“I’m bawling my eyes out from a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE. Now I understand what you’re talking about!”

Posted on | June 11, 2010 | No Comments

Our new site went live yesterday, and we started to introduce it, and our new program to the world. It’s http://www.footprintsontheheart.com. The background to this project is contained in some other posts on the PSM blog.

I’m encouraged by initial reaction. Here’s one from another photographer on Pro4um (a teriffic PRO photography forum, if you haven’t heard of it). This was in response to a post about finding who you are in a very crowded portrait market. I’d responded with a comment about finding your inner passion, told the story of the backgrouund of the new site

Fred…I just checked out your links…great stuff and lots of helpful information. Thanks so much. You are definitely an inspiration to me.

Made me think of my Daddy’s hands, a true honest pair of working-man hands…….and my grandmother’s hands, a woman who prayed for me to have a baby more than I prayed for myself, and who passed away three weeks before he was born. I so wanted a portrait of her old little tired hands with his fat little fresh newborn hands, but it just didn’t happen.

I’m bawling my eyes out from a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE. Now I understand what you’re talking about!

Thanks….

Adele McDill, Houston Texas

Briefly, the idea behind the site is this. My passion is people, and the relationships between them. My family is the most important thing in the world to me. That’s my emotional sweet spot. My wife, my kids and now my grandchildren. So how could I turn that into a new marketing direction for the studio. I was already photographing lots of these sessions, but from a marketing standpoint, it was very disjointed.

So with the new program, I wanted to bring it all together under one concept. I wanted to emphasize the emotion that’s inherent in all these special relationships.

Here’s the goals:

1. I wanted to own a word in the marketplace, and that word is RELATIONSHIPS. Lots of other people do the same kind of work, but how can I become THE RELATIONSHIPS GUY?

2. I wanted a type of work that people are less likely to try to do for themselves, or have their next door neighbor do. If you’re in the picture, it’s much harder to take it.

3. I wanted a site that would attract those who were emotionally invested in these relationships, like I am. Attract those for whom family and friends are very important. These are the kind of people who would also be attracted to having portraits created, if I can get them really thinking about the importance in their lives.

4. I wanted the site to give people a reason to come back on a regular basis, to tell their friends and family about it. I wanted a site that would have a chance to spread virally.

5. I didn’t want just another big screaming advertisement sales site, which is what most of our sites and blogs are. (See the article “I’ve Been Blogging All Wrong- and I knew it). Those are only likely to attract someone who’s already thinking of having a portrait created, and then I’m just one of about 500 studios in my little town. I wanted to get them before they started looking around, hook them with the content, become first in their mind, and then have them realize that they’ve just got to be photographed with their grandkids, or whatever.

6. I wanted a program and a site that provided opportunities to expand beyond just the photography. More on that in a later post.

A plain old photography website isn’t going to accomplish these things. Yes, the new site needed to showcase what we do, and provide lots of information to potential consumers , but it needed to go well beyond that.

So, we came up with the name Footprints On The Heart, from a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, and a poem by Flavia Weedn. It captured exactly the feeling I was looking for. I registered the name last November.

So, the overall concept is to provide content that is in alignment with our photography; content that appeals to those who are likely to value what we do.

We decided to collect and tell stories. If you’re familiar with Chicken Soup For The Soul, stories along the same lines.

At first, I just thought it was an opportunity to tell the stories of those we photograph, because there’s a story behind every portrait.

Then, the idea expanded to collect stories from our clients, whether they were being photographed or not. I have a pretty good size client base, and this could reconnect some inactive clients with us.

That exanded to collecting stories from anyone who might want to share one, which has the wonderful advantage of dramatically expanding our potential customer base. People who previously wouldn’t even know who we are will come to the site (we hope).

I’m even searching the web for appropriate content that I can share without violating copyrights.

Then we came up with the idea of having contests for the best story, with prize packages. That exanded to having the readers vote on the stories. So you post a story, then tell your friends and family to go vote for your story online. More people come to the site.

Now we’re working on cross marketing with other businesses who might cater to the same potential audience (mostly female, I’m guessing), and add them to the prize packages, and get them to promote the site to their customers. The key is that they’re not promoting a photography site, they’re promoting a site that will make you cry, in a wonderful way. My portrait work just happens to be all over it, and while we’ve got them in an emotional mood, they begin to realize the true value of having a wonderful portrait created.

We’re also preparing press releases for the local newspapers to give it a bit of an extra boost.

Will it work? Time will tell, and I know it’s going to take some time. But I think it’s got all the right ingredients, and it make use of many of the concepts I’ve been writing about.

Go take a look – www.footprintsontheheart.com. I still have some work to do, and I’ll bet with all these readers, there’s probably lots of other ideas you might come up with about improvements, etc. By all means, if you have an idea, share it. Share it as a comment on the blog so others might benefit from everyone’s brainstorming.

I’ll keep you up to date on the results, but I’m excited about the possibilities.

Then I looked around at your website………thanks for making me cry this morning!!! Wow, a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE that envokes that kind of emotion………..you nailed it!!!

Category: Business Strategy, Communications, Innovation, blogging, marketing strategies, online marketing, social media, web strategies

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