Facebook,Youpic, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram, 500px etc etc

[rottie102]

It's a PITA to have an online presence on all of them, post new photos etc.

Which ones are you on?
Which ones are working in terms of getting you publicity?

[DibblyDobbler]

I am on:

Facebook - (does anybody want to be my fwiend?) Quite a lot of exposure on here for my pics - must get more likez!
Twitter - don't do much in here except stalk keep up with various 'stars' eg Mr Carter
Flickr - my main site, doing pretty well, few hundred 'followers' couple of hundred K views but has gone a bit quiet of late
500px - not got as much on here but recent pics have done quite well

That's more than enough - and yes it is a pain keeping them all going!

[nellyleelephant]

Your Flickr site makes me want to be back on Skye

[rottie102]

Have you seen YouPic? Somebody asked me on Facebook yesterday whether I post my photos on it and I had a look, never heard of it before, I have to say - pretty decent quality of photos.

[DibblyDobbler]

nellyleelephant said:

Your Flickr site makes me want to be back on Skye

Don't worry it'll be there for a while I think, get yourself a trip booked up

rottie102 said:

Have you seen YouPic? Somebody asked me on Facebook yesterday whether I post my photos on it and I had a look, never heard of it before, I have to say - pretty decent quality of photos.

Never heard of it tbh - will have a look

[RobDickinson]

Played with youpic a little, have a bunch of inspiration photos no editors picks, seems quite hit and miss on when you upload.

500px is about the best showcase, Flickr seems intent on self destruction

[markmullen]

I've got Flickr, www.flickr.com/markmullen which I find useful for spreading the word, it gets lots of views, and is very good at SEO so my photos appear in a lot of google searches, in turn each photo I upload has a link to my own site so it drives traffic

I use Twitter, www.twitter.com/markmullenphoto which I find most useful for keeping in touch with fellow photographers

My Facebook page, www.facebook.com/markmullenphotography is good for reaching a different audience. Each photo I upload to my own site I link in a post on FB, which then cascades down into Twitter. Some stuff you think will fly on FB dies a sorry death, other things which you think will be of only minor interest go bananas, the FB audience really likes a behind the scenes pic.

Finally my own site, www.markmullenphotography.co.uk is a showcase of my landscape photography and is the one I try and drive traffic to, my business cards for example only have this address on, from there people can link to FB and Twitter but I try and get them to the site first. I have tried to keep it pretty clean, no commercial work, just landscapes.

I have google plus but don't understand it nor really use it.

[MartinP]

They all have their pros and cons, so probably best to focus on the one(s) that benefit you. For me, it's the following:

Facebook is very good for showcasing work to my clients friends and driving some traffic to my website

Twitter is good for keeping up with other photographers and again driving traffic to my website (though not as much as Facebook gets me)

I'm on Google+ for the authorship benefits, so is part of my SEO strategy

Pinterest is a very useful one for me as so many brides use that to look for inspiration for their weddings

I'm still on Flickr, mainly just for historical reasons, but I do sell the occasional image to a corporate client from there and it's resulted in my work being featured in Turning Pro magazine and The Wall Street Journal, so a little publicity.

I have a few images on 500px, but it's not doing anything for me.

[WillAron]

I try to use every social media site as possible. I've always uploaded my images to Facebook and Twitter and Flickr. Strangely enough, I'm starting to consider posting my work to Tumblr again!! :O

[RobDickinson]

I need to make google+ work as facebook is mostly broken

[GetCarter]

On none of the above, but managed 80k hits and +£3k sales from me' website... which shows how much we really need all of the above.

[rottie102]

GetCarter said:

On none of the above, but managed 80k hits and +£3k sales from me' website... which shows how much we really need all of the above.

... or how many views and sales you're missing out on avoiding social media

[GetCarter]

rottie102 said:

... or how many views and sales you're missing out on avoiding social media

Well, yea but no but...

Firstly I can't accept the T&Cs of some of them. FB is a nightmare (they own all the photos posted). I do use Twitter, but that's just to link to my 'pic-a-day'. The main problem is that I don't like the way these sites determine what size and how squashed photos become. I like to do that for myself.

[RobDickinson]

GetCarter said:

FB is a nightmare (they own all the photos posted)

No they dont. "You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook" https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

They do require rights to publish but then they need that to work as a sharing service/website.

I think about 30-40% of my print sales come from facebook.

edit:

facebooks image quality is terrible. No getting around that.

Flickr seems to be doing something new recently with sharpening on scaling or something too.

500px is decent quality though hard to share, very limited social aspect.

[GetCarter]

RobDickinson said:

No they dont. "You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook" https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

They do require rights to publish but then they need that to work as a sharing service/website.

I think about 30-40% of my print sales come from facebook.

edit:

facebooks image quality is terrible. No getting around that.

Flickr seems to be doing something new recently with sharpening on scaling or something too.

500px is decent quality though hard to share, very limited social aspect.

I see they have re-worded it (probably because so many of us left)... I still don't like this though: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.

[RobDickinson]

If they didnt have that they couldnt show anyone else your photos. They can only publish them in connection with facebook.

Conceivably they could use your posts to promote facebook, but thats about all they can really do.

[...Mole...]

I just use Flickr and Twitter although my activity has been quite low this year. It's really just somewhere to put some pgotos up occasionally and keep in touch with other photographers.

I had my own website for a while but I took that down to rethink and redesign it, again it was just somewhere to have my photos and whilst i got the very occasional sale through people e-mailing me I'm going to attempt something a bit more focussed towards sales this time.

Considering a facebook page to but I'm not a big user of facebook so not sure how much use i'd get out of it.

[RobDickinson]

As a 'business' facebook is broke now. unless something really goes viral you reach 10-20% of our subscribers with an average post. Its just not shown to the others unless you pay.

[rottie102]

RobDickinson said:

As a 'business' facebook is broke now. unless something really goes viral you reach 10-20% of our subscribers with an average post. Its just not shown to the others unless you pay.

That's true, but then on the other hand there's no better way to show your work to people you ACTUALLY want to show it to.

[MartinP]

rottie102 said:

RobDickinson said:

As a 'business' facebook is broke now. unless something really goes viral you reach 10-20% of our subscribers with an average post. Its just not shown to the others unless you pay.

That's true, but then on the other hand there's no better way to show your work to people you ACTUALLY want to show it to.

This one highlights how the social networks can differ according to the type of your photography. For Rob's landscape images, I'd agree that Facebook business pages are now 'broken' and offer little value. If you're into social photography though, it still works if you can tag the client (or get them to tag themselves) in the image. You can then get a mini viral effect through their friends - you can't beat free publicity like that!