Top 3 Reasons You Might Want to Feature Twilight Photos of Your Real Estate Listing

Whether you are a realtor or a home owner, start thinking like a savvy marketer and take advantage of professionally done twilight and sunset images for your property listing.

Here’s the top 3 reasons why.

1. Twilight photos stand out.

In today’s social media obsessed world, you only have a few seconds to get a potential home buyer’s attention. An enchanting twilight image of your home, whether it’s a multi million dollar listing or the cute 2 bedroom cottage next door, a twilight photo will stand out among the noise on instagram and online and peak a home buyer’s interest to click and see more.

2. Twilight photos employ savvy marketing.

Look at covers and “wow” shots of homes in lifestyle magazines. Why do they use these so frequently? Because they sell! Your real estate agent is marketing your home, not unlike a product for a high end company. Having a twilight or sunset image of your home will showcase your home better.

3. Twilight photos are darn cozy!

You know how a photo of a campfire or a candle just makes you feel warm inside? A well lit twilight shot of your home done by a professional gives that same feeling to a homebuyer. Warm lights aglow set against a serene evening sky will paint of picture of what it's actually like to live in the home. And those warm fuzzies from a potential buyer who will most likely never have the opportunity to see your home this way otherwise will result in a second look.

Conclusion:

It’s not a magic bullet, and it’s not for every single home listing out there, but a twilight and/or sunset image done by a professional photographer will give your listing an edge. Think like a savvy marketing person and consult with your agent to see if eye-capturing twilight photos might make your listing POP.

Add our Signature Natural Twilight Photos Today!

What's the deal with those 16 Hoops?

What’s the deal with those hoops, and why are there 16 of them?

This is by far our most frequently asked question. It's kinda a long story. But that’s the point. It’s all about orbits—or rather, choosing the orbit that makes sense for you on a cosmic level.

The answer dives into Deep Space territory (psst: “Deep Space” is one of our blog categories—check it out when you want to exercise your brain).

Let's begin by starting up the way-back time machine (thank you Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know).

First Destination: New Mexico

Status: Childhood’s End

I’ve always been fascinated with space, philosophy, and history. The cosmic hum in the Land of Enchantment is for reals. It got into my soul, deeply. This white girl left New Mexico, but New Mexico and its painted high desert culture never left this girl.

Second Destination: Breckenridge, Colorado

Status: The Art of the Chameleon

I’d just graduated film school at Ithaca College and was working for a wedding and portrait master, assisting on very high-end celebrity weddings. This is where I learned the art of the chameleon. I didn't want to be noticed—I wanted to be quietly snapping away behind the magic safety of my camera. It was a defense mechanism for my introverted creative soul.

Third Destination: York, Maine

Status: Success Has Its Downside

I knew I wanted to create things for people (while, ahem, getting paid) from my unique vision of the world, but I always assumed no one would care for or want my Western-desert, geeky, deep-space brand of "being". So I quietly started my wedding photography business with little or no thought to who and why. Just stumbled into it. I called it Geneve Hoffman Photography (GHP).

Side note: Using my name is one of the biggest regrets of my career. But we learn. Read on, intrepid time traveler.

My wedding and portrait business soared to new levels.  But ironically, it was when my business and career was at its apex that I hit my lowest point personally. I was deeply unsatisfied.

One big bright spot in this era that is worth mentioning: I hired the very talented Erin Flett to do my new sun- and orbit-inspired logo for GHP. I showed her some artwork of orbiting sun circles from my childhood home in New Mexico, and told her the theory of my photography: I see the light from the ancient Big Bang traveling through the universe, down through orbits and our own sun. That same neverending light reflects on my clients here on Earth and allows them to shine. Then, that same light (or my interpretation of it) travels through my lens and back out into the universe. And it begins again.

I’ve always known the power of great design—whether it is airport architecture, an iPhone, a Picasso, or a logo. Great design feels like love. You can't put it into words. It's just a warm, enveloping feeling. I knew after that logo design, and how Erin was able to translate my thoughts so perfectly into the artwork I was looking for, that something had begun to change in my path.

Fourth Destination: Cocooned...

Status: Chameleon Turns Butterfly

Winter 2013 to spring 2015 was my 2-year long hibernation period. I was sick for about 18 months, and I turned away from everything I knew in order to heal.

My illness became a metaphor for another kind of sickness that I personally knew was infecting my business. I was also seeing and hearing it from all my other photographer friends and in the industry as a whole.

Right around that time, my colleague Anne Schmidt introduced Todd and Jamie Reichman to our 200-member photographers’ group here in Maine. Listening to Todd's podcast series that winter of 2013 changed my career and led me on a path to reevaluate the entire photography industry as I knew it. I could see we were both searching.

I hired some consultants outside the photo industry. I did the excruciatingly hard work of starting a new business "the right way”. And then, I emerged from my deep space hibernation in the fall of 2015 knowing exactly what to do.

Final Destination: Right here, right now

Status: The Business I Always Wanted

After thinking hard about what I wanted to bring to my space, what kind of knowledge I wanted to share and how I wanted to share it, I formed 16 Hoops: a strategic design and branding firm for photographers.

So what does all this have to do with the name 16 Hoops? EVERYTHING.

I knew I wanted to rework Erin Flett’s original logo for me, and hone it for this new business—and I needed a name to end all names, because I know after my deep space sabbatical that this is the last business I ever want to run.

So I went to the place that gave me so much inspiration in my creative life (even in film school). I opened up my American Indian Myths & Legends book. I turned to the story of the creation myth in the ancient pueblo people, hoping something would pop off the page.

Literally the first page I opened up was the story of how the Great Sun used 16 hoops (or orbits) to create the "Earth". The hoop is a very sacred symbol for native cultures.

The Earth origin story was the perfect metaphor for what we are trying to do here at 16 Hoops. I believe in terraforming for our clients, creating an ecosystem of positioning around their brands that not only sustains them and their own customers, but allows them to soar.

The secret of memorable branding

I took my childhood in New Mexico, my lifelong love of design, my geeky passion for history and cosmology, and mashed it all up in the name 16 Hoops.

Amazing branding is about taking all your experiences, combining them, and spitting it all back into the universe in a way that appeals directly to the people you want to reach. It's either real and meaningful or it's not.

And your branding doesn’t have to be some Level 5 Geek story about universe origins. It can be romantic and pretty, or simple and clean, or anything in between.

But above all, you can't fake it.

Everything you do in your life is what makes you "you". When done well, branding and messaging can only be about you.

Think your branding isn’t working? Do the logo swap test. If your logo could be used for any other business, go back to the drawing board.

My hope is that the 16 Hoops origin story will mean something to you as a creative business owner. I think you deserve branding that makes you pump your fist in the air when you see it or say it. That’s part of why I started 16 Hoops. Don't accept anything less.

And know this: It's a weird and wonderful journey to get there.

Links and Resources

Can Your Brand Pass the Logo Test?

American Indian Myths and Legends

Todd Reichman’s website, A Man To Fish

Erin Flett

My weddings website

Josh & Chuck: Stuff You Should Know Podcast

Boosting vs. Running a Meta Ad Campaign: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should boost a post or run an ad campaign on Meta (Facebook + Instagram), you’re not alone!. While they both help increase visibility, they work very differently — and knowing which one to use can save you time and money.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

→Boosting a Post

Boosting is the quickest way to increase visibility or engagement on a single post you've already published. Think of it as paying to get more eyeballs on something you’ve already shared.

How it works:

• You select a post, hit “Boost,” and choose your audience and budget.

• Meta shows your post to more people based on your target settings.

Best for:
✔️ Increasing engagement (likes, comments)
✔️ Growing brand awareness and community
✔️ Promoting events or quick announcements

Limitations:

• Basic targeting options (age, gender, location, interests)

• Less control over the type of action people take

• Doesn’t give you detailed performance insights

→Running a Meta Ad Campaign

Ad campaigns are more advanced and customizable. You create a specific goal (like leads, clicks, engagement or sales) and Meta builds the campaign to meet that goal.

How it works:

• You create an ad in Meta Ads Manager (separate from regular posts).

• You define the campaign objective — engagement, website visits, lead generation, sales, etc.

• Meta’s algorithm adjusts to deliver results based on your goal.

Best for:
✔️ Driving specific actions (website visits, lead generation, engagement, sales, sign-ups)
✔️ Targeting with more precision (retargeting, custom audiences)
✔️ Tracking performance and optimizing based on results

Limitations:

• More complex to set up and monitor

• Higher learning curve

• Requires ongoing adjustments to optimize performance

→When to Boost vs. When to Run an Ad

• Boost when you want more people to see and engage (like, share, comment) with a post quickly.

• Run an ad campaign when you want to drive a specific action (like lead generation, long term engagement, new followers, website clicks or email sign-ups).

BONUS CONTENT!
Why Working with a Pro Matters

While boosting a post is pretty straightforward, ad campaigns are a whole different ballgame. Meta’s ad system is powerful but complicated — the wrong settings can burn through your budget fast without delivering real results.

A trained professional understands:

• How to set up campaigns to match specific business goals

• Advanced targeting strategies to reach the right audience

• How to adjust and optimize campaigns based on real-time performance

• The difference between wasted ad spend and a high-converting campaign

Meta Ads Manager is designed for professionals — not casual users. A pro knows how to make the platform work for you, not against you. Hiring an expert ensures your money is well spent and your goals are being met efficiently.

Pro Tip:

Boosting gives you quick visibility; ad campaigns give you strategic control. If you’re not sure where to start — boost first, then shift to ads once you know your audience better!

Top 10 Real Estate Photo Checklist

The marketing of your home is one of the most important aspects of the entire selling process — and it starts with inviting images of your house that will stand out.

Whether this is your first time listing your house with a professional agent, or whether you are an old pro at it, these tips we developed will help you make your property shine in today’s fast moving, image obsessed modern marketplace.

TOP 10 GUIDE

1. First impressions count.

Start with the outside, as this is how most people will first experience your house online and in person.

• Tidy up yard & landscaping

• Sweep porches & decks

• Remove and/or tidy ANY and ALL kids toys, garden tools, hoses, garbage cans.

• Spruce up the patio area! Remove BBQ covers and open up patio umbrellas if wind allows it (house will look more real and relaxing!). if your BBQ is rusty or unsightly, just remove or toss it.

• Clear all cars from road & driveway and shut garage doors.

• BONUS: add some color with new potted plants or in Winter a colorful natural wreath on the door.

2. Spend some time on “The BIG 3.”

Kitchen, Living Room & Primary Suite. Spending time on each room is a major bonus, but if you want most bang for your time plan on spending the majority of your time staging the BIG 3: Kitchen, Living Room & Primary Suite.

3. Light up your world.

Turn on all the lights throughout entire house before your photographer arrives. This not only adds more atmosphere to your house but it’s a great reminder to replace any burned out bulbs you may find.

4. Don’t overlook windows.

Open up all window treatments to same height and clean/brighten window panes that need it. We’ve seen amazing houses that could have photographed so much better if the windows were clean and shiny.

5. Clear the counters.

Clean and clear all counter spaces in kitchen and all bathrooms. Remove all personal items from any shower or bath enclosures behind glass doors. TIP: Place all bathroom & kitchen items you are still using daily in a bin - this way you can easily access and store them quickly.

6. Remove personal and private items.

Remove all unnecessary furniture & decor and personal/private items from the BIG 3 (bonus for all rooms).

7. Remove kitchen/bath mats and all runners.

We know, weird one right? But by removing all floor mats & hallway runners will make each room and your house look and feel bigger.

8. Furry friends are stressed out!

Please plan on taking dogs to another location before photographer arrives and during the photography and house touring process. Why? When you hide their food, beds, toys etc and bring strangers in it spells stress for our furry friends! Even your friendly doggie may act in ways that are unexpected during this time of stress. Please take them on a long walk, bring them to a trusted neighbor or family friend or on a ride while house is being photographed. This not only creates a safe process for your photographer and their equipment, but it will relieve stress on the pets as well. Cats are usually fine.

TIP: Remove/stow all pet items. 🙂

9. Don’t overlook entrance ways and near doors.

Put all personal items away in a closet (jackets, keys, shoes, alarm clocks, dresser items, bric-a-brac etc).

10. Declutter and clean!

This is the number one thing that will ensure the most positive viewing experience of your photos and home for any potential buyer. Remove stickers and post-it’s from fridge. Make all beds, vacuum, dust and tidy each room and remove/pack up any and every cluttered area that might make your house look smaller. Think of it as a time saver - now you wont’ have to do this again when you move! Do this yourself, consult your agent, or ask about getting pro advice from one of our favorite staging consultants.

Some bonus insider tips you should know:

• You can do it! We want your process to be smooth and stress free, so the day your photographer arrives is not the day to be doing this! Go over this list with your agent and plan some time to have all this done before the photographer arrives so you can enjoy the process fully.

• Need more time? Our photographer is on a tight schedule and wants to get your house listed just as much as you do! Help the process by having everything ready. If you need an extra day or two, just let us know in advance and we can work together to accommodate this.

• Life Happens. Weather and other scheduling/human bumps come up—take a deep breath, and remember it’s all going to be ok and we are in this together. 🙂Our photographer can absolutely photograph the interior on a cloudy or even rainy day, but occasionally weather can have an impact on how your house looks that first day it enters the market. Your agent will guide you through the scheduling process.

• We got this! Be prepared to leave the house for approx 2 hours (or more if expansive property with custom video & drone). We understand that owners want to help, but the best help you can be is to prepare your property beforehand and then leave it to our creative, caring and well insured professional team. Your house is in very good hands - take some R&R - you’ve earned it!

Have Questions?

Work harder. You've earned it.

Huh Geneve? 

Work harder...because I've earned it? Sounds counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

When I first started my weddings business in 2003 I quit my day job and went full time with no safety net. In fact, my husband was between jobs at the time as well.

And because of a nice timing “right-time-right-place-right-girl” scenario I was first and best to the market. First and best usually wins out at least initially. And it did for me. 

It came very easy. Too easy.

I was making money so fast that I kind of stopped working at it. Something was missing.

The key ingredient missing for me was innovation. 

I was just doing the exact same thing to capture clients for many years. And then another photographer came along and did the same. And then another. And then another…and then…fast forward 10 years with little or no innovation and you get the picture.

No one, including me, was innovating any part of the business model.

No one was even asking the question “should I innovate” because photographers were in such demand.

Without innovation customers can easily find new and better alternatives. 

And this should be a very recognizable scenario to you if you are a photographer.

Because while photographers will always be in demand - there are so darn many of them now. Stand back and take a look at choosing a photographer from a customer POV. 

And is there anything REALLY that different between us all? 

Is anyone doing anything so innovative that they stand out? It’s painful to say, but the answer is usually no.

So I've decided to innovate and never stop. Because I earned the right to work hard and make my business the best it can be. Gosh darn it.

Think you might need to innovate too? Here are 3 clear signs.

Three clear signs that a business model is not innovating (aka, working hard enough):

1. Everyone is copying each other will little or no improvements to the service or offerings.

2. Customers easily find, and are happy with, alternatives.

3. And the REAL clear sign is that you can’t raise your prices.

And here is another cold, hard fact and I know because #ILearnedTheHardWay #SoYouDontHave to:

Even if none of those apply to you RIGHT NOW, it probably means you are first/best of some kind. Which 100% will dry up if you don’t WORK HARD and INNOVATE. And if it dries up while you are in denial, it will be very hard to correct.

Think KODAK. No innovation, denial, death. (And if you said "Kodak who?” Yah. Try googling KODAK and see what comes up first).

But on the flip side, a success case story. 

Look at Squarespace. 

Worked very hard to innovate when they saw that html & flash sites were going to be obsolete with mobile technology. They obliterated all of the offerings they had (no matter how much money they had invested in them - argh - so hard!) and invested everything in mobile technology. Even a beloved brand like Squarespace can never stop innovating. Or else. 

And if you think are different, dear photographer, you are not. Innovate. Do the very hard work, because you have earned it. You and your clients deserve the best.

Are you one of the unicorn photographers who is working hard & innovating and having it pay off? Tell me about it. I’m looking for case studies. I’ll make it worth your while.

Or are you like most talented photographers and having some success by just doing what everyone else is doing - but deep down you know you could be doing more, so much more? Tell me about that too. Let’s work it out together.

Advice for photographers from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

I literally pumped my fist in the air when I saw the scene below featuring Dwayne Johnson's character, Spencer Strasmore, on HBO series Ballers.

He expressed exactly how I think right now.

And yet it's also so true that some people DO NOT think this way or relate to this moment.

Before you watch it, let me set the scene. His character and his sidekick Joe, played by Rob Corddry, are two guys kind of low on the powerful, mostly rich white guy, NFL totem pole. They are trying to change that, esp Spencer. They both have way too many high stakes fires going in this moment, and they are stuck in traffic and very late to a make it or break it meeting. Joe, who is pretty ballsy himself, is freaking out and starting to question why they are going through all this stress and craziness. That is when Spencer gives his uncharacteristic speech below. As a fan of the show, it's a welcome glimpse into the psyche and motivations that drive this charismatic, but highly flawed central figure.

Check out the clip. And PS - apologies for the minor f-bomb - you would not believe how much we had to edit out to get it THIS clean. I mean, it is HBO.

What do you think? How did this moment (and it's obvious audio flaws - doh!) strike you?

Meh?

Heck yeah!

That's not me.

?

I talk to a lot of photographers in my job. I hear a lot of "I'm an imposter, everyone is going to find out" or "Who am I to charge $10,000 for a portrait?"

And I GET IT.

It's very scary to run your own creative business. To put your work and your craft out there. And let's face it, be judged for it.

But I think it's scarier to hide. I prefer to shout to the world who I am and what I do.

"Some of us believe that we can do anything. Some of us believe we can't."

"That guy" charging $10K or $40K or $100K for a portrait believes she can do it, so she does.

I know it sounds too simple. And it is. It's a simple mind set.

You believe that you can do it, and you will. Or you don't.

I would love to hear from photographers about this. I know I say that in every article. And I mean it. 

Does technology move my photography business forward? Ask the Amish.

I don’t know about you, but I really starting to dig deep and question how much social media is helping my business. I mean REALLY moving the needle forward into building a thriving, highly profitable photography business.

Anyone else starting to think this way?

The dizzying array of available social media options and new technologies can send professional photographers like you into a tailspin. What to embrace to move the needle forward and what to avoid? How is a photographer to know? 

Well, the Amish might have a clue.

That’s right. The "horse-buggy-driving-power-grid-avoiding-bonnet-wearing" Amish have some killer advice for your photography business.

I learned recently from Cal Newport that the Amish people in America have a thoughtful and elegant approach to technology that has allowed the their culture, communities and traditions to thrive despite the encroaching outside world and all it’s noise and distractions.

The elders in the Amish community try out the new technology and then decide to adapt it or shun it based on one critical question: 

Does this new technology move us as a people toward goal of family & community bonding? 

If yes, then they adopt it. 

But If answer is no - then they shun it forever.

Having no cars is one example he cites. The Amish tried it out and found that people would drive away from the community when they had free time instead of visiting each other and patronizing each others’ shops.

The questions they don’t ask are even more interesting than the one they do. They don’t, for instance, ask:

1. "will this technology make my life more convenient?”

2. “will this technology make make my business more profitable?”

3. “will this technology make my life or business easier?”

4. “is everyone else using this?”

5. “will I have more fun using this?”

Because the answer to all these could be a re-sounding “YES” and still the new technology could be hurting your business in the long (and short) term. 

Ask the bigger questions:

• Is this technology serving your guiding principles, big goals, and mission?

• Or is it just instead creating busy work and distraction?

• Do you know the difference? Can you measure it?

Have you taken the time to articulate and write down your big goals and guiding principles like the Amish have done? 

Here are some examples of possible Guiding Principles for a photography business:

• Spending more time with clients

• Delighting clients

• Creating community

• Making lives of customers & staff better

So let’s look at a technology like Social Media. Specifically Facebook for example.

Does advertising on Facebook to your friends move your business forward? 

Are you friends your clients? 

Should you NOT use Facebook for this very reason? 

Should you even be on Facebook at all?

If you do, how? In a group that is specific to your actual customers?

Does the time you spend on it serve your Guiding Principles? Or would you better serve it by hitting the pavement in your own community and getting to know your potential clients? If the answer is no, it’s time to question that technology and potentially kick it the curb. 

I’m not saying to cast off all technology, buy a large black brimmed hat and live in the cabin in the woods. I’m just saying, it might be time to question and track how much time you might be spending with all these shiny apps on your iphone and ask yourself it really, measurably moving your photography business substantially forward toward your big goals?

Just because everyone else is doing something, doesn't mean you should. In fact, when everyone is doing something might be just the time to start thinking different (link to think different?). 

Time to go Amish on your business. Tell me some of your guiding principles, and let's explore what you could be doing to move your business toward them.

You are not everyone. Prove it.

Here is the typical photography career:

• Stumble into it because you take great photos (degree not required, but bonus).

• Get lucky by having friends hire you first, then slowly widening to a larger audience.

• Sit by the phone (or email).

• Send out an email template. get hired (or wait).

I’m oversimplifying to a degree, but this is essentially how it works and has worked for a long, long time. 

How do I know? 

That was my wedding career from circa 2003 to 2016. I never had to work to get clients. I did styled shoots that got wild publicity, I did the occasional wedding show and networked loosely with planners, florists, venues, and DJ’s that I liked. 

But most of my success came from “FIRST. BEST.” I entered first and best and held that well over for over a decade. 

That’s it.

This old business model won’t work now for any photographer, including me. 

FIRST doesn’t exist with 150,000+ professional full time photographers. These are people who call themselves Professional Photographer on their tax returns - imagine how many in your own market do not. And everyone is good (best) now.

Take a look around at the sea of photographers all doing the same thing and expecting different results. 

So why do talented, smart photographers still do this and hope for different results?

It’s because they/we are distracted by small tasks that constantly interrupt the REAL & DEEP WORK we should be doing.

This new economy requires, no demands, innovation.

If you don’t innovate your photography business model, you will fail.

Sounds scary. But it’s meant to be an exciting call to action rather than a doomsday cry.

How do you innovate? With DEEP WORK. 

I’m sure a few of you have seen Cal Newport’s TED talk on this subject (check out another article on this...). But don’t watch it (distraction!). His book Deep Work is far more engaging. Get this book.

The first step toward doing deep work is simple. 

1. Set three GIANT goals for your business.

2. Determine what work must be done to reach these goals.

3. Eliminate all or most of everything else.

Let’s break it down.

1. Set 3 Giant Goals

These are not small goals. Small goals will not innovate your business model. These 3 goals should make your heart skip a beat. One possible set of 3 goals for a hypothetical mid-size town photographer could be…

1. Move my family to a larger OR more lucrative market (see what I mean…heart skip a beat!).

2. Re-brand as a luxury brand.

3. Gross $200K next year.

Some other goals could be...

• Stop all advertising and do in person networking only.

• Make the switch to luxury IPS.

• Become a freelance photojournalist with National Geographic.

• Start a magazine for photographers.

• Photograph only what I love and am good at.

• Focus on high end Jewish weddings.

2. Determine what work must be done to reach these goals

Using our hypothetical photographer who decides to move above. Here is some DEEP WORK that could be done...

• Dive deep into Luxury Brands around the world. What do they say, what do they feel like, how do they market? What kinds of products do they create?

• Study high end luxury markets around the country (Scarsdale NY, Rhinebeck, Maclean VA, West Palm Beach FL, Rolling Hills CA, Belle Mead TN, Darien CT, Scottsdale AZ, Cary NC, Newport Beach CA, Wellesley MA etc…). Which two or three could be potential new homes for you?

• Get a loan or save enough to make the move and open up a studio.

• Start photographing work for your portfolio that will start to build this kind of higher end clientele (you don’t need to wait until you move to do this).

• Take a course on IPS for the luxury market.

3. Eliminate everything else.

This part should be easy, hypothetically.

• Stop photographing anything that doesn’t move you toward this goal.

• Stop the endless tweaking of your brand and website. You can’t tweak a broken system. It requires destruction and evolution.

• Stop spending any time on social media or other distractions that doesn’t move you toward this goal.

• Stop…stop…stop…ANYTHING that doesn’t move you toward this.

When you start thinking and acting this way amazing change can happen. It takes work and some internal re-wiring of old bad habits that bore deep tracks in your psyche. But it can be done.

Or you can just keep doing what you have always done and expecting different results. Ahem. How’s that working for ya?

It’s time to get off the distraction hamster wheel. Be bold. Do the DEEP WORK required - if for not other reason than NO ONE ELSE IS DOING IT - WHY NOT BE THE ONE WHO DOES.

It’s the only way to stand out in a sea of look alike photographers all doing the same thing. 

You are not everyone. Prove it.

5 Ways Solid Business Systems Help You Stand Out from the Pack

Being an expert (one of our mantras here at 16 Hoops) requires some forethought and design. You aren’t going to naturally wake up one day and find you have the expert position in your market or with your customers.

Expertise is built. It is earned.

We will add this: it is also repeatable. 

It can’t be random, either. Take this wisdom from E-Myth Revisited:

Definition of deal-breaking customer service = creating a delightful experience, then taking it away.

How do we earn customer trust and delight, and then replicate those experiences? With systems. Formal, written, AKA not "in your head" systems.

Systems are the backbone of any thriving customer-oriented business. Let’s explore five ways that repeatable, designed systems hold everything in elegant balance.

1. Systems get you three steps ahead of your customer

Ever wondered why restaurants give bread or chips and salsa for free? It seems counterintuitive--won't it leave us full and we won't order as much?

Gordon Ramsay explains why good restaurants do this, and it totally makes sense. It buys the restaurant time with the customer for when they will inevitably get in the weeds. It's "baked in" to the system. It's the old "under-promise and over-deliver" adage.

2. Systems allow you to repeatedly delight and surprise your customer

Yours truly hired one of her favorite photographers, Davina Fear, for one of Fear's famous "Familyness" sessions.

There were many cool things about this entire process with Davina--but the one our family still talks about to this day was the Summer Bucket List package that arrived 6 months later. It was simple, just a box with confetti & fun family bonding game ideas. 

But - it was totally out of the blue, long after we had paid our balance and moved on with our busy lives. We felt so special! But to Davina, it was just another awesome day at the office because of her systems that were designed to surprise and delight.

3. Systems allow you to be you and play to your strengths

The news is out about introverts vs. extroverts in the workplace. And it turns out that introverts and extroverts are going to have WILDLY different systems that work for them.

Case in point: We love Sarah Petty at Joy of Marketing to death. She is one of the most fun, outgoing, confident, interesting mentors out there. The systems that she sells probably ROCK a lot of photographers' worlds out there (more power to them).

But no matter how we tried, her bubbly phone scripts and motivational selling tools just never worked for our studied, introverted souls. And that's okay--because one size does not fit all when it comes to systems for your own business. What works for Joe Cool Photo down the street will most likely never work for you.

That is why we don't really believe in DIY programs--they are designed by very well-meaning people who are NOT YOU. At 16 Hoops, a huge part of our program is mining deep and figuring what is really going to work for you. Are you a procrastinator? Do you hate in-person sales? Do you like to think you should be networking, but really, deep in your soul, know that you won't do it? Do you love meeting new people more than anything? Do you want to dominate the global sphere with your TED talk someday? Do you never, no, not ever want to have employees? Do you know you want to hire a team to run your business someday?

Each of the people I've just described above is a sampling of who should have different systems.

4. Systems allow you to automate and streamline

A few years ago, in our household each night was a frantic open-up-the-fridge-and-pray game. We had no plan. Until...we discovered Taco Tuesdays. Then Pizza Friday.

Now we actually look forward to shopping day--we know exactly what to get and making dinner is (well, almost) a pleasure now.

Build a plan, get down to the molecular level (what "ingredients," or tasks, do you need to "buy," or do, every week?), and stick to it. It's as simple as that, and it will change the way you run your business.

5. Systems give you the option to sell your business someday

Here is the promised land of systems.

Take everything out of your head, and get it down onto paper. Literally: put it in a binder that anyone can step into practically seamlessly and run your business with. This is your payoff for the hard work of building custom systems. You now have a documented system that allows you the freedom to either step away from your business slowly, or sell it outright.

See a pattern here?

The best systems churn away all but unnoticed by your clients and your staff.

You won’t get any thank-yous. You won’t get anyone tweeting how awesome you are. But you will have is a strong, growing, admirable business with clients who come back again and again.

Do it better. Do it with your quiet, elegant, thoughtful systems. Rinse and repeat.

Worlds to Discover: The Stellar Advantages of Deep Expertise

There is a dark side to the creative professional. 

Creatives thrive when the landscape is constantly changing. This makes them highly attractive to work with. They are adaptable and able to solve any problem thrown their way.

But this quality is both a gift and a curse to creative business owners. 

Because creatives crave new challenges, they get stuck in generalist gear. They'll take almost any job that comes along because they're afraid of either getting bored or losing business if they say no.

If you're a wedding photographer who's taking any old wedding that comes your way because it feels like a challenge or you have some bills to pay--whether it's ballroom, B&B, historic, coastal, Western, barn, big city, small town, rural, weekday, outdoor, tented, 50 guests, 300 guests...you're a generalist.

If you're a portrait photographer taking any old gig that comes your way because it feels like a challenge or you have some bills to pay--headshots, kids, newborns, maternity, weddings, seniors, pets, corporate, bands, product shots…you're a generalist.

Lord help you if you are doing BOTH weddings & portraits. 

Being a generalist is fun and maybe even profitable, for a bit. But it will backfire one day if it hasn’t already.

A backfire is when you're...

• Feeling like you're always competing on price

• Wondering what your year will look like

• Wishing you had a steady pipeline of highly paid, rewarding work instead of a trickle of erratic work

• Sitting by your computer hoping a bride or family will email

• Struggling to blog and market because you don’t know your audience

Is your ulcer acting up yet? Can you hear the backfire coming?

Enter THE SPECIALIST

You might think that specialists are bored because they only do one thing. Or that they're losing business by claiming expertise in one narrow avenue.

Nah-ah.

It's just the opposite, in fact.

Here is what the world of deep expertise for your creative business looks and feels like:

• Rather than excluding potential clients, you are opening up your access to a more profitable, desirable niche market

• With focus comes confidence. No more learning curve. No more competition.

• Specialists don’t get bored. They get better. Your confidence gives you power to take on larger and larger challenges. You think Picasso got bored painting? Heck no. He got deeper into his craft--and commanded ever higher prices for his work.

• You think generalists do TED Talks? Nope.

• With deep expertise comes deep value. You can charge more and more as you sail deeper into those blue-ocean solo waters, where only you can solve your client’s problems.

Here's the kicker: once you have become a deep expert in one thing, you can choose at any time to take on a project or client outside your scope--on your own terms. It's the best of both worlds.

For those select few who choose to do the hard work that it takes to plant their flag on the undiscovered worlds of deep expertise, the sum of their parts creates the most stellar advantages in the business landscape.

P.S. This post is dedicated to some mentors and authors we cherish here at 16 Hoops. Thank you to Blair Enns, Jonathan Stark, Jody Maberry, and Philip Morgan (in no particular order!) for helping 16 Hoops dive deep into our own fascinating worlds of expertise.

Think Different: The Case for NOT Using the Word "Investment" in Your Navigation Bar

Okay, look.

I've got nothing against the word "investment". We use it here in context all the time at 16 Hoops.

I don’t even have anything against the togs who use it in their site menus and nav bars.

However, I do have a bone to pick with the fact that EVERY SINGLE photographer website template out there blindly uses the word "investment" in exactly the same way because of some Patient Zero site design from 2004.

Do you think Apple looked at how Microsoft did its nav bar before they launched? No, they went back to the drawing board and said “Think different."

The word “investment” in the navigation bar is the poster child for mediocrity. It’s the most common “symptom" I see of a larger problem in the photography industry. And here at 16 Hoops, we're railing against that problem.

We're railing against blindly following the lemmings off the cliff.

I’m all for using language (copy) in a compelling way. The word “investment” sounds better than “pricing,” right? It must!

But in reality, it allows every photographer out there who is intimidated by or finds unpleasant the fact they have to actually sell their products and run a business to procrastinate even further.

Does Apple use the word “investment” as some secret way of saying “This is a good idea”?

NO. They very simply state what a product costs after showing off all its abilities.

Apple doesn't have to legitimize a product's price by sneakily calling it “an investment," and neither do you.

That is the systemic crisis our industry is facing right now. Too many photographers look (and present themselves as) exactly the same.

Ergo, too many photographers compete for all the same clients. Ergo, too many photographers (epidemic levels) compete on price and commoditize our amazing industry and talents. (iPhones aren't helping…but I have ideas on how the iPhone is THE BEST thing that ever happened to our industry.)

And using the same words, the same logos, the same structures, the same website templates ain’t helping us at all.

Think Different. Really examine what your website is doing for your business. And start by re-thinking the word “investment".

Do You Have an Exclusive System Yet?

Your exclusive system makes you smarter. 

Your exclusive system makes you think.

Your exclusive system allows you to enjoy the sales the process--even if you HATE sales.

Your exclusive system means you've got a repeatable, profitable, unique process that hooks clients and makes your life easier. 

Photographers don’t always think this way, but they should.

So let’s back up.

What is an "exclusive system" when it comes to your photography business?

Unofficially, it means transforming your creative knowledge into a unique selling tool (or tools) for your business.

Officially, it can also be legally protected. In this case, your system is known as "intellectual property," or "IP".

Today, we're talking about unofficial systems. (Note that the IP aspect is a natural Phase 2, especially if you want to sell your business, and/or if you've invested a large sum in researching and designing your proprietary system).

Mine what's yours

An exclusive system makes you dig deep into your experience as a pro photographer and find the one thing you do for your clients that no one else does.

You actually already know what your system contains, because at some point in your business you have done all these things naturally. The elements of your system are all right there in your own history and one-of-a-kind experiences. You just need to know where to look to dig them up.

Once you mine those golden nuggets (they're usually hiding in plain sight, but sometimes it takes some blasting), it is not enough to simply stop there. No, that would be like striking gold and then just leaving it there in the mountain to admire. 

You gotta do the work to write those systems down--so you can cash in on them and effect great change in your business.

Why MUST you write down your system? A written system isn't just a record of company policies and procedures for you and your employees or assistants (though that could be start of one).

The process of writing down your system shows you your weak spots--where you need to dig deeper. It also shows your strong spots--where you have been doing things differently and didn't even realize it. 

Polish that gold

Once you've got your system in writing, take the time to create a proprietary visual infographic (or even a video!) about your system. Guard this resource like Fort Knox--it’s meant for your staff and clients' eyes only.

Next, bolster your appealing, well-designed visual system with a few case studies from previous clients.

Share that puppy with prospective clients, and you've just bumped your business to the tippy-top of their shortlist. Not too many photographers are doing this in any kind of formal, repeatable way.

Photographers (and most business owners) might *think* they are taking these steps, but they are not. Not at all.

If you can’t create a proprietary visual and/or written statement from your system, then you essentially don’t have one. 

If you think that having a website, a contact form, an email response, and a pricing sheet is a system, then you have a lot of (doable! rewarding!) work ahead of you.

What DOES make you stand out? Taking these four steps:

1. Do the brave work of positioning your business around your unique expertise

2. Express that expertise in purposeful branding and website design

3. Have a precise, strategic marketing plan that drives inquiries and nurtures leads

4. Seal the deal with your exclusive SYSTEM--again, this is the process you've developed that sells clients on working with you

It’s pretty much an unbeatable combination to take your business to the next level, to repeatably and consistently land that premium-paying ideal client, and to stop competing on price. Forever. 

So what are you waiting for? Start designing your system today. 

"What About The Logo?" Is the Wrong Question.

We were working on a fun client branding project recently when something happened to turn on a lightbulb for our clients.

I love when these "lightbulb moments" happen, and I'd like to share this one as a great example of our unique approach "at work" with 16 Hoops.

To give you a bit of background, we do branding differently from a lot of other agencies out there.

We are highly specialized since we only work for photographers, and we believe that the destination determines the map.

From point A to point Z, whether it's a 1-month or year-long project, all design decisions are laser-focused on the desired outcome established early on. That's the "strategic" part of our design firm.

This desired outcome is usually buried very deeply. Working closely with our brave clients, we have to stir up quite a ruckus to find it. 

And we wouldn't have it any other way.

As one of my favorite design mentors, Eric Karjaluoto at Smash Lab, likes to say: If you aren't willing to do the hard work to make meaningful change in your business, then... "There are tens of thousands of other design agencies who'd be happy to take your money anyway."

So, back to our story.

We had gone through the very hard work of the positioning module of our program, and armed with that knowledge, we were now knee-deep in our "design thinking" phase.

But before we could even get through our first branding exercise, our client asked,

"Well, what about the logo?"

("Well, who cares?" was what we WANTED to say.)

But--thinking better of it, drinking our own Kool Aid--we advised them:

"Don't ask 'Well, what about the logo?' Ask instead, 'How, when, why, and where is my logo being used to inspire my ideal client to pick up the phone and hire me?'"

And then ask: 

"How then, again, are the identifying marks, icons, colors, textures, logos, feel, fonts, words, packaging, etc., being woven together in complete harmony throughout the entire client experience of my business to elicit warm fuzzies and command a premium price?"

And finally ask:

"How is the complete yet delicate ecosystem of my business experience being revealed, shared, and demanded in the larger world/market?"

Ding, ding, ding. Lightbulb went on. That's what branding is all about. Suddenly the client was able to see how their brand is like an ecosystem, rather than just a logo and a set of colors. All the parts work together in harmony--each unable to shine without the others--to showcase style, purpose, personality, and value to their target client. 

Or at least, that's how 16 Hoops approaches branding for our clients. Seth Godin also has a wonderful definition of branding as an ecosystem.

Our hope is that 16 Hoops clients will never look at their logo the same way again.

Real Experts Have Skin in the Game

This post is for anyone who is considering hiring an outside design firm or consultant.

One of our most important guiding principles here at 16 Hoops for our clients is our complete avoidance of (and general distaste for) hourly pricing and "billable hours".

(Yuck! Ptooey!)

We brazenly vanquished hourly pricing to the hinterlands from Day One. 

You might ask, "Why, 16 Hoops?! What did hourly pricing ever do to you?!"

It’s not only what it does to us--it’s what it does to you, our customer. 

We believe in the concept of expertise. Expertise is the DNA of any business (including your own photography business).

Experts deeply understand the complex problems and solutions of their ideal customer. If they didn’t understand these things, they would, um, not be called experts. They would be called something else.

As design & strategy experts, they should have the knowledge to:

    •    look at your problem (diagnose)

    •    offer up a solution (prescribe)

    •    execute and solve the problem (apply)

    •    re-execute (re-apply) often and as needed as new problems arise

They are, in effect, staking their reputation on this expertly applied knowledge.  

It doesn’t matter if it takes an expert 5 minutes or 500 hours to solve your problem. It’s their EXPERTISE you are paying for--not their time.

That’s what we call "skin in the game," and it manifests in Purposeful Pricing (AKA, "fixed bid" pricing)--they either solve your issue for an agreed-upon cost, or, if they are worth their salt, they work for free until they solve what they promised. 

Hourly pricing, on the other end of the spectrum, is used by people who probably never even asked you detailed questions about your problem, and who can’t tell you how much it will cost to fix. They usually just start doing work, tally up those hours, and hand over the bill. 

Did they even solve your problem? Did they even ask what the problem was in the first place?

(Side note here: "My website is old" is not a problem, by the way. That may be a symptom of a larger problem, like "I don't have clients anymore--help me," or "My revenue has dropped 35%," or "I want to own a new market niche," etc. 

But a poorly designed, out-of-style website is NEVER the problem in and of itself. Ergo, simply building a new pretty website won't solve that underlying problem. Experts will charge you to solve the underlying problem, and one tool of many toward that goal will most likely be a new website. See the difference?)

In some cases, hourly billing allows for work to start before you have even agreed on the outcome or goal. It's equivalent to hiring a pair of hands, not an expert's brain.    

Where’s the skin in that game? It’s on you. Hourly billers are asking you to take a ton of risk (is your problem solved??), while they take none (they can keep happily charging away whether your problem is solved or not).

In addition, it’s in their best interest to take longer to do the work. What is their incentive to do it faster when they are billing by the hour? It creates a conflict of interest at every turn between the designer and the customer.

It’s almost never going to be in the interest of the customer to pay by the hour. 

Imagine if a real estate agent said, “Let’s just get you into the house, and then in 3-6 months, we’ll tally up the hours used and see how much this baby costs.” Crazy, right? (PS...that is kinda what happened before the 2008 recession. Let's avoid that for your business at all costs! Step one: Stop tweaking your website with no goal in mind!).

Hourly pricing should be exiled to the hinterlands, right??

Instead of asking "What is your rate?", ask this question

The question should never be, “What is your rate?” It should always be, “I have a problem, or I need to improve my business. How much will it cost to solve my problem, and what is my return on investment?" 

See the difference?

There should be a major discovery session before any work begins or any costs are offered up (always costs, NEVER estimates). Experts know what questions to ask.

Experts usually charge what initially looks like more. But in the end, they actually solve your problem. The hourly guy could still be charging away, sometimes years later, and while you may have some pretty design elements complete, and some buttons on your website, you'll be no closer to solving your initial problem at the “end” of the engagement than you were at the start.

An amazing thing happens when you pay someone an "investment" sum for something that is important to you: Suddenly, both sides care more. Both sides are invested and will move mountains to achieve it.

Both sides have skin in the game, and magic happens.

PS. Check out Kirk Bowman’s Art of Value Podcast featuring Jonathan Stark if you want to get even more down and dirty with the pitfalls of hourly pricing.

How to Name Your Business Right the First Time (and Other Hard Decisions)

Some bells are hard to unring.

If we could only go back in time...there are so many things we'd say to our younger entrepreneurial selves. Right?

Decisions you make today will have far-reaching consequences, most of which you just can't see right now. And decisions you made back then, when you started your business, are still affecting it now.

Let's quickly explore one of those consequences now.

Think very, very carefully about the name you choose for your business

Yours truly's biggest mistake, by far, was naming my first business after myself.

Even way back in 1999, I instinctively knew not to call my photography business "Geneve Hoffman Photography." I was 99% sure I wanted to call it Blue Door Photography because of all the blue doors I photographed obsessively in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Blue Door was totally "me," and it sounded cool. It was evocative--all my gut instincts were saying yes.

But I was a newbie, and I had to pull the trigger, and I got very generic (almost bad) advice from someone from whom I had no business seeking business advice (ahem, my hairdresser). I think this person even said, “Everyone calls their business by their first name in your field.” That alone should have been my cue to run the other way.

Why your business name should not be the name on your birth certificate

The problem with naming your business after yourself is that the business--its reputation, its successes, its failures, its personality--are forever tied to you, the founder.

Even if you want to back away or take a different role. Even if you decide you want to sell the business. Especially if you get hit by a bus.

15+ years after taking my hairdresser's advice, I now am in the unfortunate situation of having a business from which it will be very hard to remove myself--much less sell. Can't unring that bell.

I only see it now as a mistake with my 20/20 hindsight. How I wish I'd invested a decent sum on a branding and strategic firm back then.

No joke--I would have saved myself hundreds of thousands of dollars by now, because in 2016, I would be lightyears closer to the business of my dreams. Specifically, the dream of being able to step away from or even sell the business I worked so hard to build. 

What I wouldn't give to have that conversation with my younger entrepreneurial self. Lesson learned, though--and I am doing it right with 16 Hoops. I really don't do things small and unassuming. I do them big.

So by all means, take 10-15 years to figure it out on your own, or do what I wish I had done:

Invest in trustworthy branding advice as early as you can.

If you do it right, the payoff is HUGE, both short- and long-term.

Best SEO Practices for Photographers on Squarespace - Part Three

Let's take this baby on the open road!

In parts one & two we talked about setting up the backend for success, and paying our pound of flesh to the Google Gods.

Now we are finally getting to the fun part of SEO: creating your own content with blogging.

Let’s quickly summarize what makes for best Blogging SEO Blogging practices for Photographers on Squarespace.

There are two keys that every blog post should try to have:

1. Quality, relevant content your viewers are going to want to read, share, and return for.

2. Links to/from your website to/from other quality websites related to your content.

These two go hand in hand though because, if you are truly creating great content, other websites will want to come to you as a resource. So if you are a portrait photographer, create great content and spread it all around!

The guides and tips below will help you make the most of Squarespace’s native SEO blogging capabilities. So why not hedge your bets and use everything at your disposal?

A reminder that we are not SEO specialists, but are pretty confident in the Squarespace department.  Also remember that not every Squarespace template is created equal. Some templates will surface blogging differently, so be sure to ask your designer about this.

Before You Begin.

Before you even begin blogging, as a photographer your should be making sure that your images are:

• sized correctly for SEO

• tagged correctly for SEO (and for copyright)

• named correctly for SEO

This is true for any image on your website.

We help all of our website clients do this right from the beginning. We recommend using a combination of Lightroom & Bridge to accomplish this, but no matter what your preferred workflow method, just naming your images to protect, copyright, and enhance SEO is really a whole different video series. So, for the purposes of this series, just read the very helpful Image links below before you start blogging. 

Sizing Images Correctly for SEO

Even though you can load images of almost any size onto Squarespace, we recommend that for all blog images and any images that won’t be headers:

1500 px across on long edge jpeg is a good standard for the average image upload

Any larger than that, your images could be loading slow and slowing down your SEO. Your ranking on search engines is higher the faster your site loads. Squarespace automatically resizes all your images depending on where and how it will be used. So don't overthink this too much. Squarespace has you covered.

Tagging Images Correctly for SEO

Yes it's true that metadata and metatags are not as important as they used to be in the world of SEO. But that doesn't mean as photographers that you shouldn't still be doing it. Being thoughtful about how you tag your images is still important to protect your images from copyright infringement online, and as a bonus it won't hurt your SEO either.

We highly recommend that you use Lightroom metadata presets for every image. If you have no idea what I just said there, then you will want to watch an online tutorial. If you search for "Lightroom metadata preset Lightroom CC 2015 tutorial" - any number of tutorials should come up. 

Once you have tagged your images correctly in Lightroom and/or Bridge, you can use the handy dandy Importing Image Metadata button in the backend of Squarespace. 

***Word of warning: Metadata Import button in Squarespace only works in Gallery Pages and Gallery Blocks. It does not work in Image Blocks. So if you import your images one at a time into your blog, you will still have to manually title your images. I know, "boo Squarespace." Boo.

Naming Images Correctly for SEO

Don't ever, no never, use the random string of numbers your camera assigns to an image. And don't just name all your images "16Hoops_0001.jpeg" either.  "stock image eco friendly lightbulb.jpg" is a lot more informative than "IMG00051.JPG." Be specific, read it like a human would, and don’t keyword stuff.

If anyone in the world is searching for "eco friendly light bulb stock image" your image will come up. So if you indeed do shoot stock images of lightbulbs, and a client is looking for that too - that is as good as SEO gets.

If you have a long string of "keywords," yet fail to mention the actual content of the particular image, that is an SEO fail. Get it?

Alt Tags

Alt Tags and captions in Squarespace are another SEO naming opportunity. They are a little complicated as each template may handle and display them differently, but a caption sometimes acts as the alternative tag, or "alt tag" that google bots read and rank. But again, our mantra, KEEP IT HUMAN. DO NOT KEYWORD LOAD - google will punish you.

If you do not assign an alt tag, the title of the images and/or the caption will act as the alt tag in it's absence. So again, naming images right in the first place always a good habit to start early and practice often.

Ok - Finally, Let's Start Blogging!

So far we have shown you the following SEO for photographers on Squarespace tips:

• How to set up your titles and descriptions on each page

• How to pay your pound of flesh to the Google gods

• That you need to have properly sized, tagged, and named your images.

Let's take your content out on the open road finally!

Here is our video tutorial walking you through the Best SEO Blogging Practices for Photographers on Squarespace. Yippee!

It's a Wrap.

We hope you enjoyed this series. All of these best practices are just very basic SEO made exclusively with photographers in mind. We have really only scratched the surface, but remember you don't need to be an SEO expert to rock your own SEO. 

Don't get too deep into this stuff. There are a lot of articles out there - and they are usually just way too long and detailed for the needs of the average busy photographer. We covered what you need right here - the rest is just SEO gravy.

If you want "further reading" I urge everyone to look no further than the super helpful Squarespace support articles & videos. You can click on any question mark link as you are in the backend, or you can just noodle around it if you are looking specific help. That is another reason Squarespace is our platform of choice. 

Our own 16 Hoops Team Support is always here to help too. If you get stuck send us an email for a Resources Page request - and if you are already a client, then you know you can set up a custom tutorial with our team on any given week as part of your membership. We are here to help. 

Stay tuned too! You might like what we have brewing next:

Google is always changing their ranking algorithms and they ain’t the only game in town, so be sure to be on our mailing list for our next video series coming later this Spring on The New SEO: Diversifying your Digital & Online Marketing where we pretend that GOOGLE--GASP!--disappears overnight. What are you to do? Well fear not - we have a plan so that all your eggs aren’t in one GOOGLE basket.

Here are some outside articles that we found helpful:

10 Image Optimization Tips

 Google Webmaster Info

Squarespace Image Best Practices

Squarespace & Alt Text Tutorials/Info

The Year of Purposeful Marketing

As we all wave a fond farewell to 2017, we should also be slamming the door on random marketing for good. 

If you forgot how to avoid random marketing in general, read our primer article on When Marketing Goes Very, Very Wrong.

Instead, let’s make 2019 the Year of Purposeful Marketing.

No more stabbing in the dark at random social media platforms hoping and praying someone will notice you. 

Instead an airtight marketing plan that will zero in on your ideal client like a heat seeking missile.

But first, we need to wipe the slate clean. New Year’s are built for this kind of delicious creative destruction. Get out a blank sheet of paper. 

Step One. 

Make sure you have ONE lucrative expertise that talks to ONE client in your market.  Shed that old 2018 “generalist” skin, and become a highly sought after 2019 “specialist.” This is called positioning.

Step Two.

Re-examine how and where you engage with your high paying premium clients (logo, website, copy etc). Are you speaking their language? This is called branding.

Step Three.

Set a goal and a budget, then build a campaign. Refine, repeat. Refine, repeat. I highly recommend enlisting the help of an expert marketing team to start. This is called marketing.

Step Four.

Make sure that once your ideal client finds you, you know exactly how to repeatedly land, engage and quietly delight them. This is called systems.

Step Five.

2019 = Best. Year. Ever.

Let’s take a closer look at some possible questions to be asking yourself for the marketing bit, or Step Three from above.

How do you reach clients? Pretty basic right?

Should you use email? twitter? facebook? instagram? print ads? posters? direct mail? video ads? youtube? networking? smoke signals?

It’s impossible to say "yes, yes, yes and yes” unless you know with unwavering certainty 100% who your high paying premium customer **actually** is.

Everyone is trying to find that millennial sweet spot - but it’s more than likely that your customer is actually NOT a millennial. Especially if you are a high end portrait photographer. 

Millennials spent a wad on their wedding recently, and are probably broke. The last thing they want to spend a ton of money on is an expensive portrait session. 

SO, it begs the question - are you wasting your time on instagram if it’s actually GenXer’s you should be trying to reach? Shouldn’t you rather be spending your entire marketing budget on a robust Facebook ad campaign or a large magazine print ad campaign then? Do you even have a budget? 

These are all questions you (or better yet, your marketing team) should be asking and answering before you even open up one social media account.

Start to ask yourself questions like these so you can tear down whatever was holding you back in 2018 and build something new and exciting for 2019.

So here is your first and best checklist re-cap as we dive into 2019 (your most amazing business year ever!):

1. What is your unique area of expertise? Figure this out, and your marketing will start to magically fall into place. Be tough on your business! Make the very, very, very hard decision to be a sole expert in one lucrative thing. It’s the most game changing business decision you will ever make.

2. How does your unique expertise walk and talk in the world to engage your ideal client?

3. Once you have positioning and branding nailed, write down your sales goals (monthly? yearly? quarterly?) and build a targeted sales campaign. Refine, repeat.

4. Spend the time to build your own signature system (simple is always better) to turn clients into raving fans.

5. Enjoy your work and have a reliable pipeline of high paying clients year round! Like I said, Best Year Ever!

This all sounds like a lot, huh?

Maybe 2019 should start with a gift to your business.

The gift of our 3 week Private Roadmapping session. At the end of it you will have the an actionable foundation for all the steps above. Whether you choose to move forward with our partner design team, or on your own - you will def be on the way to your best year ever.

Tell us your dreams for 2019! I know we can achieve them together.

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Join for free here by signing up to be a member. You will receive the 8 day intro course “Am I ready for a re-brand?” right off the bat. Plus have access to our member’s only resources pages full of free advice, action items, and web tutorials and finally one helpful email a week in our member newsletter. Let me in!

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16 Hoops + Inspire Photography Retreats

Inspire Photography Retreat

My good friend Enna Grazier started Inspire with her husband Matt Grazier as the "un-conference" for photographers. As visionaries in this industry, they saw a need for a more intimate and less intimidating workshop style retreat.

I have watched it grow year after year into the inviting and invigorating 225 person event that it is today. I've also personally attended two of them in two different New England towns.

“The Inspire Mission: To foster & maintain a supportive community where photographers are encouraged & empowered to grow in their lives and businesses through innovative curriculum in the areas of Craft, Vision & Business.”

— Enna Grazier, Mark Higgins & Eric Foley

16 Hoops has the amazing opportunity to sponsor the 2017 Inspire Photography Retreats. Mary, our designer, invented some fun notebooks for each photographer too. We hope everyone enjoys them, and the retreat.

It starts February 27 and will be held this year at The Hyatt Regency in Newport Rhode Island. Get all the details HERE!

Watch the fun unfold on their Instagram feed too.

#inspirephotoretreats

Hyatt Regency, Newport RI Inspire Photo Retreats Filmed & Edited by Epic Filmmakers Photography by Stephen Wang Photography

Best SEO Practices for Photographers on Squarespace - Part Two

GOOGLE is Still King...For Now

One land, one king, one Google

Or could it be a queen? hmmm….any thoughts on this?

Even as a free citizen of Squarespace you must pay your respects to the GOOGLE gods just to cross all of our SEO “t’s.”

Look at this entire section as the price we pay gladly to thrive in its fiefdom. Ok - I’ll stop the geeky kingdom metaphors now…you get it. Just grab a cup of coffee and hunker down. It will be over before you know it.

And one more reminder that we are not SEO experts by a long shot. Just some regular photographer joes who have tried these things and had pretty good luck.

There are three levels of SEO you can or should do with Google.

1. "Only-give-you-a-slight-headache-so-you-probably-should-do-them" STEPS:

• Remove any passwords on site (must be fully launched)
• Set up a google account (if you don’t already have one)
• Set up Google Search Console (used to be webmaster, or is it still webmaster?…make up your mind Google.)
  • Submit your Property (URL)
  • Submit your sitemap (yes, Squarespace already does this for you…remember King’s are fickle things…better safe than sorry.)
  • Use "Fetch as Google” to crawl your site

2. "Guaranteed-a-full-blown-headache-so-only-do-as-bonus" STEPS:

• Set up Google Plus account
• Set up a Google My Business account
• Manually enter your business to Google Business Maps using certain keywords (if not already there)
• Set up Google Analytics
• Try out Google AdSense 

3. "Get-your-google-freak-on-you-may-want-to-consider-another-line-of-work" STEP:

• Sign up for Google Webmaster Academy (yes, this is actually a thing…sigh)

Let’s break it down:

Set Up A Google Account

Sounds easy, and you probably already have one. One side note/tip: Try to avoid setting it up using a separate business email. Google doesn't like it when you have different accounts (there is that kingly decree thing again). But it’s not a big deal, because hopefully with all this google stuff you should mostly just be setting it and forgetting it.

Set up Google Search Console.

This may take some time if you have never done it before not because it’s hard, but because it’s just a lot of links, double checking & trying to acquaint yourself with the (yawn) google search console user interface.

Set aside an hour and try to avoid distractions so you can finish it in one setting. If link below has changed (again), just search for “Google Search Console” or “submit website content to google” and the info should come up immediately.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
(Ahem. See? Even Google still calls it webmaster. Oh you Google King you).

Also - please follow the instructions in the Squarespace links below. They are a great resource and there is no point in us re-inventing a square wheel here again.

1. 1. add a “property” aka, URL - wait for verification email and click on…”add sitemap"
   2. "add sitemap” https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543547
   3. verify & “crawl—>fetch as google" property - Squarespace recommends using the HTML tag method below - our website techs can do this for you or you can follow the instructions here: https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205813918-Verifying-your-site-with-Google-Search-Console
   4. Don't worry if you get a "re-directed" "error" while crawling either. That means your site is being properly re-directed. Honestly - the whole Fetch As Google thing is a bit convoluted and overkillish. Don't lose too much sleep over this.
   5. Ignore the rest of the google gobbledy gook on the side bar of the search console. Really.

BONUS Headache Inducing SEO STEPS.

Haven’t had enough? If you want to take this to the next level, rubbing up against all the free business services that Google offers is never a bad idea to enhance your SEO.

1. Set up a basic Google Plus feed and use it to post relevant blog posts & images - unlike Facebook, you don’t have to keep checking this. Just post and walk away.
2. Check out "Google My Business" - it will walk you through some extra SEO success ideas. Pick and choose the ones you want to try out. Don't forget you have those Google Ad bucks credit under "marketing" in your main Squarespace console. (Watch our video in part 3 to see this part).
3. A lot of our clients have had luck with paid services like Google AdSense too.
4. Do a good old fashioned "google search" for your keywords and manually enter your business if it doesn’t show up on the business map for your area. This can be a bit of hit or miss and even frustrating as you search for your business and it doesn’t show up. But give it time - and keep posting and linking.
5. Last and least set up Google Analytics. I set mine up but don’t use it often (like never) - so don’t sweat this one too much. It’s one of those overhyped “things you should do.” The Squarespace analytics are fine for our purposes.

One more thing. You should set up the SSL on your site while you are in "sharpen the saw" mode on the back end. If you are collecting emails, and especially any payments on your site, it’s a must to enhance SEO.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205815898-Squarespace-and-SSL

Don't forget though, the point of all this GOOGLE worship is to just set it and forget it. Don’t linger too long on any one thing. Your time is much better spent creating awesome content on your site for your current and potential clients.

And again, I recommend referring to the awesome Squarespace Support Articles area and watching any videos in the SEO department too. Sometimes the content there is a tiny bit out of date, but the basics are very helpful.

Google should be appeased now. You get a gold star if you can count how many times we said GOOGLE in this post too. Can we PUH-LEASE move on. Next up: the actual fun part of SEO! Your own content!

Best SEO Practices for Photographers using Squarespace - Part One

What is SEO for Photographers, and Why Do I Care?

So this 3 Part series of articles was really fun.

We don’t claim to be SEO experts (in fact we’d rather avoid like the plague!), but we had a client ask us about it and this is what the 16 Hoops is all about. Ask and ye shall receive!

We scoured the internet and honestly just found articles either too dry or too detailed (like, "way-too-make-your-head-spin-detailed). So instead, we just pooled our own experiential resources. We hope you find it as fun and informative as we did. (PS - yeah, I shift from "I to we" a bunch. It’s complicated. I do all the writing, but hoops is most definitely a "we." So please forgive and bear with).

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you have at least heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and know it’s important.

And if your website is listed on the coveted “page one” spot for your industry keywords - you may even think you have nailed it.

But don’t get too comfortable.

Less and less actual clients are relying solely on search engines to find their perfect photographer. 

Also - what you may not know is that best SEO practices even from just 2 years ago are practically obsolete and vastly different than today. What may have rewarded you a few years back (keyword loading, metatags, expensive back link services) may actually harm your SEO now with the famously ever changing google algorithms. 

Squarespace is a big part of this SEO Revolution with it’s simple, responsive, mobile friendly sites and elegant back end design. 

The new streamlined SEO practices made especially for photographers that we will go over will be especially noticeable if you are coming from the WordPress platform with all its complicated key-wording and red/orange/green reward systems. 

We got nada against WordPress and hey, Squarespace ain’t for everyone (especially if you need a TON of customization…which we think, you in fact, do not)--but love it or leave it, Squarespace is by far our platform of choice here at 16 Hoops for many reasons. Its clean SEO is just one of them.

What we have noticed is that it is actually the photographers that consistently create relevant content that rise to the top. You could be pinging green left and right on yoast, but if you are only posting 6 times a year - google will punish you. 

I know - huh? 

Turns out just running your business really well is the key to great SEO. Go figure.

So here is the other KEY to great SEO:

Create thoughtful content (a lot of it) that your target audience will want to view and share. 

That is the number one reason they will not just be hiring you, but will also keep coming back year and year and portrait after portrait.

Keep in mind, SEO is a marathon and not a sprint. There is no magic bullet. If you keep doing these practices in our series and blogging frequently, your services will rise to the top in your market.

The rest of the neat tricks and stuff we will be showing you is just insurance and homage to the google gods. But insurance and spirit help is good to have.

Here is our first of two video tutorials on making the most of everything Squarespace has to offer: Setting up your Titles & Descriptions in Squarespace for SEO Success. PS - I say Part Three in beginning - just ignore that. I decided to put this part here instead and didn't want to re-record the whole thing. :)

So let's open up the hood (crack knuckles) on the Squarespace interface.

Hope you find this useful!  Let’s look forward to part two in our handy behind the scenes tour of SEO practices for photographers on Squarespace: Google Is Still King...For Now.