Columbus/Newark Ohio Photographer : Net working and Networking Help

This post will be fairly short but informational! 🙂 I am a member of a business networking group called BNI (you can find DiBlasio Photography here in the Licking County Leaders Chapter of BNI) and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome this group of people are! If you are a photographer, cake maker, hat sew-er, financial planner, gardener, etc (if you own your business or work with a small business at all!!) and you aren’t involved with your local chamber, groups like BNI or a business association, go this coming week and find out about them! The power of having a whole GROUP of other people who know you, know about your business AND like you as a person creates absolutely UNLIMITED POTENTIAL for your business to grow! This year we have started the process of choosing the the style of everything we have; from the types and sizes of albums we offer, to the way that our packages are presented to clients, we want them to have a consistent and AMAZING experience with us. NOW, that can be all well and good, but if no one knows about that passion and pursuit of excellence, we are dead in the water. Enter the power of networking! So, I’m not going to spend a ton of time on that, other than to say, if you want to add 37 (our group’s current number) sales people to your staff that you don’t have to pay and get a weekly opportunity to encourage them and inform them on how to “sell you” better, get your bucket to a local chapter and SIGN UP! 🙂

Ok, the other part of the post is about net working; a.k.a. optimizing your web presence to hit your target market and having your page/facebook/name/etc show up when they search for things related to what you offer or do. I’m still learning how to truly perfect this art, but some of the things I have learned, I will share with you in the form of a top 3 list.

#1 – Make sure you have your city/state name in your posts/page/titles etc. Google will automatically group listings and “hits” from web searches to LOCAL connections. SO, if you want Google to place you as a local hit, let them know where you are in lots of ways (and on every page of your site if possible).

#2 – Tag, tag, tag! There are a variety of ways to tag your posts, pages, and/or images in every different media source (i.e. on your blog, page, etc). Use the obvious tags (like the cloud of tags that shows up on the bottom of this page) to put KEY WORDS that people would search for (like Newark Ohio Photographer or Wedding Photography – to which Google will point them to local vendors – which is how your location in your posts puts you in the running to be listed!). Try to think of things you would Google if you were trying to find something. When we go out to eat I would probably search “Columbus Ohio Deli’s” or “Columbus Hidden Gems” is a search I tried recently that brought up a PLETHORA of awesome, local places for us to go on adventure to! Find your places where you can add tags and be descriptive, thorough and precise as to limit out accidental linking.

#3 – Register your business online with the major search engines. There are a variety of ways to add your business to online directories with the major search engines and they are very self-explanitory. This will get you started in, not only having info on the web for your future clients to find you with, but also in getting your name and location out to the engines you want to find you (you can even have customers go to your profile and add rave reviews to help boost your listing!)

There are literally THOUSANDS of websites out there that are both paid and free to help you get a better, more competitive web presence and probably ideas better than we listed. But, like I said, I’m still learning and growing myself. However, I know some people aren’t even aware this stuff matters or know where to start. SO, hopefully these are a few tips to help get your net working for you and also to get you out there and excited about NETWORKING!! 🙂 Have a great weekend everyone! And share, share, share on Facebook and your own blogs about the February Theme Date Special and the FREE GIVEAWAY we will be having this coming month!! IT’S AWESOME SO TELL YOUR FRIENDS! 🙂

and not to leave you without a photo! 🙂 Don’t forget class of 2013, we will begin the process of collecting our 24 seniors THIS SPRING to set up shoots through the fall so CONTACT US TODAY!! chad@diblasiophoto.com or 6214.598.6769!! (www.diblasiophoto.com)