Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Technology on April 25, 2010 |
Recently I was interviewed by Scott Sheppard over at Rangefinder Radio. Must say that Scott did a great job of moving the discussion along and keeping the topics flying! He is a true professional and terrific resource for our industry. I have been working in the wedding industry for 10 years now and have some definite opinions expressed in the interview.
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Workshops, tagged jason aten, san francisco, wedding photography, workshop on January 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
STARTING OUT RIGHT: ONE-DAY INTENSIVE
This is not a typical workshop. It’s not a seminar. If you’re looking for a day of learning more about your camera and shooting pretty models – this isn’t for you.
On the other hand, if you’re ready to go deep – and get serious about your photography business, you can’t afford to miss this. You can’t afford to NOT start out right.
Unlike most photography “workshops,” this isn’t about photography. It’s based on business principles to help you grow your business.
Jason brings a background in management and marketing from working at as an executive at a Fortune 100 company, and the experience of starting – and building a successful boutique studio based in the midwest.
You’ll leave with answers. You’ll leave with a PLAN. You’ll leave with the best practices and key strategies to help grow a business built to last.
KNOWING YOUR NUMBERS
We’ll start by helping define your goals. Using that as the foundation, we’ll get a grip on the numbers – including pricing, budgets, cash flow, expenses, and more.
MARKETING AND BRAND STRATEGY
Developing a brand – and a marketing strategy to support that brand – are key to finding the right clients. We’ll go through best practices in marketing and brand development – so that you’ll leave with key principles you can put in to place immediately.
THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE
The relationships you develop with your clients are about more than smiles and smooth talking. We’ll cover how we walk our clients through from inquiry to completion – and how we start the cycle over. Our goal is to build clients for life.
SETTING UP SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS
You only have so much time, and we often find ourselves spending it on things that barely help us get by – and DON’T help us grow our businesses. We’ll talk about how developing efficient systems can help set your business up for real growth.
WORKFLOW AND SALES
From the time you shoot it, to the time you sell it, we’ll cover how you can develop a workflow and sales process that results in real income and profit.
Sponsored by:
Who should come?: Photographer/Small Business Owners. Whether you’ve been doing this for less than 2 years or more than 10, this workshop is designed to help you learn best practices to grow your business.
Cost: $450 ONLY $300 per person! Includes all materials [business planning and budgeting tools, contract worksheets, participant manual] and lunch. Also includes chances at some pretty cool giveaways, including a 6 month free subscription to ShootQ, a Livebooks subscription site, a one-year Pictage Lite membership and MORE!. More giveaways to be announced shortly!
Dates/Locations: Current Cities include: Atlanta, Nashville, Jackson, MS, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Cincinnati, Austin and Houston. For more info, click on the Register Page!
How to Register: Just CLICK HERE to go to the registration page!
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Personal, Workshops on October 15, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Emilie and I just returned from a terrific couple of days in Vegas at the Engage09 The Encore, a luxury wedding business seminar! The speaker lineup was terrific…starting with Rebecca Grinnals, who also put on the day, and Marcy Blum to Simon T. Bailey and the brilliant Sean Low. Networking at this event was 2nd to none! Randy Fenoli, Director of Fashion at Kleinfeld in NYC and “Say Yes to the Dress” fame entertained us in the evening at Blush. Our great friend Jennifer Dominick of LoveLifeImages brought her Snapshot Studio to capture some of the fun!
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Workshops, tagged Katrina Families Charity Event, liveBooks, new orleans, partnercon, pictage on October 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Just four years ago thousands of families from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states were left homeless, with many of their personal belongings destroyed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. A large majority of these families lost what could arguably be their most valued treasures – family photographs.
In response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina we’ll be providing hundreds of families with charitable mini portrait sessions as part of PartnerCon New Orleans! With YOUR help, all families will be provided a CD of their images the day of the shoot, along with a package of assorted prints delivered to them a few weeks later. This is your opportunity to play a direct role in making a big difference in the lives of others, while simultaneously enriching your PartnerCon experience.
We’re seeking 100 attendee volunteers to make this charitable shoot a success. Reserve your spot now!
The Details: |
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Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Workshops, tagged 2009, atlanta, Atlanta – Monday, bambi cantrell, beth forester, boston, kevin kubota, kirk voclain, lori nordstrom, minneapolis, Minneapolis – Wednesday, robert lino, September 21, September 23, September 28, September 30, srah petty, tony corbell, vicki taufer, wppi convention and trade show, wppi road tour on September 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
| 4 different cities. 17 different speakers. 4 different topics. | ||||
| 4 CITY ROAD TRIP | ||||
This coming September, WPPI is taking the show on the road for the first-ever WPPI Road Trip. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity like this!
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| 17 SPEAKERS | ||||
| Each city will host 4 distinctive speakers that you’ve come to know and love at previous WPPI Conventions. The 2009 WPPI Road Trip roster includes: Bambi Cantrell, Tony Corbell, Jim DiVitale, Kay Eskridge, Beth Forester, Jim Garner, Doug Gordon, Kevin Kubota, Robert Lino, Lori Nordstrom, Sarah Petty, Ken Sklute, John Solano, Eddie Tapp, Vicki Taufer, Jed Taufer and Kirk Voclain. | ||||
| 4 HOT TOPICS | ||||
Each stop on the tour will cover 4 specific areas, designed specifically to cultivate your technical skills, inspire creativity and enhance the productivity of your professional photography business.
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| ALL FOR JUST $149 | ||||
| Each stop along the WPPI Road Trip includes 4 programs, a buffet lunch and a mini trade show with some of your favorite exhibitors, companies and sponsors all for just $149!
Choose 1 city and pay just $149 |
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| BONUS! | ||||
| For a limited time, WPPI is offering FREE registration to the 2010 WPPI Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, to all attendees who register and attend any one of the stops on the first-ever WPPI Road Trip! If you’ve never attended WPPI before, there is no time like the present to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity near you.
To find out more about each city and the specific speakers, please click on your city of choice below. |
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Posted in liveBooks, Marketing, tagged industry, j sandifer, livebooks. wedding photography, newsletter, wedding marketing on September 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Personal, tagged amber terronova, aurora images, Aurora Photographers Annual Meeting, jose azel, miriam marseu, pdn photo annual party, rich clarkson, tribeca skyline studios on September 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
You never know when you will meet someone that will lead to new business. While in NYC for the PDN Photo Annual Party back in May I met Jose Azel on the roof of Tribeca Skyline Studios. Jose is the man behind Aurora Images which just so happened to be based right here in Portland, Maine! After a few meetings and a nice lunch, we found that we could have an interesting partnership with liveBooks and Aurora’s archive. Jose was kind enough to invite me to his photographers annual meeting on Sebago Lake last week! I was pleasantly surprised with the amazing talent that was in attendance at the meeting. Photographers from across the country and from right in my back yard were taking part. There were break out sessions, group meetings and a pretty sweet soccer game!
Future of Our Industry Q&A session in the sun. Speakers Jose Azel, Miriam Marseu (SI), Amber Terronova (PDN) and Rich Clarkson.
Image taken from Aurora Twitter Stream...not sure who took it.
Thanks so much for having me out Jose! I look forward to a terrific partnership…
Posted in liveBooks, Marketing, tagged websites photography, wedding video testimonials on September 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Last year we updated the Emilie Inc website with video testimonials. Typical testimonial pages are rather flat and uninspiring. This page really allows Emilie’s ambassadors to speak to how their experience was on the biggest day of their lives. I think it is really powerful and we have had great feedback on it, even a couple I saw last night that said they wanted to do one.!
We believe in hiring the right people for the job…Check out Wonder Dog Films for some of their other terrific work…
Posted in Business, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged industry, newsletter, photography on August 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Business, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged northern virginia magazine, Northern Virginia Wedding Photographer of the Year, Northern virginia wedding photography, rob holley, Robert Holley on July 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Congrats to Rob Holley a Northern Virginia Wedding Photographer for winning the 2009 Photographer of the Year from Northern Virginia Magazine! Rob and I have worked together in the past and I can attest to his passion for photography.
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, Workshops, tagged chris williams, partner conference, PartnerCon New Orleans 2009, pictage, register on June 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“PartnerCon is the best industry event I’ve attended.”
David Wittig
“First of all, PartnerCon is a requirement for me every year – I need it! It’s a chance to re-connect – or connect for the first time – with friends met on the forums.”
Shari Zellers
“I love PartnerCon for it’s intimate and personal feel. My favorite part is meeting other photographers and small business owners.”
Shawn Reeder
RULES from a Local Chris Williams!
1. You are NOT in N-E-W O-R-L-EEEEE-NS, it’s NAW-LINS or NEW OR-LUNS, or even NEW OR-LEE-UNS
2. If you have to ask what you’re eating, it’s best not to know.
3. We eat alligator down here, but it does not taste like chicken no matter what anyone tells you.
4. We also eat Nutria, which is a large rat and also does not taste like chicken.
5. When we say “suck the heads” it’s referring to eating crawfish, not a late night zombie attack on Bourbon St
6. Snowballs are the #3 dessert down here. Yes that’s ice and flavored syrup. And we stand in line in the heat for it.
7. Beignets are our #2 dessert down here, just don’t breathe or sneeze while attempting to eat them. Also you can get them 24 hrs a day.
8. Bananas Foster is our #1 dessert down here, well at least in my book it is. I’d recommend Brennan’s brunch for the true Foster tasting.
9. We don’t really now how to pronounce street names. We say “Charters”for the French street name “Chartres”. It’s best not to ask. But every one of us down here can say Tchoupitoulas!
10. The French and the Spanish had the French Quarter, the too uptight goody English types took everything else but considered the Quarter an unruly place.
11. Where Y’at? Just means “how’s it going?”. Also if everyone keeps calling you “babe or baby”, it’s just our way.
12. When some guy following you tells you he knows where you got your shoes at, tell him “oh these are not my shoes”. Otherwise you are 100% sure to lose at least $20 on a bet.
13. A “Hurricane” is a red fruity potent drink, tastes like Fruit Punch Kool-Aid but after a few you WILL be one of those joining the large group of “photographed passed out people” on Bourbon St. A “Hand Grenade” is the same style, but tasting like Lime Kool-Aid.
14. For real southern drinks, try a Sazerac, Pimms Cup or sip a Mint Julep. Do this of course at a restaurant with open shutters to the street for true effect. I’d suggest Napoleon’s, which was built for you know who, though he never got to see it.
15. No locals do not hang out on Bourbon St so we don’t really notice the smell.
16. It is still illegal to tie up your pet alligator to a fire hydrant.
17. Yes I know some people down here talk like they are from Brooklyn, I still can’t figure it out either. However NO ONE down here talks like in the move “The Big Easy”.
18. We have held more Super Bowls than any other city. The Saints have yet to even go to a Super Bowl in 40 years.
19. A “2nd Line” parade is held after a funeral or a wedding, or any other excuse to parade down the street. Feel free to jump right in.
20. How many other US cities can hold a party for 2 weeks with over a million people an not have more than 500 arrests? Just remember if you get arrested the weekend before Mardi Gras, you stay in jail until Wednesday. No King Cake or Zulu coconut for you. Mardi Gras really started in Mobile,Alabama but let’s not tell anyone.
21. Some people live and work on the Westbank which is actually South of downtown New Orleans. Just easy not to ask.
22. Get in line early at Central Grocery for a muffeletta sandwich. Eat the whole thing and well, you’re crazy.
23. There are 2 directions. You are either headed towards the river or the lake.
24. Our cemeteries sit above ground due to our low lying ground. Buried below ground and the water will cause you to knock against your tomb and keep the neighbors up.
25. Andrew Jackson is our rockstar, he beat the British just down the river after the war was over.
26. We are known as the birthplace of Jazz.
27. Lestat still hangs out in the Garden District.
28. We live in a Parish, we do not know what a county is.
29. We have the oldest operating street car line in the USA, and it can get you just about anywhere from the Fr Qtr to the end of St Charles Ave.
30. And finally, yes the water did go down. The only place in New Orleans still underwater after Katrina is the aquarium.
Le Bon Temps Roule!
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged 2009, atlanta, Atlanta – Monday, bambi cantrell, beth forester, boston, Boston – Wednesday, dallas, Dallas – Monday, doug gordon, eddie tapp, first-ever WPPI Road Trip, jef taufer, jim barner, jim devitale, john solano, kay eskridge, ken sklute, kevin kubota, kirk voclain, lori nordstrom, minneapolis, Minneapolis – Wednesday, robert lino, September 21, September 23, September 28, September 30, srah petty, tony corbell, vicki taufer, wppi convention and trade show, wppi road tour on June 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
| 4 different cities. 17 different speakers. 4 different topics. | ||||
| 4 CITY ROAD TRIP | ||||
This coming September, WPPI is taking the show on the road for the first-ever WPPI Road Trip. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity like this!
|
||||
| 17 SPEAKERS | ||||
| Each city will host 4 distinctive speakers that you’ve come to know and love at previous WPPI Conventions. The 2009 WPPI Road Trip roster includes: Bambi Cantrell, Tony Corbell, Jim DiVitale, Kay Eskridge, Beth Forester, Jim Garner, Doug Gordon, Kevin Kubota, Robert Lino, Lori Nordstrom, Sarah Petty, Ken Sklute, John Solano, Eddie Tapp, Vicki Taufer, Jed Taufer and Kirk Voclain. | ||||
| 4 HOT TOPICS | ||||
Each stop on the tour will cover 4 specific areas, designed specifically to cultivate your technical skills, inspire creativity and enhance the productivity of your professional photography business.
|
||||
| ALL FOR JUST $149 | ||||
| Each stop along the WPPI Road Trip includes 4 programs, a buffet lunch and a mini trade show with some of your favorite exhibitors, companies and sponsors all for just $149!
Choose 1 city and pay just $149 |
||||
| BONUS! | ||||
| For a limited time, WPPI is offering FREE registration to the 2010 WPPI Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, to all attendees who register and attend any one of the stops on the first-ever WPPI Road Trip! If you’ve never attended WPPI before, there is no time like the present to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity near you.
To find out more about each city and the specific speakers, please click on your city of choice below. |
||||
|
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged facebook, linedin, liveBooks, small business help, Social Media 101, Twitter, webinar on June 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
| Date: | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 |
| Time: | 2pm PT, 5pm ET |
| Duration: | 1 hour |
| Host: | J Sandifer |
Register here
Would you like to:
Join J in this webinar to learn what the Social Media craze is all about. He will describe the big three, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. He will talk about what they can do for your business and how each is different. You will learn how to use these new social media tools to get your business noticed, gain new clients and get more bookings. In today’s marketplace, it is vital to innovate and continue to evolve to grow your business!
About J
I have been with liveBooks for over 2 years! I have had the pleasure of traveling the country to speak to photography groups of all types. While I came to liveBooks as an expert in the wedding industry, I have learned a ton about the commercial world by sitting on panels with creative directors and art buyers, by speaking to many liveBooks clients on the phone, and by swapping secrets with my counterparts who shoot commercially. I truly enjoy consulting entrepreneurs on how to grow their businesses in my position as a sales consultant at liveBooks.
My wife and I run a wedding studio in Portland, ME. Visit our websites at www.emilieinc.com and at www.emilieincassociates.com.
If you’re into, or trying to get into social media marketing, I’d like to be connected with you. Follow me on Twitter, link to me on LinkedIn, befriend me on Facebook (search Jason Sandifer) and follow my blog at www.jbrides.com
Posted in Business, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged j sandifer, j's newsletter, livebooks newsletter, marketing newsletter, wedding photography on May 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Business, liveBooks, Marketing, Technology, tagged PDN : Photographers Virtual Trade Show on May 14, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I will be on the virtual tradeshow floor! This should be interesting and pretty cool… It will allow artists who are unable to travel to trade shows the ability to interact with different vendors from the industry.
Live show date: May 21, 2009
Live show hours: 10 A.M. EDT – 6:00 P.M. EDT
You can check out more and sign up HERE.
Posted in Business, liveBooks, tagged May 20th PDN Photo Annual Party on May 11, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Anyone planning on attending this party next week? I will be there, so let’s make plans to hang out…DM me at @jsandifer
Posted in Business, Inspiration, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged 20 factors to better google rankings, franklin bishop, seo, seo for wedding pros on May 5, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I talk to people on a daily basis that are still in the dark a bit on how to optimize their site for SEO. As you develop your business and website…what’s the point if people can’t find you? Using a few good practices will begin to help you move up the rankings organically for terms that will help your business. I have written in the past about SEO for Wedding Pros,How does Google see your brand and is that helping your SEO? and How is your sites Googlability?. Today I came across the post below on Franklin Bishop’s blog and thought I would pass it on…it is basically what I tell folks on the phone and in presentations wrapped into a nice package:
Any discussion about SEO Fundamentals needs to start with Google. With over 75% of the world’s web searches now being conducted via Google, it’s safe to say that your potential customers will be starting their journey there as well.
Google is the gold standard of Search Engines in both overall search volume and search quality. I’ll save the rationale behind Google’s dominance for another day, but undoubtedly a large portion of their rise to the top of Search Engine excellence can be attributed to their proprietary algorithm, which is the set of calculations performed against the web’s content that decides which web sites they think their viewers will find most relevant for the entered keywords.
Google is the most difficult search engine to optimize against because it does the best job of filtering out all of the short-cuts marketers try to use to cheat the system. Google makes a company work to return high organically. At the most basic of Google’s (and hence, SEO’s) driving factors to page rank are:
This means that the early days of tweaking a few meta tag descriptions to fix your web site’s SEO are long, long gone. In today’s game, SEO cannot be thought of as a one-time expense. It requires a commitment. Based on your competition, your industry and your objectives, it may also require a good deal of time and money before you see results. There is no short-cut around satisfying these two criteria. If an SEO Consultant tells you there is, it’s likely either a scam or an activity that could get your site blacklisted.
So, how exactly does a company show Google great, relevant content that’s as popular and externally-validated as a southern Homecoming Queen? There’s no magic answer, and the rules are always changing, but….
Without further ado, and in no particular order,
1. Keyword Use in Title Tag – Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.
2. Keyword Use in Body Text – Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords – Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.
4. Keyword Use in a web page’s Headline (H1 Tag) – Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL
6. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure – Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.
7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages – Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
8. Age of Document – Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporarily relevant.
9. Amount of Indexable Text Content – Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.
10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) – Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.
11. Global Link Popularity of Site – The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).
12. Age of Site – Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).
13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site – The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.
14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site – The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.
16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.
17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.
18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.
19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
20. Age of Link.
Posted in Business, liveBooks, Marketing, tagged j sandifer, liveBooks, newsletter on April 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Inspiration, liveBooks, tagged ally godfrey reps, shutter sisters on April 14, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Ally Godfrey Reps
Click on either images to read the rest of the article and to get over and see what Shutter Sisters is all about!
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