social media - more than one account?

bubblecatcher

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Michael
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Hi, been trying to work out best social media approach.

Currently trying to build up business, i have different websites for wedding, portraits and commercial.

Currently have one facebook page, one google+ page, a personal and a business twitter account, business pinterest account.

I am keeping them separate as they have different structure, plus don't want to keep each site specific to each topic.

I have domains that relate my name and being a photographer just in case they may be of use.

I believe i can keep branding consistent across the sites, but am still unsure how to deal with social media accounts?

Do have one for each SM platform for each site?

One business one for each SM platform that covers all sites?

One of each SM platform that uses my name that covers all?


Currently i not posting all disciplines to social media accounts as I think this may be confusing to end user.



In future I would like specialise in just couple of disciplines, but that is not possible now. Looking for starting point and end point, changing approach as things develop.

Any thoughts?

thanks
 
"Currently i not posting all disciplines to social media accounts as I think this may be confusing to end user."

This is the key point. I personally don't see the need to have multiple business identities because your potential clients won't know which one to use.

I think you would be better off focussing on a good single business identity and develop that by offering multiple services. Keep it simple and easy to navigate otherwise your bounce rate will be high due to customers seeing one identity (eg Wedding) when they actually want family portraits but assume you don't do that when in fact it's under a different 'identity' with a different url.

Cheers
Steve
 
Wouldn't having one across all sm platforms increase the opportunity to sell across your streams i.e. a person booking you for a wedding could recommend/book you for portrait work? A person who you do commercial work for might not realise you can do their wedding or perhaps recommend you?


I guess that you run the risk of appearing to dilute your businesses by being jack of all to the uninitiated but I think the value of business development across all three streams outweighs this as long as you can show them as separate businesses under one umbrella brand?
 
Thanks for replies, done a bit of research on this and there are pluses and minuses for different websites/brands.

My question is not really about websites, but about social media.

My, and others, rational for having separate websites is thus.

Thanks for replies

Having a site which declares you do multiple photography disciplines dilutes the perception of mastery for one. Your target audience may frown upon other disciplines, boudoir with children portraits, wedding with commercial etc. With a dedicated site you can target your market both in terms of content and SEO.

An analogy is a handyman, great for doing lots of different jobs, but would have him rewire your house or fit new boiler?

There are some disciplines where you can have an overlap, weddings and portraits is one, but what if you pricing structure is very different? My wedding price structure is very much in tune with the industry, high res images on disk, album prints if they want them. My portraiture (family, children) is all about printed product sales, with restricted digital sales and only if ask.

On my wedding and portraits sites i will mention i do the other and have link to site, but it will be very small. People searching for wedding will find my wedding site, portrait searches my portrait site, commercial searches my commercial site.

Going back to original question, do i do the same with social media?

I think i am beginning to answer my own question, possible merge portraits and weddings together for social media, but have separate ones for commercial.

Looking at others, Thom Hogan had one site, now has split into many with original site used to link to articles on new site.

Kevin Mullins had one site, but created new one to separate photography chat away from wedding clients, also has separate site for training. Though far as i know uses single social media accounts.

I know of one school photographer on this forum who uses different websites for different types of photography.

In terms of branding, do you go with a website like name-weddingphotographer.co.uk name-portraitphotographer.co.uk or simply weddingphotographer.co.uk portraitphotographer.co.uk and do personal branding on each site?

Starting to think aloud now, but is difficult to decide which way to go. More research needed.
 
Website = business persona

Social media = personality

If you try and run several social media brands then either (1) they will be basically advertising accounts and nobody will pay any attention (2) they will all be the same so what's the point? (3) your head will explode.
 
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