I’m a tech entrepreneur for more than 2 years now. I try to use the good tools to make my life easier and more productive. As a photographer, you are facing the same problems : You don’t have enough time to do everything you need and you have a lot to do.
With this article, I’d like to share some tools we use a lot in the startup ecosystem that photographers might want to use as well. In fact, independent photographers and entrepreneurs are very similar as they run their own business, they need to find clients, to improve their product and to have all the things done.
1. Social
Social networks are everywhere. Your clients are often on these platforms, so you need to be present here to be found by new clients. Regarding your sector, you should probably be present on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin… Managing all these networks is very time-consuming, that’s why you need to find tools to do it easily and effectively.
If you need to manage different social network accounts, Hootsuite is a great tool to do it quickly and easily. You just need to connect your different accounts and then you can manage all of them directly from Hootsuite.
You will be able to engage with your followers, schedule posts, manage content through all the different global networks, follow the influencers, follow the mention you could have, find what’s going on in your sector…
You don’t need to connect to your different networks as you will have all of them at the same place. That’s great, right?
For example on Twitter, you can have a stream with keywords and Hootsuite will show you all the tweets with that keywords at the same place.
They have a free plan that allows you to manage up to 3 accounts. Check it out and discover how much time you will save.
Buffer is the easiest tool to publish on the different social networks at the right time. It allows you to schedule your posts at the perfect timing regarding the activity of your followers. You can post any content easily through a browser extension. So if you like a website, a quote or whatever, with one click you can schedule to share it on your social networks at the right time.
They base their tool on the scheduling and it is working well. You don’t need to take care of the timing anymore :-) Just fill the queue of posts you want to share and they’ll share it later.
It could be a great help to share your photos as they will post it on your different social networks for you and at a time where you could be unavailable.
They have a free plan that allows you to connect one account per platform.
- Crowd Speaking
Some time ago we saw the new Crowd Speaking “fashion” ermerging. You probably already heard about crowd funding. Crowd Speaking exactly the same concept but instead of giving money, you give your social reaching.
The goal is that many people share the same message at the same time. It’s especially great when you want to announce news, competition, promotion or whatever.
You just need to create a campaign and then ask your friends/networks to sign up. At the end of the campaign, your message will be shared automatically by all the participants and you will reach more people thanks to the crowd.
Thunderclap is the leader on the market, but you also have a french company who does it very well: Daycause.
This is a great way to reach more people on the different social networks, it is very easy and cost effective. Have a try and see how your friends/family/followers will help you on that cause :-)
You’ll see that it could be easier for them to help you by sharing a message automatically than going to Facebook , write a message and then share it to their network. You need to do the work for them, we are all lazy ;-) This crowd speaking concept is great as they just need to click on a button and then the message will be shared automatically at the right time for them.
2. How to better manage your emails
The customer relationship is very important. You need to build the trust with your client to retain and let them talk about you. Sometimes, it’s really hard to keep in touch with them since we all have a lot of emails and a lot to do so you need to follow up and to send great emails.
Here are three great tools to manage your email discussions and to see if you reach your clients.
Hubspot Sales allows you to track the emails you send. They just add a pixel to know if your recipient opens, reads and clicks on your email. You’ll say that it’s not fair for your recipients, but in fact, it is great as you can follow up and they will not miss a great information from you as you will be able to follow up with them.
It is very important to know if they have the information or not otherwise you can wait a very long time before a reply ;-)
This tool allows you to schedule your email as well. This is a very good feature as it’s better to send emails when your clients are ready to read them than in the middle of the night. So you can write your messages when you are available and send them at the right time for your clients, Excellent right?
They have a free account to begin with.
Another great tool I love is called Boomerang. This product allows you to send you a reminder if your email is not read or reply. It is especially awesome for the important emails as you will receive a reminder directly on your email account if your recipient didn’t open or didn’t reply after a certain amount of time.
You will never forget again a follow-up and your recipients will thank you for doing these follow-up for the important information they missed.
Boomerang have a free account to begin with and if you don’t have a too big email activity, it should be enough.
If you are using Gmail, you can either use the classic Gmail interface or use Inbox. This is a great new interface that allows you much more than emails.
It is basically an inbox where you can organize your conversations and your reminders to spend less time on your emails. This tool allows you to snooze some emails and handle them later by having them back to your inbox at the time you choose. You can close an email conversation as well and it will disappear from your inbox. That means that you will only see the emails that matter at that time.
You can manage your to-do list directly from Inbox and receive a reminder at the right time.
You will no more forget to reply to an email, and you’ll save time as you won’t be disturbed by incoming email as you will be able to snooze them for the right time and you will easily manage your inbox to save time.
I just began to use it and it’s unbelievable how is it easy and quick to handle your emails…
I’m using all these tools daily and I hope it will help you to save time to focus on Photography and to be with your family :-)
Feel free to comment and share it if you like or if you have other great tools to share! I’m always keen to discover new tools…
Cheers