Hey SmugMug fans!! We have put a lot of emphasis on how we can create full websites within SmugMug with SmugSkins, but a lot of need out there doesn’t fall under that category. Is this you?

• You have a website
• You love your website
• You love SmugMug and want to use it to manage your galleries or sell your images
• You want your SmugMug site to look just like your main website!

SmugMug is such an awesome platform for showcasing and selling your images, why not brand it to match the rest of your site and blog? That is where we come in.

We recently completed brand-matching for Jim Garner and J. Garner Photography,  acclaimed as  “One of the Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the World” by American Photo Magazine and  “Photographer of the Year” by Professional Photographers of America (PPA). Their main site was built using Big Folio, and they use SmugMug to host their client galleries.

Here are some screen shots, but click here to compare in your browser: Main site vs. SmugMug site for Client Galleries

Needless to say, they were thrilled.

Wow, it looks amazing!  You really nailed the look of the new site, it looks great.

Contact us for more information about brand-matching your SmugMug site!

Have you been hearing a lot lately from people on how Twitter has done wonders for their business? Have you joined and have no idea what to do next? If you’re tired of feeling like you’re on the sidelines of social media networking and need some quick tips on how to make it work for you, then keep reading. You have to, however, remember one thing: no results are instant. It takes TIME! You have to nurture your social media connections just as you do your business connections and friendships IRL (in real life). Basically, the more you put into it, the more potential you have to get out of it.

Bear in mind that although most of what I explain is geared towards pointing the Professional Photographer in the right direction, it is applicable to anyone that has a business in just about any industry, especially one that’s client base is localized. Remember folks, I’m not just a web designer/SmugMug guru – I’m also a photographer just like you. I want to share with you some tips I have picked up, many of which I have used personally to grow both of my businesses.

REMEMBER: The one of the MOST important things about using Twitter, or any other social media networking, is brand consistency. Maintain the continuity of your brand, your look and feel, throughout every representation of yourself you have online. I will tell you what to think about at every step of this process.

Quick and Dirty – How to Join Twitter:

Sign up! Just that easy. Not sure what to name yourself? Keep it professional. Use your business name if you operate under a studio, or your name if that is your identity.

First thing’s first: Settings. 1. Location: Be specific. This is how people will find you, and know you are a locally based business. 2. Web: Put your URL to your website here. Remember to always drive traffic back to your website whenever possible. Embarrassed to have people see your website? We can help make sure your website is as professional as you are. 3. Bio: Super important for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)! This will help drive traffic to your Twitter profile and help people know what you’re all about. Put your phone number too! 4. Picture: Most people feel more connected when they have a feeling there is a real person on the other end. While you can put your logo here, it might be a good idea to put a photo of you! 5. Customize! Click on design. Don’t just pick something cool looking, brand your Twitter page. Create a background image that has your contact information and your logo. Note on background image dimensions: make your background 2048px wide. Height doesn’t matter so much if you blend it with a solid color background. Make your branding no wider than about 330px on the left hand side. Match the colors for your design by clicking ‘Change Design Colors’ to compliment your background. Be consistent and your profile will stand out!

Ok – all set? Now we’ll move on to what to actually do with Twitter.

Tweeting: My best advice: be professional, with a twist of personality. Tweet about things you are doing in your business, shoots you do, for business or pleasure, ways you are involved in your community, etc. When you Tweet, always remember that Twitter is only as powerful as it is because you can connect to people. You connect to people through a few different ways:

Mentions: When you type @ in front of a word, it makes it a hotlink to a specific user’s profile. You can use this to mention someone, or reply to something they tweeted. Then, when you mention someone, they would be able to see your mention. For example, say you wanted to post a tweet mentioning us, you would say something like “Check out @newskinmedia to learn more about social media integration”. Then in turn we could reply with a “Thank you @yourname! We appreciate it!” And people that follow us would then be able to find their way to your profile (and then hopefully make their way to your website). You can find the list of tweets with mentions to you when you go to your main page and click on the @yourname link under ‘Home’.

Hash Tags: Putting a hash tag before a word also creates a hotlink, but not to an individual profile, but to a trending topic or “grouping”. Example: #tag People can follow trending topics or groupings based on a specific hash tag, and you can put a hash tag in front of anything, but they key is to do your research and find some that have some sort of a following. You can visit hashtags.org to view real-time tracking of Twitter hashtags. (try searching #photog for a general trend on photography) You can follow @hashtags to have your hashtags tracked.

Shortening URLs: Having a hard time fitting in a link to a URL and keeping it under 140 characters? Try using a service like http://tinyurl.com or http://ow.ly.

It’s Business Time!

Here are some ways I have found that are an excellent tips and resources to use Twitter to drive business your way.

Follow Industry Leaders: Stay up to date about what is going on in your own industry. Creating a strong network of people pertaining to your industry is a really good idea. You’ll stay informed and can Re-Tweet cool things they have to say.

Following Vendors & Businesses to Build your Local Network: Try and find local businesses that work within you field to try and follow. Take it a step further and approach them to try to partner with them. For photographers, look up wedding planners, dress shops, etc.

How to Find Clients & Partners: I’m going to go over this step by step because the most important thing to remember here is that you don’t want to approach people before you’re ready. You want to make sure you have your website and Twitter profile up to date and looking *impressive* before you try to make an impression on someone! Follow the instructions above if you haven’t already to set up your account. Remember, the following steps are what I have found works for me. It will be a good way to get you started. If you have any input based on what you’ve found works, please comment!

1. How to do a Search on Twitter: This is where you get to be a little creative. Go to http://search.twitter.com and click on ‘advanced search’. Put in a search term, for example wedding. Next to places put your zip code and select a radius. Click search, you should have a variety of recent tweets show up from people within your area that somewhere in their tweet mentioned your search term. Try different terms such as engaged, or photographer. Who knows what you might get.
2. Make a list of people to contact:Write out the people you think you would like to contact. Plan ahead of time what you are going to say. Do your homework. Investigate their profiles, see if they have a website, learn about them! Best to be informed. If they are a potential client, make sure you have your portfolio looking awesome. If they are a company you would potentially want to partner with, have prepared an offer before you make the initial contact.
3. Follow: Once you have an idea of what approach you would like to make, go ahead and follow them. Then you can wait and see if they follow you back! Give it a day or so before you contact them. That should be enough time for them to have received the notification that you are following them so they are familiar with your name.
4. Contact / Direct Message: If they are following you, you are able to send them a direct message. It has to be under 140 characters, so make it short and sweet. If they are a client, show them your work! If they are a vendor or potential company you can partner with, ask them to lunch! Remember to try and propose something to them that is mutually beneficial. Be creative and be confident!

Keeping up with Tweets

Probably the hardest part for most people is maintaining activity on Twitter. I know I have a hard time with this myself as I get busy. Remember that building relationships is key. You do this through being consistent about your tweets, making them contain valuable information, and interacting with people. Remember to Tweet daily, if you can! Always remember that with every tweet and every follow you make, you are establishing long-lasting social media credibility. Here are some tools that can help you with keeping an eye on things as well as being regular with your tweets!

SocialOomph (formarly TweetLater): This service allows you to prepare a bunch of tweets in advance and queue them in a schedule to be sent out. It also provides many other tools for tracking keywords, extending your profile, viewing @Mentions and Retweets, and more goodies.

Echofon: As a plugin for Facebook, this is a great way to stay on top of tweets without having to actually go to the website to check on things. They also have an iPhone app you can check out.

TweetDeck: Similar to Echofon, but for your desktop. They also have an iPhone app.

Trillian Astra: This is what I personally use. It’s one desktop program which connects you to Twitter, Facebook, AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and more. Love having everything in one place!

Summary of Best Practices

The following tips are courtesy of @ScottBourne of Bourne Media Group.

• Be generous
• Link to others
• RT others
• Inform, educate, inspire
• Always respond to sincere messages
• Stay focused and on message
• Utterly ignore trolls

Thanks for reading, everyone! Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Also, if you follow @newskinmedia on Twitter, you get 10% off Twitter Customization!

Bright and early Tuesday morning and we are ready (well, as ready as you can be after just a few hours of sleep… *yawn*!!!) to rock the WPPI trade show! A change in plans has opened up more time for us to spend with you today, so now we will be available all day at the SmugMug & Bay Photo booth.

We hope you are having as much fun as we are! Please make sure you stop by booths 1518 and 1519 to speak with us about custom SmugSkins! Make sure to ask us about our show specials:

Purchase your SmugSkin at WPPI and get a free Twitter customization!

Join our mailing list (this week only) and get 10% off your custom SmugSkin!

Help us bring a new higher standard standard of design continuity to the web. Make your entire website one single seamless entity, be it your main site, online proofing and shopping cart, portfolio, blog, etc. Give it one solid look that is all you!

Come by today (Tuesday) from 10am to 4pm or tomorrow, Wednesday, from 10am to 12:30pm. We can’t wait to meet you!

-Melissa and Frank

I am happy to announce that New Skin Media will be at WPPI this year as a special guest at the SmugMug booth! If you are dying to meet me in person and ask me a bunch of questions about customizing your SmugMug site with a new SmugSkin, be sure to check us out at booth #s 1518 & 1519 (also the Bay Photo booth) on:

Tuesday March 9th, 2010 between 1:30 and 4pm

AND Wednesday March 10th, 2010 between 10:30am and 12:20pm

We will be having special drawings and giving away special offers, so be sure and stop by!!! I’m SO excited!!! VEGAS BABY!

-Melissa

Love is in the air! Win a Free SmugSkin, a SmugMug Customization by New Skin Media!

Raise your hand if you love SmugMug! Well I may not be able to see your arms waving back and forth, but I can certainly read your comments. The New Skin Media team is launching a contest. Oh yes. It is going to be sweet. I mean heart candy, dark chocolate kind of sweet. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I am asking you to post a comment response to this blog post.

How to enter:

Just answer this question: What do you love about SmugMug? And if you haven’t used it yet, please share what you love about photography!

Please include your name, valid email address, and a link to your current website and/or SmugMug account.

What can you win?

1 Year Subscription to SmugMug Pro learn more
Advanced SmugSkin SmugMug Customization learn more

A total value of $799.95!

Entry deadline: February 14, 2010 @ Midnight PDT

New Skin Media specializes in integrating custom design features with interactive media such as SmugMug and Wordpress blogs. We swear by clean designs, easy navigation and intuitive organization. We are known for our seamless integration between multi-platform medias.

Winner will be selected by a random number generator, determined by number of entries.

Thanks and good luck!
-Melissa

Whether you are starting your business from the ground up, or have decided to undergo a full-blown restructure of how you do business, branding is something that is key. It is the jumping off point for your entire operation. Branding is more than just logo design, but a logo is an excellent place to start. If you’ve been in the professional photography industry half as long as I have (and I haven’t been in very long!) you’ve been bombarded by all kinds of suggestions by the Pros on how to go about doing this. I’m going to take you through my journey based on my years of experience as a web/graphic designer, everything I’ve learned in the last year since we started our process of the creation of the Arken Studios brand.

I created New Skin Media back in ‘06. By that time I had been working for another web development company as a designer, but the entrepreneur in me needed to create my own brand. I’m sure many of you can relate. I went in with no real business plan, I just knew I wanted to create something that was an extension of myself, without simply using my name. Long story short, the decision process consisted of a combination of picking the name of a favorite song that had a double meaning in the design world, as well as seeing what domain names were available. It’s amazing how much Godaddy can influence your decision-making process! So, I had my name. I knew I wanted a logo to reflect a design skin, and I literally drafted up my current logo in about 2 hours. Now, I wouldn’t recommend this! It just so happened to work out for me 4 years later. The creation of Arken Studios was a different story. Arken Studios has been a work in progress for a few years now… I have been working with my mom and dad on building a photography studio – and we wanted to do everything right the first time instead of just diving in.

First step: Who is my target audience?

What kinds of clients do you want to attract? This is hugely important to the rest of the creation process. Are you a wedding photographer that wants to cater strictly to high-end clientele? Do you shoot children (I can’t help but giggle when I say that) and want to present yourself as colorful and playful? There are so many options here I cannot even begin to discuss, or even recommend, which direction to go here. All I can tell you is you need to go in knowing exactly who you want to aim at. It is the cornerstone of who you will become as a brand. Early on in the Arken Studios brainstorming process, before we were even calling ourselves Arken Studios, we knew we wanted to be a high-end boutique-style studio, with an emphasis on weddings and portraiture.

Second: What do I call myself?

Since we were coming from a place where there were three people involved, it made more sense to go with a studio name that was more than just “Ron Crain Photography” or “Crain Studios”. My dad is the senior photographer right now, but one day I will be, and I might not be a Crain anymore! We decided to go with Arken because that was the name of my dad’s Mechanical Design company that he had run for over 20 years – Arken Designs. He had had that name since I was a lil tyke, so it was just as much a part of the family identity as our name, as far as I was concerned. My dad came up with Arken based on the Arkenstone from one of his favorite books, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit… “the jewel of all jewels”, it was called. (It was also a good idea to have a business name that started with an ‘A’ so it could be near the top of alphabetical business listings.) But most of all, it was a good fit for us. We wanted to portray ourselves as a high-end boutique studio.  We were able to pick something that had meaning to us, that could also sound very high-end.

So, my advice is, go with something that means something to you, and that coincides with the target audience you have selected. And don’t forget to check and see that there is an appropriate domain name available to match! It will make your business a lot easier to find for your clients. (Try not to make it something terribly long either.)

Third: Logo design

The Arken Studios logo creation process was a long and arduous journey, to say the least. Let me start off by saying, I highly recommend working with a professional graphic artist here. There are so many things to consider that you may not be aware of. I’m going to give you some suggestions, but unless you know how to work some magic in Adobe Illustrator, you probably won’t get the results you want.

Take into consideration what you know so far. You know who your target audience is, and you know your name. How can you deliver the message of each with just one simple image? You want it to be something that people look at and identify as you. It has to be unique, it has to speak for you. Arken Studios was high-end… so we wanted something that would portray that. What do you know about us by looking at our logo? We are classy. We are elegant. We are wine country. Keep in mind also that in most cases you will also be using your logo as a watermark. Will it look good in one solid flat color stamped on your images?

You MUST have your logo in vector format. This means it is fit to be applicable for both web and print medias. If you don’t know how to do this, all the more reason to work with someone that knows what they are doing. Work with your designer, no matter how much or how little of an idea you have for your design.

Fourth: Color Palette

When you have your logo set, and you are beginning to think about your key marketing tools (ie website, business cards, etc), it’s time to start thinking about color scheme. One can come before the other, or you can work on them at the same time. But both are very important. People often don’t think that the color scheme of your business is as important as your logo, but it can make or break you. Pick colors that compliment your image. Don’t pick more than 3 primary colors for your designs. Be careful not to over-do the eye. Often times simplicity speaks more loudly than intricacy.

A really good tool to use when thinking of color schemes is Adobe’s Kuler website. It’s easy to get lost in there, it’s really fun.

Finally: Putting it all together

Remember, a sweet logo is just the beginning. You have to have some real design know-how to create what you do with it. Your website isn’t a good marketing tool unless it’s put together correctly. Your business cards and print material shouldn’t be too busy. And also remember that your brand extends to you, too. Dress to suit your brand and present yourself in a manner that backs up everything you’ve worked so hard to produce. People will feed off of your personality and your confidence and are more likely to hire you when they feel you are consistent with your image.

I hope I have maybe helped give some direction and pointed you in the right direction. Let me know if anything is unclear and I will try to clarify, or if you’d like any feedback on what you’re working on. Thanks!!