visually superb photograph that you want to showcase, you may want to display  larger images instead of thumbnails. To ensure that anyone clicking on that larger image can begin licensing it with a mouse click, simply modify the html code by replacing the text ‘Thumbnails’ with ‘UserComps’ in your html code:

<a href="http://www.licensestream2.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=3071c372-1531-4c0c-8d58-9d1b6423f2fa"><img src="http://www.licensestream2.com/LicenseStream2/ContentStorage/47/

UserComps/fdemp5bb.jpg></a>

Example of a linkback from a larger image:

http://www.uschigerschner.com/PhotoArchive.html

Link from your Own (or Another) Website

3.   If you have a LicenseStream account but have built your own online presence elsewhere, it’s easy to link to your LicenseStream account from an image you are hosting directly on your own website. All you have to do is modify the html code below by replacing the image ID after id= with your own image ID from your html code:

<a href="http://www.licensestream.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=2688b5bc-dfe0-418a-9c8e-ab0710525730">License this image</a>

Example of a linkback from another website:

http://www.uschigerschner.com/index.html

liveBooks users please note: Most liveBooks sites are created using Flash. As a result, you will not be able to link back to specific content in your LicenseStream account using the html code. Instead, you can simply add a link to your LicenseStream store from your liveBooks site.

As always, please feel free to contact support@licensestream.com with any questions or feedback.