As you all know, I’ve been crazy busy lately. But I’ve been taking it all in stride. So far 2010 is turning up to be a pretty full year for me, which is awesome. One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to really push my photography beyond the scope it had been previously. I’m not talking artistically, though I’m constantly trying to make my photos better. I’m talking socially – I want them to be seen by more people, and more importantly, be appreciated by more people. More people who think my photos are awesome = more people who are likely to purchase prints/calendars/books = more opportunities for me to take better photos. It’s a win-win-win that keeps repeating itself.

One of the first things I did was start taking Flickr seriously. I’ve been using it for quite some time now, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this month that I started to figure it out. I had to change a lot of habits that I’ve cultivated since I started using the internet and I felt that I’ve collected enough on this subject to have something tangible to share with you (my audience, who should comment more often. I know you’re there – I track you on analytics! But we’ll get to that.)

First, remember that nobody likes a one-way celebrity on the internet. This is a person who talks only about themselves, posts their content everywhere but never responds to comments and often appears spammy when they do comment. We’ve all seen the type at some point on the internet. They may have a huge following, but I promise that they did it by brute force – imagine how many people ignored them in their spamming process. So then imagine how many times they’ve posted their stuff.. everywhere…

To be effective it has to be give and take process. This is definitely the most important thing. Whatever services you use – Flickr, Tumblr, Livejournal, Blogger, Etsy, Facebook, any of it – go out of your way to make friends. Comment on other peoples posts/items. Genuine comments – and don’t reference yourself or your url! In most places, when I receive a comment from somebody, I can click into their profile to get more information. I’m going to do that if I’ve never seen you before, but I’m not going to do it if you are blatantly self-promoting yourself in my space. It’s fine to link to something you’ve done if it is genuinely in context to the conversation. That’s helpful.

Next up is have a good inventory. It doesn’t matter what your “product” is – photographs, blog posts, widgets or recipes – you need a good library of them. A portfolio, if you will. A painter doesn’t get picked up in a gallery for having one good, new painting. They get picked up because they have a strong history of good paintings. I’ve seen people set up their Etsy shop or Flickr account and have one or two items and nothing else, because they’re just beginning. That’s fine, keep it up! But don’t expect high traffic yet. Have a good solid base of items. I have photos I took seven years ago that are still viewed every day in various places. The build is slow, but strong and keeps people coming back. Don’t expect to be the next big thing if you only have one or two items to show everybody.

Now that you’re working on your portfolio, tell the world about it – one piece at a time. Back when I started posting photos to the internet, bandwidth was a big, big deal. Images had to be as small as possible, often past the sake of clarity. “Cuts” were placed on posts so that you had to click-through to see the images. Because bandwidth was so scarce, the general method would be to make a single post and under it place all the images. If you could afford the bandwidth, you could look at the pictures. If you were on dial-up and didn’t want to bother, you could skip them. I find it amazing that we’re still in this mindset when tech has progressed to a point where I can view Flickr on my cell phone.

Don’t make a big picture post and make people look at all of them. Release your photos one at a time, spaced out, so that people will keep coming back. Sure, not every person is going to view every photo, but you have a stronger chance of reaching more people this way. On the same subject, keep coming back to topics every once in a while. Every time I post a new dinosaur photo, I notice that all of my dinosaur photos get more hits than usual. People look at tags and sets and related topics and meander. Do not however, get stuck on a single topic or subject. Variety is essential – otherwise you’re just seeing the same thing over and over.

And last for today, use analytics. I use google anaylitics to track everything I can – every website I manage, my Etsy shop. I can’t use it for Flickr, but they have their own stat tracker (if you have a pro account). I love Flickr’s because it is in real-time, whereas Analytics is 24 hours old. You can also use Webaliser which is available from most web hosts, but google is so much more in-depth if you can handle the bit of code. Thanks to analytics I can tell you that consistently the hours of 11pm and 2am are the most popular for me, followed closely by 8.30am and 10am. People tend to check their internet lists before bed and first thing in the morning. I am most popular in the Pacific Timezone, followed closely by Central Europe. 85% of my viewers use Mozilla for a browser, and 10% use a mobile browser. 95% of my viewers have cable internet or better, the average time spent on my site is 12 minutes. What do these kinds of things tell me? Because overwhelmingly most of my visitors have both broadband or better and Mozilla, I don’t have to worry about image size or much cross-browser compatibility. I worry about it, but I don’t stress if something is a little weird in Internet Explorer. I have so many mobile viewers I’m working on a mobile skin for my site that auto-detects a mobile browser. Twelve minutes is a lot of time to stay on a photography website, so I think I’m doing fairly well there. (The average time on the Geek website is 25 minutes. Wow!) The timezones tell me to make sure I have new content up before those people come visit again.

I check my stats all the time, but I don’t stress out too much over them. Every Friday my numbers skyrocket until Sunday, and then Sunday night they plummet and don’t start to climb again until early Wednesday. This is consistent with my viewers and rather than try to push them, I work with them. I put up way more content during the end of the week. I’ll save something super awesome for Saturday morning. Sure, this exaggerates my numbers even more, but that’s okay. I’m working with what I have.

That’s all I have. I have to get up kind of early tomorrow, so I should get to bed. And you, dear reader, should take note to the first part of this and comment! I love hearing from my readers. Let me know where I can read your blog, too, because you know I will.