Photographer In New Area. Need Advice!

Ya I ran some Facebook ads and targeted my demographic. For a while there 100% of my leads were coming via Facebook. In the past month or so I would say its been 50/50 via Facebook and website. Just not sure how I want to proceed with my SEO.

Social Marketing makes my head spin sometimes lol.

Let me put some points out there and then tie them together...

1) There is this lady at a church that I attended back when I was a kid. I heard that she did photography so I followed her on Facebook. She always put up galleries of photo shoots she was doing for people in the church. Family pictures, graduation photos, weddings, etc. EVERY TIME she put them up. Just showcasing her work and getting "oohs and ahhs"

We did our own family photos with her last year. We'd put off getting them done but this lady's photo updates showing up in my stream...well the biggest thing they did was keep fresh in my mind that I needed to get family photos taken. That it was important. Top of mind consciousness. The second part was looking at the photos and knowing she did good work. Combine the two and when we had the extra money we went with her.

2) Real Estate Photography - real estate agents need to get great interior photos done for their listings. They NEED to. Most still don't but the sellers are getting more demanding. Those selling homes over $200k know that great photos are important. I know of a guy who work 5 days a week exclusively shooting listings for Realtors and makes about $8,000 p/month.

The central networking place for this sub-culture of photographers is Photography For Real Estate

They even have their own Flickr group and stuff that they critique each others's stuff.

3) Combo - imagine just networking with Realtors all over the area. As many as possible. Create a presentation where you can highlight the benefits of great photography for getting listings sold. Dig up the stats on how homes sell for faster and more money with good photos. It's all on that site I just mentioned.

Create the presentation and call real estate offices. Many of them still have weekly meetings and the office managers love to have relevant local speakers who can relieve them of their obligation to figure out something motivational to talk about for the week. So they'll love you to be there.

Your GOAL though, would be to make as many Facebook connections as possible. Tell them at the presentation that you would like to connect with them on Facebook. Make yourself available after the presentation for networking. You should get a lot of contacts.

On days that there are NOT any meetings, just call up the big listing agents in various cities who are listing higher end listings. You can do this by teaming up with a Realtor who you develop a relationship with and ask them to pull a search of active listings in various cities with prices that average $275k or more. The price points is important as agents who are selling listings BELOW that price point are going to talk themselves out of paying for pro photos and will just shoot them all by themselves with their cell phone.

When you get the list, resort it on the screen by agent. Each city will have only one, two, or three agents that have a number of listings. These three agents will account for about 10% to 15% of all the listings in the area. All the rest will be spread between tons of other agents. Ignore all these other people at first. Just go from city to city to city until you can't find any cities you'd like to drive and do business in because they are just too far away and do this search and find the two or three top agents and get their names and contact info.

Call these agents and friend them on Facebook.

Then, anytime you shoot a listing, just put the pictures up on your Facebook profile. Over time, these agents will get the pictures that you're really "the guy" for photos. Interact with them and they'll develop the know/like/trust factor through facebook. See how this all works together?

This could turn into a healthy local business for you.