Overwhelm is the word I hear most often when talking to photographers about their websites and marketing. Many find technology intimidating and aren’t sure where to start or find the right information.

Keeping up with the fast changing pace of social media, SEO, web and mobile technologies can be daunting, and for any business to survive today requires many skills.

Drinking from the information firehose

The problem isn’t the lack of information on marketing and social media. It’s knowing what information is valuable and figuring out what to do with it. There is so much information out there that the volume and noise is drowning out any good information.

Often times people try to do too many things hoping something will work, most of which doesn’t end up working at all. Which is exactly what leaves people feeling overwhelmed. It’s hard enough to find the time to do everything and it can be frustrating when it feels like valuable time is being wasted.

One of the most quoted rules in marketing is the 80/20 Rule (The Pareto Principle), which states that 80% of your sales come from just 20% of your customer base.

What is the 20% of effort that will get the 80% of what we want? What’s the best way to figure it out?

I recently came across a presentation from Tim Ferris on mastering any skill quickly. He has a an unorthodox way of accomplishing things and thought it was an interesting take if you’re trying to tackle websites and online marketing.

Eliminate Options for More Effectiveness

In The 4 Hour Chef,  Tim Ferriss talks about Meta Learning, the strategies and framework for mastering any skill quickly. The book is a “cookbook” for learning anything and cooking is the vehicle he uses to teach this method. Along with recipes and cooking skills are great insights and tips you can use to grasp the skills you need in your business, marketing, social media or anything else.

He breaks down Meta-Learning into a four-part DiSSS framework that you can apply to any skill, like marketing and social media.

1. Deconstruction 
Most anything is overwhelming if it’s new. In order to be successful at any skill or goal you need to break it down into manageable parts. Ask yourself, “What are the minimal learnable units, the “LEGO blocks” or components I should be starting with?

2. Selection
Which 20 percent of the blocks should I focus on for 80 percent or more of the outcome I want? What 20% of the tactics will give you 80% of the results.

For example, stop focusing on your “average” customer and instead look for the exceptional clients (the happiest) and then addressing their needs. This is also the best way to stand out in an over-crowded marketplace.

3. Sequencing
Ferris tells you to ask yourself, “In what order should I learn the blocks. What if I did the opposite of best practices?’ By switching up the order in which you learn a skill, you will become more fluent and efficient in it. Question everything and instead of following conventional wisdom replicate outliers and anomalies.

4. Stakes 
What are the stakes necessary for motivation in the face of the temptation to quit. The stakes for business owners are already there. If you don’t succeed, you won’t get more clients, business or sales.

Cheat Sheets for Everything: How to reduce the information overwhelm

The other part of the Meta-Learning Framework is what Ferris calls the One-Pager.

The One-Pager summarizes the most important 20% into an easily digestible document so you can focus on the most effective tasks that will get you the biggest results.

As an example, Google Analytics is one of those tools you need to use in order to see whether your marketing is working and how people are finding you. Google Analytics however collects a ton of data and there are hundreds of reports to wade through.

The basic reports in Google Analytics aren’t enough to give you meaningful answers to what’s working for your marketing. I wanted to simplify and zero in on just the stats I needed most with the key performance insights that I could use. I created a Google Analytics One-Pager summary with the 12 metrics of the most important outcomes and results based on my marketing.

By doing this it simplified things and helped my cut through the data clutter. It also helps me on the most essential for the best results.

I use these reports for client sites which makes it so much faster when setting things up. If you are HiFi Ready Made Site owner you can download the reports here.

How this four step learning framework be applied to learning new web and marketing skills

Not only can this process make learning more effective, it can also help you implement marketing systems in your business that make you more productive.

Here are four take-aways from the book and video for learning a new marketing skill.

1. Eliminate as many options as possible
Deconstruct the task and break it into smaller, more manageable parts. If you want to learn SEO, start by learning one piece at a time, like keyword research. If it’s social media, then decide what channel that will give you best results and master that one first. If you’re new to Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest don’t try and tackle them at the same time. Don’t try ten different marketing strategies to do at once – pick one that would work best for you and focus there.

2. Start with tools you can use quickly
Use as few tools as possible until you’ve mastered them, then expand. It’s easy to get  distracted by tools and lose sight of the important things that will move your business forward.

3. Don’t try to accomplish too many things at once. 
Often times when people are getting started with a new site or re-design they try and tackle way too many things. View everything as tasks or goals that you can slowly chip away at instead of trying to grasp huge tasks to accomplish at once. Take small steps so your less likely to be discouraged.

4. Find an expert
When I wanted to learn Google Analytics I learned from an expert in the field. I didn’t want to waste my time searching all over for the information and chasing rabbit holes. Find someone who’s an expert at whatever skill you need or who is getting the results you’re after and spend a few weeks learning from them.

Here is the video of the presentation Ferris gave on accelerated learning at The Next Web conference.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

Two new features were recently added to HiFi Ready Made Sites.

Full Width Layout Option

Previously, only a few HiFi Ready Made Designs featured a full width layout option for the header and footer.

Bossa Nova
Mellow Yellow
Uppercase
Vintage – full width footer only

This feature has now been added to all sites and can be enabled in your sites theme options panel.

Mobile Navigation

The mobile navigation has been updated with a more user friendly sliding panel. When the main navigation is toggled open, the menu slides out from left.

Both of these features have already been updated for current users of HiFi Ready Made Sites.

If you purchased a theme prior to January 2013, you can grab the updates from the theme documentation page. Please refer to the instructions on updating your site.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

Visual media rules the web right now. Images are the most shared item on Facebook, and of course Pinterest and Instagram. When images from your website are shared on those sites it can drive more visitors back to your site.

The images on your site can also bring potential traffic to your site from Google Searches.  I know from checking Google Analytics, there is a lot of search queries from image search.

Often times people neglect to optimize their images and as a result miss out on a lot of traffic opportunities.

This is an easy SEO win that could bring you more site visitors.

Here are a few ways to make sure your images are optimized and working for your business.

How search engines work
Google has “robots (software that ranks websites)” that check out your site.  The thing is, these robots don’t see pictures or colors etc…  they only see text.  So they don’t see your pictures, but they do see the name of the pictures.

Adding Titles and “Alt Text” to images can help search engines associate images with text.

ALT Tags
In terms of SEO, ALT tags are the most important. Use keywords here that are related to the content on your page, and don’t stuff with too many keywords, especially irrelevant ones. In general, try and stick to one keyword, two at most per image.

Title
Use keywords in the title as well. Rather than IMG38723987123.jpg use a name like senior-portrait-session-ideas.jpg

If you hover over any of the images on this site, you can see the Alt Text.

Add a description and copyright
I recommend adding your website and copyright info to your images as well. When Google finds multiple copies of the same image it uses many different signals to identify the source of the image. I set up a metadata template in Photoshop Bridge to automatically apply this information to all of my images.

How to automatically optimize images

If you are using WordPress, the Title, Alt Text, Descriptions and Captions can all be added in the media editor. You can also save time by using an SEO Image plugin, which will automatically optimize all of your images with alt text and titles. If you are a Hi-Fi Ready-Made site owner, this has already been added for you.

File Size
File size is important because it affects page loading times. Google factors in page loading times in ranking. If you host with ZippyKid, image optimization is a built in server feature.

Open Graph Tags
Open Graph tags are great because they let you specify which images are used when your content is shared on social media. It does not impact SEO however it allows you to control your brand message and how your content is shared.

Flash
If you’re using a Flash site, optimizing your images will not make a difference since the search engines cannot “see” the page content.

What to do next
Go check your Google Analytics account and find the 10-20 top pages/blog posts bringing in search traffic. In Google Analytics look under Traffic > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages.

Go to those pages and add Titles and ALT Text to the images. Make sure to use a relevant keyword or keyword phrase. It can take a little while for those images to start ranking or displaying in the search engine results, however when they do it can be a great source of additional traffic.

Here is an SEO Image Optimization cheat sheet for you to grab and keep handy for reference.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

In the past I’ve always used a social media manager like Hootsuite to schedule Facebook posts in advance. Lately however I’ve been using the post scheduling feature in Facebook instead, for one main reason:

it’s the only way to schedule a Facebook post in advance AND have the option of tagging people. If you are using a third party social media manager this is not an option.

There is also some research suggesting that posts made inside of Facebook are more likely to appear in fan newsfeeds.

Some people miss this feature so here’s a quick how-to for scheduling a post inside of Facebook.

In the post box add a status update, photo or event

Add your text and select the schedule icon

Select the year. Once you’ve selected the year, the option to “add a month” will appear.

Select the month. Once you’ve selected the month, the option to “add a day” will appear.

Select the day. Once you’ve selected the day, the option to “add a hour” will appear so you can set the time of day.

You can also back-date posts as well. To view the posts that you have scheduled, go to Edit Page and select “Use Activity Log.” Any scheduled posts will be displayed at the top

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

Vine is a new social mobile app that was recently launched by Twitter.  It lets you create a 6 second looping video and share on the Vine social network, Twitter and Facebook. Think of it like Instagram for video.

Below are three easy ways to embed Vine videos on your WordPress blog or site.

Twitter Link

If you shared the video on Twitter, you can simply copy and paste the tweet link and embed both the Tweet and Vine video in your post.

Go to your Twitter feed and expand the tweet with the Vine video you’d like to embed.

Copy the Tweet link in the browser window

vine.co/v/bHOXLYL0dgd

— Nancy Nardi (@NancyNardi) March 5, 2013

Embed Vine video

The second way is to use the Vine embed code.

First, go the Vine video you want to embed in your Vine app and select the share icon.

Then select “Share this post”

Select the embed option

An email window will open. Email the link. 

Go to the Vine video link. Select your options. Below is an example of the Simple format

You can also select the Postcard format

WordPress Plugin

The third option is to use the Artiss Vine Embed WordPress plugin. Simply install the plugin, use the shortcode provided and add it to your post.

Right now the only drawback is that the embeds use <iframes> which are not responsive. The videos will play just fine on mobile, but if the embed size is wider than the browser it’s being viewed on it will hang off the page.

It looks like the Artiss plugin will have responsive features coming in future versions. Below is the vine video embed:

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

We want the process of accessing HiFi Site support and tutorials to be as easy as possible for customers. We have recently updated the support area, and have also added and updated the documentation and tutorials.

New videos and updated documentation has been added, including:

• Setting up the new gallery and slider features,
• SEO features
• Create a touch slider with blog posts 
• Creating custom MailChimp Forms
• The Video Gallery Feature
• Tips for customizing your site

and more.

See the new Support & Tutorials area.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

Creating a unique website starts with creating a unique brand.

Most WordPress themes can be customized with colors, backgrounds, branding elements and even layouts. Having a clear brand and identity is what will make your business stand out from the pack.

Earlier this year Joy Vertz, owner of Shoot the Moon Photography re-designed two websites. One for Shoot the Moon Photography studio and the other for her Joy Vertz educational site for photographers. Two very different and unique brands, two very different looks.

The Fashion Editor Design was used for both of these sites, however you would not know that by looking at either site.

Shoot the Moon Photography has three different product lines, and wanted unique menus and areas for each service specialty.

No coding was required to style the sites, menus or layouts.

Check out Joy’s site here.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

This year there are some really great visual design trends to take a look at. The Photography business is crowded and standing out is vital if you want to get ahead.

Of course it’s not smart to just go chasing the latest trends simply because it’s something new. Capitalizing on trends however and incorporating them in a way that’s consistent with your brand and style can help you create something original and make you stand out from the competition.

Responsive Design

The majority of internet users will be browsing with some type of mobile device.  People expect to be able to browse on their mobile device just like they do a desktop. Mobile is no longer just smartphones. Many users browse on devices like iPads. It’s no longer is your website “mobile friendly”  – it’s is your site “web-friendly.”

Responsive design means rather than designing for a specific device, like a desktop browser, one design is created that automatically adapts or responds to the device that is accessing the site. The consolidation of mobile and desktop into one version is what Google is recommending as well.

Content

Creating quality content is one of the most important parts of your website. It’s the key to ranking better in the search engines and to keep visitors engaged and sharing your content.

Content helps you build strong brand identity which means you own your space in the search results for your niche. If your business is fashion senior portraits, then you want your site to be the go-to site for fashion senior portraits. Google will associate keywords with this site in order to deliver a relevant result.

Simple & Minimal

Less is more. Things like easy navigation, less clutter, more white-space and a clean design aesthetic put the focus on your content and imagery.

Big Images

As photographers your images are at the center of what you do. Large images make a big impact and can really make a site standout. Even social media sites are moving to bigger images. Google Plus and Facebook have recently updated user profile designs to reflect this.

Typography

Along with big images, typography can add impact and uniqueness to your design. The latest web font technologies from Google Fonts and Typekit are a great way to add style without compromising search engine crawlability. Typography works well along with the ‘big” image trend, and we are seeing more and more typography being layered over images for a clean look that really stands out.

No more Flash

Flash is dead. Not only that it makes your site look dated. This shouldn’t really be a surprise however I mention it because I still see so many photography sites using flash based solutions. Too many devices don’t support it and Adobe is no longer supporting it either.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

I just recently gave a presentation for the Seniors Ignite Online Event called The Social Senior Code. It covered using your website to sell the experience to high school seniors and how to set up your website to book more clients.

Your website is one of your best sales tools and it should be working for you 24/7 – but knowing where to start is something I am asked about quite often.

Good website copy and content communicates what you’re about and connects with people without selling and pushing products.

As part of the Seniors Ignite Online Event, I put together the Website Essentials & Action Guide. It covers what pages to have on your site, and how to set up a user-friendly site that gets more visitors and books more clients.
It also includes the HiFi Modern Senior Marketing Campaign Templates & Web Graphics with over 60 templates & web graphics to use in your online & offline marketing

Right now this special bundle is only available for a limited time through Seniors Ignite Online and isn’t offered any where else.

Check it out here.

The video below gives a more in depth look at what’s included.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing

John Pyle is a professional photographer in Columbus Georgia who specializes in fashion and senior portrait images. His website and social presence play a key part in the incredible experience he offers clients.

I worked with John to create a new design and layout that was launched a couple of weeks ago. John wanted a minimal design that is mobile friendly and easy to browse on any device. He also wanted to display large images, and since all of his posts feature images,  gallery options for blog posts were added as well.

The site features a slideshow of full screen background images on the home page with touch-swipe navigation for mobile devices. Both the blog and website are managed as one website, and the site displays beautifully across any device. Responsive mobile techniques were used so the site would automatically adapt to the size of the device being used to browse the site.

Not only is this easier for site visitors and more SEO friendly,  it is also what Google recommends.

Home Page Design

Portfolio/Gallery Design

Blog Design

Mobile Design

Visit the site

John has a big online and social media presence. He’s sharing his social media strategy today at noon as part of the Seniors Ignite Free Online event. Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking to get more out of social media.

Nancy Nardi | Hi-fi Social Web Marketing