One marketing tactic that most photographers totally miss out on is having a USP, or a Unique Selling Proposition.  This is taught in-depth by marketing experts such as Dan Kennedy and John Jantsch.
The idea is that you need to provide a clear reason why people should do business with you instead of your competitors.  Your USP should explain what is different about your work, what is different about your service, what is different about you, etc.  An effective USP should be long enough to convince your prospects but shouldn’t be a paragraph of information.
If you can’t succinctly explain why people should do business with you, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business for yourself.  Really!  If you can’t offer anything different than your competitors, then get out of business fast – it will be painful and frustrating every single day.
But, if you can, you’ll be super successful.  You see, if you can get people to understand why you’re different, you can charge higher prices, you can limit your products/services to ONLY what you’re good at, you’ll have better success asking for referrals, you’ll get much more repeat business, and more.
All this becuase YOU ARE THE BEST at what you do.  If you’re not marketing yourself as the best in the business, then you’re missing out on huge rewards.
So, task for this week: Figure out what you do better than any of your competitors and start marketing whatever that is.  Jack up your prices and you’ll see results.  The more you try and compare apples to apples with your competitors, the more you’ll lose business to them and lose profits on the work you get.  But if you put yourself in a position where no one else can compete, you’ll win all day long.
Let me know how this tactic works for you.…

Over at ArtAdvice.com, Sylvia posted an article titled, “Face the Facts – 5 Facts Artists Have to Face to Succeed in Business“.  She sheds some great insight on some common misconceptions that people have about artists and that artists have about themselves, their art, and their business.  Definitely take a moment to read it.
The five f…

Whenever I tell people that my dad is a photographer, they always respond by saying something like, “Cool!” or “That must be so much fun!” or “Awesome”.  They assume he’s “living the dream”.  I guess to a certain extent, he is.  But, that’s the question I’m raising to you today ̵…

Have you nailed down your New Year’s Resolutions?  Even if you have, let me suggest a few things.  Its easy to focus on resolutions that may improve your work, but make sure you have resolutions that improve your business as well.  Here are a few things that photographers need to focus on in 2009.

• First and foremost, use social media (primarily your blog) to tell your story.
• Use video to tell your story.
• Don’t go it alone – find partners that can help you build your business (hint: many of them may

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Technology and the internet are rapidly changing just about every industry and photography is no exception.  Here’s what I think you need to do to succeed in 2009:

• Successful photographers will embrace social media to connect and tell their story.  They’ll use blogs, social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, they’ll also use sharing sites like Flickr, and they’ll network using Twitter.  If you don’t have a plan to incorporate social media into your business, watch out.
• Successful photographers will also focus just as much time and energy telling their story and the stories of their works as they do on actually creating their work.  The story behind the pho

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