Three and a half months ago when I started my business in Phoenix, Arizona I think I was the only person in the world that believed how far I could spread my brand and my business as a photographer in such a short time. Of course I started by attending the Chamber meetings and in turn was invited to visit many other traditional networking meetings, which resulted in several coffee meeting pitches being directed my way. Luckily I ignored the sales pitches that would have me paying to get a higher google rank and stealthily avoided paying up to $3000/ year to network with exclusive groups and learn secret business advice. The Chamber has good intentions but I felt like the community aspect was missing most of the time. It was an old boys club mentality, and a heavy push marketing environment.
I intentionally focused locally because it was never my intent to build an empire. I knew from looking at the market in Phoenix I could easily compete at the highest level of photography. So I started to build my bridges not at all by traditional means. First thing I did was start this blog, then began building my network through linkedin and extensively using twitter and facebook to build bridges into the community. I started following the daily rants and raves of the Phoenix twitter community and attending events that were more social in nature and less network business card race inspired.
This is what I was looking for and how the Chamber had failed me, this was a group of people that understood the benefit in having a long conversation even if that person never bought or sold you anything. It became a requirement for me when meeting someone new to converse with them and not just hand them my card and grab theirs. I’d like to continue to differentiate between networking and bridge building because at some point the work I did became a process of resource sharing instead of resource guarding. Networking in most instances becomes an unmanageable list of resources that may buy or sell to you. A bridge for me refers to something local, immediatley useful and built to facilitate two way communication.
PodCampAZ is one of the first great sucesses for my business. I found out about PodCampAZ on twitter and became involved with the planning process by just showing up and offering my services where ever I could as a volunteer. At PodCampAZ I continue to work with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met and after a couple weeks found them starting to use me and share me as a resource within their communities. In social media it seems that when you give a little you really do get a lot back.
Results: And I’ve just begun.
- My self published book “Phoenix 20″ is going to be in the hands of the Mayor after my book signing.
- I have a partnership with Mighty Imaging to sell prints from their art store.
- I have about 100 local contacts that follow me on twitter and most of those I would consider friends and some of them are even clients now.
- Almost any event I attend lately someone knows my name before they meet me. (and they’ve already heard good things about my photography)
- I have a community of people who comment and learn about my business by following my recent work on flickr.
- I will have a billboard of my fine arts work on display on the 202 in Chandler in partnership with oibillboards.com by the end of this week.
Social media pays. Even my wife is starting to believe.
Do you have any similar experiences or did you find social media to be a waste of time? Feel free to share with my community in the comments below.
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