I figured we would do a video blog post this week to touch on a great way to seek out clients. You can use this technique when things are slow, or you can have an assistant or intern working on this while you’re managing other aspects of your studio.

As always, feel free to add comments and questions below.

Video Transcription:
Hi everyone. This is William Bay from Flaunt Your Site.com
Today I’m going to help you find new clients by harnessing the power of Twitter with the program TweetDeck.

If you’re unfamiliar with TweetDeck, I highly suggest that you go to tweetdeck.com and check it out. The program comes in a desktop version which I use, as well as a web version, and mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
It’s a great program as it brings your social media like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles under one easy to use interface. It also allows you to manage multiple accounts. So if you have a personal Twitter account and a business account, you can manage them all from the same program.
What I’m going to share with you today is the power of the search columns and how that can be used to prospect for potential clients in your photography business.
In TweetDeck, you’ll find the “Add Column” button here. We’re going to click on that and the following dialog box will ask us which account you want to use. We’re going to use Twitter which is the default account already.
Then in the Search Bar we’re going to input a keyword that you think your potential customers may use while tweeting, so that we can target those people.
For example, I’m a Wedding Photographer in San Diego, so I’m looking for people that are getting married in San Diego. In this case I would use terms like San Diego Married, or San Diego Wedding, or even San Diego Engaged. You can have multiple search columns, which will payoff with more potential prospects.
The words don’t have to be in any particular order, and the great thing about this is that San Diego (or the city in which you’re searching) doesn’t have to be in the Tweet itself, but could be in the person’s Twitter profile which would create an even better target for you.

Now comes the process of sorting through the searches and finding good prospects to respond to. You’ll want to find good tweets that could be open to receiving some information from you. It’s important to not just bombard people with unwanted info about you and your services.
You can potentially have your account suspended if you are just spamming people.

You may find people that have announced that they have just been engaged. In this case you might respond with a message of congratulations and send them to something you’ve written about ‘selecting a wedding photographer’ or ‘ten things to know about planning your wedding’ on your website that they could read if they were interested.
Or you may find someone that is actually looking for recommendations of other vendors. You would definitely want to recommend the vendors you’ve worked with. The opportunity may present itself to let them know that you’re a photographer for hire as well, but remember social media is about sharing, and growing communities and relationships. If you were to refer a vendor, they may refer work back to you at some point too. There’s something to be said for internet karma.
Now can this work for other photographers? Of course. If you are a Maternity Photographer, you might look up phrases like “having a baby” or “I’m pregnant” if you are a Senior Photographer you can look up words like “graduate” or “senior.”
It’s really up to your creativity.
Why use TweetDeck over Twitter’s search:

1. In my opinion TweetDeck’s interface is quite a bit more streamlined than Twitter’s and has more features.
2. TweetDeck feeds are automatic, so I don’t have to refresh my browser screen when people send new tweets. It’s live, in real time.
3. Since I can have as many search columns it’s just as simple as scrolling to the right of my most used columns to go through my lists.
4. One of my favorite features is that you can assign an audible notification as the searches come in, so you don’t have to check every five minutes to see if you’re missing something new.

I hope now that you have a new way to obtain new clients. The bonus to this technique is that as you start spreading your content with other people, you may gain new followers, as well as having your links spread across the internet which will bring you more traffic, and increase your SEO.
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me here at FlauntYourSite.com. We do specialize in SEO, and Social Marketing for photographers and can help you in your campaigns.